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Authors' Links  Selection

 Appell  (10/07/2021)  Go to:  List top | Next section (03/10/2020) | List bottom 
      Lauren Appell: Biden's DOJ targets parents but when protecting our kids, we know how to handle bullies  (Fox 10/07/2021)
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The Justice Department (DOJ) declared open season on parents this week in a disturbing decision to target moms and dads across the country who dare speak out against woke school board agendas like critical race theory curriculum (CRT) and politically driven COVID-19 restrictions.
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The absurd announcement to investigate parents they deem a threat follows an equally absurd letter from the National School Boards Association (NSBA) last week asking for the Biden administration's protection against parents.
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In their woke world parents exercising free speech to protect their kids is somehow equivalent to domestic terrorism. You read that right.  Parents are now terrorists in Biden's America. 
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Shameful and a gross misuse of power that with all our nation's problems, violent crime included, the DOJ wants to direct resources to investigate moms and dads.  Because to them we're the real threat to our country.
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... American parents have really become is a problem.  A big giant colossal roadblock for the uber woke agenda of activist school boards across the country trying to brainwash our kids.  And they've caught on that we're not going to sit down and shut up anytime soon.
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So parents are bullied and told to butt out, and if we don't, we'll be investigated and persecuted by the very government agencies we fund.
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They're overplaying their hand.  It was COVID that exposed both their indoctrination of kids and the power-hungry mentality of school boards and teachers unions.
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Parents caught wind of their agenda and started speaking up.  Activist school boards and teachers unions threw gasoline on the fire by doubling down on parents, who then got even more upset at the arrogance with which we were dismissed and ignored.
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Perhaps this is their first rodeo being challenged by parents, since they operated largely unchecked and under the radar before COVID blew the lid off their woke shenanigans.
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However, when it comes to our children, the most precious gifts God has entrusted us with, we will not be scared into silence, especially by a bunch of power-hungry elitists with a distorted view of their role in our kids' lives and education.
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Our taxpayer dollars fund all the power and privilege that is afforded to them as they sit atop their bully pulpit.
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You can bet parents aren't going to be browbeaten into submission while they cash our checks and then use their perch to lob threats at us so they can control our kids.
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In Virginia's recent gubernatorial debate Democrat Terry McAuliffe shockingly said the quiet part out loud, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."
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Every once in a while, even the most well-oiled politician accidentally tells you what they really think.  And this is what the school boards, teachers unions and the politicians they back really think of you the parent.
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Listen up – We don't co-parent with the government.  While every family dynamic may be different, one thing is for sure – it takes a family, not some agenda-driven bureaucrat in a government-run school to raise our kids.
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Parents (you know, the "domestic terrorists") are heading for the exits of these public schools.  In Fairfax County, Virginia, home of one of the largest school districts in the country, the district lost close to 9,000 students just this year.
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It's almost laughable that school boards want to be "protected" against "big bad parents" when, for the last year and half, it's our kids who've needed the protection against their woke indoctrination.
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This whole thing reeks of desperation and a political stunt to put a lid on moms and dads, whose only crime is exercising our First Amendment right.  As we've often seen lately, when free speech conflicts with the approved narrative, they try to cancel you.  Or in this case, flag you as a domestic terrorist.
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The only threat we pose to school boards is taking back our kids and stopping their politically driven agenda and severe overreach into our children's education through their indoctrination.
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We will not be undermined, intimidated or silenced by a bunch of woke bureaucrats trying to pump our kids full of propaganda for their political purposes.
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From extremist school boards to the DOJ, these government bullies are the real threat.  Now that they've been exposed, their days of unhampered power with no accountability is a history lesson.
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We're parents – we can handle bullies.  Thou shalt not mess with our kids.
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See related Alligator in the Pool (Dick Wright, 07/08/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related You Better Shut up! (Mike Shelton, 06/28/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Lauren Appell: Dr.  Seuss silenced – sobering lessons as cancel culture strikes beloved author  (Fox 03/03/2021)
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Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known in households across America as Dr.  Seuss, just became the latest cancel culture casualty.
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Dr.  Seuss' birthday coincides with Read Across America Day, which was by design when it was founded by the National Education Association more than 20 years ago.
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This year the author and cartoonist, who has sold more than 650 million books in at least 95 countries, posthumously received an unexpected birthday gift — he got blacklisted.
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Dr.  Seuss Enterprises said it will stop publishing six of the author's books due to racial and insensitive imagery.
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The organization said they "listened and took feedback from our audiences including teachers, academics and specialists in the field as part of our review process.  We then worked with a panel of experts, including educators, to review our catalog of titles."
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That's funny, the one audience they fail to mention listening to is parents.  Parents of all races, ethnicities and backgrounds.
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What do those parents have to say about the imagery from Dr.  Seuss?  We don't know, because it appears none of us have been asked.
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A parent might have said: "Change a word, soften an image, but banning entire books is a draconian and unnecessary overreaction."
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While six books have been banned for now, Dr.  Seuss Enterprises said it's "committed to listening and learning and will continue to review our entire portfolio." That's code for stay tuned, we're not done banning books.
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... actual listening and learning leads to respectful dialogue, otherwise the result is cowering to the politically correct mob.
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President Biden parted from past Presidents Obama and Trump by dropping Dr.  Seuss from his "Read Across America Day" proclamation this week.
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When asked why Dr.  Seuss was missing from the president's proclamation, White House press secretary Jen Psaki wouldn't answer the question, and this time she didn't even bother to say she'd circle back.
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We can't let ourselves turn into a country that's quick to blacklist everything and slow to communicate anything.
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In President Obama's proclamation, he said Dr.  Seuss "used his incredible talent to instill in his most impressionable readers universal values we all hold dear." It's not often I find common ground with President Obama, but on this he was absolutely right.
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Here are a few quotes from Dr.  Seuss that speak to those universal values.
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Some of these I've even been known to put on shirts for my kids to celebrate Dr.  Seuss' birthday.
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"Today you are you, that is truer than true.  There is no one alive who is youer than you."
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"Why fit in when you were born to stand out."
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"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind."
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"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It's not."
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"A person's a person, no matter how small."
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A book by Dr.  Seuss is reportedly the first story one in four American children receive.  That was true for my kids and that was also true for me.
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It's no wonder, he made reading fun, instilled a curiosity and love for learning, and created some of our kids' first childhood memories.
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We're all uniquely created, it's unreasonable to expect that we will all think the same.  Nor should we.  Our country cannot continue down this path of stamping into silent submission everyone with a dissenting viewpoint. 
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When we continue to erase stories and silence voices, we can never hear what they have to say.
      Education disaster?  Common Core has given us snowflakes instead of students  (Fox 03/31/2019)
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... while it's been a disaster academically, from an agenda-driven perspective Common Core has been a huge win for the politically correct propaganda being peddled.
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Want proof?  Look no further than any college campus over the past couple of years: the rejection of free speech and violent attempts to stifle it; the embrace of socialism out of pure ignorance by a generation who can't even define it; and the complete lack of tolerance and unwillingness to engage in a civil debate with those who embrace center-right ideas.
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All while running for the nearest "safe space" when something offends them.
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Common Core has given us snowflakes instead of students.  Screams and protests have become their coping mechanisms.
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A de facto degree in political correctness may earn you an honorary membership into the elite liberal "resist" movements of your choice, but you're in for some shock and awe when you leave your safe space for the real world.
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... President Obama promised it would "not only make America's entire education system the envy of the world, but we will launch a ‘Race to the Top' that will prepare every child, everywhere in America, for the challenges of the 21st century."
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For example, simple multiplication, addition and subtraction problems can no longer be learned from the back of flashcards.  You must now show how you arrived at the answer.
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... you'd be wrong unless you add fives and add threes and show why it's 15.
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Silly me, I always thought the whole point of multiplication was that it helped to circumvent endless addition.
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While student achievement is going downhill, here's what is on the rise thanks to Common Core — indoctrination.
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How on earth can screwing up basic math concepts possibly be linked to indoctrinating our kids?  Have no fear, they found a way.
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The mandatory taxpayer-funded conferences that teachers are required to attend now often include Common Core.
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However, rather than keeping their workshops focused on education, the platform has been used to promote politically correct propaganda.
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At a conference last year, UnboundEd CEO Kate Gerson reportedly told teachers, "If you are under the impression that there are good white people and bad white people, you're wrong."
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Fun fact: Gerson was an early creator of the Common Core-compliant curriculum that's now available all over the country.
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This is what happens when government is put in charge: 5x3 no longer equals 15 and good white people + bad white people = all white people bad.
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As with most things the government hijacks, this entire experiment began as a way for the government to ultimately have more control over not just our kids' education, but over our kids' thinking and ideals.
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We've been played.
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• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
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 Avella  (03/10/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/07/2021) | Next sect (08/25/2020) | List bot 
      Electoral College on Colorado ballot – voters can support Constitution and stop big states' power...  (Fox 03/10/2020)
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Before them is the choice to keep the Electoral College or overthrow it with the National Popular Vote (NPV).
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The NPV is nothing more than a power grab by Democrats in large urban states.
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States would give their Electoral College votes to the winner of the national popular vote, no matter how the citizens of the state voted.
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With Democrats on the march in nine more states possessing 88 electoral votes, including Michigan, Maine, North Carolina and Virginia, their sights are set on an iron-gripped control of the federal government by large urban states.
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The writers of our Constitution, beginning with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, did not stumble on the Electoral College by chance.
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It was a deliberate choice to protect the rights of small states and stop larger states from simply imposing their will on the entire country.
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It is not a mistake that we have a bicameral national legislature, with one chamber's membership determined by population and the other which treats states equally, giving them each two senators.
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Progressives want to impose a standard of majority rule, as determined exclusively by matters of population size.
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That is not what the Founding Fathers envisioned.  They made a conscious decision to avoid the tyranny of the majority.
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Abandoning the current Electoral College, which Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren support, would be surrendering to "tyranny of the majority" of coastal elites who believe changing to a national vote system is an easier path to the White House than having rural state voters cast judgment on out-of-step progressive agendas.
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The NPV would be great for states such as California, New York and Illinois.  It would be an opportunity for a very few large population hubs to essentially dictate the entire national agenda and push their policies and preferences on the majority of Americans, most of whom live outside those metropolitan areas.
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For the majority of states without major population centers, the NPV would be a disaster.
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Why any of the mid-size and smaller states would surrender their right to be heard is befuddling.
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Presidential candidates would essentially be incentivized to ignore the issues facing not just Colorado, but virtually any state without large population centers
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To tie this all together, the interests of Democrats in large population states are driving the national popular vote system.
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Of the $1.8 million that has already been spent in Colorado in favor of the National Popular Vote, more than 99 percent has come from outside the state, with more than 75 percent coming from the state with the largest population and most to gain – California.
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The famed Benjamin Franklin led the charge for the Declaration of Independence to call on us to "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
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While it is a pledge all of us need to take seriously, a little of Franklin's common sense is what is needed in Colorado this year.
 Beccaro  (08/25/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/10/2020) | Next sect (10/24/2019) | List bot 
      RNC highlights best of free enterprise, not what's wrong with America  (Fox 08/25/2020)
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The Republican National Convention got off to a strong start on Monday.  It did so, not by dwelling on what is wrong in America, but by demonstrating what is possible in a land of free enterprise.
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The American civilization is unique in history.
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Never before, and not since, has a nation of its size been born of such fresh ground and cultivated so deliberately by ideals.
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Over the last 400 years, this New World has invited an unprecedented number of diverse peoples, from around the globe, to its shores to pursue, not the culture or systems of their pasts but, instead, the economic and political fortunes of their individual futures.
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Only a vibrant and free economy could have assimilated the millions that came throughout the 1800s and into the 1900s.  No European state could have assimilated so many people with their comparatively less free and vibrant economies.
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The choice of the 2020 election is whether to reduce that freedom with a more government-driven economy or one that moves back toward a market-driven approach.
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That is why Republicans placed the stories of former U.N.  Ambassador Nikki Haley, Sen.  Tim Scott of South Carolina and Cuban-American Maximo Alvarez front and center Monday night.
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Alvarez warned of the false promises of socialism based on his family's experience under Castro in Cuba.
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According to Alvarez, speaking about the Democrat big-government promises, "Free education, free health care, defund the police, trust a socialist state more than your family and community.  They don't sound radical to my ears.  They sound familiar."
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Alvarez knows those are false promises and prefers his chances in a free society.  "In America, I would decide my own future.  I'm so grateful to America, the place where I was able to build my American dream through hard work and determination."
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Scott highlighted his family's journey from "cotton to Congress" in a single lifetime – his grandfather's.  He even noted that he got off to a rough start in his studies.  Perseverance, however, allowed him to succeed.
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Haley highlighted the aspirational over the negative with her personal story.
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She noted that she was "the proud daughter of Indian immigrants.  They came to America and settled in a small Southern town.  My father wore a turban.  My mother wore a sari.  I was a Brown girl in a Black-and-White world.  We faced discrimination and hardship.  But my parents never gave in to grievance and hate.  My mom built a successful business.  My dad taught 30 years at a historically black college.  And the people of South Carolina chose me as their first minority and first female governor."
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Most importantly, Haley made clear that "America isn't perfect.  But the principles we hold dear are perfect."
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In practical terms, standards of living rise with economic growth or fall with stagnation.  Excessive government produces that stagnation, as it has in the European Union, which has produced just over one percent growth over the last 20 years.  It is even worse in Cuba.
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The eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, with their high regulation and high taxation policies, produced the least growth of any modern presidency.
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Economic stagnation does not produce the rags-to-riches stories that have made America great.  Adopting the redux of the Obama-Biden big government policies won't either.
      Tom Del Beccaro: If Biden wins 2020 election, his policies would damage US in 3 major ways  (Fox 08/04/2020)
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American politics is so divided these days that, for many, defeating the other party's candidate appears to be all that matters, so much so that the candidate's policies are almost completely ignored.
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In this election, however, that's a dangerous dynamic given that Biden's policy choices would do unprecedented damage to the United States and the world.
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As a historical matter, the larger or more powerful representative governments become, the greater the gap between the major parties and their policies becomes.
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Biden's Policies Would Impose An Economic Depression
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The U.S.  economy is already weak with record numbers of people on government assistance in the form of unemployment benefits and loans or grants to businesses.
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Entire industries such as travel, schools, entertainment and restaurants are facing uncertain futures.
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Indeed, there is no certainty they will come back to anywhere close to pre-COVID-19 levels.  Even if they did, there is no certainty how long that would take.
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... Biden's policies are particularly damaging to business startups.  They will drag the economy down at a time when we need to provide incentives to start-ups – not kill them off.
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Beyond that, Biden's war on energy will cripple an industry that has been a major source of the economic growth America has enjoyed for years.
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Biden's Policies Would Weaken Us and Strengthen Russia, Iran and China
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President's Trump greatest foreign policy achievement occurred without firing a shot.
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By unleashing the American energy industry, Trump lowered the price of energy and gained new customers around the world for American oil and gas.
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Trump's policy defunded Russia and Iran, for whom energy is their main trading commodity because they lost energy customers and access to hard currency as prices dropped.
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A defunded Iran and Russia directly led to them being less provocative.  Both have precarious economies as a matter of course because they are centrally planned.
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Less oil money for them means they have less money to spend on terror and international intrigue.
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Incredibly, Joe Biden wants to empower them.  Biden's war on energy would raise the price of energy and put Iran and Russia back in the game.
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Biden literally would make the United States' economy more centrally planned, weaken it, thereby hobbling U.S.  foreign policy, and enable the centrally planned governments of Russia and Iran to exploit the only lifeline they have – their oil reserves.
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The stupidity of such a policy and long-term implications cannot be understated – but it gets worse.
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Who benefits most from a weaker United States?  China.
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China gains whenever the United States is economically weak.  China is the most aggressive country in the world with enormous means.  Joe Biden would unleash them as well.
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In sum, the combination of Biden's bad economic policies will not only push the United States into a depression; it will embolden our worst enemies whose fortunes will rise.
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Law and Order Under Biden Would Suffer Irreversible Harm
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Law and Order, like reputations, is easier maintained than recovered.
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... the pushover Joe Biden (as the Marxist Angela Davis has described him) will seek to redefine social justice in America at the expense of the rule of law.
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Finally, Democrats in Congress will reinstate discredited investigations of Republicans.
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Meanwhile, law and order in our major cities will continue to decline while the 2nd Amendment is assaulted as never before.
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Overall, between his economic policies that will result in a depression and his social justice policies, Biden will plunge America into a new round of class warfare that will reach unprecedented heights.
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As we turn on each other, our attention from the world will be averted.  That will give freer rein to the actions of Iran, Russia and China.
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That's what lies ahead under a Joe Biden presidency – elections have consequences and policy matters.
      Tom Del Beccaro: Coronavirus is proof that US not ready for a serious disaster  (Fox 03/15/2020)
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... the experience indicates one thing is for certain: America is not ready for a major national crisis, such as the failure of an electrical grid a bioterrorist crisis or worse.
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The silver lining of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic loss it involves, however, could be that wise leaders stop using government to buy votes and instead prepare for us future crises.
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As bad the coronavirus is, in plain truth, much worse problems are possible for the United States.
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The country's electrical grid is precarious and interconnected.  It is quite vulnerable to foreign attack, and leading providers, like PG&E, have their database administration in India.
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Experts know that if portions of the grid failed or were disabled by an attack, huge portions of the country could be in the dark for weeks or possibly months.
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Those companies with their databases in foreign countries would, to say the least, have a difficult time accessing the Internet.
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Those same experts fear the intense social disorder and economic dislocation that would follow.
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No one should think we are ready for such a circumstance.  The amount of economic dislocation occurring now is proof of that.
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Returning to the coronavirus, ... yet another stark story: China hints at denying Americans life-saving coronavirus drugs.
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The United States remains alarmingly dependent on foreign sources for critical drugs.
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The economist Adam Smith would tell us the world works best when a country produces products and services for which it has an advantage to produce and sells its excesses to the world.
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In our interconnected world, however, China – a stated enemy - has been the producer of many of the drugs critical to the health of Americans.
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While Adam Smith is unquestionably correct in time of peace and in the absence of peril, the coronavirus and China are surely a prescription for danger.
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Little wonder why American companies and doctors are currently scrambling to secure medicines for Americans to counter this pandemic.
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We are fortunate that this pandemic has hit us after the dead of winter.  It is likely that the warming weather will slow the coronavirus.
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Even so, it has caused hysteria, the flames of which have been fanned by a partisan media.
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Americans should demand that our politicians stop using government to buy votes.
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We have real vulnerabilities with respect to the very infrastructure of America and critical drugs.  It is time our government secures our safety before it is too late.
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... our governments and their ardent advocates must stop being a roadblock to domestic production of essential items.
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At the same time, America needs reliable communication in a crisis and our governments must secure our nation's infrastructure.
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In plain terms, the warnings are clear.  It is time for our leaders to do what is right, not what is political.
      Tom Del Beccaro: Decoding Democrats' rush to impeachment  (Fox 10/01/2019)
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Congressional Democrats are rushing headlong into impeachment proceedings.
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They are doing so without solid evidence that President Trump engaged in anything remotely close to "high crimes and misdemeanors."
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Here's why they can't help themselves.
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First, the Democratic Party today is not the Democratic Party of years past.  Today's Democratic Party is the party of government and "social justice."
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They favor the expansion of government, dramatically so, even though government already accounts for 38 percent of the total U.S.  economy.
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They favor the expansion of regulation, even though the costs of existing regulations exceed another 12 percent of the economy.
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Democrats today see government as an employer, the provider of pensions and the purveyor of justice through the courts.
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Democrats feel their party MUST select the next Supreme Court justice, or they will lose the courts for years to come – as well as their ability to mete out social justice.
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As such, having the White House and Senate in Republican hands is more unacceptable to them now than at any time since before the Civil War.
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With that intensity in mind, it's time to rethink the attack on President Trump.
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Democrats want the presidency.  Trump is in their way.
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It's time to realize that this isn't really about Trump's personality or tactics.
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They want the presidency, and they will attack future Republican nominees and presidents as well.
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Don't be surprised.  The imposition of socialism has been always been an ugly fight.
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Secondly, Democrats have resorted to impeachment because the Democratic Party cannot satisfy its base with just the House.
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You cannot control government with just the House.  The presidency is a must.
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Third, it is a mistake to think the Democrats are unified or that impeachment was a consensus move among them.  Several sets of hands are on the Democratic Party's driving wheel.
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One belongs to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to defend 31 freshmen House Democrats in districts that Trump won.
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The second set belongs to Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her "Squad." They want to defeat moderate Democrats in Congress — thereby jeopardizing House control.
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The 2020 presidential candidates are also grabbing the wheel.  They're demanding "Medicare-for-all," impeachment and massive spending increases.
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There's also the impeachment crowd.
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In the competition between them, the Democratic Party has moved further to the left, making impeachment all but inevitable.
• 
The last piece to the puzzle of how the Democrats arrived at this moment, is the cold, hard truth the Democrats are facing.
• 
They know the inspector general report on surveillance abuses will be ugly for them.
• 
They are waiting for Attorney General William Barr and U.S.  Attorney John Durham to unload on issues such as crimes committed by Democrats in the 2016 election and with respect to the Ukraine.
• 
They know that President Trump could declassify information on issues ranging from surveillance abuses to the Obama administration's policymaking related to Uranium One and Iran.
• 
What's the Democratic Party to do under these circumstances?
• 
The answer is now plain to see.
• 
They have moved out in front of the pending release of information.
• 
They are taking the fight to President Trump.  They want to dirty Trump in every way possible.
• 
Then, when Durham, Barr and Trump drop their truths — Democrats will claim that it is simple retaliation by a president who has done things wrong all along.
• 
It is, of course, a high-stakes gamble, given the paucity of facts on the Democrats side.
• 
But with so much at stake, the Supreme Court on the line, and the White House in its sights, the Democratic Party thinks it's worth the risk – America be damned.
 Bennet  (10/24/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (08/25/2020) | Next sect (08/31/2018) | List bot 
      Celebrate what’s right about America and our great history – Don’t focus only on our failings  (Fox 10/24/2019)
• 
We Americans are on the verge of some important anniversaries – and not just the centennial of the Roaring Twenties.
• 
Next year we mark the 400th anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims.
• 
In 2021, it's the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving.
• 
We're four years away from the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
• 
A little more than five years away from the 250th anniversary of those first shots heard 'round the world at Lexington and Concord.
• 
And about six years away from the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
• 
Those of us around in 1976 remember the Bicentennial of the Declaration.
• 
It was a grand celebration of parades, flags, fireworks and tall ships.
• 
Given the mood of the country today, we have to wonder: What kind of celebrations are we now headed for?
• 
We got a good hint from The New York Times this year with the publication of its 1619 Project, which aims to "reframe U.S.  history by marking the year when the first enslaved Africans arrived on Virginia soil as our nation's foundational date."
• 
It is full of assertions such as "a re-education is necessary" and "if you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."
• 
For decades now, this has been a problem with many textbooks and social studies lessons.
• 
They tend to highlight the bad – obsessing on blemishes, failings, and atrocities – and go light on the good.  The goal, it seems, is to teach that there is nothing exceptional about our country.
• 
In fact, the message is that American turns out to be a pretty lousy place.
• 
So it's not hard to imagine comments from elites in the media and academia during the coming anniversaries.
• 
The Boston Tea Party patriots who disguised themselves as Mohawk Indians were appropriating a culture they ravaged.
• 
The authors of the Declaration of Independence were rich white men who were greedy for their own liberty but intent on oppressing everyone else.
• 
Here's an old-fashioned but much-needed proposal: Let's not be shy about actually celebrating this country's history and its greatness.
• 
Yes, study and understand the times we've failed, sometimes badly.
• 
But enough of this running down the country again and again.  It's tearing us apart.
• 
How about if, in teaching American history, we start with President Abraham Lincoln's great assertion that this country is the "last best hope of Earth"?
• 
How about if we explain that ours was the first nation in history created out of the belief that people should govern themselves?
• 
That twice in the 20th century, the U.S.  led the way in saving the world from tyranny – first from the Axis powers, then from Soviet totalitarianism?
• 
That over the decades, American capitalism has lifted millions from poverty?
• 
Yes, teach about the history of racism and oppression.
• 
But that is not the beginning or the center of the American story.  To try to make it so is dishonest and an injustice to our students.
• 
American history is the story of a great people who time and again have managed to save themselves and others, to correct wrongs, and to preserve what is still the world's last best hope.
 Bergstein  (08/31/2018)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/24/2019) | Next sect (04/29/2021) | List bot 
      Liberal Jews, the Party despises you  (INN 08/31/2018)
• 
What is this mysterious potent virus that has contaminated the minds of ordinary Americans to make them turn into mindless haters of all things revolving around their own America, their nation?
• 
Sitting, kneeling, doing everything but show respect for the National Anthem and our flag.
• 
Schools teaching our kids that America has a shameful history.
• 
Major politicians representing the Left Half of our citizenry knowingly putting down our nation.
• 
Andy-Boy Cuomo, the governor of the great state of New York demeaning our nation by stating to the world that our country is not and never was great.
• 
Why then did his grandfather come to this country as a legal, documented immigrant and have both his son and grandson rise to be national figures and even Andy-Boy himself, to have a good shot at running for president?
• 
Obama, who started this whole "Hate America" madness had a visiting African student studying in this country as his father.
• 
Stalin and Josef Goebels must be doing a joyful dance together in the fires of Hell right now seeing that their dreams of defeating American democracy are coming to fulfillment decades after their own failed attempts at fascism.
• 
And this is happening without the use of guns or poison gas.  Its modern architecture is American made, right in the heartlands of America.
• 
We have black hooded, masked young thugs throughout the country attacking peaceful citizens who have different political beliefs.
• 
They burn universities, firebomb cops, smash storefronts and intimidate without being called out by their smirking sponsors, the Progressives, Socialists, Marxists, Islamists and fascists who all hunker under the banner of the welcoming, winking and nodding Democrat Party.
• 
The mystery person who is leading that Party, be it Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Valerie Jarrett or Maxine Waters, says not a word to put the fire hoses on the conflagration they have caused.
• 
They want more of it.  Deaths through violence in the streets would hasten our downfall.
• 
Let me also toss a fastball at the heads of the Liberal Jewish community.  As a Jew, I feel it's my duty to call them to task for acting as useful idiots for the Radical Leftist Democrat Party with whom many so proudly goose step in solidarity.
• 
My brothers and sisters, the Party despises you.  They use you for funding and votes.
• 
All to support the Palestinians who would slit the throats of every Israeli (and you) if they had the chance.
• 
What have they done to protect your kids and grandkids who have no physical security nor right to speak out in defense of Jewish causes in their colleges because of Leftists who control their institutions?
• 
Your future under any Democrat administration is a bleak one.
• 
Your continued support of The Party will come back to bite you or your descendants.  Guaranteed!!
 Bossie  (04/29/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (08/31/2018) | Next sect (02/05/2021) | List bot 
      David Bossie: Biden's speech — top takeaways from president's '100 days' address to Congress  (Fox 04/29/2021)
• 
This is a presidency that doesn't have a skeptical mainstream media to contend with. In the absence of legitimate media scrutiny, President Biden can essentially say and do whatever he pleases, because he thinks he's accountable to no one.
• 
Biden is wrong.  There's no such thing as free stuff and responsible adults understand that taxpayers will be picking up the tab for all of this.
• 
The president tried to equate climate change to job creation, but millions of blue-collar workers know liberal climate change policies are job-killers.
• 
It doesn't take a genius to understand that this reckless disregard for taxpayer dollars must not continue. In fact, with our national debt already at $28 trillion and rapidly rising, we're on the fast track to a calamity that will make Greece's economic collapse look like a walk in the park.
• 
As Biden discussed popular poll-tested issues like health care and education, he failed to mention his administration's radical plans on packing the Supreme Court or making Washington, D.C.  our 51 state.
• 
Then there's H.R.  1, the Democrat's bill designed to destroy the integrity of our elections and stifle free speech.  It is based on a lie — voter suppression.
• 
To make matters worse, the president glossed over the crisis he created at our southern border with his irresponsible executive orders. ...
• 
Biden also continued to divide our nation over the issue of police reform and his dangerous plans to "reimagine" policing.
• 
The truth is that Biden's wrongheaded quest to fundamentally transform America into a socialist utopia is running into political reality. ...
• 
Biden won the presidency by about 40,000 votes in just three states, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a microscopic majority in the House, and the U.S.  Senate is deadlocked at 50-50. The American people aren't looking for radical change.
      Democrats' China syndrome – this is why they're tough on Georgia, soft on communists in Beijing  (Fox 04/10/2021)
• 
As the fascist woke mob continues the politics of personal destruction by punishing the state of Georgia over false allegations about its new voting law, the Biden administration, Major League Baseball, and companies like Coca-Cola and Delta turn a blind eye to China's human rights abuses and voting crackdowns in Hong Kong. ...
• 
Why is it the policy of the left to be tougher on Georgia than the Communists in Beijing? If we can't have a 2021 All-Star Game in Atlanta, can we really have a 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing?
• 
Biden's decision to mobilize the cancel culture with fake news about the commonsense reforms in Georgia instead of on headlines like "China legislature endorses reducing public vote in Hong Kong" and "China sharply reduces elected seats in Hong Kong legislature" makes one thing abundantly clear: woke is broke.  ...
• 
Apparently, the left has decided that criticizing Communist China – arguably our chief geopolitical adversary – is taboo. ...
• 
Forgetting China's ongoing human rights abuses; forgetting China's crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong; forgetting that it was China that allowed the coronavirus to fester into a global pandemic; forgetting China's refusal to cooperate with health investigators; forgetting all that, Democrats and their allies in the liberal media are choosing the woke mob over American interests. ...
• 
The chilling result of this phony narrative is that it's fast becoming a de facto thought crime to criticize the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) – and Beijing is taking advantage of that on the world stage.
• 
With over 550,000 Americans dead, calls for Chinese truth and transparency from the Democrats in power, the mainstream media and corporate America should be the rule, not the exception. ...
• 
... indicated that the Biden administration would not take any action to hold China accountable and pivoted to discussing the importance of mitigating future pandemics.
• 
China's economic, trade, military and espionage abuses are aggressive and ultimately designed to undermine the United States as the leader of the free world.  So, what's going on with the American left's appeasement of China?
• 
Democrat politicians are often targeted to further Beijing's agenda. Joe and Hunter Biden's ties to the Chinese are well-documented and have given many a cause for concern.
• 
The younger Biden's shady business dealings in China have raised red flags over conflicts of interest and the elder Biden's ability to confront the Chinese. ...
• 
But Beijing extends its influence to congressional Democrats, as well.
• 
Christina Fang, or Fang Fang, was a Chinese national and reported spy for the CCP. She targeted Congressman Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and ingratiated herself into his office...
• 
The curious decision by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to allow Swalwell to continue to serve on the House Intelligence Committee deserves much more scrutiny.
• 
For two decades, Sen.  Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., employed a Chinese spy as her driver and personal assistant. The spy reported to Chinese government officials while Feinstein, at the time, was chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
• 
The liberal media's lack of legitimate interest in these stories is odd. Perhaps the left's kid gloves treatment of Communist China is rooted in their proclivity for big government authoritarianism or, in the case of corporate America, the almighty dollar.
• 
Perhaps it's due to critical race theories following college graduates from the campus to the White House, Capitol Hill and the newsroom. Perhaps Trump Derangement Syndrome is causing half of our country to not only be anti-Trump but also pro-Beijing.
• 
Whatever the cause, the result is the same: If we're unable to have serious discussions about the real threats posed by China's communist regime, we're leaving ourselves vulnerable to their aggression. ...
• 
The woke mob may cheer as our nation is undermined by Chinese incursions while they criticize Georgia on false pretenses, but the rise of China is a geopolitical disaster for all countries that value liberty, free and fair elections, and human rights.
• 
See related Foreign Affairs (Antonio Branco, 05/16/2019) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Biden Bible (Fuller, 12/2020)") cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Top Secret (Mike Shelton, 12/11/2020) cartoon from Adult picture album
      Trump impeachment trial — Dems need to wrap up this sham and get to work before it's too late  (Fox 02/12/2021)
• 
It's February 2021.  The election of 2020 has come and gone.  President Donald Trump is not the president of the United States and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts is not presiding over the U.S.  Senate.
• 
So, why are the Democrats holding an illegitimate impeachment show trial after President Joe Biden implored all of us to unite just 23 days ago?
• 
As House impeachment managers closed their weak opening arguments on Thursday, COVID-19 has killed over 473,000 people - including over 73,000 on Biden's watch - and millions of Americans are still struggling to make ends meet.
• 
This is an abuse of power, plain and simple, and the American people are paying close attention.  They're wondering: when will the Democrats do something for them?
• 
The dangerous precedent that's being set by Democrats will live in infamy for many reasons.
• 
First and foremost, we already know the outcome.  Late last month, 45 Senators voted in favor of the position that the impeachment of a former president is unconstitutional.
• 
Trump will be acquitted because the Constitution states that conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate.
• 
By forcing a vote on the constitutionality of this impeachment farce in January, Sen.  Rand Paul, R-Ky.  provided the Democrats with an easy exit strategy.
• 
At that point, President Joe Biden — the leader of the Democratic Party — could have called Leader Schumer and asked him to use Senator Paul's vote as an excuse to dismiss the trial.
• 
Biden could have demonstrated that he's interested in uniting and healing the country, but it didn't happen — because he's not.  Instead, Biden showed no leadership or genuine interest in stopping this charade.
• 
By failing to act, the president has made it clear that the Democrats' priority is not putting vaccines in arms or providing relief for the American people but instead continuing their divisive four-year political war against Donald Trump.
• 
In his remarks on January 6th, President Trump said, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
• 
The key words here of course are "peacefully" and "patriotically" and make "your voices" heard.
• 
The Constitution clearly states that "Judgement in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor..." In the context of the current scenario, the first part of this provision isn't possible, making the second part void.
• 
Simply stated, President Trump cannot be removed from office because he's no longer the officeholder.  But this hasn't stopped Trump-hating-Democrats from plowing forward with their shameful political stunt.
• 
Imagine how the mainstream media would react if a Republican majority in the Senate tried to impeach a former Democratic president.  Suffice to say, it would never happen.
• 
Impeachments should never be used to carry out a political vendetta against a former political adversary.
• 
See related Tantrum! (Mike Shelton, 01/14/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      David Bossie: Biden and the impeachment charade – it's time for president to step up in name of unity  (Fox 01/28/2021)
• 
You can't support unity and remain silent on big tech censorship at the same time.  You can't support unity and not condemn Antifa at the same time.
• 
You can't support unity and sign executive orders canceling your predecessor's signature policies at the same time.
• 
And you can't support unity and allow congressional Democrats to waste precious time on an unconstitutional impeachment trial of a president who is no longer in office.
• 
President Biden ran a campaign for president promising to put his response to the COVID-19 pandemic first.  Then-candidate Biden pledged from his basement to take decisive action and tackle COVID-19 more effectively than the Trump administration. 
• 
Sadly, it took just two days for the President to backtrack on his central guarantee to the American people.  Now Biden says, "there's nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months."
• 
These actions speak volumes about the hopelessly out of touch mindset of President Biden.  Biden's words during the campaign appear to have been just empty rhetoric designed to win an election at any cost.
• 
Swamp creatures like Biden believe that once you're elected, you can do whatever you want once you take office.
• 
Only a career politician who has thrived in Washington for nearly a half-century would insult the intelligence of the American people by thinking he could get away with these disingenuous antics.
• 
It took the unhinged radicals in Pelosi's caucus less time to debate the impeachment of an American president than to debate the renaming of a post office. 
• 
It was a sad and irresponsible abuse of power.  And it's something we're all going to regret for a very long time.
• 
These Democratic career politicians still hate President Trump more than they love their country, even as Trump the citizen-politician gets on with his private life in Florida.
• 
This is the perfect time for President Biden to say something real about unity.  Biden could stand up and say call off the trial – because it will further enflame our divisions and would be counterproductive to bringing people together to enact his legislative agenda.
• 
Biden will never unite this nation if he can't take on his political base when it's for the greater good.
• 
The fact that Supreme Chief Justice John Roberts won't be presiding over the divisive impeachment trial confirms its illegitimacy. 
• 
The decision to have partisan Democrat Senate President Pro Tempore Patrick Leahy preside over the phony trial just confirms that the entire operation is an act of naked retribution against a former – and potentially future – political adversary.
• 
As the sham trial approaches, Senate Democrats are setting a dangerous precedent that will render impeachment meaningless in the future.
• 
Using impeachment as a vehicle to ban a former president from running for federal office again is a slippery slope.
• 
What would prevent the impeachment process from being used against anyone the party in power wanted to block from running for president in the future?
• 
See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      David Bossie: Trump clearly defeats Biden in first presidential debate  (Fox 09/30/2020)
• 
Why won't Biden answer questions about whether or not he'll upset decades of precedent by packing the Supreme Court with liberals and ending the Senate filibuster?
• 
What is Biden's response to President Trump's policies that caused the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans in our nation's history before the pandemic hit?
• 
What is Biden's answer to his disastrous 1994 crime bill and his chummy relationship with segregationist Southern senators?
• 
He has no answer; Biden can only lob unpresidential personal insults.
• 
President Trump is running for reelection with a sense of purpose and urgency.  It's clear that he wants four more years because he wants to keep America great.
• 
On the other hand, Biden is walking, not running for president — and slowly at that.
• 
Trump is fighting with all his might to keep his job as commander in chief because he's deeply concerned about the dangerous road to socialism that Biden has in store for America.
• 
The president finally got a chance to ask Biden many other questions the liberal media refuse to ask.
• 
President Trump's response to the Chinese coronavirus has been outstanding.  The president has done everything in his power to keep Americans safe.
• 
From quickly stopping international travel to the United States, to fulfilling the request of every governor regardless of political party, to keeping the public informed, to making sure there was enough personal protective equipment, beds, and ventilators, to implementing Operation Warp Speed to quickly find a vaccine, this president has risen to the occasion.
• 
It's easy to criticize when you're sitting in the cheap seats like Biden, but it's obvious that if Biden were the one confronted with this unprecedented crisis, he would have failed.
• 
Moreover, and just as noteworthy, if President Trump had done everything exactly the opposite, Biden and his minions would have criticized him all the same.
• 
The American people ... that President Trump made a lot of money before he was elected to public office, and they know Joe Biden's family made a lot of money during his four decades in public office.
• 
The president spoke about the importance of freedom that prioritizes individual liberty versus a socialist society; celebrating and learning from our nation's history instead of erasing it; and lifting up all Americans with pro-growth economic policies compared to a faceless bureaucracy that picks winners and losers.
• 
The contrast with Biden couldn't be greater.  Disingenuously, Biden now says he supports the police, but after the statements and actions this summer of both he and his running mate — Sen.  Kamala Harris, D-Calif.  — can't be trusted. 
• 
When pressed by President Trump, Biden failed to name one single police organization that supports his candidacy and refused to condemn Antifa anarchists by name.
• 
Furthermore, Biden can't be trusted on keeping our borders secure, raising taxes and job-killing regulations, allowing the government to outlaw private health insurance, or making foreign policy decisions with a peace-through-strength mentality.
• 
To the contrary, for the better part of 18 months, Biden has shown a stunning indifference to law and order and our heroic police, has promised to raise taxes, cozy up to China, give free health care to illegal immigrants, and enact portions of the socialist Green New Deal...
• 
Similarly, Biden's rhetoric about President Trump's eminently qualified Supreme Court nominee...  Biden appears not to understand that judges are not policymakers on health care or anything else; these are typical Democratic scare tactics.
• 
President Trump's outstanding decision to elevate a 48-year old working mother of seven who resides in the middle of the Rust Belt to the highest court in the land sends a signal to voters from Minnesota to Pennsylvania that he appreciates bedrock American values.
• 
This fact is of great concern to Biden, who spends his days pandering to the out-of-touch socialist agenda of coastal elitists.
• 
The American people saw ultimate political outsider Donald Trump make a strong case Tuesday night about why he deserves four more years in office instead of the ultimate Washington swamp creature Joe Biden.
• 
Biden still has no answer about why he failed to accomplish in 47 years what President Trump has delivered for the American people in just 47 months.  The American people deserve to know.
      David Bossie: Biden wrong on China his entire career – let's look at the record  (Fox 05/15/2020)
• 
In April, records from 9/11 mastermind Usama bin Laden's compound were disclosed detailing his plans to assassinate then-President Barack Obama.
• 
Bin Laden's rationale for his horrific plot was telling: "Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S.  into a crisis."
• 
Now, a decade since U.S.  Special Forces killed bin Laden in Pakistan, it's my guess that President Xi Jinping of China – our greatest geopolitical foe today – also wants former Vice President Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States.
• 
... Biden and other establishment politicians in Washington have been instrumental in China's meteoric rise from a developing nation into a Communist power with global ambitions.
• 
For decades, China has executed a foreign policy focused on replacing the United States as the world's leading economy.
• 
... Biden gave a floor speech in September 2000 in support of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with China.
• 
"Finally, I would like to point out that my support for permanent normal trade relations with China is based not just on an assessment of the economic benefits to the U.S., not just on the prospects for political reform in China, but also on the impact on our national security."
• 
Twenty years later, on each of the three prongs he laid out to justify his support for the legislation, it's clear that Biden was dead wrong.
• 
Statistics show that 3.7 million American jobs have been lost to China since 2001 due to our horrendous anti-U.S.  worker policies.
• 
Furthermore, China has imprisoned upwards of one million Muslim Uighurs and other minorities in "re-education camps." It also, according to reports, jailed more than 48 journalists in 2019 alone just for seeking the truth.
• 
And today we face a global pandemic with more than 80,000 Americans dying from COVID-19 because China chose to lie instead of help save lives.
• 
So much for Biden's promises of economic prosperity, political reform and national security.
• 
About a decade after his pro-PNTR vote, in 2011, Vice President Biden doubled down on his cozy rhetoric toward China in an op-ed he wrote for The New York Times.?  Biden shamelessly reiterated his unwise support for the Chinese government, stating, "I remain convinced that a successful China can make our country more prosperous, not less."
• 
Biden, who first visited China in 1979, couldn't see that the Communist leadership there was playing him for a fool.
• 
"Some may warn of America's demise, but I'm not among them.  And let me reassure you: based on my time in China, neither are the Chinese."
• 
Biden is choosing to ignore the fact that President Trump singlehandedly changed the debate and rallied America around his get-tough-on Beijing policy.?
• 
Exactly one year ago at a May campaign rally, Biden boasted, "China is going to eat our lunch?  Come on, man ... they can't figure out how they're going to deal with the corruption that exists within the system.  I mean, you know, they're not bad folks, folks.  But guess what, they're not, they're not competition for us."
• 
In our current reality, this statement personifies how wrongheaded Biden remains on China.?
• 
A typical liberal like Sleepy Joe in the White House would return to failed globalist policies and China would pass the United States as the world's leading economic superpower and never look back.?
• 
The bottom line is that Biden's disastrous policies would take us back to the days of economic stagnation.
• 
Trump came into office with the goal of making America great again.  It wasn't some poll-tested slogan that sounded good in speeches – it was a promise to the American people.?It was a promise that the failed economy of the Obama-Biden administration, characterized by slow growth and vanishing job opportunities, would not be tolerated.?
• 
Upon entering office, President Trump confronted Chinese Communist leaders with his ironclad promise to the American people that he would bring our economy roaring back to life.
• 
The idea that America's time was up and that China was the future simply did not sit well with the president.
• 
China and who can best rebuild our economy will be the dominant issues on Election Day and that's bad news for Joe Biden.
      David Bossie: Coronavirus and Trump – biased media's attacks no match for this president  (Fox 04/16/2020)
• 
The presidency of Donald Trump has been a historic one on many levels.
• 
Candidate Trump — the ultimate political outsider — defeated a powerful entrenched career politician to capture the White House when no one said it was possible.
• 
The president then stormed into Washington and exposed the Russia hoax and a corrupt deep state that spied on his campaign.
• 
And while dealing with relentless attacks from the liberal media, his pro-growth economic policies and supreme confidence in the American worker ushered in one of the greatest economic booms in our nation's history.
• 
Then, being faced with the prospects of heading into an election year with record low unemployment and historic job creation and no positive agenda of their own, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her lapdog Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif., concocted a political tall tale about a routine phone call between President Trump and the president of Ukraine.
• 
This shameful impeachment stunt blew up in their faces.
• 
It's now been nearly five years since Trump came down the golden escalator.  Since that day, the biased liberal media made the decision to destroy him.
• 
Sadly, that effort continues today with their coverage of Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 
Now there's always been bias in the media, but this president has exposed it in a way no one else could have.
• 
The liberal media's hatred for Trump has made it plainly obvious that many so-called journalists who cover him are political activists.
• 
The anti-Trump media has turned into the opposition.  They attack whatever decision the president makes.
• 
This isn't journalism, and the president is right to criticize what's become of the once-respected fourth estate.
• 
Take, for example, the president's recent comments about his plans to reopen the greatest economy on Earth after the worst of the coronavirus crisis is behind us.
• 
The president clearly stated this enormous decision will be made in consultation with state governors.  He was immediately attacked by the liberal media for acting like a monarch opposed to states' rights.
• 
The president has big-government liberals and left-wing reporters in knots.  The same people who usually want power centralized in Washington, now are supporting states' rights.
• 
... with every decision Trump makes to combat COVID-19, the media formulates some rationale to oppose the decision, no matter what.
• 
And they definitely won't give him any credit, regardless of whether he decides on a state-by-state, regional or a national reopening approach.  The political hacks covering the decision will attack it either way.
• 
Thankfully, the president has other outlets.  He can speak directly to the American people with his press conferences, on social media and through conservative media outlets.
• 
The liberal media's reluctance to cover the president's daily COVID-19 press conferences is telling.
• 
It confirms the press conferences are an extremely effective method of communication for Trump and his adversaries in the media are bitter about it.
• 
But through it all, the American people see through the bias.  Whether you voted for him in 2016 or not, you know by now that Trump will outwork the opposition forces in Washington and make the best decision he can for the country and people that he loves so dearly – regardless of party affiliation.
• 
The liberal media dug itself a deep hole during the Trump presidency.  The coverage of coronavirus could have been the moment to stop digging, but the media's collective stubbornness knows no bounds.
• 
Members of the media simply refuse to pull out of their death spiral.  We're in the midst of a global pandemic not seen in 100 years, and the liberal media still won't be fair to Trump.
• 
The liberal media has a partisan agenda, and Trump is making sure everyone knows it.
• 
They despise Trump because he's winning, and they're scared to death at the thought of unsteady Sleepy Joe Biden on a debate stage with him come October.
• 
The liberal media has tried to destroy this president since 2015 and has failed miserably.
• 
See related Who Did This? (Mike Lester, 04/04/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Media and Corona (Gary McCoy, 03/12/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      In Trump impeachment trial, Senate Republicans should block testimony by Bolton and others  (Fox 01/29/2020)
• 
The American people know this entire pathetic impeachment undertaking is a political attack by radicalized Democrats out to meddle in the 2020 election.
• 
Democrats know they have no answer for President Trump's success story and the great American comeback we've seen unfold over the past three years because of his leadership.
• 
So House Democrats impeached him and put him on trial in the Senate to hurt his reelection chances.
• 
First and foremost, in the spirit of transparency, the president did something no other chief executive would have done.
• 
He proactively released the transcript of his July 25 routine phone call with the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that showed no quid pro quo was discussed.
• 
Second, the Ukrainian government never launched an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden, his son Hunter, or allegations that Ukraine interfered in our 2016 election.
• 
Yet the U.S.  government delivered $391million in security assistance to Ukraine nonetheless.
• 
Furthermore, President Zelensky and other senior Ukrainian officials stated flatly that there was no pressure on them from President Trump to start any investigations.  And the Ukrainian government didn't even know there was a hold on the U.S.  aid at the time of the short Trump-Zelensky phone call.
• 
Despite the obvious absence of facts, unhinged House Democrats rammed through the two weakest and most politically inspired articles of impeachment in our nation's history.
• 
Then Democrats sang in unison that their case was rock-solid and claimed President Trump's guilt was a foregone conclusion – until they flip-flopped and started asking for more witnesses to rescue their weak case.
• 
These desperate Democratic attempts to reignite the smear campaign against the duly elected president of the United States with more witness testimony are just a continuation of the Democratic abuse of power – using impeachment as a political weapon less than 10 months before the next presidential election.
• 
This must come to an end.  The American people should be able to decide on Election Day who their president will be for the next four years.
• 
The Senate is the world's greatest deliberative body.
• 
Senators should judge the evidence that House Democrats used to bring their indictment and nothing more.
• 
Allowing Bolton – or any other additional witnesses – to testify would do nothing but kick-start another three-ring circus like the shameful nomination hearings for now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh last fall.
• 
If the Democrats are given one witness, it will never be enough.  They will keep asking for more and more and more.
• 
They hate President Trump more than they love our country and will happily drag us all through the mud for as long as it takes to destroy him.
• 
That's why this coup attempt needs to be put down by the Republican majority in the Senate once and for all.
• 
Democratic impeachment managers know President Trump will be acquitted in the Senate.
• 
So their only strategy going forward is to prolong the inevitable by feverishly pleading for the same witness testimony that a month ago they said they didn't need and wouldn't go to court to get.
• 
... if the Democrats want to call down the thunder, they'll pay a heavy price for it.
• 
... it's my firm belief that there should be no additional witnesses.  Giving irrational people like Chuck Schumer an inch is a colossal mistake because he'll only try to take a mile.
• 
Any Republican senator who may be considering voting with the Democrats to call more witnesses must understand the gravity of the situation.
• 
This is their moment to set a precedent that partisan impeachment efforts will not and should not get any undeserved oxygen.
• 
That will send the message that the hammer of impeachment should not be abused for political purposes in the future.
      Trump perseveres in 2019 — stands tall despite relentless attacks from Democrats and media  (Fox 12/31/2019)
• 
Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House for the second time; there was a government shutdown; special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year investigation came to an end; the Democrat presidential primary campaigns began; the American economy enjoyed historic prolonged vibrancy; anti-Trump Republicans like John Kasich and Jeb Bush started and ended their search for a primary challenger to run against the president, and President Trump was fraudulently impeached by unhinged partisans in the House of Representatives.
• 
But through it all, President Donald Trump — the ultimate political outsider — continues to plow forward, never relenting in his focus of putting America First.
• 
In the face of unprecedented attacks from the left — including a mainstream media that in 2019 was fully exposed as a vicious partner of Democrat political operatives — Trump perseveres.
• 
Facing an onslaught of fake news that would have brought other leaders to their knees, Trump stands tall heading into the fourth year of his presidency.
• 
The year began with a government shutdown caused by congressional Democrats refusing to acknowledge the crisis at our Southern border.
• 
Undeterred, Trump demonstrated true presidential leadership by ordering billions in appropriated military funds to be used to construct the much-needed border wall.
• 
Even in the face of unprecedented liberal obstruction, more than 500 miles of a border wall is under construction thanks to the president.
• 
At his State of the Union address, President Trump declared that "America will never be a socialist country." That certainly hasn't stopped the Democrats from lurching further to the left.
• 
Throughout the past year, Democrats proved that they lied to the American people to get into power in 2018.
• 
Despite the promises, there was never any intention of working with Trump in a bipartisan manner on important policies for the American people.
• 
The real Democrat agenda started and ended with impeaching the duly elected president of the United States by any means necessary.
• 
Since Trump's election three years ago, 7.2 million jobs have been created — with nearly 2 million new jobs in 2019 alone.
• 
Additionally, wages have increased by 3.1 percent over the past year.
• 
On top of all that, the president has made it an ongoing priority to slash overly burdensome government regulations that stifle economic growth.
• 
In September, with Mueller's findings in the rearview mirror and Chairman Jerry Nadler's hearings on the report a complete failure — thanks in large part to former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski — the American people were ready for impeachment-crazed Democrats in Congress to turn the corner and work with the president on issues important to them.
• 
But Speaker Pelosi would have none of it.  Instead, she and her caucus of left-wing socialists made the ill-fated decision to turn a routine phone call between Trump and the president of Ukraine into another partisan impeachment witch hunt.
• 
The sham inquiry that transpired over the next three months will do lasting damage to our republic because impeachment is now seen as just another political campaign weapon.
• 
Pelosi's continued refusal to transmit the articles of impeachment to the Senate confirms what's been known all along — this entire effort by the left is an orchestrated stunt designed to hurt Trump's reelection chances.
• 
Let it not be forgotten that in the midst of the Democrat impeachment circus and accompanying media frenzy, Trump never took his eye off the ball for the American people.
• 
In October, the president ordered the elimination of the world's most wanted terrorist Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, putting an exclamation point on his promise to destroy ISIS.
• 
When it's all said and done, his most lasting accomplishment may very well be his all-important effort to fill the federal bench with strict constitutionalists.
• 
While most of the optimism on the center-right is driven by Trump's historic record of accomplishment, it's also a product of the pathetic field of highly mediocre Democrats vying for their party's nomination for president.
• 
See related We Got Him! (Antonio Branco, 12/09/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump impeachment vote is Democratic declaration of war – Republicans must declare war on Dems  (Fox 11/01/2019)
• 
With House passage Thursday of a resolution formalizing their blatantly partisan impeachment witch hunt against President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow crazed radical Democrats have declared war on the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
Now it's time for Republicans to draw up their own declaration of war against Democrats.
• 
The Democrats – who didn't pick up a single Republican vote for their baseless resolution to move forward with a kangaroo court masquerading as public impeachment hearings – are choosing to tear apart the country we all love because they are consumed by their burning hatred for President Trump.
• 
This charade isn't about anything President Trump has done wrong, because he hasn't done anything to warrant impeachment.
• 
Instead, the Democrats are improperly using the impeachment process to weaken public support for the president in an effort to defeat him in the 2020 presidential election.
• 
The American people must hold the Democrats accountable for their abuse of power.
• 
The lack of judgment on display by the desperate Democrats – who fear that Trump's enormous achievements in office will ensure his reelection – is stunning.
• 
... driven by Trump Derangement Syndrome, Democrats are determined to pursue impeachment regardless of the harm it causes to our nation and to their own party.
• 
Pelosi, ... Schiff and their Democratic co-conspirators in their attempted coup are going to do whatever they want, however they want, because they think the rules don't apply to them.
• 
After all, who's going to call them out for their misdeeds – their partisan allies at the fake and corrupt New York Times and Washington Post?  Come on.
• 
Let's face it: unhinged radical Democratic Reps.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota are calling the shots on behalf of a mob of anti-Trump socialists who have seized control of the Democratic Party.
• 
Sadly, the biased mainstream media are willing accomplices in this anti-Trump hysteria.
• 
The Fourth Estate will never recover from this epic failure of duty.
• 
Rants about President Trump abusing his power and jeopardizing national security are a clever cover story for what this charade truly is – an attempt to substitute the judgment of Democratic politicians for the votes of the American people.
• 
The reason Schiff's fake whistleblower hasn't testified yet is because he doesn't pass the smell test.
• 
This individual is an anti-Trump political operative, not a whistleblower.
• 
If Schiff won't call the whistleblower and the other deep state co-conspirators in to testify, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., must.
• 
If Democrats want to investigate phone calls, President Trump should release transcripts of calls by former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Biden with world leaders from countries such as Russia, Ukraine and Iran.
• 
The American people should get to read the transcript of the call just before Obama sent pallets of cash totaling $400 million to the America-hating mullahs in Iran.
• 
Now Senate Republicans need to lock arms and push back against this madness.
• 
These are not normal times.  The Democratic Party is throwing historical precedent, due process and congressional decorum out the window.
• 
This is not the Nixon impeachment of 1974 or the Clinton impeachment of 1998, where there was actual criminal wrongdoing.
• 
This is a political coup attempt against President Trump and his 63 million voters because Democrats fear they can't defeat him at the ballot box.
• 
The Democrats are making a mockery of our system of government and the Constitution and they must be confronted head-on.
• 
The Democrats are at war with President Trump.
• 
Every single Republican at every level of government must now unite and put their battle gear on.
• 
It's time to put this coup attempt down.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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      Big Tech and the scary truth — if we don't have online freedom, then we are no longer free  (Fox 02/05/2021)
• 
We are only a few days into a new administration and online censorship has already gotten much worse.
• 
Facebook declared it will cut down on political speech, which likely means conservative political speech.
• 
YouTube continues to restrict former President Donald Trump and other conservatives.
• 
And Twitter's phony fact-checking system won't even rein in Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for lying and accusing Sen.  Ted Cruz, R-Texas of trying to have her "murdered."
• 
When Big Tech got away with suspending the president of the United States, it was obvious they would not stop there.
• 
Tech tyrants joined forces to take down the social media site Parler for not adhering to their speech mandates.
• 
Big Tech threw its weight behind the Democratic presidential campaign, censoring truth about the Hunter Biden scandal that would have tipped the election for President Donald Trump.  Then they censored the president when he tried to tell that story.  Now they've censored him altogether.
• 
If Big Tech can silence the president of the United States, they can muzzle anyone.  The jihad they are waging against anyone who strays from their worldview proves it.
• 
The most powerful companies in human history have decided the public has no rights in the online world the public helped create.  Big Tech does not believe in free speech.
• 
They swear to tell the truth in congressional committees.  They proclaim their allegiance to free speech.  Then they are actively suppressing it before everyone's eyes.  How is this not perjury?
• 
The public should be terrified.  Everything we do now is online.  Big Tech has declared its intention to ban, censor and block anyone whose opinions it opposes.
• 
Work.  Tweet your opposition to Fauci's COVID shutdowns — that's a threat to public safety and you're censored.
• 
Shopping.  Purchase something PayPal disapproves of and it won't process your credit card.
• 
Church.  Post a statement endorsing traditional marriage – that's hate speech and you're banned.
• 
Politics.  Veer from leftist ideology and you're banished from the public square.
• 
Say the wrong thing.  Think the wrong thing and you become a third-class citizen.  Only when you accept the left's ideological worldview will your rehabilitation be complete.
• 
Many conservatives and free-market supporters have naively defended Big Tech as private companies with the right to do as they please.
• 
What happened to Parler proves how ridiculous that argument is.  Both Google and Apple removed the Parler app from their stores, making it almost impossible to download.
• 
Then the woke "Amazon Employees For Climate Justice" joined in, demanding that the company also force Parler off of its servers, shutting it down.
• 
The idea that, "If you build it, they will come," is dead.  No one can simply build a social media site that the tech lords oppose.  You need to build the entire support network — banks to fund it, credit card companies to process payments, server companies, search engines and dozens more firms that would all be closed to you by the woke left.
• 
Big Tech, along with their media allies, are being disingenuous suggesting conservative sites such as Parler, and public leaders such as President Trump somehow project violence, or other inappropriate behavior.
• 
Twitter allows an open platform for foreign dictators like Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who has fantasized about wiping out Israel.  "Why should & how can #Israel be eliminated?" he asked, answering "9 key questions." His main account is still there even after Iranian threats to Trump's life.
• 
Twitter has also allowed the monsters who run China to falsely blame the U.S.  military for COVID-19, and, most recently, defend the genocide of 1 million Uyghur Muslims.
• 
Facebook, YouTube, Google, Apple, Amazon – these companies are the arbiters of free speech.  All allow "hate speech" from BLM, or Antifa, or numerous other radical groups, but if a conservative says one word that veers from their orthodoxy, they are often expelled.
• 
Now, Big Tech executives are in bed with the Biden administration, and why not?  Biden knows they'll do all of his dirty bidding.
• 
They know he will thwart any effort to hold them to account politically.  Biden talks about regulating tech, but that's what they want.
• 
Tech CEOs have begged for more regulation.  They want regulations to shut down their competitors almost as much as they want to shut down the right.
• 
The urgency for anti-trust legislation to break up these monsters is greater than ever.  Even that would only be a start.
• 
It is not just that they are monopolies.  They are monopolies that are actively attempting to force America into submitting to a radical leftist orthodoxy – and have demonstrated they have the power to do so.
• 
The radical left is rejoicing.  They believe they have it all.  If Americans comply – maybe they do.
• 
See related Marching (Mike Shelton, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related 1984 (Bob Gorrell, 01/14/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      2020 and Big Tech – Election isn't just about Trump vs.  Biden.  It's about fate of democracy  (Fox 06/16/2020)
• 
Big Tech has already made its choice for president in November.  Social media companies have thrown their support to former Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
They are doing it by disallowing President Trump from communicating with the American people.
• 
It is the greatest form of censorship, not to mention election manipulation, this country has ever witnessed.
• 
Twitter, which is used by 83 percent of journalists, recently added so-called "fact-checks" to presidential tweets so that it can further undermine his 81-million follower account.
• 
Twitter's biases are legion.  The site is fact-checking the president yet has allowed almost countless examples of foreign propaganda and flat-out lies against the president to flourish.
• 
Twitter knows he used their platform to propel his candidacy in 2016.  The censors are hell-bent on preventing him from communicating to his base this time around.
• 
Snap, which runs the messaging app Snapchat, has joined with Twitter in the censorship campaign, adding character assassination to the mix.  It has declared it "will not amplify voices who incite racial violence and injustice."
• 
The president's comments will no longer be included in Snapchat's "Discover" section, reserved for key content from news outlets and celebrities.
• 
Facebook's leftist staffers are openly at war with CEO Mark Zuckerberg for not censoring Trump, publicly rebelling by holding a virtual walk-out.
• 
According to Protocol, "many employees changed their social media icons to a white fist on a black background," while others took to Twitter to bash their boss.
• 
... Zuckerberg announced Facebook is "going to review potential options for handling violating or partially-violating content." So, he might cave, as well.
• 
Reddit, one of the most popular sites on the internet, has repeatedly restricted conservative content.
• 
Wikipedia insists it be considered a nonpartisan platform.  Nonsense.  It has joined the effort to censor the president.
• 
Even Wikipedia founder Larry Sanger acknowledged this.  He wrote in May that "Wikipedia no longer has an effective neutrality policy."
• 
The leftist censorship effort transcends the political arena.  Last year, the knitting site Ravelry banned any pro-Trump commentary for its 8 million users under the "New Policy: Do Not Post In Support of Trump or his Administration."
• 
There are numerous other examples — big and small — of President Trump being censored from the public conversation.
• 
And that's just what we know about.  The algorithms, the super-complex computer programs that run the sites, control everything about what everyone can see or post.  And we don't know a thing about them.
• 
... Big Tech companies like Google "can shift opinions and votes in numerous ways that people can't detect," such as limiting what you see on the first search page.
• 
"When it comes to election manipulation, left-leaning American technology companies make the Russians look like rank amateurs."
• 
... social media executives and their radical leftwing staffers ... are determined to choose the next president – or better put, prevent Trump's reelection.
• 
And if we let them, we'll never have another free election anywhere.
• 
This year it's Trump.  If they succeed, it'll be open season on the entire conservative movement.
• 
See related , )">Just in the Way (12/23/2019)", ) cartoon from USA picture album
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      Tammy Bruce: Trump's Portland intervention decried by Dems who are enabling chaos  (Fox 07/23/2020)
• 
After an effort by the legacy media to disappear the story, the nation is finally hearing about the mayhem and violence overtaking Portland, Oreg.
• 
For almost two months, the city has been in the grip of typical vandalism, chaos and bedlam that is the hallmark of the fascist group Antifa, a federally declared terrorist group.
• 
They, along with the Democratic-aligned Marxist group Black Lives Matter, have made Portland a hellscape for the law-abiding citizens who live there.
• 
But in today's upside-down world, the federal government coming to the aid of a city under siege has enraged Democratic leadership.
• 
That alone should tell you everything you need to know about that party and its malevolent politics...
• 
... Mayor Lori Lightfoot ... laughably insisted, "She will use every tool she has to stop Trump from sending ‘troops' to the city, including filing a lawsuit.  ‘We're not going to have tyranny in the city of Chicago,'"
• 
Talk about a lack of self-awareness.  This last weekend of violence in Chicago left 10 people dead and 70 injured, including 10 minors...
• 
But it's the arrival of federal assistance to quell the violence that threatens "tyranny." Got it.
• 
Democratic leadership calls federal law enforcement "stormtroopers" as local leadership fights against assistance to stop murderous crimes waves killing their cities.
• 
The rhetoric against police continues, and police budgets are getting cut, as in New York, where certain crime units have already been disbanded.
• 
Democrats revel in anarchy and mayhem, and throwing your family into the volcano is the price they decided is worth paying as they imagine making Mr.  Trump look bad.
• 
      Tammy Bruce: Attacks on Goya CEO expose the left's mob-mentality tactics  (Fox 07/16/2020)
• 
During his remarks, he noted that "Trump was ‘a builder,' like his own illustrious grandfather, and called for Americans to pray for their president."
• 
Fortunately, for most Americans, such decent and generous remarks are considered normal and worth praising, yet Democrats were sent over (again) their Trump-hating cliff leading to a call for a boycott of this largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States.
• 
Make no mistake, this cancel-culture obscenity, the seeking to destroy people and businesses that do not conform, is the virtual version of the riots that played out in Democratic-run cities with real-life fire bombing of buildings and the physical destruction of businesses and lives.
• 
It may be less visually dramatic, but it is still the mob, and they still seek to destroy and punish anyone who dares to get in their political way.
• 
Mr.  Unanue was attacked on social media and in newspapers.  The conventional wisdom was, after having his company disemboweled, he would lift himself briefly off the ground, beg for forgiveness and then slink away into cancelled obscurity.
• 
But as a man of principle, he decided to not bend to the mob.  "You know, this call for a boycott.  There's so many people for, you know, against the boycott and for our company.  So it's just a reflection, I believe, of the division that exists today in our country."
• 
Mr.  Unanue told ... "I don't know who I attribute this quote to, but we've lived by the philosophy of ‘there are those who are born to love and to build and others to hate and destroy.' And unfortunately, this great divide is killing our nation."
• 
As the left was engaging in virtual arson, conservatives and other well-meaning people countered this threat against Goya with a call to support the company and buy their products.
• 
This typical cancel-culture effort to destroy a person and a company for not conforming to the Democratic worldview is nothing new.
• 
Bullying, abuse, violence and rioting are now the upfront Democratic election strategies for 2020.
• 
I know, it doesn't make sense, but it is all the left has ever had — they feed on envy, jealousy and hate, and condition their base to view everything, especially their own lives, through a lens of victimhood and enemies.
• 
For generations now, liberals and the left have been conditioning Americans to see each other through the lens of tribalism.
• 
It is, after all, easier to control people when they believe they're under constant threat by an unknown and unknowable enemy who happens to live right next door.
• 
Americans have been sold the lie that a sliver of your identity is what matters, and that the Democratic machine will represent and protect you.
• 
Identity politics is sold as philosophy of personal elevation and power, but in reality it's about control, punishment and destruction.
• 
Ultimately, it is the brainwashing and destruction that enforces a code of complete conformity lest you are expelled and cancelled.
• 
This is the real agenda of the left — control people with threat so questions, debate, independent thought and genuine inquiry into facts are too dangerous to even consider.
• 
It is the only way violent fascists are able to take, and keep, control of Americans cities without fear of confrontation.
• 
How else can you explain urban areas run by Democratic mayors in the United States before our very eyes turning into dystopian hellscapes?
• 
How else can you explain the demonstrations by Black Lives Matter, but their silence about the surge in murders of Black people (including children) every weekend in New York and Chicago?
• 
How else is it that Mr.  Unanue, head of the largest Hispanic-owned company in America, founded by his immigrant grandfather, would be at the top of the liberal list for virtual execution?
• 
It is explained by the fact that it is all about control by people who have contempt for the very communities they claim to care about.
      It is about the political control brought by chaos and fear.  And it is the only thing the Democrats and their allied groups know how to  ()
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tammy Bruce: Education gone wrong – riots reveal this about nation's colleges, professors  (Fox 06/03/2020)
      Courtesy of our educational infrastructure having been transformed into leftist indoctrination centers, the result is politicians who care only about ideology where citizens are collateral damage in their march toward a leftist  ()
• 
Our media is populated with news-actors who are similarly bound to their teachers' idols of social justice, political correctness and identity politics.
• 
All of our institutions are suffering from the twin masters of identity politics and woke philosophy.
• 
In New York City during the riots, two individuals were arrested for attempting to bomb a marked New York Police Department cruiser with a Molotov cocktail.
• 
Upon arrest, police found additional material in the car to make more Molotov cocktails, and the booking complaint alleges they intended to hand out the bombs to other rioters.
• 
One, Colinford Mattis, a 32-year-old man had been working with a corporate law firm in New York City, and is a graduate of Princeton University.
• 
The other, Urooj Rahman, a 31-year old woman, is a graduate of Fordham Law School and was admitted to the bar in 2019.
• 
On her Facebook page, she fashions herself a "human rights lawyer." His background as an "anti-poverty intern" for a mayor of San Francisco was listed on LinkedIn, as well as being president of the Princeton Black Student Union.
• 
Education went wrong, which is a dangerous realization, considering its importance not just as a conveyer of information, but as an important and formidable influence on character and values.
• 
With the breakdown of the American family, for many, the leftist indoctrination at the academy is the only instruction on life and principles to which they've been exposed.
• 
"Battle lines are more clearly being drawn these days, between those who clearly believe America is irredeemably evil and must be violently overthrown and those who believe America remains greatest country on earth, based on rule of law, individual liberty, inalienable rights.  Decades of public education have given former group a huge advantage, reinforced by media that awards itself prizes to indoctrinate message.  Seriousness of that side now being impossible to ignore, however, finally forces rule of law side to realize fight must be engaged."
• 
As leftists consumed public education, they accepted open-minded young people into their realm and are now vomiting them back up as heartless anarchists.
• 
In the midst of violent rioting in dozens of cities across the United States, and on the same night rioters set fire to Washington, D.C.'s historic St.
• 
John's Episcopal Church, Sarah Parcak, a faculty member of UAB went to Twitter encouraging people to topple a local monument she deemed a racist insult.
• 
"The crucial point in this maniacal tweet is that this professor has been honored by TED, the Smithsonian, and the Guggenheim," and asked, "Many advocates of disorder now occupy elite institutions that have in the past been the guarantors of order.  Who let them in?"
• 
"...  The middle and lower-middle-class families in this country paid millions to let the Weather Underground raise their kids in hopes they would climb the social ladder."
• 
Whoever Mattis' and Rahman's professors were, they weren't out fixing up Molotov cocktails Sunday night, but for some reason their young charges allegedly were.
• 
And Parcak was no doubt comfortable in a chair during the 10 p.m.  hour on a Sunday as she was tweet-inciting others to put themselves and their futures at great risk.
• 
Why put yourself on the line when others who look up to you are too naive to know you're stuffing them into a cannon?
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Bernie Sanders' cynical move — When pols try to win over terrorists, drug dealers, look out  (Fox 04/25/2019)
• 
His insistence that even terrorists and rapists should have a say in who governs us is an affront to the values that hold this nation together.
• 
Voting is an important right of American citizens, but it's predicated on the commitment we all make to the social compact.
• 
Just like freedom is only guaranteed when you don't break the agreement, as defined by our laws.
• 
The moment you decide our laws, and the compact, do not apply to you, neither do certain rights accorded to law-abiding citizens, like personal freedom and the right to vote.
• 
Make no mistake: This has nothing to do with democracy and principles and everything to do with expanding the Democratic voting base.
• 
And like most Democratic Party positions, the result will be a disaster for the country and our political process.
• 
"Does this mean that you would support enfranchising people like the Boston Marathon bomber, a convicted terrorist and murderer?"
• 
"Do you think that those convicted of sexual assault should have the opportunity to vote for politicians who could have a direct impact on women's rights?"
• 
Sanders, after first commenting on the issue of voter suppression, then went on to say, "... But I do believe that even if they're in jail, they're paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy."
• 
He then went on to speciously argue that stopping maniacs in prison from voting was a "slippery slope" because "Republican governors all across the country" are trying to find ways, to "come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can't vote."
• 
In other words, you have to let terrorists vote because otherwise evil conservatives will stop young people from voting.  Or something.
• 
Moreover, one of the main concerns for all of us involves the behavior of politicians.  During elections, politicians appeal to voting blocs of constituencies.
• 
Imagine a voting bloc of criminals in prison so large that politicians will necessarily try to appeal to them as they do other constituencies who have particular interests.
• 
All of us should be concerned about what politicians, on both sides of the aisle, would feel compelled to promise and offer to those who have not had our best interests in mind and who have taken action to harm the people of this nation.
• 
What could go wrong when politicians try to win the support of terrorists, murderers, rapists and drug dealers?
• 
Keep in mind, very often Democrats will propose a ridiculously extreme position, like allowing terrorists and serial killers to vote from prison, and then the "compromise" becomes the actual dynamic they were seeking.
• 
Democrats laugh when they suggest we take five steps toward the cliff and Republicans chime in, insist on "compromise," arguing for taking just two steps toward the cliff.
• 
That's a win, we're told.
• 
Is it?
• 
See related He's the Future (Michael Ramirez, 03/05/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tammy Bruce: Not a witch hunt, but a Trump hunt  (Fox 03/28/2019)
• 
... many people are missing that the report does include an indictment — of those who fabricated a horrendous crime to be blamed on the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
And not just any wrongdoing, but action that would have constituted treason, a crime punishable by death.
• 
What Mueller concluded is clear: "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
• 
It was a massive investigation.  ... it was the largest federal investigation since the Sept.  11, 2001, attacks. 
• 
There are some people calling for everyone to move on, that we should use this exoneration as a way to just go back to "business as usual" for the country.
• 
That, of course, is absurd.
• 
If there was ever a time to look behind the curtain, it's when it becomes apparent that top federal law enforcement officials may have conspired to overturn a U.S.  presidential election.
• 
The good news is that most understand the imperative of addressing this as one of the most serious events confronting our nation.
• 
Some want to sweep it under the rug specifically because it's so shocking and even frightening to consider who was involved and what it means for our republic.
• 
But that is exactly why we have a duty to look.
• 
There are people in media behaving as though this investigation was legitimate from the start and followed a linear path to conclusion.
• 
We now know neither is true.
• 
It would be foolish to suggest Mueller was unaware of the attitude of his friends and colleagues toward Trump.
• 
For him to accept the appointment as special prosecutor at all and as a result of his fired friend, former FBI Director James B.  Comey, leaking classified notes about Trump to the press, on its face is troublesome.
• 
To have access to every legal mind in the Department of Justice but choose to appoint people like former FBI agent Peter Strzok and former FBI lawyer Lisa Page to his team is also revealing.
• 
Imagine what the Mueller report would have looked like if Strzok remained involved, the same man who promised his lover that he would not allow Trump to become president and assured her they had an "insurance policy" to keep that from happening.
• 
Mueller elevated him to a position where he could act on that promise.
• 
In the aftermath of the Mueller report, for those crowing about how "the system worked," think again.
• 
This is about how the system broke down the moment some in the American federal law enforcement infrastructure decided to target a duly elected president because they didn't get the electoral result they expected and wanted.
• 
We don't get to pretend that everything's fine because, in the end, the people attempting and facilitating a coup didn't succeed.
• 
They don't get to walk away because we exposed them and stopped them from prevailing.
• 
The only way to make sure that this does not happen again is to hold those who perpetrated this accountable and to be honest about the nature of what has occurred throughout this shameful event, no matter to whom this leads us.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Buck  (07/29/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (07/23/2020) | Next sect (01/27/2020) | List bot 
      Rep.  Ken Buck: 2020 election is opportunity for conservatives to stand up to cancel-culture mob  (Fox 07/29/2020)
• 
The cancel culture continues to gain momentum, as more statues across the nation are toppled, and sports teams, major food brands and even music bands are succumbing to pressure to change their names.
• 
The logical question on many Americans' minds is: When does this all end?
• 
To understand where this war on our history ends, we have to examine its roots and its underlying causes.
• 
Over the years, a toxic idea has emerged on college campuses.  Students have demanded that college campuses become so-called "safe spaces."
• 
The argument in favor of safe spaces goes something like this: that which challenges me, that which offends me, that which makes me uncomfortable must be silenced or shut down.  Canceled, in other words.
• 
The advocates for canceling American history are fixated on one narrative – that America is irredeemably flawed and oppressive.
• 
The least safe idea, from their perspective, is that America's founders put into motion the greatest political experiment in human history that has led to more freedoms for more people than any past system.
• 
The greatness of America's founding is a fact, but it disrupts their conclusion, so it must be canceled.
• 
One of the exceptional aspects of our system of government is that we are a republic, not a democracy (despite what progressives say).
• 
The founders understood that both democracies and republics present challenges.  The difference is that democracies all suffer the same fate, suicide, as John Adams pointed out; republics, by contrast, require constant vigilance, but at least provide the hope of survival.
• 
That our republic has lasted 244 years is strong proof that our founders were on the right track.
• 
Our founders knew that republican government was a necessity for our nation's survival but that it alone was insufficient.  Republics require that each generation commit to our founding ideals.
• 
The legend is that Benjamin Franklin was asked, upon exiting the Constitutional Convention of 1787, what form of government we would have.
• 
His quip, "A republic, if you can keep it," has been an enduring reminder to generations of Americans ever since that we share the responsibility for keeping the republic.
• 
The tenuous nature of republican government means personal responsibility plays a significant role in American culture.  Progressives reject the concept of personal freedom because of what it demands of us.
• 
The progressives' assault on American greatness goes straight to the Declaration of Independence.
• 
The document is a marvel and is the strongest demonstration of American exceptionalism.
• 
Through Jefferson's words, we gave birth not only to a new nation but to an entirely new arrangement between humans and their government.
• 
G.K.  Chesterton, in his commentaries on America, remarked on the significance of the Declaration of Independence.  "America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.  That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence....  It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just."
• 
Therein lies the heart and soul of the Declaration, and it gives insight into why progressives, so determined to undermine America, attack the document.
• 
The Declaration of Independence defined individual liberty in a way that had never been done before, and it defined our rights as being God-given.
• 
The Declaration of Independence did something even the founders did not fully anticipate.  It put into motion the abolition of slavery.
• 
Progressives have championed historical nonsense such as the 1619 Project, which attempts to make slavery the sine qua non of our nation's founding.
• 
In reality, slavery was an affront to America's ideals, and to the very language of the Declaration of Independence, and that is why the institution was done away with.
• 
Elections almost always come down to one central question.  This year's election question is a nod to Benjamin Franklin: Is our republic worth keeping?
• 
The cancel crowd tells us there is nothing worth preserving in our history, and we should systematically attack, destroy, rewrite and rename.
• 
For the rest of us, November provides an opportunity for us to take personal responsibility for keeping our republic.
• 
Will that be easy?  No, of course not.  But nothing worth doing ever is.
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      America's two constitutions — since the '60s, competing visions of a more perfect union  (Fox 01/27/2020)
• 
Not long after he left the White House, Bill Clinton gave what is still the best description of the fault lines that run through American politics.
• 
"If you look back on the '60s and on balance you think there was more good than harm, you're probably a Democrat."
• 
"If you think there was more harm than good, you're probably a Republican."
• 
What could he have meant by that?
• 
Though Americans are reluctant to admit it, the legacy of the 1960s that most divides the country has its roots in the civil rights legislation passed in the immediate aftermath of John F.  Kennedy's assassination.
• 
It was enacted in a rush of grief, anger and overconfidence — the same overconfidence that had driven Kennedy to propose landing a man on the moon and would drive Lyndon Johnson to wage war on Vietnam.
• 
Shored up and extended by various court rulings and executive orders, the legislation became the core of the most effective campaign of social transformation in American history.
• 
This campaign was effective both for its typically American idealism and for its typically American ruthlessness.
• 
It authorized Washington to shape state elections, withhold school funds, scrutinize the hiring practices of private businesses and sue them.
• 
It placed Offices of Civil Rights in the major cabinet agencies, and these offices were soon issuing legally binding guidelines, quotas and targets.
• 
Above all, it exposed every corner of American social, business and political life to direction from judges.
• 
Americans assumed that solving the unique and extraordinary problem of segregation would require handing Washington powers never before granted in peacetime.
• 
In this they were correct.
• 
But they were also confident that the use of these powers would be limited in time (to a few years at most), in place (to the South), and in purpose (to eliminating segregation).
• 
In this they misjudged, with fateful consequence for the country's political system.
• 
Civil rights law may have started off as a purpose-built tool to thwart the insidious legalism of Southern segregation and the violence of Southern sheriffs.
• 
It would end up a wide-ranging reinvention of government.
• 
Civil rights became an all-purpose constitutional shortcut for progressive judges and administrators.
• 
Over time it brought social changes in its wake that the leaders of the civil-rights movement had not envisioned and voters had not sanctioned: affirmative action, speech codes on college campuses, a set of bureaucratic procedures that made immigrants almost impossible to deport, gay marriage, transgender bathrooms.
• 
In retrospect, the changes begun in the 1960s, with civil rights at their core, were not just a major new element in the Constitution.
• 
They were a rival constitution, with which the pre-1964 one would frequently prove incompatible — and the incompatibility would worsen as the civil-rights regime was built out.
• 
Our present political impasse is the legacy of that clash of systems.
• 
Much of what we today call polarization" or "incivility" is something more grave.  It is the disagreement over which of the two constitutions shall prevail: the pre-1964 constitution, with all the traditional forms of jurisprudential legitimacy and centuries of American culture behind it; or the de facto constitution of 1964, which lacks this traditional kind of legitimacy but commands the near-unanimous endorsement of judicial elites and civic educators, and the passionate allegiance of those who received it as a liberation.
• 
As long as the baby boom generation was in its working years, permitting the country to run large debts, Washington could afford to pay for two social orders at the same time.
• 
A good civil rights movement led by the martyred Rev.  Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.  had been hijacked, starting in the 1970s, by a radical version that brought affirmative action and eventually political correctness.
• 
But affirmative action and political correctness were not temporary.  Over time they hardened into pillars of the second constitution.
• 
Both affirmative action and political correctness were derived from the basic enforcement powers of civil rights law.
• 
And this was the only civil rights on offer.  If you didn't like affirmative action and political correctness, you didn't like civil rights.
• 
The United States had not only acquired two codes of rules (two constitutions) — as people rallied to one code or the other — they also sorted themselves into two sets of citizens (two countries).
• 
To each side, the other's constitution might as well have been written in invisible ink.  Democrats were the party of rights, Republicans of bills.
• 
Much happened this century to bring matters to the present boil.
• 
Barack Obama, both for his fans and his detractors, was the first president to understand civil rights law in the way described here: as a de facto constitution by which the de jure constitution could be overridden or bypassed.
• 
In this view, the old republic built on battlefield victories had been overthrown by a new one built on rights marches and Supreme Court jurisprudence.
• 
The election of 2016 brought the change into focus.  Today two nations look at each other in mutual incomprehension across an impeachment hearing room.
• 
It appears we are facing a constitutional problem of the profoundest kind.
 Carafano  (03/06/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/27/2020) | Next sect (02/16/2022) | List bot 
      What China is learning from Putin's Ukraine invasion  (Fox 03/06/2022)
• 
Vladimir Putin could never rest easy without the Russian flag flying over Kyiv.  Never doubt for a second that Xi Jinping feels the same way about Taiwan.  The president of China certainly hopes, in his lifetime, to see the communist flag flutter above Taipei.
• 
Putin would not have moved on Ukraine if he didn't think a weakened, distracted and divided Europe, paired with a feckless American president, would not stand in his way.
• 
"Unlike Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a Chinese move on Taiwan involves it getting past hundreds of miles of water."
• 
If Beijing wants to take Taiwan by force, it won't act until it's convinced it can win decisively and quickly.  Beijing thinks the West is only going to get weaker, so time is on its side.
• 
What happens when victories are not quick and decisive?  Putin may well conquer Ukraine, but if he does, it will only be after an expensive, debilitating campaign that devastates his conquests while delivering a staggering hammer blow to his own economy.
• 
Beijing is also learning lessons about the value of Putin as ally.  Rather than dividing and weakening Europe, Putin has given NATO a reason to be NATO again.  European countries are stepping up to spend more on defense.
• 
Congress is likely to press the Biden administration to strengthen both the U.S.  military's conventional and strategic posture.
• 
Beijing has also had to spend geopolitical capital to side with Russia.  Fending off responsibility for the Uyghur genocide (which they can hide behind the Great Firewall) is one thing, but defending Russian war crimes, which play out on Twitter and YouTube, guts China's credibility of claims that it's a "responsible" power.
• 
... Beijing's buddy in Moscow is going to be an economic basketcase.  Even if Beijing wants to bail them out with their patent debt trap, that is going to cost a lot of money – likely more than the Chinese Communist Party can spare.
• 
Here is an even bigger lesson Xi did not anticipate.  He has been thrilled to watch the West commit economic suicide with its "climate action" plan that impoverishes their economies (while doing little to address climate issues) even as the China economy thrives, powered by ever more coal-fired plants.
• 
What if this war actually causes the West to wake up and adopt policies that deliver reliable, affordable and abundant energy (without Russian oil and gas)?
• 
Let's be honest.  Even before Putin attacked Ukraine, Beijing was right to think the West was in the process of geopolitical suicide.  Not one Western leader showed Putin any backbone.
• 
They still cling to their climate-action nonsense.  We still talk a lot about protecting supply chains, and then Congress offers to subsidize costs for high-tech companies knee-deep in China.
• 
Yet the resistance in the Ukraine has stirred some buried truth in the West, like being dead asleep and then shocked awake – a reminder that if we don't defend our freedom, safety and prosperity, no one will.
• 
The lesson for Beijing may be to wait a bit.  They may well decide to wait and see what happens after the Ukraine war: if the West returns to its geostrategic slumbers or if defending the free world becomes a new reality in the post-modern world.  You can bet Xi will be rooting for the former.
      China's Xi wins Biden-Putin cage match over Ukraine  (Fox 01/24/2022)
• 
When the squabbling over Ukraine concludes, it's hard to see how China's President Xi Jinping doesn't come out on top.
• 
For his part, Putin has numerous options.  He has made impossible demands (like an end to NATO enlargement), but will pay zero consequences if his maximum ambitions are not met.
• 
Putin has already achieved two major objectives.  First, he has made a mockery of the Biden "the adults are back" bumper sticker.  Confidence in Biden's leadership is lower than an Alaskan thermometer in January.
• 
Second, Putin has dug deep into the fissures of European solidarity.  Nobody is bragging about a Europe "whole, free and at peace" these days.
• 
Where Putin goes from here only he knows.  Here is what we do know.  Putin has been around a long time and taken many reckless, risky and destabilizing steps.  He has never, however, triggered World War III.
• 
He's likely smart enough to figure out how to wring something he wants out of this crisis without setting the world alight.
• 
This raises the China card.  With Biden so unable to lead, many are offering up their own ideas to fill the vacuum, though they are equally vacuous.
• 
One German admiral made headlines arguing Germany make nice with Putin and worry about Beijing.  (He then immediately resigned.) He is, however, not the only one tossing out this suggestion.  This is a proposal lacking a ticket to the logic train.
• 
Russia and China have the same objectives in Europe.  They want a Europe divided and weak.  They want the transatlantic community to dissolve and for Americans to sit at home on their hands.  Asking for Putin's help with China is geopolitical assisted suicide.
• 
Dithering over Russia, regardless of how Ukraine plays out in the end, only helps China.  Xi's read of the West's response to Putin will be that free nations aren't serious about protecting their own interests.
• 
The Biden administration and European leaders have demonstrably shown they don't have a sound strategy to deal with either, let alone both.
• 
The West needs leaders with broader and more confident vision.  Right now Putin sleeps at night dreaming of Stalin in all his glory.  Xi dreams of Mao on the march.  Biden and his buddies must be dreaming of SpongeBob.
      Biden's foreign policy challenges for 2022 – are he and his team up for the job?  (Fox 01/03/2022)
• 
The big bad world out there promises to give us all plenty of headaches throughout 2022.
• 
There are the carry-over hot spots of course: the Korean DMZ, Crimea, Taiwan.  Things could explode there almost any time.
• 
But trouble is brewing elsewhere, too, and not always in the places we'd most expect.  Here are five problem areas to keep an eye on throughout the new year.
• 
Peru, Honduras and now Chile have elected governments intent on making a hard left turn.  For those countries, that can open the gates to economic malaise, Chinese encroachment and terrorism.
• 
And it could create a lot of headaches here, as well: increased drug smuggling, illegal immigration and crime.  And, with national elections coming up in Brazil and Colombia, things could get worse.
• 
Unfortunately, the Southern Hemisphere's lurch to the left comes at a time of weak leadership in Washington.  The Biden administration has thus far proven inept at everything in Latin America, except insulting and degrading the few friendly and supportive regimes like Guatemala.
• 
Over the next year, adversarial regimes around the world will look at Latin America and Biden's wide-open border and see a tempting and exposed flank ready to be exploited.
• 
In places like Afghanistan, transnational terrorists have more and larger sanctuaries than they did in 2021.
• 
Afghanistan is but Exhibit A.  And conciliatory moves by the Biden administration have only strengthened and emboldened the world's number one sponsor of terrorism.
• 
Throw in that previously mentioned wide-open border, and it's easy to see how another 9/11 can be in our not-so-distant future.
• 
Also be on the lookout for a new wrinkle in terrorist attacks: drones.  They are now common coin in conflict zones everywhere.  It's only a matter of time before terrorists use them to target innocents.
• 
Thanks to its Belt and Road Initiative, China is already firmly established throughout Africa.  Beijing's malignant influence is exacerbating the continent's long-standing problems of poor governance, lack of economic freedom and deteriorating public safety.
• 
All of this leads to oppression and instability.  Mass migration, often triggered by the desire to escape armed conflict, is greater than ever.
• 
And the mass migration creates even more space and opportunity for terrorists, extremists and sophisticated criminal networks.
• 
This vicious cycle is not an "over there" problem.  What is coming out of Africa is already impacting Europe, the Middle East and the Western Hemisphere.
• 
Everyone is watching Ukraine today, but Putin has chaos and mayhem in play in Moldova, Georgia, the Balkans and several other places as well.
• 
How long can Biden limp along with the lethargic, inept team he has running national security and foreign policy?  So far, the only personnel shake-ups he has made involve the Oval Office dog and a cat.
• 
With a domestic agenda on life support, a looming midterm election massacre and global problems galore, can Biden really afford to keep this lame team on the roster?
• 
Changes are well in order.  But that raises the question: If Biden does bring in new people, will U.S.  polices get better or worse?
      Biden worsens border mess – here's how adversaries view fragile admin's self-induced crisis  (Fox 03/28/2021)
• 
In just a few days, the administration went from proclaiming there is "no [crisis] ... the border is closed" to announcing that Vice President Harris has been tapped to fix the crisis-that-isn't-a-crisis.
• 
Then a vice presidential spokesperson declared that the VP is not in charge; she's just undertaking a diplomatic outreach to Latin America.
• 
Finally, speaking for himself, Biden had nothing to add but the same blame game and excuse-making that his team has been peddling for days.
• 
... Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has repeatedly emphasized the administration's intent to continue accepting unaccompanied minors.
• 
By saying the government won't stop this abuse of the immigration system, administration officials are literally telling the human smugglers how to game the system and get the maximum number of illegal aliens into the U.S.  as quickly and efficiently as possible.
• 
At the same time, the administration promotes major amnesty bills, two of which have already passed the House.
• 
Amnesty bills also spur illegal immigration.  The cartels use them as recruiting tools, making the case that NOW is the time to come to the U.S.  "They will let you in.  They will let you stay.  Strike while the iron is hot."
• 
... reporter recently interviewed a person who crossed the border, he admitted he came because Biden had been elected – that he would never have tried if Trump was still president.  No wonder they are coming wearing Biden T-shirts.
• 
When President Obama's policies signaled open borders in 2014, public outrage led his administration to reinstitute some controls – measures close to what Trump later perfected.
• 
Similarly, when Europe was flooded with immigrants, the problem was out of control until European governments finally adopted Trumpian measures.
• 
Biden's border crisis will not go away unless Harris follows this proven path.  So far, however, the White House is loath to follow Trump's lead, even when it's demonstrably the right step to take.
• 
Meanwhile, the president seems disconnected, barely talking to reporters, offering vague promises of future visits to the border, and refusing to admit that the problem flows from what is just bad policy.
• 
Trump's policies were, at root, not partisan.  They were just realistic.
• 
Biden's team, however, seems bent on following a hard-left ideology, even if sticking with proven, non-leftist policies make the best sense for American interests.
• 
This may suggest to America's adversaries some promising avenues for needling the administration.
• 
A seemingly disengaged president, a penchant for pushing a radical agenda over practical policies, and a willingness to hide the truth about their failures rather than face and fix problems ... that's a formula bad guys can play with.
• 
What's happening on our southern border makes the U.S.  administration looks fragile, insecure and distracted.  Iran, North Korea, China and Russia must all be thinking, "How can we take advantage of that?"
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      China lies about its wrongdoing on COVID, spying, global aggression, pollution and more  (Fox 12/18/2020)
• 
The Chinese Communist Party has lied about COVID-19 from the start.  And it's still lying about the disease that has turned into a pandemic confirmed to be responsible for nearly 75 million infections around the world, including 17.2 million in the U.S."
• 
The global death toll from the pandemic is over 1.6 million, including more than 310,000 in the U.S.
• 
Beijing's malignant behavior doesn't stop with the pandemic, of course.  Just this month we've learned of Chinese spies trying to seduce U.S.  lawmakers and other politicians.
• 
And we've learned of other Chinese Communist Party members who have infiltrated a host of U.S.  universities and businesses.
• 
Naturally, the Chinese regime denies it all.  Its dogged addiction to lying in the face of clear-cut facts is a worrisome indicator that the Beijing we must deal with now and into the future is even more duplicitous and aggressive than the Beijing of the past.
• 
The Chinese are still lying, trying to pin the origin of COVID-19 seemingly anywhere other than Wuhan Province in their own country — the actual place where the disease first appeared.
• 
Chinese officials suggested in March that COVID-19 it originated in, you guessed it, the U.S.  Last month, they pointed fingers at India.  Last week, they were blaming Italy.
• 
China's outrageous conduct during the pandemic goes beyond mere lying and negligence.  It also has bullied and threatened other nations.  At one point a Chinese official threatened to withhold medical supplies and personal protective equipment from the U.S.  market.
• 
The regime doesn't believe honesty is the best policy.  Rather, its preferred policy seems to be deceit and aggression.
• 
Recently more news came to light of efforts by Chinese intelligence to infiltrate and influence government, including most famously the office of Rep.  Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.
• 
... a cache of leaked documents revealed Chinese Communist Party members are in positions of power and influence all over the world.
• 
As for bald-face deceit, the Chinese leader recently told the United Nations General Assembly that his country was leading the world in responding to climate concerns and protecting the planet.
• 
In fact, China is the world's leading polluter.  It spews more greenhouse gases than any other nation, and its pollution is getting worse — not better.
• 
China has not taken one step in statecraft that suggests the regime is interested in being a more responsible international partner.
• 
There is a lesson to be learned here.  For eight years President Barack Obama's administration tried persistently to "reset" relations with Russia and consistently failed.
• 
There was a reason for that.  Detente requires a partner that is willing to drop the aggressive behavior that caused problems to begin with.  Putin was never that partner, and Chinese President Xi Jinping is cut from the same mold.
• 
It is the height of irresponsibility to believe that going easy on the Chinese Communist regime will produce anything other than more deceit and aggression and more disappointment for the free world.
• 
See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
      James Carafano: Rioting in US cities – 5 reasons why violent radicals feel emboldened  (Fox 08/26/2020)
• 
... there is no sign that the deliberate attacks will end any time soon.
• 
Indeed, the looting, threats, arson, assaults, intimidation and extortion seem to be spreading, now reaching into smaller cities and suburbs.
• 
Here are five reasons these emboldened and increasingly violent radicals pose a very real threat to safety on our streets and equal protection under the law.
• 
No.  5: We are facing a capable enemy
• 
The street militias have shifted targets and tactics to sustain pressure on communities and local officials.  They have become consistently more belligerent.
• 
They have developed aggressive legal tactics, allowing them to bail out rioters – even those charged with assaulting police – almost as quickly as they are arrested.
• 
They have also developed sophisticated social networking and media strategies that allow them to distribute how-to–riot guidance (such as how to avoid being identified and arrested) as well as spread disinformation and propaganda.
• 
Further, it is clear these groups have robust financial and logistical support.
• 
These guys are not going to run out of steam like easily bored teenagers or liberal activists who have to go back to their day jobs.
• 
Backed with a large war chest, this organized radicalism presents a persistent threat, constantly seeking new ways and new places to the make rest of our lives miserable.
• 
No.  4: There is a war on our streets
• 
Sustained violent protests attract extremists who crave even more extreme violence.
• 
And, as we saw over the weekend in Portland, violent extremists draw counter-extremists, who see the challenge as a green light to press their own radical agenda.
• 
No.  3: Local officials have failed us
• 
Portland, Seattle, Chicago and other cities where violence has spiraled out of control share one common liability: political leadership that has utterly failed to address public safety.
• 
In every case, they have turned a blind eye toward criminal behavior, creating permissive environments that only encourage ever more extreme protests and violence.
• 
In every case, they have hamstrung local police and adjured cooperation with state and federal enforcement.  This is a recipe for disaster.
• 
Organized crime of all kinds thrives when it can exploit weak enforcement and gaps between local, state and federal law enforcement.
• 
No.  2: Our media have failed us
• 
It is astonishing that the organized violence in American cities has not received wall-to-wall coverage from mainstream media.
• 
Equally astonishing is the absence of any substantive investigative reporting into the operations of Antifa, BLM or other organizations creating and condoning chaos in our streets.
• 
Apparently unable to distinguish peaceful advocacy for justice from radical agendas intent on achieving change by warring on the American people, the media remain content to pretend that eyewitness accounts and even videos of nightmarish violence are somehow overblown.
• 
Too often, the handful of reporters and commentators who have given the issue the attention it deserves are dismissed, ignored or ridiculed.
• 
No.  1: Our politicians have failed us
• 
The safety of American streets and the sanctity of our homes and businesses ought to be as strongly a bipartisan agenda as the demands for racial equality.
• 
They are not.  Virtually to a person, one side of the political aisle has ignored this threat, like a fireman at a five-alarm blaze ignoring a fire.
• 
We have to stop playing politics with the safety and livelihood of the American people.
• 
This won't stop – and, indeed, will get worse – if every day Americans don't start standing up more and saying no more.
• 
Find ways to show support for our law enforcement agencies.
• 
Start demanding that local and state officials work with the federal government to disrupt and demolish the organized, criminal militias on our streets.
• 
And for heaven's sake, stop giving money to groups that funnel that money to those who supply and bail out the people who are tearing up our streets.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      James Carafano: Election meddling — domestic threats more of a challenge than foreign  (Fox 08/11/2020)
• 
Washington used to abide by the maxim: "Politics stops at the water's edge." Those days are gone.
• 
The apoplectic pundits would have us believe that foreign efforts to influence the elections have everything to do with helping one candidate or another win.  They don't.
• 
Foreign powers have tried to meddle in our elections — through overt action and covert manipulation — since we started having elections.
• 
Election meddling is part of foreign statecraft.  Perhaps the most expansive foreign effort to bend the American electorate came in the years leading up to Pearl Harbor.
• 
Our British cousins really wanted to tilt a neutral America their way in the battle against the Axis powers.
• 
Then, as now, the appropriate response to any activity that threatens election integrity is not to ask: "How can I use this to bash my political opponents?"
• 
Rather, the question to ask is: "What is the appropriate, proportional and responsible way to deal with this threat?"
• 
Few reports bothered to parse the nature of the threats.  Generally, there are two: efforts to actually manipulate and change voting outcomes and efforts to influence voters.
• 
Efforts to actually change votes are an issue that the government already takes very seriously.  There is no proof that the Chinese, Russian, Iranian or any other foreign government changed or interfered with balloting during the 2016 election.
• 
In gauging threats, Americans ought to be far more concerned about domestic voter fraud and the integrity of state-managed election efforts.
• 
The Heritage Foundation maintains a data base, a sampling of recent cases of voter fraud around the country.  It shows that domestic voter fraud is all too real and all too common.
• 
Every vote cast illegally undermines the integrity of the system and the rights of legitimate voters.  In close elections, fraud could undermine our democratic will.
• 
Those wishing to preserve the integrity of our elections should worry less about foreign interference and concentrate on pressing state and local election authorities to adopt practices and provide oversight to assure that every legitimate vote is counted, and every bogus vote gets spotted and tossed out.
• 
But what about that other phenomenon: foreign efforts to influence American voters?  Certainly these efforts are being made.  But how much of an impact do they have?
• 
Politician, parties and PACs already spend tens-of-billions of dollars trying to influence our decisions as to who gets our votes.  Influence-spending by foreign powers is but a drop in the bucket.
• 
Nor are American voters hopelessly naive.  Knowing that some of the voices they hear are not legit makes voters warier, making them a harder target for foreign influencers.
• 
The American electorate is deeply divided.  But it's divided for many reasons — reasons that have nothing to with foreign manipulation and, in most cases, are impervious to it.
• 
Foreign policy issues typically take a backseat to domestic policy considerations in U.S.  elections, and that certainly appears to be the case this year.
• 
We can use our intelligence services to understand and undermine their actions.  Civil society can help bring transparency to foreign influences.  All this will mitigate the threat even further.
• 
What does not help is we do our enemies work for them and use their ill-intended behavior to bash each other.
      James Carafano: In Portland, Seattle, Homeland Security is facing organized, criminal activity  (Fox 07/28/2020)
• 
Critics assailing the Department of Homeland Security for "over-stepping their bounds" in Portland have it 100 percent wrong.  The department is in the right.
• 
Further, its actions thus far should just be the first step in disrupting the organized violence aimed at intimidating public officials, injuring law enforcement officers, destroying public and private property and making our streets less safe.
• 
Let's be clear.  We are not talking about "peaceful protests." What is going on in Portland, as well as Seattle and some other is an array of criminal activity: rioting, looting, arson, assaulting law enforcement officers and more.  This is flat out criminal activity.
• 
And it is not all spontaneous.  This is organized criminal activity.
• 
... the rioters are targeting cities where public officials have created a more permissive environment.  They have restricted the actions of local and state law enforcement.  When rioters are arrested, they release them quickly, refusing to prosecute.
• 
Moreover, these officials refuse to cooperate with federal law enforcement.  In sum, they have turned their cities into "soft targets" for criminals.
• 
... it is clear that many of the crimes committed are premeditated.  Rioters show up armed with commercial fireworks, chain saws, crowbars, frozen water bottles, laser pointers (that have already injured the eyesight of several law enforcement personnel), leaf blowers (to disperse tear gas) and metal spikes (to incapacitate the tires of law enforcement vehicles).
• 
People planning to conduct a peaceful protest would have no use for any of these items.
• 
They have no defensive value.  These are nothing more — or less — than weapons intended to be used to attack property and injure law enforcement personnel.
• 
In addition, the rioters appear to be changing and adapting tactics as time goes on.
• 
After the Department of Homeland Security deployed to protect the courthouse, groups soon appeared to protect the rioters.
• 
These included "moms" in yellow shirts (several identified by a reporter at the scene as the same rioters they had seen days before); flag-waving "patriots" and then "vets."
• 
That such groups would spontaneously materialize in succession and show-up in the middle of post-midnight riots seems unlikely.
• 
Criminals — whatever their motivations — have hijacked legitimate demonstrations, transforming them into lawless, violent mobs that deny citizens equal protection under the law, make our streets less safe, and threaten the safety of law enforcement.
• 
The ongoing attacks in places like Portland are not just people "letting off steam" or advocating for change.
• 
They are acts of violence, conducted illegally to get what they want.  That's a crime.  It needs to be stopped.
• 
The federal government should vigorously investigate, prosecute and disrupt any organizations or individuals they find aiding, abetting or directing these attacks.
• 
Local, state and federal law enforcement need to pool their resources to protect our cities and investigate and prosecute organized criminal activity.
      James Carafano: China's coronavirus bullying – US must keep pushing back.  Here's how  (Fox 05/28/2020)
• 
Remember the old public relations maxim: "There's no such thing as bad publicity"?  Try telling that to Beijing.  Having loosed a pandemic, China finds itself (quite deservedly) deluged with bad publicity.
• 
Yet, oddly, the regime seems to think the best way out of their image nightmare is to make it worse.
• 
Well, alrighty then.  If that's their play, the U.S.  ought to spend more time thinking about how we can help the Chinese Communist Party dig itself a deeper hole.
• 
The list of China's self-inflicted wounds grows longer by the day.  They failed to confine the epidemic in Wuhan.  They allowed millions of travelers to carry the disease around the world.  They failed to inform the world of the disease in timely fashion.  They failed to cooperate with other nations seeking to understand the disease.  They hoarded protective equipment.  They spread lies (like blaming others for the outbreak) to deflect criticism.  Then they started threatening some countries — like Australia — that announced plans to investigate Beijing's handling of the outbreak.
• 
Of course, China sees the U.S.  as the big obstacle on its long march to become the world's most dominant military and economic power.  However, Beijing's strategy has always been to "win without fighting."
• 
Rather than directly bump heads with Washington, it seeks to find ways to undercut U.S.  dominance, bend international organizations its way and draw off American friends and allies.
• 
The Trump administration has pushed back bluntly.  It has slapped tariffs on Chinese goods and pressed for better trade deals.  It has actively opposed China's candidates for leadership positions in international organizations.  And it has called out Chinese disinformation and lies disseminated during the pandemic response.
• 
The Chinese response to this has been to put on a brave face and act even more belligerently than usual.
• 
They have been more vociferous in their claims on the South China Seas and moved troops into contested regions of the border with India.
• 
Most troubling of all is the regime's announcement that it will pass legislation that could significantly compromise the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong, gutting the commitments Beijing swore to uphold when it signed the "Basic Law," marking the return of the island to China from Great Britain.
• 
While it was always assumed the Chinese Communist Party would circle back and punish the people of Hong Kong for their upstart behavior, the fact that they're doing it right now is interesting.
• 
Yet, this round of aggression comes with a cost.  The regime has demonstrated once again it cannot be trusted to uphold its commitments.
• 
And it has shown its willingness to bully and bluff to get its way.  That will only make the world more wary of China.
• 
China will never stop its destabilizing actions unless the U.S.  stands strong to defend its interests and work with friends and allies to mitigate the China challenge.
• 
In dealing with the Beijing bullies, the U.S.  must stick to its strategy: when China does wrong, we need to call them on it and make them pay a price for their bad behavior.
      James Carafano: Coronavirus and China — 3 rules to build US up and make them pay  (Fox 05/12/2020)
• 
Around the world, a lot of folks are itching to retaliate against China for its complicity in launching the coronavirus pandemic.
• 
But a thirst for vengeance seldom leads one to the wisest course of action.  Revenge, after all, is a dish best served cold — or at least without the heat of passion.
• 
The ongoing competition between the U.S.  and China cannot be resolved quickly.  This is a marathon, not a sprint, and there are special rules for this kind of contest.
• 
Long-term competitions are long for a reason: neither side has a decisive advantage over the other.
• 
When neither side holds a decisive edge, conflicts can settle into wars of attrition, with the winner emerging at long last, barely standing.
• 
Today, China challenges the West.  Beijing has speedily amassed power in part because we let them cut into our competitive advantages.
• 
The Chinese Communist Party ran amok through global free markets, lying, cheating and stealing their way to the top.
• 
If the free world wants to stay on top and mitigate the threat of Beijing's global destabilizing behavior, we are going to have to work both sides of the problem — pushing back on China and protecting our core competitive advantages.
• 
What has kept the West from becoming a suburb of Beijing so far is that we are free.  We can defend ourselves.  We are affluent.
• 
If we lose those decisive advantages, we become little more than a speed-bump to the Party's ambitions.
• 
This leads to the three rules we must follow when it comes to getting back at Beijing for the COVID-19 outbreak and its many other misdeeds.
• 
Rule #1.  Put first things first.
• 
Job one for America, its allies and partners is to get our economies safely up and running.  If we can't do that — nothing else matters.
• 
So, the first rule is that no major action against China should interfere with rebooting the U.S.  economy and the U.S.  leading the free world in economic recovery.  Let's get everybody back to work first.
• 
Rule #2.  Getting the bad guy's attention is more important than making yourself feel better.
• 
The only steps worth taking against Beijing are those that will actually make them sweat.
• 
If Washington slashes our capacity to defend U.S.  interests, that will send the wrong message to Beijing — a message far stronger than insisting aspirin be made in America.
• 
Rule #3.  Think long-term.
• 
China isn't going anywhere.  Neither are we.  Let's give them challenges that they will face for the long haul.
• 
Perhaps this won't be as satisfying as a slap in the face, but such measures are much more likely to get Beijing's attention, mitigate threats and perhaps change the Party's behavior.
• 
Rebuilding the U.S.  manufacturing capacity and strengthening trade and investment ties with our friends will worry Beijing far more than restrictionist measures that curb free markets.
• 
The best way to serve up revenge?  With policies that both weaken the advantages of the Chinese Communist Party and safeguard the freedom, prosperity and security of the free world.
• 
That's how we keep the strength needed to finish the marathon first and in good shape for the next race.
      James Carafano: Coronavirus recovery — Trump's plan missing these key pieces  (Fox 04/28/2020)
• 
... more and more Americans are getting anxious to get America back to work.
• 
Protesters have rallied at statehouses in many parts of the country, demanding that governors start relaxing lockdown restrictions that have shuttered millions of businesses and left tens of millions of workers without jobs.
• 
These protesters are not out of touch.  They are the vanguard recognizing that the time has come to get to work.
• 
Rightfully, they reject the false idea that our nation is faced with only one choice: either shelter in our basements until a cure is found or act as though the disease doesn't exist.
• 
Some folks have been talking up the idea of making the U.S.  economy completely self-contained.  No need to rely on foreign suppliers for anything.
• 
From I-phones to minerals to drugs, we'll make 'em all right here in the good ol' USA.  That's a pipedream.
• 
The reality is that, when it comes to restarting the economy, we have to work with the economy we have.  Job number one is to get it up and running and get everyone back to work.
• 
To make things go, we'll need to engage with some vitally important foreign partners — partners that, unlike China, share the American vision of free markets and free peoples.
• 
... the U.S.  economic recovery will hinge to a great degree on the economic recovery of the free world.  We will have to come back from this crisis together, with the U.S.  leading the way.
• 
... Washington ought to be looking for investments, innovation, new supply chains and relationships that not only help bring our economies back quickly but also strengthen the bonds among free peoples.
• 
Washington also needs to start thinking about how to prevent and mitigate the next pandemic.
• 
Sadly, many on the left want to use this crisis to advance a socialist agenda, everything from government-run health care to redistributing national income.
• 
The administration needs to have a plan to fight back.  Battling future pandemics shouldn't undermine our freedoms, the virtues of federalism, and the instruments of a free market that create prosperity.
• 
If the White House doesn't come up with a powerful program now to fill these policies spaces, progressives will be all too happy to fill the void.
• 
They will deliver ideas that could be as dangerous as the plague.
• 
Instead what we need is a plan from the president for American global economic leadership and a vision that will ensure this disaster never happens again.
      James Carafano: Russia is a menace, but blame Putin and Obama, NOT Trump  (Fox 03/29/2019)
• 
Trump has a Russia problem, but it has nothing to do with Robert Mueller's investigation.
• 
The real problem is – well, just Russia.
• 
Moscow is a menace.
• 
And if you're looking for someone to blame, it ain't Trump.  You do have two choices, though: Putin or Obama.
• 
Flip a coin.  But before you make the call, let's pause to review how we got to where we are in U.S.-Russia relations.
• 
From the outset of his rise to power, Putin had two goals: first, to take complete control of the Russian state and second, to use that power and authority to sow discord among the transatlantic community, weakening the western nations politically, militarily and – where possible – economically.
• 
Why weaken the West?  Because it would allow Putin to establish a hard sphere of influence over the surrounding nations – especially the former Soviet states.
• 
This would not only help Putin recapture for Russia the prestige it enjoyed in the communist era, but it would also assure the perpetuation of his control far into the future.
• 
That was always the plan, and it will likely remain the plan as long as Putinism has its gnarly fingers around the throat of the Russian people.
• 
But is it all Putin's fault?  After all, Putin is just a thug with a mediocre economy and a middling military.
• 
That's why it is also fair to blame Obama.  After all, who let Russia back into the great power game?
• 
Team Obama racked up a long list of seriously bad moves in dealing with Moscow.
• 
It's not like no one warned Obama that Putin's Russia was a rising menace.
• 
But Mr.  "No Drama" simply pooh-poohed the notion that it was anything to worry about.
• 
Given that history, is it any wonder that Putin thought he could mess with the 2016 elections and get away with it?
• 
The main goal was, no doubt, simply to sow doubt and distaste about whichever candidate emerged the winner.
• 
But Trump's speculation that Moscow would have been happier with a Clinton presidency is probably right.
• 
Her election might well have perpetuated many of the worst elements of Obama's policies, including letting Russia undermine European energy security and energy free markets.
• 
Looking back solely to assess blame is, of course, a largely fruitless exercise.
• 
The point of looking back to figure out how we got where we are today is to help us understand what to do to move forward.
• 
In practice, this administration has looked back and learned the right lessons.  Across the board, the team has been tough on Russia.
• 
And many on the left aren't happy about it.  ... Their argument is that what we are doing now isn't working because Putin isn't changing.
• 
The flaw here lies in thinking that we can change him.
• 
We can't.  Obama's approach certainly didn't, and Trump's policies don't try to.  Putin will just keep being Putin, no matter who is in the Oval Office.
• 
What the current U.S.  strategy does is something that Obama never did: recognizing Putin for who he is and pushing back on him.
• 
Frankly, Trump's biggest problem today is not Putin.  Vlad has been put in his place.
• 
No, today the big problem is places like Berlin and Paris, where bumping heads with Washington is all the rage.
• 
The Euro-elite pine for an America happy to "lead from behind" and let them prate about "strategic autonomy" for Europe while raking in cash from Russian energy projects.
• 
Knowingly or unknowingly these voices are doing Putin's work for him, undermining the solidarity of the transatlantic community.
• 
Their vitriol is far worse, more damaging, and more dangerous than Trump's tweets.
• 
They need to wake up.  Putin is our common problem.  He's not going to change and he's not going away anytime soon.
• 
What's needed is a common effort to keep him from disrupting and weakening the transatlantic community.
• 
Who knows, if the Putin had to face a common front from the West, maybe he would start to mend his ways.
• 
Then we could all live in peace and prosperity.
• 
See related You Look Ridiculous (Michael Ramirez, 10/03/2015) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Flexibility (Bob Gorrell, 02/28/2014) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Pathetic and Weak (Glenn McCoy, 03/04/2014) cartoon from World picture album
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      Tucker Carlson: How long until Canadian-style tyranny comes to America?  (Fox 02/16/2022)
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... Canada canceled democracy last night.  And the remarkable thing is no one in this country seemed to notice that it happened.
• 
There was no outcry from our political class, as their friend Justin Trudeau declared martial law in response to an entirely peaceful protest from his country's working class.
• 
Weirdest of all, the State Department, which exists these days to denounce such attackers of democracy as Hungary and Poland, didn't say a single word as democracy in Canada ended.
• 
Canada is not some exotic, faraway land with an alien culture and unintelligible language.  It's not Ukraine.  Canada is our neighbor.  It's our trading partner.  Canada is our closest ally on Earth.
• 
What happens there matters here.  If nothing else, it's a preview of what will likely happen in the United States.
• 
So with that in mind, you should know that Justin Trudeau is no longer the prime minister of Canada.  Justin Trudeau is Canada's maximum leader, its strongman, its potentate.  Justin Trudeau is the dictator of Canada...
• 
For the first time in Canada's history, Trudeau has invoked what's known as the Emergencies Act, but the protests he is facing hardly qualify as an emergency.
• 
But suddenly, Justin Trudeau has the power to crush all political opposition to his rule, and that's exactly what he's doing.
• 
Trudeau has ended free speech in Canada.  He's banned free assembly.  Trudeau's government has shut down political rallies and arrested his political critics without probable cause.  Trudeau has instituted internal passports, that restrict travel within Canada, to the politically obedient.
• 
Canadians are no longer allowed to leave their own country unless they obey Justin Trudeau.  And if they don't obey, they could be bankrupted and destroyed.  He now has the power to do that.
• 
Trudeau has claimed the power to freeze the financial assets of any Canadian who resists him.  No court order is required to do this, he just decides.
• 
Justin Trudeau can even dictate what you do for a living and how you do it.  Today, Trudeau threatened to arrest tow truck drivers who refused to tow the trucks of protesters.
• 
In a dictatorship, the only real crime is opposing the regime.  So how did all this happen so quickly in a country as nice and moderate as Canada?
• 
Well it happened the way that it always happened.  It happened with maximum aggression and limited popular support.
• 
Justin Trudeau won reelection last year with less than a third of the national vote.  In fact, he finished the election behind his main competitor, the Conservative Party.
• 
Thanks to quirks in the parliamentary system, Trudeau took power anyway, and he immediately began to crack down on anyone who opposed him.
• 
... what do all of these media companies have in common?  Well, they're all squarely on the side of entrenched power against the population they supposedly serve.  That's the opposite of what journalism was designed to do.
• 
But at this point, it is the rule.  Not just in the United States, but around the world.  Reporters and politicians and big business all align against voters, against you.
• 
Media organizations have been agitating against democracy for years now, even as they've posed loudly as its greatest defenders.
• 
... isn't holding anti-government views allowed in a democracy?  In fact, isn't the measure of democratic government the degree to which you're allowed to question the people in charge?  Well, that used to be the definition of democracy.  It's not anymore...
• 
... since when does the CIA get to decide what websites Americans read?  Are there any civil libertarians left in this country?  Old-fashioned liberals, anyone?  What do they think of this?
• 
This new class of dictators seizes power incrementally, through the bureaucracy.  They never raise their voices.  They don't wave their arms.  They smile and they tell you they're protecting democracy and public health.  They praise diversity, even as they demand conformity.
• 
One morning you wake up and they've canceled your job and seized your bank account for the crime of disagreeing with them.
• 
This is the architecture of tyranny, and it's not just happening in Canada.  It's happening here in the United States.  It will be used against us.  Bet on it.
      Tucker Carlson: How long before protests like the 'Freedom Convoy' come to America?  (Fox 02/08/2022)
• 
Workers of the world unite.  You have nothing to lose but your chains.  That's from Karl Marx, of course.  He wrote that famous phrase in 1848.
• 
The weird thing is, it's pretty likely that Marx himself never met an actual worker.  ... Karl Marx never spent a moment in a factory.
• 
He was a rich kid who became a journalist.  Of course he was.  But for more than 150 years, Karl Marx inspired generations of other rich kids who also became journalists to repeat his line or variations of it.
• 
Over time, workers became working men or working class and then with feminism, working people or working families, but the idea itself never changed.
• 
Ordinary people, wage earners, are getting shafted, so they've got to unite.  They've got to come together for protection and for dignity.
• 
This was the idea, of course, behind the organized labor movement, and every Democratic president from Andrew Jackson until now has made the very same point over and over again.
• 
"The noble people of Scranton..." You hear it even today.  So, Democrats have repeated that line often enough.  You would think they really mean it.
• 
Do they really mean it?  Let's take the test.  Here's how you know.  Watch what happens when actual workers, working people from working families who constitute the working class, actually come together as a group to protest how things are going.
• 
What happens then?  Does the intellectual class greet these workers as heroes?  Throw a parade?  Listen intently to their stories?  Does NPR do a sympathetic feature on them?
• 
Or, do self-described progressives recoil in revulsion and horror at the grubbiness of the people who as we used to say, work for a living?  Do liberals immediately denounce them as Nazis and call for their suppression by force?
• 
Or consider what's happening right now in Canada.  Thousands of truck drivers have descended on Ottawa, the capital city, to protest the tyranny of Justin Trudeau's government.
• 
Justin Trudeau does not like truck drivers.  He thinks they're revolting.  Justin Trudeau likes private equity barons and tech moguls, the only people who give him money.
• 
Trudeau is not in Ottawa right now.  In fact, he and his family fled when the truck drivers arrived and they've been in hiding ever since.
• 
So when the revolution he has been calling for finally arrived, Justin Trudeau wasn't there to see it.  He ran away in terror, kind of sad.
• 
So instead, in his place, his friend Mark Carney has been speaking for him.  Carney is a former Goldman Sachs executive...  In a recent op-ed, Mark Carney vented his rage at the impudent truckers in Ottawa and anyone who sent them money on the internet.
• 
"Anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt.  You are funding sedition.  Foreign funders of an insurrection interfered in our domestic affairs from the start."
• 
Got it?  That is not a protest.  It's sedition.  It's an insurrection.  Clearly, Mark Carney's been watching a lot of CNN up there in Canada and that's why he's concluded the truckers should be crushed by force.
• 
"Those who are still helping to extend this occupation must be identified and punished to the full force of the law."
• 
People who sent the money should be prosecuted.  If they're not prosecuted, Mark Carney fears, "the constant blaring of horns at all hours will bankrupt our businesses."
• 
... the very same finance ghouls who cheered lockdowns for two solid years are now deeply concerned that small businesses might be hurt by the trucker protests.
• 
Justin Trudeau has just ordered police to shut the whole thing down.  How do you do that?  How do you stop a truck protest?  Simple.  You seize their fuel.  That's exactly what police in Canada are doing...
• 
The very same people told us we had to defund the police are now telling the police to seize fuel from working-class Canadians who are trying to stay alive in Arctic temperatures.
• 
As they used to say in the 1960s, "scratch a liberal, and you will find a fascist." That was a Black Panther slogan, actually.  They weren't entirely stupid.  In fact, in this case, they were absolutely right.
• 
According to Justin Trudeau, possessing gasoline in the city of Ottawa is now a crime.  Now, to be clear, Ottawa didn't declare the state of emergency because the truckers lit a courthouse on fire or shot someone or leveled a church.
• 
These are Canadian citizens who drive trucks for a living, but they're being treated like a terror group.
• 
GoFundMe announced it would redirect the $10 million raised by supporters of the truckers to charities of its choice, presumably BLM, which it has supported since the very beginning.  In other words, GoFundMe planned to steal that money.
• 
They were stopped from doing this, by the way, by a number of American attorneys general who threatened to sue the companies.  So the company backed off and they're going to refund the money, supposedly.
• 
But still, the truckers, the people for whom this money was intended, will not get it.
• 
The question is: How long before protests like this come here?  Clearly, our media are worried about that.
• 
Could that happen?  Is it impossible?  No, it's not impossible.
• 
See related Special Delivery (Antonio Branco, 02/03/2016) cartoon from World picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Our democracy is no longer functioning properly, here's proof  (Fox 02/02/2022)
• 
All of a sudden, pretty much every powerful person in the country is talking about something called democracy.  Democracy, our sacred democracy.  You hear that word everywhere...  All the cool kids are saying it.
• 
But actually, if we're being honest about it, you should be a little worried about the state of our democracy, how is our democracy doing?
• 
Well, let's see: Another way to describe democracy is popular representation.  It's a synonym.
• 
When the government does what citizens want it to do, you have a democracy.  And when it doesn't, you don't.  You no longer have a free country that is ruled by its people.
• 
So what kind of system do we have?  It's easy to know.  You find out what citizens care about and then you compare those concerns to what the people who run the government say they care about.
• 
If you've got a functioning democracy, there should be a fairly precise overlap.  In a democratic system, leaders try very hard to speak for their voters.  That's the whole point of the government.
• 
So let's apply that test to the United States of America.  What do our leaders care about?  We know the answer because they tell us constantly.
• 
Our leaders care about equity and climate change.  They care about trans rights, police brutality, the deadly insurrection on January 6th, mandatory vaccinations, more H1B visas for Indian tech workers and above all, at the moment, defending our closest ally, Ukraine, from Russian aggression.
• 
And of course, they care about third-wave academic feminism.  That's deeply important to them.
• 
The most famous Democrat in Congress gave us an impromptu tutorial in Instagram about the connection between cosmetics and the patriarchy. 
• 
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: There are studies that show that women who wear makeup regularly wear like a, a decent amount of makeup kind of show up to the office and glam also make more money.  And so at that point, it stops being these calculations and decisions stop being about choice and they start being about patriarchy...  We live in systems that were largely built for the convenience of men and oftentimes were designed with the subjugation of women and queer people in mind.
• 
If you work in the media or have multiple college degrees, chances are you're pretty good at making it all about you.  You is what you care about most.
• 
What does the rest of America care about?  Once again, we don't have to guess about that.  We've got a huge amount of public opinion polling on that subject.
• 
At the top of the list, you'll see government incompetence, the economy, the cost of living and immigration.
• 
It is completely different from the list Joe Biden might have made.  Equity, climate change, transgenderism mandatory vaccination, Jan.  6, Ukraine.
• 
Those trends be pretty unimportant to most Americans.  Some of those issues or at the very bottom of the list.
• 
... Americans are very worried about inflation and crime.  As it happens, and this tells you everything, those are the two topics the White House has dismissed recently as irrelevant and dumb.  The White House isn't at all worried about inflation and crime.
• 
Baltimore is a city run by people who fervently believe in the equity agenda and consider gender studies a legitimate academic discipline.
• 
In Baltimore, pretty much everyone in charge is Black, yet it's a matter of religious faith that the main thing holding the city back is White racism.
• 
Who do you blame for Baltimore?  Did White men do this to Baltimore?  Was it the patriarchy?  Was it structural racism that caused all those murders?  Do you agree with Pete Buttigieg that Klansman urban planners put the highways in the wrong place?  And that's the real problem.  Racist roads?
• 
Or, could it be that the real problem with Baltimore is something much more obvious?  Could it be that progressive policies designed to "lift up marginalized communities" in the end destroyed those communities?
      Tucker Carlson: The world no longer cares what Joe Biden says  (Fox 01/19/2022)
• 
Joe Biden shuffled forth from seclusion this afternoon for a rare solo press conference.  ... it was only his second since taking office a full year ago.  And by the end, you were wishing that Joe Biden spoke in public less often.
• 
The whole thing was awful, was totally weird and embarrassing, not just to him, but to the country.  At one point, Biden treated us to a stream of consciousness thoughts about his son's former employer; that would be a small, corrupt nation called Ukraine.
• 
Apparently, Ukraine's eastern border with Russia — unlike, say, our southern border with Mexico — is a sacred boundary created by God that must be protected at all costs, up to and including, American lives.
• 
... here's what you should know.  You are currently funding a proxy battle in Ukraine against the nuclear-armed Russian military, and that could very well erupt into a hot war that includes you, the United States.  If nothing else, Biden made that very clear.  So sleep well tonight.
• 
Then Biden bragged about himself, as he tends to do whenever he's awake.  "Can you think of any other president who's done so much in a year?" he asked at one point.  How do you respond to a question like that?  Biden didn't wait for the answer.  Instead, he got mad at a reporter who dared asked him about COVID.
• 
BIDEN: ... I didn't overpromise, but I have probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen.
• 
Outperformed.  Well, it's true, actually.  Outperform - meaning more Americans have died from coronavirus on my watch than under evil anti-science Cheeto man...
• 
Biden talked about his so-called voting rights legislation, which only Nazis oppose.  Without that legislation, the next election will almost certainly be fraudulent, rigged, illegitimate, stolen.
• 
See how that works?  If you complain about an election after the fact, you're an insurrectionist.  The Justice Department may indict you for sedition.  But if you complain about an election ahead of time preemptively, then you're a civil rights leader.
• 
Biden went on to boast under his steady, wise leadership, peasants in this country have gotten "raises." Now, he didn't mention that inflation has already eaten those raises in a single bite, and next year's raises too.
• 
Biden did allow that there are some Americans who are "frustrated and fatigued," but that is not his fault.  It's COVID's fault, a disease created by unvaccinated Trump voters and not - we want to be clear about this - not created by his family's longtime patrons in the government of China.  They had nothing to do with it.  You did it.
• 
In any case, the solution, Biden explained, is more testing and more shots.  That's why he plans to send a COVID test to every American household and force every last holdout to get the vaccine.
• 
No one is listening to Joe Biden anymore.  He is weak.  He commands no respect.  The world no longer cares what he says.  As if to prove it, just hours before Biden spoke today, Starbucks — the left-wing coffee chain and under usual circumstances, worships Joe Biden and his party — Starbucks, announced its 200,000 employees no longer have to get the vaccine.  It was mandatory in Starbucks.  It's not anymore.
• 
Meanwhile, in Israel, which is probably the most vaccinated country in the world, scientists just contradicted everything the administration's been telling us for a full year about vaccine passports and natural immunity.
• 
So a study in Israel, which no one has yet to denounce as misinformation, found that four vaccine shots do not work as well against Omicron as natural immunity does.
• 
Oh, where have you heard that?  Well, we've known that for more than a year.  Our own CDC found that natural immunity provided more protection against delta variant of COVID than vaccination did.
• 
Professor Cohen went on to apologize for the biggest mistake of the pandemic: shutting down schools and forcing children to stay home, which destroyed a generation.  It turns out there was no scientific basis for doing that at all.  It was all teachers' unions wanting more time off.
• 
Omicron, the professor said, will turn this pandemic into the endemic phase.  It'll be like the flu, a widespread but mild illness.  Everybody gets it, and very few are badly hurt by it.
• 
This has been pretty obvious.  You'd never know it from listening to Joe Biden.  He had no clue whatsoever.  But Great Britain, which has been almost hysterical in the face of COVID, has come to the same conclusion.  So today, as Joe Biden pushed everyone to take a third COVID shot, calling it the optimum protection you can have — except for natural immunity, which tends to be much more effective.
• 
Boris Johnson, the prime minister of Great Britain, announced an end to all mandates and all lockdowns in Great Britain, including in schools.
• 
So the United States used to lead the world, particularly in the field of science.  Modern science was essentially invented here.  It was certainly perfected here.  Now, the United States follows the world.
• 
Much smaller countries.  Our two closest allies, in fact.  Countries which have COVID at least as seriously as we did, have decided that what we've done for the last two years doesn't work.  And they're changing their policies.  They're freeing their population from the yoke of this insanity.
• 
All of that was happening at the very moment Biden was preparing for his big solo press conference.  But apparently nobody told them what was happening.  Our two strongest allies are doing this, and he didn't know.
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Inflation (Mike Shelton, 06/18/2021) cartoon from Economy picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Biden's speeches reveal what he thinks of Americans  (Fox 01/12/2022)
• 
Here's how democracies work: In a democracy, voters strike a highly straightforward deal with a government that rules them.  Here's what it is: Politicians do their best to improve your life.
• 
In exchange for that, you vote for them.  That is a voluntary arrangement.  It works pretty well.  For 250 years, that's how it's worked here in the United States.
• 
But suddenly, not anymore.  During his entire first year in office, Joe Biden did virtually nothing to improve the actual lives of actual American citizens.  And he didn't because he didn't even really try.
• 
Making voters happy is not a feature of the equity agenda.  Punishment is the point of the equity agenda, inflicting pain on the right people, dispensing rough justice, meting out reparations by other names.
• 
In his speeches, you can see clearly how Joe Biden feels about America.  He's deeply disappointed in the country, and he's annoyed with the people who live here.
• 
Biden doesn't cajole voters.  He harangues and berates them.  He patronizes them and issues threats.  You cause the corona pandemic.  You're stupid and selfish.
• 
So for an American president, this is an entirely new way of governing.  And you've got to wonder how long it can continue.  How exactly are Democrats going to hold on to power in the coming midterm elections?
• 
If you think about it, there's only one way they can do that.  They've got to create a new form of government, one that keeps incumbents in power forever, no matter what they do, no matter how incompetent and destructive they may be.
• 
One way to do that is by diluting the political power of citizens.  And that's why Democrats in New York are allowing nearly a million foreign nationals here illegally to vote in local elections.  It's why Gavin Newsom has announced that California is now going to offer unlimited health care to illegal aliens, so that more of them will come.
• 
That's the point.  And it's why Democrats are pushing for what they describe as a transformative voting rights bill.  It's their top legislative priority.  It's the main thing they care about.
• 
... at its heart, the bill would give the federal government the power to control how elections are conducted across the country.  The bill requires states to obtain pre-clearance from the federal government before they can set the rules of their own elections.
• 
... it means, among other things, that states would no longer have the authority to require voter ID or registration at the polls.  States would also lose the power to pick the locations for polling sites, as well as the ability to draw the boundaries of their own congressional districts.
• 
... the idea is simple.  The idea is this country is too racist to allow states to run their own affairs.
• 
Everything about that claim is absurd.  If America is so racist, then why have tens of thousands of Haitians stuck across our border this year?
• 
Why would you let incumbent politicians rig the game in their own favor?  We would not allow that.  You'd have to be bullied into it.
• 
How would you be bullied?  You know the answer.  The fastest way to bully Americans, other than by scaring them with viruses, is to call them racist.  So, of course, that's precisely what the Democratic Party is doing right now.
• 
JOE BIDEN: Do you want to be the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor?  Do you want to be the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?  This is the moment to decide to defend our elections, to defend our democracy.
• 
So if you oppose an unconstitutional power grab by corrupt politicians in their 80s, you are the leader of a confederacy.  You're a foreign combatant.  That's what he said.
• 
That's how important it is to keep the Democratic Party in power forever, and that's why we need to change the way the Senate votes.  So we'll never lose an election again.
• 
JOE BIDEN: We must find a way to pass these voting rights bill debate and vote.  Let the majority prevail.  And if that very amendment is blocked, we have no option but to change the Senate rules, including getting rid of the filibuster for this.
• 
Yeah, getting rid of the filibuster.  We can go on about this, heard it, you probably know, but it's worth remembering that the Democratic Party Joe Biden's party invoked the filibuster more than 300 times recently.
• 
So what's different?  Well, the threat of White terror, of course.  Getting rid of voter ID laws is a matter of national security, Biden explained.  Stand in the way and you may be a terrorist.
• 
JOE BIDEN: I will not yield, I will not flinch, I will defend the right to vote our democracy against all enemies, foreign and, yes, domestic.
• 
Enemies within our own country, we will kill them.  It's kind of amusing to see Joe Biden call other people extremists.  The message: Give me total power over your life or else I know you're a dangerous radical.  It's pretty funny, but it's also not funny.
• 
Just hours before Joe Biden spoke, the Department of Justice announced the formation of a new domestic terrorism unit.
• 
What's it for?  Well, you can read about it on the website.  It's designed to hunt down and punish anyone who opposes the federal government or is otherwise "anti-authority."
• 
Anti-authority?  Who's that?  Well, pretty much at this point, all thinking people who aren't directly on the federal payroll.  That means you.
• 
It means all of us got the message?  If you think voters ought to show I.D.  at the polls, you could be hearing from the FBI because you're a threat.  On the other hand, speaking papers, you should know that your COVID papers are still mandatory, and becoming more so because vax cards are not at all like driver's licenses at polling places, they're not racist.
• 
In fact, in Washington, D.C., the mayor, Muriel Bowser, just announced you're no longer allowed outside without your papers.
• 
Here's the quote: "Starting Saturday, we'll need these three things before heading out: Proof of vaccination (12 years), Proof of vaccination and photo I.D.  (18 years), and a mask."
• 
Otherwise, you must stay in your house, because we own your body.  That's Muriel Bowser, who, by the way, is not a dangerous extremist.  She can't be, because she's loyal to the regime.
      Tucker Carlson: Why are we still talking about this?  (Fox 01/07/2022)
• 
As you may have heard, this is the anniversary of January 6th, and in commemoration of that, we have donned the official network-approved solemn anchor outfit: white shirt, muted tie, message reverence.
• 
But actually, if you take three steps back as historical events go — if we're being honest now — January 6th, barely rates as a footnote, really, not a lot happened that day.
• 
If you think about it, the presidential election was not overturned, the Capitol was not destroyed.  The government wasn't toppled.  No matter what you may have heard, not a single elected official was injured, thank God.
• 
Police got shoved.  Unfortunately, punches were thrown.  But the only person who wound up dead from violence was an unarmed protester who was shot to death without warning by a cop.
• 
None of the so-called insurrectionists had guns.  When was the last time you saw an insurrection like that?
• 
So looking back, you could probably call what happened on January 6th a riot, we have called it that, but really only just a riot, maybe just barely.  By recent standards, it was an embarrassingly tepid effort.  No one even bothered to set a fire or spray paint slogans on the walls.
• 
So the question is why are we still talking about this?  Why are our leaders obsessing over this event?  For every single one of the last 365 days, the propaganda machine has been at 11, ginning up noise about January 6 to deafening levels, and it's not stopping.
• 
In fact, after all this time, amazingly, the yelling is getting louder and wilder and still more disconnected from reality.
• 
A year after the election it doesn't make sense.  It's not relevant to their lives.  Everyone agrees January 6 was ugly.  But was it really a greater threat to America than, say, inflation?  Than opening the southern border and admitting two million people whose identities we can't confirm?
• 
So it's a tough sell, telling normal people that this is a world-historic event.  So why are they still saying that?  There are reasons actually and we're going to do our best to explain what those reasons are and what actually happened?
• 
Biden told the country that in fact, symbolically, January 6th was worse than the Civil War, the American Civil War.  That would be the war that killed more than a million people.  January 6th was worse than that because somebody held a naughty flag.
• 
... these people have no shame.  And that definitely goes to the national media, they were out in force today.
• 
But then you saw something pretty strange, you saw the police who were in charge of securing the perimeter, move aside the barricades and let the protesters or rioters or insurrectionists whatever you're going to call them — a lot of people still in prison — let them in the building.  So why did they do that?
• 
Now we know conclusively, because an awful lot has been reported on it, much divulged by the U.S.  government, that law enforcement authorities knew there was going to be a significant protest that day.  And so they were prepared.  Apparently, they had snipers with shoot-to-kill orders on standby.
• 
So why exactly where the protesters allowed in, welcomed in, by law enforcement?  There may be a completely good reason for that.  We're not doubting that there is an honest explanation.  We just don't know what it is.  No one has ever explained that.
• 
Liz Cheney, who has berated the country in the most self-righteous possible way for weeks, months now, telling us we need to get the bottom of exactly what happened — totally uninterested in finding out why that happened.
• 
So there he is, scaffold commander, commanding the crowd to break the law, exhorting them forward to break the law.  There was the largest manhunt in American history conducted after this day, January 6th.
• 
... this man has been dubbed by internet sleuths as the scaffold commander.  Now he was shot from a variety of different angles on videotape on January 6th, appearing to give orders to the crowd from an elevated position.  There's really no doubt if you watch the tapes and they're all available online and if interested, you should that this guy was coordinating the movement of the crowd toward and into the United States Capitol.
• 
If FBI agents can fly to Alaska and hassle old ladies on Social Security because they were present, they can probably find this guy.  And yet, as far as we know, this guy who clearly had some kind of management role that day has not been arrested, has not been charged or even publicly identified.  What is that about?
• 
Scaffold Commander: (on top of scaffolding yelling on a megaphone) Okay we're in!  We're in!  Come on!  We gotta fill up the Capitol!  Come on!  Come now!  We need help Come now we need help!  We're gonna fill up the Capitol.
• 
... this guy is not only unidentified, no new authority seems interested in the slightest and finding out who he is and why is that?
      Tucker Carlson: The Democratic Party is failing, so they are trying to ruin your Christmas  (Fox 12/22/2021)
• 
Has there ever been a news environment like this one?  Every day feels like some weird new PSYOP from the government, as translated through the media companies designed to convince you of something that's just obviously false.
• 
Here is the most important fact in American politics right now: The Democratic Party just hit a brick wall.  Democrats cannot continue to run the United States of America.
• 
Democrats sincerely believe they were the party of oppressed racial minorities, a group that they alone could protect from White racism.
• 
That was the whole point of the party.  And weirdly, Republican leaders seemed to kind of accept it as true.  But actually, it turns out it wasn't true at all.
• 
In fact, the Democratic Party is not the party of oppressed racial minorities, it's the opposite, it's the party of entitled White liberals and pretty much only entitled White liberals.
• 
Now they're telling you you're going to die of a cold.  They're calling it omicron.  It's a terrifying new variant of COVID, which you remember is a name they picked to conceal the fact that the entire pandemic was likely created in a lab by the Chinese government with the help of American tax dollars.
• 
But shut up.  Stop talking.  That's racist.  And now omicron is here, so there's no time to think.  Your job is to be afraid.
• 
And unfortunately, many people are afraid they haven't had time because they're so afraid to check the numbers and discover that as an epidemiological matter, this is all completely insane.
• 
Far more Americans have died this month from choking on entrees than have died from omicron.  That is factually true.  The CDC can confirm it for you.
• 
So there you go.  If you've had at least three Joe Biden-approved vaccine injections, you can celebrate Christmas.  That's the word from our Botoxed Napoleon.  Otherwise, you can't celebrate Christmas.
• 
How long before they tell us you can't vote in person without the vaccine?  That's coming, obviously.
• 
But for now, Joe Biden has canceled Christmas for America's working class, now known as "the unvaccinated." They didn't vote for him in the last election, so they can't celebrate Christmas.  In fact, this whole pandemic is their fault.
• 
Now, before we unpack the implications of what Biden has said, a word about the language he and many others are using.  Biden and his employees persist in calling these injections of vaccine.
• 
But that's not quite right.  A vaccine prevents disease.  The polio shot is a vaccine.  You take the shot, and you don't get polio.  That's not what these shots are.
• 
As Biden himself conceded from the stage today, many thousands of fully vaccinated people have been infected with COVID recently.  Now, Biden claims these people are in better shape because they got the shot.  He didn't prove that.  So far, no one has proved that.
• 
But let's assume Biden is right, which is fine.  It's still not really a vaccine if you can get and transmit the virus, it's more like an experimental health supplement.
• 
And that's fine, too.  We're not against experimental health supplements, your body, your choice, they used to say.  But unlike other experimental health supplements, this one's mandatory.
• 
In fact, as our increasingly desperate and honestly vicious president explained today, submitting to this injection is your patriotic duty.
• 
If you don't get this shot, said the man who, up until his election was secretly doing business with the Chinese, you don't really love this country.
• 
All the words delivered with Joe Biden's signature lack of shame.  Literally, nothing embarrasses this man.  Maybe that's one of the benefits of senility.
• 
As its power wanes and its destruction at the ballot box looms on the horizon, the Democratic Party is trying to wreck your Christmas.
• 
It's their latest PSYOP.  They can't convince you of anything anymore.  You no longer believe them.  Why would you?  So they're trying to punish and terrify you into submission instead.
• 
But here's the good news: It's not working.  Americans are going to celebrate Christmas anyway, they always have, and they're going to this year.  This is still America.
      Tucker Carlson: Biden's southern border policy may be the most destructive thing any administration has done  (Fox 12/18/2021)
• 
Most Americans have no idea it's happening, but the rest of the world is watching closely.  So if you live in an impoverished country and you'd like a better job and free schools and free health care courtesy of American taxpayers, come on in.  And they are.
• 
This is totally crazy and third-world.  You're not supposed to mention that they've racialized everything, so you can't say anything.  Most Republicans have been intimidated into silence.  They don't want to be called names.
• 
But the truth is, nothing like this has ever happened in the United States, and it's important for two reasons: The first is the rule of law.  Remember that?
• 
So there are people right now still being held in solitary confinement because they trespassed in a building that technically they own — it's called the Capitol of the United States — and they're still there.  They're still in jail.
• 
But millions of foreign nationals just walk in ignoring our laws completely, and that's totally cool because equity or something?
• 
How can anybody respect the laws of the United States when they are being ignored by the people in charge of enforcing them?  There's a massive cost to that.
• 
And here's the second point to make: You cannot overstate the scale of demographic change underway right now in the United States.  It's a direct assault on our democracy.
• 
Democracy is the process by which the population elects its representatives.  If you change the population, you dilute the political power of the people who already live there.  This is an assault on democracy.
• 
At what scale?  Here's an example: Customs and Border Protection caught more than 170,000 foreign nationals crossing into our country from Mexico last month.  How many people is that?  Well, that's the equivalent of the entire population of Knoxville, Tennessee, in a single month.
• 
But it's happening every month, month after month under Joe Biden.  And those are just the people we're catching.  So this, and let's not lie about it, is the Democratic Party's reelection plan.
• 
New York is already allowing non-citizens to vote.  Expect that trend to spread, because equity.
• 
Opening the border may be the single most destructive thing that any administration has ever done to this country.
• 
See related Leading the Caravan (Sean Delonas, 10/22/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Dreamer (Glenn McCoy, 09/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
      Tucker Carlson: It's not surprising Jussie Smollett pushed his hoax as far as he could  (Fox 12/03/2021)
• 
The question is - how did anyone, anywhere, ever fall for this story, even for a moment?  Looking back, in retrospect, it was maybe the most obvious hoax ever perpetrated.
• 
Smollett claimed that he left his apartment in Chicago alone one freezing January night at 2 a.m.  to pick up a Subway sandwich, something that no one who isn't homeless has ever done.
• 
As he walked down the street, two White men approached him and began screaming in his face for being Black and gay.
• 
Because of course, you're not allowed to be either one of those things in the city of Chicago.  They called him the N-word.  They punched him in the face.  They poured a chemical onto his body.
• 
Then, needless to say, they wrapped a noose around his neck because, you know, Chicago.  They didn't bother to rob him.
• 
Their motives were purely political: "This is MAGA country," they screamed about a city that voted more than 83% for Hillary Clinton.
• 
So that's the story that Jussie Smollett told the police that night, a noose still hanging around his neck.  The police, it's fair to say were highly skeptical.
• 
The leaders of the Democratic Party, however, were not skeptical at all.  In fact, the story he told was the story they were already telling.
• 
That same year, several Democratic senators, including notably Kamala Harris of California, a personal friend of Jussie Smollett, sent a letter to the Justice Department.  The letter claimed that attacks from White supremacist Trump voters were among this country's greatest threats.
• 
Attacks by Black supremacists, by contrast, were not even real.  In fact, Harris lectured the DOJ, saying the very term Black supremacist is a "fabricated term based on a faulty assessment of a small number of isolated incidents." In other words, only Trump voters commit hate crimes.
• 
Then the FBI noticed that nearly 90% of law enforcement agencies across the country had been reporting no hate crimes within their jurisdictions because actually, there's not a lot of hate in the country because it's a pretty nice country.  Most people are not racist at all, most people are really kind.  They're Americans.
• 
Then the FBI encouraged law enforcement agencies to report any possible hate crime, even if the crime derived from an obviously false report.
• 
And that's why more than 80% of the hate crimes suspects investigated by the feds from 2005 to 2019 were never prosecuted.
• 
Why is that?  Because they were fake.  But they still show up in the statistics, and they still allow NPR to tell you that people who would disagree with Anthony Fauci are beating up Asians on the street in New York.
• 
Right.  So it's a fiction.  It's yet another lie engineered by the Biden administration and carried forth as fact by the media.  They did it for political reasons.  They've been doing it for years.  In fact, they've done it for so long.  they started to believe it was actually true.
• 
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why they took Jussie Smollett seriously when no normal person would.  The story was absurd from the very first day, but they believed it completely.
• 
By 2019, in America, it was actually getting pretty difficult for the average Black person to get beaten up on the street for having the wrong skin color.
• 
As Jussie Smollett found out, personally, if you wanted to have racists throw bleach in your face and hang a noose around your neck, you had to pay Nigerian bodybuilders to do it.  The going rate at the time was $3,500.  That's not cheap, but then violent anti-Black racism was getting extremely hard to find.  It was a rare commodity.
• 
... Kamala Harris, did.  Harris described what happened to Jussie Smollett as an "attempted modern-day lynching." Nancy Pelosi said it was a "homophobic attack and an affront to our humanity." Eric Swalwell of California told us they were countless Jussie Smolletts in this filthy, racist nation of ours, "Hate crimes like this are happening more frequently egged on by careless, hate filled rhetoric." Notice the redundancy.  Senator Cory Booker, meanwhile, demanded anti-lynching legislation as if we didn't already have that, and so on.
• 
So in a landscape like this, with the most powerful people in the country cheering him on like a modern Dietrich Bonhoeffer, is it really surprising that Jussie Smollett just pushed it as far as he could?  No, it's not very surprising.
• 
What's surprising is that absolutely nothing Smollett said - no matter how transparently ridiculous or melodramatic or embarrassing or obviously non-factual - no matter what he said, none of it aroused even the slightest hint of skepticism of any kind from a hardened newswoman Robin Roberts of ABC.
• 
Well, eventually, thank God, the police took over.  Robin Roberts had to relinquish control of the story.  The cops interviewed the people in the end, who Jussie Smollett had hired to beat him up - the two Black guys.
• 
Turns out, Smollett had paid for the noose and the bleach.  So you've got to ask once the evidence arrived, how did all of his supporters react?
• 
A Michelle Obama aide reached out to a partisan D.A.  in Chicago, Kim Foxx, and had charges against Jussie Smollett dismissed.  Oh, that's what happens when you have friends.  You're so powerless you can get Michelle Obama to make it go away.
• 
... the same day that Jussie Smollett cried in his interview with Robin Roberts - which she described as "beautiful, Jussie beautiful" - he was texting one of the people he claims beat him up because he's Black and gay. 
• 
"Brother, I love you.  I stand with you.  I know 100 percent you and your brother did nothing wrong." These are the people he paid to put a noose around his neck.
• 
Smollett was also on videotape, conducting a dry run of the attack the day before it happened.  Oh, you're not hearing a ton about this in the media.  Why is that?  Because it undermines the core claim that they are making, which is people who vote for candidates they don't like are dangerous.  People of a certain color are dangerous.  The violence in America is committed by their political enemies, when in fact, that's a lie.
• 
And we know it's a lie because there are real numbers out there, and you're welcome to look them up if you like.  And they do not tell you that Trump voters are the ones behind the crime wave currently in progress.
• 
So once you learn that one thing is a lie, you might start to ask yourself, "What else are they lying about?" And that's not a process they welcome.
• 
See related One of His Better Performances (Tom Stiglich, 02/18/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Media won't investigate motives in Waukesha massacre - here's why  (Fox 11/24/2021)
• 
Last Friday, Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted of all charges against him in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  Just two days later, a Black nationalist BLM supporter drove an SUV through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
• 
It was a slaughter.  Six people were killed, including three grandmothers and an eight-year-old boy.  Forty-seven people were injured very badly, many of them children.
• 
Police say the man who did this is a career criminal called Darrell Brooks.  As of tonight, Brooks has not publicly explained why he committed mass murder.
• 
Instead, the media and local authorities have decided to speak for him, and the main thing they want you to know is that these killings had absolutely nothing to do with the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict just two days before.  Nothing whatsoever.  The timing is just one of those amazing coincidences.
• 
"There is no evidence that this is a terrorist incident," announced Waukesha's chief of police.  But if indiscriminately murdering women and children at a Christmas parade isn't terrorism, then what exactly is it?
• 
Well, it's a vehicular mishap.  Here's how Twitter's in-house news team described it.  "Five people dead and more than 40 injured after car drives through parade." Car.  It's the fault of the red SUV.
• 
Other news organizations had another explanation handy.  It turns out they told us that Brooks was fleeing from a knife fight.  And the implication, of course, was that he got spooked and drove through the parade by accident.
• 
... then MSNBC took this theory a step further and suggested the police had somehow goaded Darrell Brooks into driving into people by firing a gun at him.
• 
So Brooks was doing whatever he could to get away from the police so effectively, it's the cop's fault.  Except no, that's not what happened.  Eyewitnesses, many eyewitnesses described Brooks zigzagging down the street trying to murder as many innocent people as he could.  These killings were absolutely intentional.  And no, Brooks was not being chased by the police.  That's a lie.
• 
... the question remains why did Darrell Brooks commit mass murder in Waukesha?  The media don't seem interested in finding out, not even a little bit.  So they've decided to ignore the story completely.  And they are.
• 
Subpoenas to Roger Stone from some fake congressional committee are apparently more important than six deaths.
• 
The more we learn about Darrell Brooks, the easier it is to understand why the media don't want to talk about him.  Brooks's social media feeds are full of racist and Black nationalist propaganda.  In one of his rap songs, he includes lines from Malcolm X justifying race-hate against Whites...
• 
... one BLM activist was happy to connect the dots here.  He describes Brooks' mass murder, as retaliation for the Rittenhouse acquittal...
• 
This has to do with the verdict.  That's the obvious conclusion.  Is it true?  Again, we have not confirmed it, but we can be absolutely certain that the national media will spend zero time trying to find out.  Why?  Because they're implicated.
• 
News organizations spent more than a year telling us that a case that had precisely nothing to do with race was somehow a referendum on the civil rights of Black people and the rise of White supremacy.
• 
So if it turns out those lies, and they are lies, got six people murdered.  They'll probably be the last to tell us that.
• 
We do know that Darrell Brooks never should have been on the street in the first place, he was a thoroughly loathsome person.
• 
A few weeks ago, probably not surprisingly, he was charged with punching the mother of his latest child in the face and then running her over with his car, so he should have been in jail for that.
• 
But the Milwaukee County District Attorney, a radical called John Chisholm, released Brooks on a $1,000 bail.
• 
So $1,000 for beating and running over a woman.  Why?  Well, because John Chisholm believes that bail is racist.
• 
A few years ago, Chisholm acknowledged that letting violent criminals out of jail was certain to cost innocent lives.  But, he explained, it's still worth it, because equity.
• 
"Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, Who's going to go out and kill somebody?  You bet.  Guaranteed.  It is guaranteed to happen.  It does not invalidate the overall approach."
• 
In other words, the deaths of innocents, old ladies, small children are a small price to pay because the principle of equity is so beautiful and so important.
• 
That is a diseased way of thinking.  It's how cult leaders and dictators think.  It is not a western worldview, but suddenly it's a mainstream position within the Democratic Party.
• 
... what would happen if we did this if we actually emptied the prisons?  As Democrats are demanding, we're getting a taste of the consequences right now by watching what's happening in the San Francisco Bay Area. 
• 
There's nothing equitable about what's happening there.  It's theft, big picture, it's anarchy, it's violent chaos in which the weak will always suffer the most.
• 
Why do we have civilization in the first place?  Precisely to prevent that.  So you've got to wonder why they're encouraging it.
      Tucker Carlson: Lying media had no effect on Rittenhouse verdict and propaganda was defeated  (Fox 11/20/2021)
• 
Here's how the story started, just so we all remember.  17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse wound up on the street in Kenosha in the first place with a gun for one reason: He was there because in the summer of 2020 the leadership of the Democrat Party endorsed mob violence for political ends.
• 
That's why there were riots in Kenosha that night, because people like Kamala Harris supported those rights.
• 
More than a year later, as Rittenhouse stood trial for murder, those very same people implied there would be more violence if he was acquitted.
• 
So imagine being a juror on that case.  Imagine the pressure and the fear.  It would take enormous moral courage for any juror to ignore the threats and follow the evidence to its logical conclusion.
• 
So much courage that at times we doubted it was even possible in a country as politicized as ours now is.  But as we learned today, it is still possible, thank God.
• 
This afternoon, the jury acquitted Rittenhouse on all charges.  The jury affirmed what was obvious from the very beginning: He acted in self-defense.
• 
It was a wonderful moment.  Anyone who believes in impartial justice was vindicated.  Here's that moment:...
• 
COURT CLERK: As to the first count of the information — Joseph Rosenbaum — we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H.  Rittenhouse, not guilty.  As to the second count of the information - Richard McGinnis - we the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H.  Rittenhouse, not guilty.  As to the third count of the information - unknown male - we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H.  Rittenhouse, not guilty.  As to the fourth count of the information - Anthony Huber - we, the jury, find the defendant, Kyle H.  Rittenhouse, not guilty.  As to the fifth count of the information - Gaige Grosskreutz - we the jury find the defendant, Kyle H.  Rittenhouse, not guilty.
• 
Remarkable.  Months of relentless lying from the media about this case, in the end, had no effect whatsoever on the jury.  Propaganda doesn't always win.  Today it was soundly defeated, thank God.
• 
REPORTER: How do you feel, man?  / KYLE RITTENHOUSE: The jury reached the correct verdict.  Self-defense is not illegal.  And, I believe they came to the correct verdict.  And I'm glad that everything went well.  It's been a rough journey, but we made it through it, we made it through the hard part.
• 
Technically as a legal matter this case is over.  Kyle Rittenhouse has been proclaimed innocent in a court of law.  He's free to resume his life.
• 
For the authoritarians among us, this is a disaster, they can't let it go.  Why?  Because they understand the Rittenhouse case is a referendum on the most basic right of all, the ancient right of self-defense.
• 
If Kyle Rittenhouse can save his own life from the mob, then you can too.  That drives them insane.
• 
So insane that the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee today, Jerry Nadler of New York, implied Kyle Rittenhouse may face federal charges.  ... You have to be deranged to consider that.  What would be the effect on the country?
• 
But you never know with these people.  At the very least, the case will be used to justify taking your guns away.  You can bet on it.
• 
But, if it does go to the Feds, if Kyle Rittenhouse is prosecuted by the Department of Justice, the case will be handled by Kristen ClarkE, the Black nationalist who runs the so-called Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.  The division that does not protect your civil rights, in fact, it's trying to take it away.
• 
Last year Kristen Clarke weighed in on the Rittenhouse case and zeroed in on Rittenhouse's color like his race was some kind of crime.  She described him as an "armed White man," murdering innocent protesters at "point-blank range."
• 
Just hours after the verdict, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Sean Patrick Maloney, a congressman, released this statement: "It is disgusting and disturbing that someone was able to carry a loaded assault rifle into a protest against the unjust killing of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man."
• 
Everything about it is wrong, not just a lie, but factually wrong.  Jacob Blake was not killed.  He was also not unarmed.  He was carrying a knife.  You know that because he said he was carrying a knife.  He was allegedly trying to kidnap a child.  That's when the police showed up.  When he grabbed a knife, they shot him.  Again, that's not in dispute.  And he's still alive.  But it doesn't matter.  Because to these people, facts don't matter, clearly.
• 
Kamala Harris said she was proud of Jacob Blake last year, the Democratic Party is sticking with that too.  They are trying and they have been from the beginning to make this case into a racial divide, to further divide the country.  Kamala Harris today said that the outcome of this case, the jury's verdict, was proof that our judicial system is not "equitable," whatever that means.
• 
It needs to be changed.  The Attorney General of the state of New York said it needs to be completely torn down and rebuilt, our justice system, that we've had for 250 years, the best thing in our country.
• 
The idea that you are tried on the basis of the facts, not on the basis of what you look like.  But they would like to change that.
• 
They're trying to whip people into a frenzy on the basis of claims that are totally, provably untrue.  What kind of a frenzy?  Well, consider this: This is from a senior advisor at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic campaign arm.  His name is Dyjuan Tatro, he issued an explosive call for riots.  "No justice, no peace," he wrote in the wake of the verdict.
• 
Who is Dyjuan Tatro?  He, according to news reports, spent a decade in prison after he shot two people.  Now he works for the Democratic Party, in case you're interested in whose side they're on.
• 
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Congresswoman Val Demings, another Democrat, offered this assessment: "The core of the far-right movement in America is they should be able to kill you if they want to." That's the official line of the Democratic Party tonight.
• 
Keep in mind, if you watch the trial, you know this, Kyle Rittenhouse was walking down the street when he was charged by a convicted child rapist and charged by a number of other people.  He sought no conflict.  There was never any evidence he was the aggressor in any case.  He was aggressed against.
• 
White vigilantism, White supremacy.  White.  White.  White.  White.  White.  That was over the media all day long, explicit racial attacks.
• 
What does that have to do with this case?  And in what kind of country is that allowed when the most powerful people in the country level explicit racial attacks against one of their countrymen?
• 
It's very ominous they are talking like this now.  Just as a reminder in case you're tuning in for the first time in a year, everyone involved in this case is the same color.
• 
It's really, really dark.  The rest of us should not allow them to get away with racializing this, allowing them to get away with attacking people on the basis of their skin color.
• 
The ACLU said, "Despite Kyle Rittenhouse's conscious decision to travel across state lines and injure one person and take the lives of two people protesting the shooting of Jacob Blake by police, he was not held responsible for his actions."
• 
This is insanity.  And by the way, the continuous references to crossing state lines are not insignificant.  Legally they're meaningless.  You have a right to cross state lines if you're an American because it's your country.  You can go to all 50 states and you're not breaking the law.
• 
So why are we inflicting that on you on a day when all of us should be celebrating?  We'll tell you why.
• 
Because none of that made any difference to the jury.  And if you're totally absorbed in American media, you get the impression that American media are in charge of our country.
• 
And it turns out, they're not.  Most people don't watch that crap.  They don't care what people like that say.  They don't care at all.
• 
There are a lot of rational, decent, thoughtful people on all sides of all races in this country who are still willing to think clearly about what is right, what is wrong, what is factual, what is false, what is just, and what is not.  And today, they did.
• 
So, that's the real lesson here.  In the face of all of that propaganda, a group of jurors in Kenosha, Wisconsin, were brave enough to reach the right and obvious conclusion anyway.  Amen.
      Tucker Carlson: Actions like these threaten America's judicial system  (Fox 11/19/2021)
• 
The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial has just sent the jurors home for the night to think about the trial for yet another day.
• 
So far, deliberations, in this case, have lasted about 20 hours.  In a normal proceeding, we'd have the jury's decision in about 20 minutes.
• 
The essential question, in this case, is really clear did Kyle Rittenhouse have good reason to believe dangerous men were trying to murder him?
• 
And the answer is also clear and unequivocal?  Yes, he did.  These people were definitely trying to murder Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
So Rittenhouse's response to that threat was the definition of self-defense.  Desperate split-second decisions made in the face of unwanted aggression in an attempt to save his own life.
• 
That's what happened.  Every person who testified at the trial on both sides confirmed that no honest person doubts it.
• 
So Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been charged in the first place.  And yet he was, and the reason he was is very simple.  From the beginning, this case was driven by politics, and ever since it's been tainted by government deception and incompetence.
• 
One of the charges that Kyle Rittenhouse faces is a felony count for recklessly endangering the safety of a man who until today had never been identified.
• 
Video footage from the night of August 25th shows a man kicking Kyle Rittenhouse in the face and knocking him down.  Rittenhouse responds by firing his rifle twice, and both times he missed.
• 
Tonight, the jury is considering whether Rittenhouse acted recklessly when he fired those two shots.  And yet, and here's the point.  The jury has no idea as it deliberates who this man is because the prosecution never identified him.  Prosecutors claimed they didn't know his identity, and they had no way to find it out.
• 
So that means that Rittenhouse's defense attorneys never got to cross-examine this man or introduce any evidence about his behavior that night.  That's not a small thing.
• 
... that man's name is Maurice Freeland.  Freeland has admitted that he attacked Rittenhouse moments before another man, a domestic abuser called Anthony Huber, started bashing Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard.
• 
So who is Maurice Freeland?  Well, according to the Daily Mail, he's a career criminal.  He has opened charges for domestic abuse, disorderly conduct and criminal damage to property.
• 
So what we learn here, among other things, is that every single person Kyle Rittenhouse shot or shot at on August 25th in Kenosha had a lengthy and violent criminal record.
• 
Well, that seems relevant, but the jury doesn't know it.  Thanks to unethical behavior by the prosecution, Maurice Freeland never had to testify in court.
• 
That means the state knew all along exactly who Maurice Freeland was but they withheld that information from Kyle Rittenhouse's lawyers.
• 
And as a result of that, Kyle Rittenhouse was deprived of his constitutional right under the confrontation clause to challenge the accuser in open court.
• 
That's not supposed to happen, it can't happen, and that's not the only relative evidence that was withheld from Kyle Rittenhouse' lawyers during this trial.
• 
The prosecution's theory of the case is that Joseph Rosenbaum, the child rapist, began chasing Kyle Rittenhouse after Rittenhouse pointed his rifle at Ziminsky.  So apparently the pedophile was defending the honor of the accused rapist.  That's their claim.
• 
Conveniently for the state, however, Joshua Ziminsky, like Maurice Freeland, never testified in this case.  Why?  Because prosecutors made sure he couldn't.  Prosecutors charged Ziminsky with arson and then delayed his trial so he would not be available to testify and the Rittenhouse trial.
• 
By the way, and this is relevant too, authorities say the Ziminsky brought a gun to the riot and fired a shot before Kyle Rittenhouse ever pulled his own trigger.  How's that for relevant?  But jurors never got to hear Joshua Ziminsky explain that.
• 
According to one of Rittenhouse's lawyers, the defense copy of the drone footage was nearly three times less clear than what the prosecutors had.
• 
It doesn't matter what the explanation is, there's no excuse for this in a criminal trial.  The prosecution has a legal obligation to obtain evidence in a timely manner and then provide the defense the moment it's available, that's the law.
• 
So by definition, Kyle Rittenhouse is not getting a fair trial, by the way.  Outside the courtroom as well as inside.  yesterday as hundreds of National Guard troops idled nearby, a fight broke out between protesters within earshot of jurors.
• 
Today, we learned that a freelancer for MSNBC followed the jurors' bus to the courtroom.  He blew through a red light to keep up with the bus.
• 
Now, why would a "journalist" follow jurors before they've reached their verdict?  Well, the judge seemed to understand exactly what was going on.  This morning, he banned anyone associated with MSNBC from the courthouse.
• 
Now, you don't have to like Kyle Rittenhouse or what he did to see this as scary and wrong and a threat to all of us doesn't matter who you voted for, it does matter what you thought of Donald Trump.  That's irrelevant.
• 
Withholding evidence in a criminal trial.  Intimidating jurors.  These things threaten not just Kyle Rittenhouse.  They threaten America's system of impartial justice, which, by the way, is the best thing we still have in this country.
      Tucker Carlson: How much longer can this go on in our country?  (Fox 11/18/2021)
• 
So there's a difference between lying and propaganda, and it's worth knowing what it is.  All propaganda is lying, but not all lying is propaganda.  So what's the difference between the two?
• 
Propaganda is not a shading of the truth.  Propaganda is a complete inversion of the truth.  ... propaganda looks like it's the mirror image of reality is the exact opposite of the truth.  And it is always delivered with ferocious aggression.
• 
Propaganda tends to bewilder people to confuse them when they first hear it.  It's so completely and obviously untrue.  What is this, you think?  And yet for that very reason, because it's so ridiculous, so absurd, Propaganda tends to be effective.  People assume that lies that bold have got to be true.
• 
And that's why propaganda has always been a feature of society, especially now it's why we're now swimming in propaganda.  January 6th was an armed insurrection.  They screamed, Russia is the real threat.  The 2020 election was perfectly fair.  COVID is more dangerous than opioids, no really, it is.
• 
... here's one from today's headlines.  Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist.  Now you're hearing that claim constantly from media figures and from politicians as a factual matter.
• 
That is a lie.  There's no evidence whatsoever that Kyle Rittenhouse is a white supremacist, whatever that term is supposed to mean.  There is precisely no racial angle at all to this story.  None.
• 
Of the four people directly involved in the Kyle Rittenhouse shootings, all four of them were white.  So you might not like Kyle Rittenhouse, but if you're an honest person, you would have to concede that racism had nothing to do with what he did.
• 
The point was Kyle Rittenhouse is a dangerous racist.  And by the way, anyone who would defend Kyle Rittenhouse is probably a dangerous racist too — maybe one of those white militia people.
• 
You see how that works, it works by indirection and stealth and dishonesty.  But of course you see it because you see it every day because it never ended.  They're still telling you the same thing now.
• 
So why have they been doing this for 15 months?  Well, now it's obvious.  If Kyle Rittenhouse wasn't actually what he was, which was a 17-year-old lifeguard who came to Kenosha to clean Antifa graffiti off the walls of schools.
• 
If their lies are true, it means this trial is about whether Black people can continue to live in the United States without being fear in fear of being murdered by white supremacist militiamen like Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
And by the way, after much repetition at this point, many Americans believe that's exactly what the trial is about, and they believe it because they keep hearing it on MSNBC.
• 
If Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted, quote, the rest of us should be living in fear.  Now, why would we be living in fear?  Because Kyle Rittenhouse might go on to shoot other convicted child rapists and violent criminals who actually tried to murder him?
• 
That's the threat.  How afraid should the rest of us be of that?  Once again, that claim doesn't even make sense, but it doesn't need to.  The fact that it's nonsensical does not diminish in any way the emotional power of those words.
• 
But there's another point, too.  And that point is to subvert our system of justice.  American justice is based on the principle of equality, the principle that all of us are equal under the law, no matter what we look like, no matter who are parents were, no matter where we came from.  That's called equality.  And until very recently, our leaders were proud to offer it.
• 
Equity is something very, very different.  In fact, it's the opposite of equality.
• 
If you think equity is the point of the justice system that you don't care about the details, you're not interested in the evidence, you don't understand who is actually guilty or innocent before the law.
• 
What you care about instead, is the appearance of the defendants, the identity of the people who are convicted and acquitted.  According to the principles of equity.  How you were born determines whether or not you are guilty.  That's equity.
• 
And it's not a fringe theory anymore, according to Joe Biden himself, equity is the organizing principle of this White House.  He said so the day he was inaugurated.
• 
But in order to replace equality in our justice system and every other institution with equity, that means you have to tear down the system we currently have and have used for the last two hundred and fifty years.
• 
That's not easy.  It's a big assignment.  How do you do it?  Well, in the justice system, there's no faster way to tear it down than by calling judges racist, which, needless to say, is exactly what they're doing now.
• 
Elie Mystal: He has made a series of decisions, each one perhaps maybe individually defensible, but in totality lead to the impression of a biased racist judge with his Trump rally cellphone that is trying to get Rittenhouse a walk.
• 
The racist judge.  So that's a very heavy thing to say about anyone and particularly a sitting judge in the middle of a murder trial.  So the question is, is the judge actually a racist?  In the answer, as you know by now, is that No, there's no evidence of that at all.
• 
And the man who has claimed the judge was racist knows there's no evidence of it.  The man who just claimed it by the way went to Harvard Law School.  He's not stupid.  He knows what the facts are.  He just doesn't care what the facts are.  Whatever it takes.
• 
So this way of looking at the world intentionally denying reality for the sake of a desired outcome is often called postmodernism.  But that's not quite right.  In fact, this is pre-modern.  This is an instinct older than civilization itself and in fact, a challenge to civilization itself.
• 
This is the kind of thinking that leads to tribalism.  Tribalism is the belief that my team is always right and your team is barely human.  Tribalism has been around for as long as people have been around.  It's never gone away.  It just lurks beneath the surface of societies, all societies.
• 
One of the main goals of any civilization is to suppress tribalism so that we can live together without killing one another.  So you should be concerned when it reemerges in public and boy has it.
• 
Joy Reid: ... In America, there's a thing about both white vigilantism and white tears, particularly male white tears.
• 
So that is it currently employed MSNBC anchor, Harvard graduate, not an employee of Radio Rwanda.  And that person is telling us what she really thinks in a Tik Tok video.
• 
White tears.  She mocks the very idea.  People that evil can't cry.  They don't have human emotions because they're not really human.  You don't have to care about them.  They don't qualify for your compassion.  You can laugh as they weep and feel good about it.
• 
You often hear the word dehumanize.  What does it mean?  That's what it looks like.  So you wonder how long this can go on our country before something really important breaks.
      Tucker Carlson: Why did the people in charge let Kenosha be destroyed?  (Fox 11/17/2021)
• 
... from the very first moments of this trial it was obvious that Kyle Rittenhouse never should have been indicted in the first place.
• 
The key question was: Did Kyle Rittenhouse act in self-defense that night in Kenosha?  And the answer unequivocally is yes.  Obviously, it's a no-brainer.  ... no honest person could reach a different conclusion.
• 
Kyle Rittenhouse shot men he believed were trying to kill him.  Now, why did Kyle Rittenhouse believe that, you may ask?
• 
Well, in one case, the man he shot told him so directly, "I plan to kill you." Of the other two men Kyle Rittenhouse shot, one repeatedly bashed him in the head with a skateboard as he lay on the ground.  The other stuck a loaded gun in his face.  So Kyle Rittenhouse fought back in order to save his own life.
• 
We're not guessing about that, even the prosecution's witnesses made that point.  So once that happened, once Kyle Rittenhouse's life was threatened on the street in Kenosha, what were his options exactly?
• 
Well, he could fight back, or he could allow himself to be murdered by the rioters.  And allowing himself to be murdered by the rioters is essentially what the prosecution has argued: Kyle Rittenhouse had a duty to submit to the mob.
• 
... that's lunacy, and no sane jury could agree with that for a second.  So the question is why is it taking so long for this jury to produce a very obvious verdict?
• 
For answer, look outside the courtroom.  There are hundreds of National Guard troops assembled tonight in Kenosha.  Why are they there?
• 
Well, they've come in case Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted.  Not in case he's convicted, in case he's acquitted.  At which point if he is acquitted, pretty much everyone expects the usual mobs of Joe Biden voters to burn and loot and destroy.
• 
Why does everyone expect this?  Because people on the left are openly calling for it.  "Now the jury deliberation has begun, I think every city in America should prepare for what could happen if Rittenhouse gets acquitted.  It may get RIGHTFULLY unpleasant."
• 
So imagine if you were a juror in this case?  How would you feel about this?  You're not sequestered, you know how the country feels.  You know what the threats are.  Well, you might think twice before you acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse, no matter what the evidence was.
• 
Remember what happened after Rodney King, they burned Los Angeles to the ground.  You wouldn't want to be responsible for that.  You wouldn't want to spark riots.
• 
And of course, that's the whole point of the exercise.  The mob threatens violence, the rest of us tremble, and pretty soon the mob controls our justice system.
• 
Pretty soon, the enemies of civilization, which is what they are, are in charge of the country.  That's what's happening now.
• 
So it's worth pausing for a moment to ask, how did we get here?  ... "We're waiting to see if riots break out because of media lies about a case from a riot that happened because of media lies."
• 
The August 2020 riot in Kenosha wasn't really a riot in the way that we understand riots, it was an outbreak of political violence.  It began three days after the Democratic Convention.  That was the context for it.
• 
It was, in fact, one of many riots that summer across the country, all of which were explicitly supported by the leadership of the Democratic Party.  We're not making this up.  Look it up.
• 
What was the point of these riots?  Big picture, the point was to unseat Donald Trump.
• 
In the specific case of Kenosha, we know exactly the chain of events that led to where we are today.  A man called Jacob Blake was shot by the police.
• 
Immediately, the media and the Democratic politicians they serve lied about what happened.  So they told us that a cop shot Jacob Blake in the back for no apparent reason – and by the way, Jacob Blake was unarmed, he was helpless, he was pulled out of a lineup and shot him because that's what America is like.
• 
Kamala Harris then jumped in and said she was "proud" of Jacob Blake like he was a civil rights hero, like he was shot for being the wrong color, as so often happens in a systemically racist country.
• 
In fact, the police were responding to a call from a woman who said Jacob Blake was trying to kidnap her child.  So the police showed up as they should have.
• 
They tried to detain Jacob Blake and Jacob Blake fought the cops.  Then he grabbed a knife.  Jacob Blake was holding that knife when he was shot by the police.  Jacob Blake admitted that on television.
• 
Based on the first false stories from the news media told intentionally, our leader suggested that these riots in Kenosha were somehow justified and then allowed them to continue.
• 
... that's not a civil rights protest, that's not people fighting back against oppression, systemic racism.  That's just people destroying things they didn't build.  That's people wrecking our civilization.
• 
In no normal country would that be allowed, it would be put down immediately with force.  That's why we have police.
• 
You can't allow that because if you do allow that, people get killed - as they did.  But local police, you should know, did virtually nothing to stop any of the things...
• 
The governor of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, turned down an offer from Washington to send federal officers in order to help get Kenosha under control, to save the city...
• 
Downtown Kenosha burned.  It will never be rebuilt.  Talk about a city that doesn't deserve any of this.  Kenosha is just a town of 100,000 people, many of them Hispanic, if that even matters.  But it's true, they're not rich people who live there.
• 
Kenosha is far past its prime.  It was part of the industrial base that built this country that built the modern world.  Now it's suffering even more than it was before the riots because a bunch of entitled antisocial lunatics broke things for no reason.  Because our leaders allowed them.
• 
So why did the people in charge allow Kenosha to be destroyed?  This happened over days.  They allowed this.  Why?
• 
Well, for the same reason they indicted Kyle Rittenhouse.  To send a very clear message to the rest of us watching on television: Don't resist.  When the mob comes, you can't fight back.  We're in charge.  We'll do what we want.  All summer they made that very clear.
• 
So the message over time was very, very clear.  And again, it's the same message they're sending us with the Rittenhouse trial: resistance is futile.  Try to defend yourself and we're gonna throw you in jail.
• 
During closing arguments, in case you missed the point, one of the prosecutors, in this case, said it out loud: When the mob comes, he said, just let them beat you. 
• 
KRAUS: Everybody takes a beating, sometimes, right?  Sometimes you get in a scuffle and maybe you do get hurt a little bit.  That doesn't mean you would just start plugging people with your full metal jacket, AR-15 rounds...
• 
Everyone takes a beating?  How dare you talk like that in court.  In a sane, civilized society you can't condone violence just because the people committing it vote for the candidate you like.
• 
Notice the change here, though.  This case has gone from "white supremacist hunts down executes BLM protesters" – like it was a racial case, everyone's white – to the new theme "that teenager should have accepted his beating from the child molester arsonist who was chasing him and threatening to kill him and because he didn't he needs to go to jail." Once again, a very clear message: submit.  The prosecution hammered this again and again and again. 
• 
KRAUS: Why do you get to immediately just start shooting?  As Mr.  Binger said, he brought a gun to a fistfight.  And he's too cowardly to use his own fist to fight his way out.  He has to start shooting. 
• 
Really?  Too cowardly?  A 17-year-old should have gotten into a fistfight with a 36-year-old violent pedophile?  Right.
• 
Speaking of cowardly, where were the police who are paid to stop this stuff?  Who are paid to keep mob violence from happening in the first place?  Where's the governor, who's under too much political pressure to protect his own people?
• 
Talk about cowardly.  Blaming a 17-year-old who shows up because the city his dad lives in is on fire and he wants to do something?
• 
He shouldn't have been there in the first place, he shouldn't have had to have been there.  The adults should have been there.  They're the cowards.
• 
These prosecutors are appalling, this whole spectacle is appalling.  At the same time, watch how the prosecutor characterizes the pedophile's actions the night he was shot. 
• 
BINGER: So what does he do that night?  Oh, let me tell you all the awful things Joseph Rosenbaum did.  He tipped over a porta-potty that had no one in it.  He swung a chain.  He lit a metal garbage dumpster on fire.  Oh, and there's this empty wooden flatbed trailer that they pulled out in the middle of the road and they tipped it over to stop some bearcats and they lit it on fire.  Oh, and he said some bad words.  He said the N-word.
• 
That's one of the weirdest thing that's ever happened in an open court.  That's the prosecutor.  That's a government official mocking the idea that it's a big deal to light cars on fire to keep the police from coming in and restoring order.
• 
It's just not a big deal at all, is what the prosecutor is telling us.  He's also saying it's not a big deal to scream racial slurs in public.  Really, since when is that true?
• 
This is lunacy.  The jury was never allowed to hear the details of the life of this guy, Joseph Rosenbaum.  He had quite a history that does seem sort of relevant, actually.
• 
The rest of the media is not going to tell you anything about it, so we will.  In 2002, Joseph Rosenbaum was charged by a grand jury with 11 counts of child molestation, including forcible sodomy.  This wasn't, him at 19 with a 17-year-old girlfriend.  No, no.  He raped children.  The victims were 5 boys between the ages of 9 and 11.
• 
Ultimately, Rosenbaum was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this.  When he got out of prison, Rosenbaum destroyed his ankle monitor that he was required to wear.  The day he died, Rosenbaum had an open case for domestic abuse.  They're defending this guy.
• 
Just hours before he threatened to kill Kyle Rittenhouse, Rosenbaum had been released from a mental hospital being treated for some sort of disorder, obviously.  He tried to go back to his fiance, but she had a no-contact order after she pressed charges against him a month earlier for hitting her.  So this is the man they're telling you was a model citizen.
• 
JOY REID: Let me just remind people of the names of the victims.  Joseph Rosenbaum, who was 36-years-old.  Anthony Huber, who was 26.  Gaige Grosskreutz is only 27 years old, was injured.  These are the victims.  These are the people that people ought to remember, these are the people who were hurt here, not the person who was crying on the stand today.
• 
This is not a cross-section of America.  These are the worst people in America.  Joseph Rosenbaum, the child rapist.  What about the other victims?  Our media tells you a main victim is a guy called Gaige Grosskreutz.  He's the guy who ran up Kyle Rittenhouse and pointed a loaded gun in his face, for which he's never been charged, that's not a big deal because he votes the right way.  Who is this guy?
• 
Well, Grosskreutz, it turns out, also has a lengthy criminal history that includes an arrest for hitting his own grandmother in the face.  Just six days before he testified in the trial Grosskreutz was in court on a DUI charge, which Joe Biden says is not a big deal, but most of us grew up thinking, you were not supposed to do that.
• 
Several years ago, Grosskreutz was charged with smashing the bedroom window of his ex-girlfriend's home at 4 a.m.  On the night, Kyle Rittenhouse shot him, Grosskreutz has admitted he was carrying an illegal firearm.  Oh, no longer a big deal, either.  Gun crimes don't matter if you vote the right way.
• 
So what about Anthony Huber?  He's the man who hit Kyle Rittenhouse twice in the head with a skateboard.  Who was he?
• 
He's a convicted domestic abuser.  According to court records, Huber once told his brother that if he didn't clean a room in his house, he was going to "gut him like a pig." Huber said that while he was holding a six-inch knife to his brother's stomach.  Then he grabbed his brother's neck and said "I'm going to burn this house down with all of you in it." Huber pleaded guilty to one count of strangulation that time.
• 
So I guess the point is pretty simple: there were a lot of violent criminals at this particular Joe Biden rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, last summer.
• 
Kind of hard not to contrast it with what happened on January 6, the insurrection they never stopped telling us about.
• 
No one has been charged with carrying a gun inside the Capitol building that day.  How many fires did they set?  None that we're aware of, but they get to rot in solitary confinement anyway while Gaige Grosskreutz gets the seal of approval from MSNBC anchors for pointing a loaded gun he was carrying illegally in the face of a child.
• 
So the Kyle Rittenhouse trial is wrapping up, but the people who engineered the political prosecution behind this are still in power.
• 
One of the main takeaways from all of this is that those people are now more brazen than they have ever been.  They're just saying it out loud Tucker.
      now Carlson: Media and Big Tech lied about the Kyle Rittenhouse case - here's the truth  (Fox 11/16/2021)
• 
... part of the reason it's just so interesting is because the facts are so different from what we've been told for more than a year, completely different.  And it's shocking to compare reality against the version of reality we've been force-fed.
• 
Here's one example.  ... "Kyle Rittenhouse, 17," declared the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "was not old enough to legally carry the assault-style rifle he had." Just stating it as fact.  And then the entire national media followed suit and told us the same thing. 
• 
The problem was it was a lie.  In fact, under Wisconsin law, which apparently no one in any newsroom in America had even bothered to check, 17-year-olds are allowed to carry rifles as long as their barrels meet a minimum length requirement, and Kyle Rittenhouse's rifle met that requirement.
• 
The prosecution is admitting in open court that it was legal.  He had not committed a gun crime, and that means that for more than a year, Big Tech and its lackeys throughout our media have spread misinformation about Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
Well, that's embarrassing.  What are they going to say?  Well, they're not going to admit it, of course.  They're going to make certain you don't learn about it.
• 
Just minutes after the judge in the case dismissed the gun charge, YouTube, which is owned by Google, censored the video streams of several independent legal experts who were commenting on the trial in real time.
• 
... hundreds of people were watching those streams at the moment they were canceled, but over concern that Americans might conclude that Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent, YouTube shut them down, citing policy violations...
• 
... the very same people who have told you for years that borders are by definition White supremacy now claim it's some kind of moral offense for an American citizen to enter a contiguous state.
• 
Nor have any of the people hyperventilating about crossing state lines explained why it's OK for the BLM rioters and the Antifa creeps to come from around the country to burn Kenosha down, as many of them did.  Haven't even addressed that.
• 
But if there's one thing this trial has taught us, it's how completely dishonest and totally misleading so many of the news accounts of what Kyle Rittenhouse did have been.
• 
... for example, how Rittenhouse first encountered convicted child rapist Joseph Rosenbaum, the first man he shot.  There are multiple witnesses to that.  Most of it's on video, actually.
• 
Joseph Rosenbaum had just been released from a mental hospital and for some reason decided to join the riot.  So first he lit a fire.  Then he began to swing a chain like a weapon.
• 
When he saw Kyle Rittenhouse, he threatened to kill Kyle Rittenhouse.  Then he chased Rittenhouse in a full sprint, cornered him, and then tried to snatch his gun from his hands.
• 
It was at that point that Rittenhouse fired.  Who wouldn't fire at that point?
• 
After shooting Rosenbaum, Rittenhouse tried to turn himself in to police, but he couldn't because a mob howling for his death chased him down a city street.
• 
One rioter that knocked Kyle Rittenhouse to the ground, another smashed him in the head with a skateboard, and a third rioter drew a loaded pistol, which he was not allowed to have, unlike Kyle Rittenhouse, and pointed it in Kyle Rittenhouse's face.
• 
So at no point was Kyle Rittenhouse the aggressor in the sequence of events.  Every move he made was defensive.
• 
That's not our interpretation of it.  That's what came out from prosecutors and witnesses in court.  None of these facts are disputed.  They all happened.
• 
So that's a very tough problem for the prosecution.  With facts like those, What exactly do you say?  What they said is really interesting.  Today the prosecutor was left trying to argue that convicted child rapist mental patient Joseph Rosenbaum, whose criminal record you can read online, and you should get a sense of who they're defending here, that this guy had threatened to murder Kyle Rittenhouse in front of witnesses, and yet actually, he was not a threat to Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
The whole thing is ridiculous.  And it got more absurd as the day progressed.  The prosecutor Thomas Binger explained that if you take steps to defend yourself, you have by definition given up your right to self-defense.
• 
If an ex-con with a history of violent crime informs you that he is going to murder you and then tries to grab your gun from your hands, you are allowed to respond.  In fact, you have to respond because it would be suicidal not to, obviously.
• 
You have no right to resist.  That's the whole point of this whole proceeding.  So the next time BLM sweeps into your town, your neighborhood, your house to burn and loot and brandish weapons, you had better not try to protect yourself or your family.
• 
Try to protect yourself or your family, and we will charge you with murder.  And while we're at it, we'll have the national media call you racist.
• 
These people are demented and they're dangerous, and that kind of talk degrades the social fabric faster than everything.
• 
See related Hang Em’ High-Tech (Antonio Branco, 01/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Kyle Rittenhouse's trial is the most bizarre court proceeding ever caught on camera  (Fox 11/10/2021)
• 
The outline of the case itself is pretty straightforward.  Kyle Rittenhouse went to the BLM riots in Kenosha last summer, armed with a rifle.
• 
While he was there, he shot three people.  He killed two of them.  The prosecution claims this was murder.  Kyle Rittenhouse says it was self-defense, so it's pretty simple.
• 
But here's the amazing thing: Every single witness the prosecution has called so far has wound up making Kyle Rittenhouse's case for him.
• 
That would include even Gaige Grosskreutz.  He's the avowed communist who Rittenhouse shot in the arm.  Grosskreutz was supposed to be the prosecution's star witness in this trial.
• 
But once he got on the stand, he admitted that Kyle Rittenhouse only shot him after he pointed a loaded gun in the boy's face.
• 
"It wasn't until you pointed your gun at him, advanced on him, with your gun — now your hands down, pointed at him — that he fired, right?" GROSSKREUTZ: Correct.
• 
So that's kind of it right there, that's pretty much the end of the trial, because when someone runs up and points a loaded gun in your face, you are allowed to shoot that person that is called self-defense.
• 
That's the rule.  It has been the rule throughout human history, in every society on Earth since people lived in caves.
• 
According to the prosecution's star witness, self-defense is exactly what happened here.  So as a matter of law, in addition to custom and common sense, Gaige Grosskreutz just proves that Kyle Rittenhouse acted to defend himself from harm.
• 
But the trial kept going, and as it did keep going, things got even weirder and much worse for the prosecution.  Gaige Grosskreutz, for example, admitted that he was carrying his gun illegally.  He'd been arrested for felony burglary.  Of course, he had.  So his gun permit was invalid.
• 
Grosskreutz also admitted under oath that when he sued the city of Kenosha for $10 million, which for some reason he thought he was owed, he failed to mention the fact that he was carrying a firearm and pointing it in people's faces.
• 
At one point, a detective, a witness called by the prosecution, implicated the prosecution in a cover-up.  The detective admitted that the police did not search Gage Grosskreutz's phone after the shooting, even though they had a valid warrant to do that.
• 
Well, why didn't they?  Well, they didn't, because the prosecution ordered the police not to look at the phone, and that had never happened before.
• 
And you can see why it's baffling, really.  Why would a government lawyer want less evidence in a case?
• 
So you're not allowed to look at the phone of the guy who got shot and was holding a gun.  So why would an honest prosecutor ask a cop to ignore that?  Why wouldn't an honest prosecutor want to see the phone?
• 
Apparently, the phone had video from that night, had relevant text messages, location data.  So if you want to know what really happened that night, you would look at the phone.
• 
But it turned out the prosecutor didn't want to know what happened that night.  He wanted to declare Kyle Rittenhouse a murderer.  He was under enormous political pressure to do that, so that's exactly what he did.
• 
It goes without saying this is not how American justice is supposed to work.  But thankfully, like most webs of deception, it collapsed under scrutiny in a big way.
• 
... why was a convicted child molester at a riot on behalf of BLM?  ... A lot of people like that there that night, it turns out.
• 
But the prosecutor hoped to portray the shooting of the child molester Rosenbaum, as an act of senseless violence committed by a psychopath, Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
PROSECUTOR: So your interpretation of what he was trying to do or what he was intending to do or anything along those lines is complete guesswork isn't it.  MCGINNISS: Well he said f** you and reached for the weapon.
• 
Well, there's that.  So a convicted child molester with a long and violent criminal history runs up to Kyle Rittenhouse out of nowhere in the middle of a riot and tries to take his gun away.  So Rittenhouse shot him.
• 
That's what happened.  Those are the facts.  Again, according to the prosecution's own witness.  And not just one witness.
• 
... the prosecution's medical expert, a man called Doug Kelly, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum appeared to be grabbing the barrel of Kyle Rittenhouse's rifle when Rittenhouse fired.
• 
Then yet another prosecution witness, this one called Ryan Balch, testified that Joseph Rosenbaum said out loud that he intended to kill Kyle Rittenhouse.
• 
BALCH: ... And when I turned around, Rosenbaum was right there in front of my face yelling and screaming.  And I said dude, back up chill, I don't know what your problem is.  And he goes you know what, if I catch one of you guys alone tonight I'm going to f***ing kill you.
• 
BINGER: And he said that to you?  / BALCH: Correct.  / BINGER: Did he say that to the defendant as well?  / BALCH: Well the defendant was there – so yes.
• 
At one point, another prosecution witness testified that Anthony Huber, who was, you won't be surprised to learn at this point, a convicted domestic abuser was bashing Kyle Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard when he was shot.
• 
So once again, we have the textbook definition of self-defense.  Not much of a prosecution.  In fact, at no point did the prosecution make its own case.  They make Kyle Rittenhouse's case.
• 
But you never know any of this from watching the coverage of the trial.  NBC News, for example, just ran this thoroughly dishonest headline: Shooting victim at Rittenhouse trial said he thought he was going to die.  What the article didn't mention, seems kind of relevant, the shooting victim was pointing a loaded gun at the boy who shot him.
• 
Actually, in point of fact, Kyle Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth left by the rioting Biden voters the child molester included.
• 
Turns out, the morning of the shooting Kyle Rittenhouse was videotaped cleaning anarchist graffiti off the walls of a local high school.  That seems like good citizenship, actually.
• 
Naturally, elected Democrats denounced him as a racist.  Ayanna Pressley described Rittenhouse as a "White supremacist domestic terrorist," echoing the MSNBC Morning Show.  Ilhan Omar did the same.
• 
Joe Biden, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, called the 17-year-old "A White supremacist." Now, for the record, the men Rittenhouse shot were all White, kind of a funny kind of White supremacy there.
• 
So if you wanted a guilty verdict in this trial, you would probably have to threaten the jury.  And as it turns out, some people are planning to do just that.
• 
CORTEZ RICE, FRIEND OF GEORGE FLOYD: I ain't even going to name the people that I know that's up in the Kenosha trial.  There is cameras in there.  There is definitely cameras up in there.  There is definitely people taking pictures of the jury and everything.  We know what's going on.  So we need the same results man.  We need the same results.
• 
There's not a small thing.  Jury intimidation is a serious felony in this country.  But as far as we know, the Department of Justice isn't doing anything to stop it in this case.
• 
So it looks like it's continuing today.  At the Rittenhouse trial, a judge told jurors that some were taking their pictures at a bus stop outside the courthouse.  That, of course, is a threat.  We'll see if it works.
      Tucker Carlson: When ideologues take over, life gets much worse for most people  (Fox 11/09/2021)
• 
Why are people so dissatisfied all of a sudden with Joe Biden?  Well, the obvious answer is you're going to hear a lot of people say this Joe Biden is senile and ineffective.
      But if you think about it, that's not true.  It can't really be true because voters knew perfectly well all along that Biden was  ()
• 
They knew that when they elected him, it was obvious even then.  In fact, it was part of his appeal.
• 
Biden was too slow to be threatening to anyone.  This was not a guy who was going to be making a lot of sudden moves.  If you secretly wished it was still 1985, Joe Biden was your man because he was under the impression that it actually was.
• 
Biden is afraid.  You see it every time you look at him.  He's overwhelmed.  He's off-balance.  And that's why he's so often snappy and aggressive, because underneath it all, he feels anxious.
• 
Biden isn't always sure where he is or what's happening around him.  So a man like that cannot possibly lead a country this complex.
• 
But the problem is his weakness makes him a target for predators.  Ideologues like Susan Rice or Barack Obama can take a man like that hostage and make him read their scripts.  That's exactly what is happening...
• 
... the White House plan to pay reparations to illegal aliens up to almost half a million dollars per person.  So the very idea of an administration doing that under any circumstances is completely deranged.
• 
What's interesting is that Joe Biden, who was not ideological, he's emotional.  Biden understood that immediately.  And so he responded when asked the way that any normal person would, he said effectively, What the hell are you talking about?  That's crazy.
• 
Now whatever you think of Biden, he's been in politics for more than 50 years, and at this point, if nothing else, he's got a pretty good gut sense of these things.
• 
Unfortunately, Joe Biden is no longer in charge, he no longer makes meaningful decisions.  The ideologues are in charge.  The Obama people are in charge.  That's the point.
• 
So after that moment, they hauled Joe Biden before the central committee.  They gave him a good reeducation.  And the next thing you know, Biden is out there dutifully repeating their lunatic slogans.
• 
Biden: If, in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legal or illegal and you lost your child, you lost your child, he's gone, you deserve some kind of compensation, no matter what the circumstance.  What that will be, I have no idea.  I have no idea.
• 
The ideologues are in control, and that is a huge problem for the rest of us.  It's a problem because ideologues have no interest in the lives of actual human beings.
• 
Ideologues care only about their theories, about the bright new future they are building.  Human beings are just speed bumps on the way to utopia.
• 
So not surprisingly, when ideologues take over society, any society in any country, at any point throughout history, life always gets much worse for most people.  Borders fall, crime rises, schools collapse, inflation gets out of control.
• 
But the ideologues don't care because they're completely focused on the shiny new society they're constructing.  Nothing else matters.  Perfection is always just around the corner.  As soon as we get rid of all these white men, everything will be great.
• 
Meanwhile, inevitably, the actual physical world around them, the world that the rest of us inhabit day to day crumbles at high speed and you're seeing it now everywhere.
• 
... here's the thing from an ideologues perspective.  Destruction is the whole point.  Burn down Wendy's, loot Macy's, defund the police, close the school, shut down the energy grid, tear it all down, scrape the pads so we can put up something new and perfect — as they often put it — Build back better.
• 
The problem with thinking like this, there are many problems, but the core problem is that you tend to ignore the suffering of the people who still live in your country, pre utopia.  You don't care about them and they know you don't care about them.
      Tucker Carlson: Censorship is mainstream media's last dying grasp at relevance  (Fox 10/30/2021)
• 
About 20 minutes into the 2016 presidential campaign, it was pretty clear the American media were horribly addicted to Donald Trump.  They hated Trump, obviously, but they also needed Trump in order to live.  And that's the face of addiction.
• 
So there was really never any question about what was going to happen for sure when news organizations were finally cut off from their vital daily supply of Donald Trump.
• 
They're going to collapse in a pile, and that's exactly what they've done.  They've collapsed.
• 
They have one final hope for keeping the scam alive and its censorship.  So the dying media companies have convinced themselves that somehow they can get the government and their friends in the tech monopolies to shut down their competitors.
• 
And it explains why all of a sudden journalists, of all people, are leading the charge against the First Amendment that you thought made their jobs possible.
• 
This is the key to their campaign against what they call misinformation.  Now, if you're a literal-minded person - we certainly are - you laugh every time you hear them say that.
• 
Misinformation?  Aren't these the exact same people who told us that Putin got Trump elected?  The ones you swore that some high school kid from Kentucky was in the Klan?  Yeah, same people.
• 
So of course, they're not against misinformation.  Obviously, the point is they want to restore their monopoly on it, and that's what they're trying to do.
• 
See related Addicted (Antonio Branco, 02/09/2021) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: The Biden administration is targeting blue-collar men  (Fox 10/28/2021)
• 
Less than a year into the Joe Biden administration, the United States faces massive and potentially dangerous shortages of just about everything.
• 
Just this week, one of the largest health care providers in the western United States, it's called Intermountain Healthcare, began soliciting help from its own patients.
• 
... understand the current state of the American economy.  Hospitals begging for medical equipment.  Essential goods unavailable everywhere.  Supply chains frozen just months before Christmas.  It's not improving.  It could get much worse very quickly.
• 
How did we get energy shortages in a country that has more energy than it can consume?  Well, that was not accidental.  It was entirely intentional.  It was the result of policies that came from Washington.
• 
And maybe that's why Joe Biden does not seem upset about it when asked.  Now, cars may be a threat to the global climate, but more pressing cars equal physical autonomy.  They're yours.  You can take them where you want.
• 
So say goodbye to cheap gasoline, probably forever.  That was the basis upon which our modern society was structured.  That's why we have suburbs that, by the way, the administration hates what most people enjoy living in.
• 
So what's going on here?  We'll be honest, Joe Biden didn't do all of this, a lot of things are going on here and they're happening all at once.
• 
The main driver of this is that over time we've become completely through various administrations, both parties, we've become completely dependent on China.
• 
The Chinese Chinese Communist Party effectively is our new OPEC with the word they can shut down our economy.
• 
At the same time, the ideologues in the White House are raising energy costs.  Just in case you thought, maybe we could make up some of the gap in domestic manufacturing, that's impossible with energy costs this high.  You need cheap energy in order to have a manufacturing economy.
• 
And then to add to this, there is a labor shortage once again, the result of long-term sad trends.  But that has been dramatically exacerbated by policies from the Biden White House and that labor shortage is hitting paradoxically at exactly the moment when there's an unemployment crisis.
• 
... this administration has targeted a very specific portion of the population, targeted them for ideological and political reasons, blue-collar men.  The idea is they supported the wrong party, they have retrograde attitudes, they engage in wrong think and we're going to crush them.  And so systematically, they have.
• 
... instead of answering these most basic problems when you're running a country...  they're lecturing us about how we should be delighted that we have a new four-star trans admiral.  That's the prize they're bringing to us.  You voted for us, here's your trans admiral, be happy.
• 
Among other things, these are totally unserious people.  They are purely ideological.  They do not care if the actual country, the physical country, comes apart at the seams as long as the population dutifully repeats the correct slogans.
• 
Once you understand that, you understand why every day we get some frivolous new announcement about some social justice goal that in the end will not improve the life of a single American citizen.
• 
Here's today's example.  The State Department has just announced it will issue the first passport ever with an x gender marker.  Huh?  First of all, who cares?
• 
Second, why is the U.S.  government trying to pretend that gender isn't real?  It's the realest thing in human society.  It's the basis of civilization.
• 
But whatever they lectured us today quote, this is for those who don't have identify as male or female.  So you won't be able to get on a plane because no one's working at the airlines anymore.  But at least you won't get misgendered.  OK.
• 
Here's another example.  There's an ongoing House Intel Committee hearing with the heads of the CIA, NSA and DNI, not on how the intel agencies have been weaponized against American citizens.  No, that would be too germane.
• 
No, this hearing was about DEI.  That's not a new intel agency.  It's a new cult.  It's called diversity, equity and inclusion.  So the hearing began with Adam Schiff complaining, and this is a key problem for most Americans, that all the Intel briefers he deals with are white men?
• 
SCHIFF: I can't help but notice that the large majority of IC briefers, though uniformly excellent, who appear before the committee are often White and male.
We need to recruit officers with diverse backgrounds into the IC and then show them there's a path forward to advance and grow their careers to top leadership positions.
• 
The White House just issued its first-ever national gender equity and equality strategy that happened on Friday.  Did you miss it?  Maybe you were waiting in line trying to buy food?  Well, one of the highlights from that plan, the White House, says it will work to end cash bail.  Oh, that will make your life better.
• 
But that's not all.  The White House also announced it wants to, and we're quoting seek to eliminate barriers that prevent immigrants from accessing government-funded services.  Ooh, that's the whole game right there.
• 
So you're getting poorer.  Gas prices are going up.  We've completely lost control of the infrastructure in the country.  What are the chances we're going to have blackouts this summer when people dare to turn on the air conditioning about 100 percent?
• 
The White House, instead of spending a single moment trying to fix actual problems that actually affect your life, has turned the entire force of the federal government on this question.  How can illegal aliens get more free stuff from the government?  That tells you everything.
      Tucker Carlson: The White House has new instructions for Americans - lower your expectations  (Fox 10/20/2021)
• 
We've seen riots before, in 1992.  Following the Rodney King verdict, rioters in Los Angeles torched a lot of the middle of that city.
• 
But they didn't burn any police stations because you can't burn a police station because there are police there and they're armed and they represent the law, they enforce the laws.
• 
You can't burn down a police station because if they let you do that, then you know the whole system is crumbled.
• 
And yet that's exactly what happened just days into the BLM hysteria last summer.  A police station was burning, and the implication of that was very clear.
• 
This is why we don't allow police stations to get burned because the message it sends is this: the police can't protect you, They can't even protect themselves.
• 
So the police aren't in charge.  Legitimate authority is gone.  The mob is now in charge.
• 
So as this is happening, there happens to be, as noted, a reporter standing right there with a microphone and a camera taking those pictures directly into your living room.
• 
"The fire engines can't get in here.  There is no ability to bring anybody in here to solve this problem, so I want to be clear in how I characterize it, this mostly protests.  It is not - It is not, generally speaking, unruly."
• 
It's mostly a protest, he said.  Flames in the background.  It's generally speaking, not unruly.  While standing in front of a burning building.
• 
... it wasn't a gaffe, was not taken out of context, in fact, it was MSNBC's explicit editorial policy to lie about what you were watching live, to characterize violent riots as peaceful protests.
• 
"This will guide our reporting in MN: While the situation on the ground in Minneapolis is fluid, and there has been violence, it is most accurate at this time to describe what is happening there as protests — not riots."
• 
"... Our country was started because - the Boston Tea Party rioting.  So don't get it twisted and think oh, this is something that has never happened before and this is so terrible and where are we and these savages and all of that..."
• 
Now that's not true.  In fact, it's grotesquely untrue, and you have to be historically literate to believe it.  Many people are, unfortunately, but it worked because propaganda does.  That's why they do it.
• 
So instead of pushing back against this rioting, most Americans kind of went along with it.  Well, it doesn't look quite right to me, but this is how our country started.
• 
And this trend has continued, The Washington Post just ran this headline, "Don't rant about short-staffed stores and supply chain woes." Rather than "living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit ... We do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations."
• 
Lower your expectations, what did you expect in America?  Come on.  Bread lines, we've always had bread lines.  It's sort of charmingly retro, these bread lines.  Don't complain as your life becomes worse and as your country degrades.  That's the message, and not surprisingly, that message is coming directly from the people who are making your life worse and destroying the country.
• 
The truth is, you shouldn't have daily looting in American cities because it's a first-world country.  This isn't some Third World hellhole.
• 
This is once again the country that our ancestors built.  This is a great country, it's a clean country, it's an orderly country.
• 
People don't steal.  You're not allowed to steal, period.  But all of a sudden, you can steal and our leaders are telling you you've always been able to steal.  It's OK...
• 
In Philadelphia last week, several people on the train, they got on the train and then they got to watch as a man raped a woman on the train for minutes.
• 
She was raped in front of all these people and they did nothing.  So how does this happen?  Now we're saying about root causes, what were the root causes of this rape?
• 
We can tell you tonight that the 35-year-old Congolese man who apparently raped this woman, his name was Fiston Ngoy, has a criminal record and shouldn't have been here in the first place.
• 
He was on an overstayed student visa.  He should have been deported.  This should never have happened.  He should not have been here.
• 
And the only reason he was is because he had a lot of people like him have been invited here and allowed to stay by the people who run the country, but who don't ride the train.
• 
This particular man first came the United States in 2012, is on a student visa now that visa ended in 2015 because he was no longer a student.  Court records show that the boy racked up "multiple arrests" and two misdemeanor convictions one for controlled substances and one for sexual abuse.
• 
OK, so here's someone in the country illegally who is convicted of sexual abuse and drugs, but he's still here?  So why aren't the people who allowed him to remain here in jail themselves?  They certainly should be.
• 
So to recap, you can walk into our country at the invitation of our leaders at public expense.  You can overstay your visa and in so doing, mock our laws.  Then you can get busted for drugs and a sex crime, not deported, allowed to stay.  And then you go on - Probably inevitably at this point - to rape a woman on a train in full view of a crowd that does nothing to stop it.
• 
Today, Joe Biden's nominee to lead the Border Patrol, a guy called Chris Magnus set for his confirmation hearings.  Now it turns out that Magnus, if anything, is to the left of Biden, even to the left of Barack Obama on immigration matters.
• 
So here you have the person who's about to oversee our country's border security, who does not believe in borders.
• 
Now, if that bothers you in any way, if you think we should be deporting rapists instead of letting them rape women on trains, then the White House has a very clear message for you: Shut up, Karen.  Stop complaining.
• 
Those arsons are an arsonist or mostly peaceful protesters.  That treadmill?  You don't deserve a treadmill.  Lower your expectations.  Get used to it.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: America has once again become segregated  (Fox 10/19/2021)
• 
If you're old enough to recall the first Gulf War, you know that Colin Powell was one of the last public officials that most Americans believed in.  Powell's life, his story, seemed to confirm everything that was good about this country...
• 
Toward the end of his life, Powell sometimes said that his remarkable career was proof that affirmative action worked, but it always seemed like a halfhearted talking point.
• 
Anyone who knew Powell personally can confirm that he was as impressive as any person in the U.S.  government and far more than most of them.
• 
He was legitimately smart, deeply knowledgeable about the world.  He was openly patriotic.  He was hardly a diversity hire.  He was so obviously superior to a lot of the people around him.
• 
Unlike other people in Washington, Colin Powell got where he was on merit, and that was inspiring to watch.  Powell's success meant that our system worked.
• 
Our system was meritocratic at the time.  It elevated the best.  Thirty years ago, our meritocracy was the country's unifying principle.  All Americans were proud of it.  Colin Powell embodied it.
• 
Like almost everyone his age, Colin Powell was fully vaccinated against COVID, and yet, according to his family and doctors, Colin Powell died of COVID.
• 
Former CDC Director Robert Redfield announced just today that about 40 percent of all recent COVID deaths in the state of Maryland, for example, are among those who have had both shots.
• 
So what does that tell you exactly?  What tells you you've been lied to?  Vaccines may be highly useful for some people, but across the population, they do not solve COVID.
• 
That's not speculation.  It is an observable fact.  People have been fully vaccinated can still get the virus.  They can still transmit the virus to others, and they can still die from COVID.
• 
So the question is why are they telling us otherwise?  And the answer is simple.  They're telling us that to divide us from each other to set the country against itself.
• 
And yet, from the very beginning, demagogues, like Joe Biden and many others have used this virus as a hammer to smash the bonds that connect Americans to one another.
• 
During last year's presidential campaign, Joe Biden, repeatedly and always with a straight face, told us that every single American who died from COVID died because of Donald Trump's negligence.
• 
Now, Biden is telling us that the only reason people are still dying from COVID is because stubborn, mostly working-class Americans won't submit to his shot.
• 
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated, they all repeat that line just as they've been told to.  But that claim is a lie.  This is not a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
• 
It never was that.  This is a pandemic of the Chinese government born in a lab in Wuhan and brought here either accidentally or not.  That's the fact of it.
• 
You'll read that some plumber in Wichita was choked to death from COVID alone in a hospital bed, and then you watch as the blue checks and social media celebrate his death.  He wasn't vaccinated.  They'll tell you he deserved it.
• 
Some preacher in Florida will die, leaving behind not just a grieving family, but tweets skeptical of the COVID vaccine, and then suddenly his death becomes a neat little morality play performed at maximum volume for the rest of us.  See, this is what you get.
• 
This is the most corrosive possible way to approach the deaths of fellow Americans, but the president himself joins in gleefully.  He scolds these people, these otherwise decent Americans as they die alone in agony.
• 
How dare they take up the space in our hospital, Biden says, they're occupying the beds of worthy patients, people who followed instructions and therefore deserve health care.  People who deserve to live.
• 
Pause for a moment and think about that, we don't think about it enough, but we should.  Colin Powell follow the instructions he did what Joe Biden asked.  So did 40 percent of fully vaccinated people who recently died in Maryland.  They all died anyway.
• 
Are those deaths more or less tragic than the passing of the disobedient plumber in Wichita or the preacher in Waco?
• 
In fact, they're all the same in their significance and in their effect.  People cried when these people died, people who love them, vaccinated or not.  Every life matters.  Every single one, every death is sad.  That's obvious, it's the most basic fact of the human condition.  How do we forget that?
• 
Because they told us to forget it.  And the irony, of course, is the people telling us to forget that and treat our fellow Americans as criminals who deserve to die, clearly don't mean a single word that they are saying.  They are not sincere.
• 
They're not interested ultimately in our health.  They are fixated on maximizing their own power.  And we know that because of the distance between what they say and what they do.  That's always how you know.
• 
Stopping the spread of COVID is not the point.  Dividing the country into rulers, and the ruled is the point.
• 
We're looking at a system of government that is changing very fast.  One in which laws explicitly do not apply to the people who make the laws.
• 
Colin Powell, whatever you think of him, didn't grow up in a country like this.  And you don't want your children to grow up in one, either.
      Tucker Carlson: The hypocrisy of the left has left America in a nightmare scenario  (Fox 10/16/2021)
• 
... this is unequal justice, by any measure, it contradicts the central principle of our legal system and our country, which is we're all citizens and all of a stand equal before the law.  It's not about what you believe, it's about what you do.  It has nothing to do with who you vote for.  Nothing to do with who you listen to on the radio or watch on television.  It has to do with what you violate the law.  But that's no longer what it has to do with.
• 
You should know that none of the code pink protesters who stormed Senate buildings during the Kavanaugh hearings wound up in jail.  Of course not.  They weren't tossed in solitary confinement.
• 
Neither were the self-described environmentalists who just raided a federal building in Washington.
• 
This is what happens when law enforcement becomes partisan.  This is the nightmare scenario.  This is the country you don't want to live in.  This is the country that judges you on the basis of who you vote for and we'll put you in jail if you got the wrong way.
• 
... criminals with the right politics suffer no consequences.  In some cases, those criminals are put in charge of enforcing the law themselves.
• 
Here's one example: The former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe.  McCabe admitted lying to federal investigators - That's a felony, by the way, unlike parading in the Capitol - but he was never hauled off to jail, never lectured about his vaccine status by some lunatic prosecutor.
• 
... you're the country's second in line in our biggest law enforcement agency and you've admitted committing a felony, and all that happened to you was that you lost your padded federal benefits.  And you say that was unfair and you're still whining about them even after you got it back.
• 
Are you the same Andy McCabe, who destroyed Mike Flynn's life and bankrupted him, tried to send him to prison on a charge of lying to federal investigators?
• 
Yes, that charge was in fact engineered by Andy McCabe for the sole purpose of getting rid of Michael Flynn at the behest of Barack Obama and his cronies.
• 
... when Andy McCabe lied to investigators about leaking to the media, was he charged?  No, that wasn't parading in Congress.  Now he gets his pension back and he's celebrated on national television.
• 
Why is that?  Because Andy McCabe is on the right side.  He's a member of the national security state, which the Left now venerate because the national security state is on their side.
• 
The FBI can label political dissidents domestic terrorists, which justifies killing them, and everyone applauds when they die.  So Ashley Babbitt hurt not a single person on January 6th.  She was unarmed, and yet, Andy McCabe's defenders justified shooting her because the FBI says she was somehow a threat to national security.
• 
JOY REID: Ashli Babbitt, who was a trained Air Force specialist, trained by our tax dollars to kill, she was a military member.  If she had gotten through that door, God knows what kind of harm she could have done.
• 
DEAN OBEIDALLAH, MSNBC COLUMNIST: His supporters who attack the Capitol are terrorists.  It`s two plus two equals four stuff, like Ashli Babbitt, all those who attacked the Capitol are terrorists because the FBI director has said it was an act of terrorism.
• 
REP.  SWALWELL: Ashley Babbitt was the woman that was leading the mob that was about to storm the House floor and she was shot by a brave officer that was the last line of defense for many members of Congress and many of these members were the slowest, least mobile members.  If they had been overrun by that mob, people would have been killed.
• 
She was a threat to their safety.  She was like 5' 2" and totally unarmed.  She was not warned, by the way, before she was shot to death.  We've never seen the results of that investigation.
• 
We know the man who shot her was completely reckless.  He left a loaded firearm in a men's room in the Capitol.  He wasn't fired for that for some reason, no one in the federal government ever fired.
• 
So that's clearly over the line in a functional country, but then to see those ghouls gloating about the death of an unarmed woman?  How will they treat you?
• 
So they're telling you that for the crime of praying in the Capitol building, Ashley Babbitt deserved to be executed.
• 
At the same time, they're telling you that, they're ignoring other crimes, once committed by people who are actually armed.
• 
An 18-year-old who opened fire in his classroom in Texas shot several people, got out of jail in a single day.  He told us he was bullied.  Yet another victim of white supremacy and he got a pass...
• 
Shooting an unarmed woman in the neck without warning her because you didn't like what she was saying.  But if you torch a federal courthouse in Portland, no problem.
• 
If you show up at a school board meeting and object to your 14-year-old daughter being raped in the bathroom, that's when you get thrown to the ground and taken to jail.
• 
SCOTT SMITH: Then I tried to tell the lady what had happened to my daughter.  And she looked me down in the face and said, that's not what happened.  And that just struck me, like, how do you know what happened?  You don't even know me.  // And she started in on me again and threatened my family business, my livelihood, everything that gives my family what we need.  She threatened to ruin my business on social media.  // The next thing I know, I'm getting touched from all over the place.  I didn't know who was touching me, who was grabbing me.  I turn around, the police are grabbing me.  And next thing I know, I'm tackled to the ground.
• 
They're not for defunding the police...  They're for repurposing the police.  They're not against the use of force.  They embrace the use of force.  As long as it's against their political opponents.
• 
Therefore, letting criminals off the hook and redefining people who oppose the regime as criminals, the only ones who get punished.
• 
What form of government is this?  It's not democracy, it's anarchical tyranny.  ... this is a threat to the very center of the American idea, which is equality.  Under the law, everyone treated the same by the justice system.
• 
Right now, you can burn a Target in Minneapolis.  You can burn a Wendy's and face no consequences, but try to defend your own property like the McCloskeys.
• 
Try to exercise your constitutional right to state your views about the last election and you go to jail.  That's true.
      Tucker Carlson: The people in charge are intent on replacing democracy with authoritarianism  (Fox 10/09/2021)
• 
The people in charge are intent on replacing our free democratic system with an authoritarian system where they don't convince you of anything.  They simply make you do things and they benefit from that.
• 
... that really is the divide.  People are for an authoritarian America and those who are for a free America.  It's that simple.  And once you start to understand politics through that lens, you figure out what's really going on.
• 
If we allocate power based on who's the most popular with the public and that's the basic premise of democracy, the Democratic Party is in very tough shape and they know that.
• 
And that may be why, according to polls, Democrats now overwhelmingly want the government to make their political opponents shut up.
• 
More than three-quarters of Democratic Party voters want the tech companies to "restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information."
• 
So that's authoritarianism, there's no other word for it.  And it's ironic considering for four years, prominent Democrats told us we were living through a fascist system.  Donald Trump was a fascist.
• 
So you'll recall that Joe Biden voters destroyed statues and destroyed our country's biggest cities for more than a year, and the police did nothing about it.  And our media class applauded.
• 
And yet, because justice is no longer meted out equally if someone dares to dishonor the legacy of St.  George Floyd, the New York Police Department Special Hate Crimes Division springs into action.
• 
So that's not really hypocrisy anymore, it's hierarchy.  What they're telling you is that crimes against their ideas are the only crimes that matter.
• 
Well, that attitude has no popular support in this country, so you can only enforce it by force using surveillance to root out people who've got the wrong ideas.
      Tucker Carlson: Media will never admit there was no insurrection  (Fox 09/24/2021)
• 
In March 1971, a bomb went off in the U.S.  Capitol building.  There was no mystery about who did it.  A Marxist group called the Weather Underground took responsibility for it, even before the explosions.
• 
The Weathermen weren't ashamed of what they did.  They planned to overthrow the U.S.  government, and they wanted everyone to know it.
• 
Yet even at the time, many Americans weren't aware of this.  The media immediately began telling a very different story about what happened.
• 
The Washington Post, for example, explained that the radical left wasn't actually to blame for the Capitol bombings.  Instead the culprit was something far more general, something called quote, "the easy contagion of extremism in a time of dark frustrations and deep disillusionment." (Whatever that means.  It probably means that there was a Republican president at the time.)...
• 
The actual bombers remained welcome in polite society.  Years later, one of them became a quote, "distinguished professor" at a supposedly prestigious American university.
• 
Leftists commit violence and the media covers for them?  That's something most of us are highly familiar with.  It's been happening for a very long time.
• 
To this day, there are a lot of Americans who think a right-winger killed JFK.  Of course, the gunman was a man so committed to communism that he defected to the Soviet Union.  But the media told the public it was a conservative, so many believed them.
• 
Partisans understand that history is a tool they can use to accumulate power.  So they lie about something to suit their ends, they keep lying, and before long their lies are recorded as truth.
• 
We're living through distorted history as we watch the events of January 6 described by everyone.  Here's how the media described that day:
• 
TARA SETMEYER, CNN: That day will be another day that lives in infamy in history, similar to Pearl Harbor and 9/11
• 
CHUCK SCHUMER: We can now add January 6th, 2021 to that very short list of dates in American history that will live forever in infamy.
• 
BIDEN: The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
• 
ANDERSON COOPER: 150 days since the worst single act of political violence since the Civil War.
• 
CHRIS HAYES: The worst attack on American democracy since the Civil War SCHUMER: The greatest attempt at insurrection since the Civil War.
• 
STEVE SCHMIDT: The 1/6 attacks are likely to kill a lot more Americans than were killed on the 9/11 attacks.
• 
MATTHEW DOWD: Though there was less loss of life on January 6th, January 6th was worse than 9/11.
• 
Because we are literal, let's go through the evidence: only one person was killed on Jan.  6, and that person was an unarmed female protestor, shot in the neck without warming by a Capitol Hill police officer who happens to have a documented history of extreme recklessness.
• 
The protestors, meanwhile, killed no one.  Yet they're telling you those protesters were worse than the imperial Japanese army that attacked Pearl Harbor, killed thousands of Americans and led to the Second World War, the biggest war in history.  They're also worse than al Qaeda.
• 
BESCHLOSS: Think of the 6th of January.  If those terrorists who committed that attack on our Capitol had been a little bit faster, they could have and probably would have executed the vice president, executed the speaker of the House, executed other members and leaders of Congress.
• 
You look at that, and say ‘that guy's stupid,' and that's fair, by the way.  But then you look at 15 other guys just like him saying exactly the same thing, and you have to ask yourself, why are they all saying the exact same thing, maybe there's a purpose here.
• 
And that might lead you to ask what actually happened, and how can we find out?  How can we make up our minds for ourselves?
• 
It's clearly a significant day in American history.  It's being used to change the country.  So maybe we should get to the actual facts of that day, what are they?
• 
Well, it turns out, the Biden administration didn't want to tell us what they were.  They refused to release thousands of hours of surveillance footage from within the Capitol on January 6.
• 
Why wouldn't they want us to see that?  Well, we're not sure.  But we know they really didn't want us to see it.  In fact, they went to court to keep the footage under seal.
• 
The point is they can't let you see the video because it's just too dangerous to national security.  Keep in mind, the Capitol is a public building, which technically speaking, you own.  You've probably been inside, because until the other day, you were allowed to, because it's your country, or was.
• 
So, the idea that you're not allowed to see the inside of the Capitol is insane.  The idea that the public has a clear interest in knowing what happened that day is real.
• 
Footage we have seen up to this point — shot by journalists and citizens — contradicted the official storyline.
• 
So if you look at the guy in the Viking horns, the Chewbacca guy, you may reach the obvious conclusion maybe Psilocybin mushrooms aren't good for you.  And that's fair.
• 
But no honest person could look at that video and decide America is under attack from terrorists.
• 
When you see images from a surveillance camera positioned at the entrance to the Senate wing of the capitol, you don't see people hiding bombs, or using bayonets or firing weapons, trying to take over the country, an insurrection.
• 
You see people walking around taking pictures.  They don't look like terrorists, they look like tourists, and all of them, by the way, are Americans.  The rest of the footage, including shots from surveillance cameras outside the crypt at the capitol, is similar.
• 
You can look up all of this footage online right now.  And you should.  Because you'll notice that contrary to what the DOJ – we're going to have to start putting air quotes around that - claimed, none of the footage shows a secret route into the capitol.
• 
You can compare the footage that was released with what Democrats showed us during the impeachment hearings earlier this year. 
• 
Surveillance footage shows a squad of people, dressed in all-black, systematically entering the capitol and kicking open one of the exterior doors on the Senate side.
• 
They appear to be well-trained and coordinated.  They're not high on hallucinogenic mushrooms.  The question is, who are they?
• 
What is clear is that, once again, this footage reveals that the first draft of history was a lie.  An intentional distortion.  A mirage created to control you.  It was the work of a specific political party, it was the work of the Democratic party.
• 
So it turns out, the vast majority of people inside the Capitol on January 6 were peaceful.  They were not insurrectionists.  They shouldn't have been there, they weren't trying to overthrow the government, that's a total crock.
• 
And with that in mind, some of the other lies about January 6 start to make more sense.  Remember this?
• 
ANA CABRERA, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher in the hours-long attack.
• 
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC: They beat a capitol police officer to death with a fire extinguisher.
• 
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN: Officer Brian Sicknick died after being hit in the head with a fire extinguisher after the fight.
• 
CRAIG MELVIN, MSNBC: He died at the age of 42 after he was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher.
• 
When all of them are using exactly the same line, maybe there's a reason for that.  Maybe it's coordinated.  Maybe they're lying.  In this case, they were lying.
• 
Brian Sicknick was not murdered – there's no evidence of that at all, the medical examiner said he died of a stroke.
• 
So, the reason they told you that is they wanted to establish a storyline before all the facts were in.
• 
That's a common theme for virtually everything that happens in the news right now.  Something happens, you're not exactly sure what the outline is, you don't know all the facts, nobody does, and all of a sudden, they hang a story on it that helps them politically, and they ram it down your throat day after day.
• 
Remember the lies you heard again and again about the McCloskeys, who were White supremacists, or the Covington kids, who were also White supremacists.
• 
Remember how they claimed George Floyd was choked to death, even though an autopsy showed he had a fatal level of fentanyl in his system and zero signs of suffocation.
• 
And remember what they said about the laptop showing that Hunter Biden was selling access to this father for years, but no it wasn't real:
• 
FRANK FIGLIUZZI, MSNBC: disinformation that he knows to be fabricated and supplied by a foreign intelligence service and despite the warning, he's still doing it.
• 
TIFFANY CROSS, MSNBC: You have said this entire thing is so obviously a Russian plot.
• 
JOHN AVLON, CNN: It's sort of a crazy quilt that has all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation.
• 
That said it wasn't for lack of trying.
• 
NICOLLE WALLACE, MSNBC: Rudy basically functioning as a Russian asset by pushing Russian disinformation.
• 
BRIAN STELTER, CNN: CNN reported on Friday that U.S.  authorities are seeing if those e-mails we just talked about, are connected to an ongoing Russian disinformation effort.  Huh.
• 
These people are so shameless.  They know they're being used by liars and the Democratic party and the so-called intel community and they just mouth the words anyway.  They say whatever they're told to say.
• 
And then, of course, the tech community gets involved and shuts down all conversation about it.
• 
Joe Biden went on stage at a presidential debate and repeated the lie.
• 
BIDEN: We are in a situation where we have foreign countries trying to interfere in the outcome of our election.
• 
His own national security adviser told him that what is happening with his buddy, Rudy Giuliani, he's being used as a Russian pawn.  He's being fed information that is Russian.  Information that is not true.
• 
They all knew it was true at the time.  They knew within hours of the first New York Post story that really was the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop.  Everybody knew it.  Everybody.
• 
Especially Joe Biden.  His texts and emails were all over the laptop.  Of course he knew they were real.  He wrote them.
• 
But, the media lied on his behalf, and Biden got elected because they covered for him.  And now that he is President, they can admit it is, in fact, all true.  Too late, it's true.
• 
Politico finally got around to confirming that every bit of the New York Post's reporting on Hunter Biden's laptop was absolutely accurate.  It wasn't Russian disinformation, it was totally real.
• 
When are they going to admit there was no insurrection?  Never.
      Tucker Carlson: This is proof Biden and his lackeys in the media are lying about COVID  (Fox 09/24/2021)
• 
Think about that: blaming regular Americans for a virus that American bureaucrats funded and the Chinese military created.
• 
If you don't follow his made-up laws, laws with no precedent in all of American history, you're the reason we're all suffering.
• 
It's your fault middle America.  Of course it is.  It's always middle America's fault.  What a lie.
      Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden revealed why he supports illegal immigration in 2015, he wants to change the country  (Fox 09/23/2021)
• 
You've got to ask yourself, as you watch the historic tragedy that is Joe Biden's immigration policy, what's the point of this?  Nothing about it is an accident, obviously.  It is intentional.  Biden did it on purpose.  But why?
• 
Why would a president do this to his own country?  No sane, first-world nation opens its borders to the world.  Promising the poorest people on the planet that they can have endless free, taxpayer-funded services if they show up and break your laws isn't just stupid.  It's suicidal.
• 
What Joe Biden is doing now will change this country forever.  So, again, why's he doing it?
• 
There's only one plausible answer.  You're not allowed to say it out loud.  CNN will attack you if you do.  The social media companies will shut you down.  The Southern Poverty Law Center will call you dangerous.  You could lose your bank account.  The left will become completely unhinged and hysterical, and that's how you know it's true.
• 
So it would be risky for us to explain what's actually happening here.  But for once we don't need to do that.  Joe Biden himself has already done it.  Biden explained the entire point of mass immigration back in 2015, when he was Vice President:...
• 
JOE BIDEN: An unrelenting stream of immigration.  Nonstop, nonstop.  Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent, for the first time in 2017 we'll be an absolute minority in the United States of America.  Absolute minority.  Fewer than 50% of the people in America from then and on will be white European stock.  That's not a bad thing.  That's a source of our strength.
• 
... there's a reason Biden said it.  In political terms, this policy is sometimes called the great replacement — the replacement of legacy Americans, with more obedient people from faraway countries.
• 
They brag about it all the time, but if you dare to say this is happening they'll scream at you with maximum hysteria.  And yet here you have Joe Biden confirming his motive, on tape, with a smile on his face.
• 
No one who talks like this should ever be the President of the United States.  The president has a moral obligation to represent all Americans equally, not just those of a specific color.
• 
For four years, remember, they told you Donald Trump was a racist.  But has anyone shown that Trump ever in his life said anything half as disgusting as Joe Biden said on that tape?  No.  No one has.
• 
Two sitting members of Congress told you it's "racist" to enforce immigration law.  ... "It's worse than slavery," enforcing our own laws.  That was Maxine Waters.
• 
Haitians aren't bad people, a lot of them are great people.  But we have no obligation to let them into our country.  American citizens owe no debt to Haiti.  Haiti was never an American colony.
• 
It's been an independent country for more than 200 years, since 1804.  For much of that time, we've sent Haiti a whole lot of aid.  So however sad and dysfunctional Haiti might be, it's not our fault.  That's for sure.
      Tucker Carlson: Open borders means the death of young Americans, but Biden doesn't care  (Fox 09/17/2021)
• 
Close to 100,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses in the last year.  ... These are kids on your street, young people in the prime of life, our country's future, the next generation.  And they are dead now, mostly because of fentanyl that came up through Mexico.
• 
So open borders means much more of this poison in your neighborhood, killing our children.  Statistics released this week show that as of the end of July, fentanyl seizures at the southern border are more than double what they were for all of last year.
• 
Joe Biden never even mentions it.  He doesn't care.  And drugs are hardly the only disastrous effect of open borders, the median price of a new home in this country is now almost six times higher than the median American household income.  Think about that.  That's a record.  It's never happened.
• 
Thanks to the lunatics now in charge, this unsustainable growth is accelerating in ways it never has before, ever.  Under Joe Biden, hundreds of thousands of immigrants are coming into the United States every single month.
• 
So where are they going to live?  Where are they going to send their children to school?  What about the health care they've been promised for free?  Have you been to a hospital emergency room recently?  You should go.  Check it out.
• 
Once you see it, you'll understand the future of the Democratic Party is planning for you: squalid, overcrowded, chaotic, loud.
• 
Of course, having created this human disaster, Democrats now claim they have a solution to it, of course, that's why they created it in the first place so they could fix it.
• 
The Biden administration's plan will ultimately entitle illegal immigrants to the full benefits of citizenship.  That's the whole point.  That would include Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, etc., etc., etc.  Even as the welfare state expands, the number of people drawing from it expands as well.
• 
How's that going to end?  The cost of all of this, according to the Congressional Budget Office, will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the next few years alone.  What about the long term?  Some estimates put the cost at well over a trillion dollars or more.
• 
They don't care about individuals.  Individuals are expendable.  That's the mindset of every revolutionary through history.  People are a means to power.
• 
So to our leaders, illegal immigrants have a very specific functional purpose, they are a tool to change the country forever and ensure permanent democratic control over our government.  They look at the numbers.
• 
If you were born in this country and you don't have a high school degree, you're not voting for them.  You don't like what they're doing.  They don't want to change your mind.  They can't be bothered.  So they're going to bring in new people without high school degrees.  Got it?  It's changing the country in order to win elections.
      Tucker Carlson: Mark Milley is a danger to the country, and Congress doesn't seem to care  (Fox 09/16/2021)
• 
Yesterday we learned that Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a danger to the country.  That was not totally surprising.  We already knew he was a reckless nutcase.
• 
In June, in the middle of a televised congressional hearing, Milley leveled a racial attack against more than half of this country.  Milley told Congress that something called White rage was a national crisis.
• 
He never proved it or even defined the term and yet still he kept his job, which says as much about Congress as it does about him.
• 
Then in July, we learned that Milley had suggested the U.S.  military was willing to use violence against Donald Trump, who was then the sitting president.  "We're the guys with guns," he told fellow officers.  Still, Congress did nothing.
• 
Now ... we've learned that Milley secretly collaborated with our greatest military rival, the government of China.
• 
On October 30th last year, according to the book, Milley called his counterpart in China - a Chinese general.  He did not tell his boss about the call either before he made it or after.
• 
Here was Milley's message for the Chinese military: "We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.  General Li, you and I have known each other for five years.  If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.  It's not going to be a surprise."
• 
It's hard to believe that conversation actually took place, but apparently, it did.  More than 24 hours after it was reported, Mark Milley has not denied it.
• 
Instead, his spokesman released a statement today confirming that Milley does regularly speak to Chinese military officials, but claiming that those calls are authorized by civilian leaders at the Pentagon.
• 
But that turns out to be a lie.  Just hours ago, the former secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, told ... he has no idea what Mark Milley is talking about.
• 
"As secretary of defense, I did not and would not ever authorize such conduct." As Miller put it, "A lesser ranking officer accused of such behavior would immediately be relieved of duty."
• 
But Mark Milley has not been relieved of duty and apparently he won't be.  Today, Joe Biden endorsed him and the job he's doing.
• 
So for secretly revealing American military strategy to the Chinese government for threatening violence against a sitting American president, Mark Milley is not going to be punished.  Are you surprised by this?  Maybe you shouldn't be.
• 
... Milley thinks China is winning, and so he's sucking up to his new masters, so he tells us, "Russia's the only country on Earth that has the capacity to destroy the United States."
• 
That's absurd.  Nobody believes that.  The Chinese military is far, far more powerful than anything Vladimir Putin controls.  It's not even close.  Milley knows that, he's lying about it. 
• 
See related Woke General Milley (Dick Wright, 06/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Mark Milley committed treason, and others were implicated  (Fox 09/15/2021)
• 
There's something about the term "deep state" that sounds paranoid, even nutty.  ... The term ... suggests that our democracy is fake.  Elections and domestic politics are a sideshow.  No matter who you vote for, in the end, the same people still run everything.  That's a pretty dark understanding of the American system.
• 
If you're a normal person who grew up here, it's the last thing you want to believe about your country.  It seems crazy.  And then you read stories like this one:...
• 
According to reporting this summer, in the days after last November's election, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, held a meeting with senior military officials at the Pentagon.
• 
Milley wanted to inform them of what he described as a serious threat to national security — a threat so grave it imperiled "the stability of the Republic."
• 
That threat, Milley said, was the sitting president of the United States.  Donald Trump had dared to question the election results.
• 
For this, Milley explained, the United States military might be required to use physical force against the president.
• 
"We're the guys with guns," Milley said.  He'd apparently been preparing for this moment.  Milley had similar conversations with the director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, as well as with the head of the NSA, Paul Nakasone.  He'd also spoken directly to Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Trump's chief political rivals.
• 
... Milley went even further than that.  ... called his counterpart in China, a general called Li Zuocheng.  Milley did not tell his boss, the president, about the call, either before he made it or afterward.
• 
Here was Milley's message for the communist Chinese military.  "Gen.  Li, I want to assure you that the American government is stable and everything is going to be OK.  We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you."
• 
"Gen.  Li, you and I have known each other for five years.  If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.  It's not going to be a surprise."
• 
Let that sink in.  "If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.  It's not going to be a surprise." According to this account, our country's top defense official secretly colluded with our chief military rival to undercut the elected president of the United States.
• 
How do you describe this?  "Deep state" isn't strong enough.  It's treason.  It's a crime.
• 
And apparently, Mark Milley isn't the only person implicated in it.  Others knew it was happening.  Our intelligence agencies almost certainly heard Mark Milley's call.
• 
Yet the NSA did nothing.  The CIA was clearly fully on board.  "We are on the way to a right-wing coup," Gina Haspel told Milley.
• 
In fact, there was a "coup" in progress, but it didn't come from the right.  It wasn't brewing in Alabama.
• 
Instead, a constellation of unelected government employees, loyal above all to the Democratic party and the permanent class in Washington, ignored the United States Constitution and invalidated the votes of tens of millions of American citizens.
• 
How'd they do that?  They invalidated democracy.  Democracy doesn't mean anything if the people you elect have no power.
• 
In early January ... Milley called another meeting of senior officials at the National Military Command Center.
• 
He informed the group that they reported to him, not to the elected president of the United States.  It was not a small claim.
• 
The National Military Command Center controls, among other things, the nuclear weapons inside the country's missile silos and onboard its nuclear submarines.  Mark Milley was seizing personal control of America's nuclear arsenal.
• 
He went around the room and demanded his officers submit to his authority, not the president.  Milley told them to follow no order without consulting him first.  Civilian control of the military was over.  Mark Milley was in charge.
• 
If this is true, this is one of the scariest things that has happened in this country.  To those who say they're worried about authoritarianism coming in America, well, it's here.
• 
That's what this is.  Authoritarian government.  Government by unelected, unaccountable leaders willing to use violence to preserve their rule.
• 
It's shocking.  Not surprisingly, our news media have spent the day celebrating it.  It turns out the self-described defenders of democracy don't really believe in the system they claim to revere.
• 
The idea of giving voters power over the government repulses them.  They're relieved to discover that, in fact, our democracy is fake.
• 
They're happy to see Mark Milley secretly conspiring with the Chinese military to end civilian control of our Pentagon.  This is the government they want.  You should not forget that.
      Tucker Carlson: The degradation of our people is the real American crisis  (Fox 09/14/2021)
• 
Joe Biden, Sept.  9: "I'm announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees that together employ over 80 million workers to ensure their workforces are Fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.  // We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers.  // We've been patient, but our patience is wearing thin and the refusal has cost all of us."
• 
Virtually every sentence of the speech reinforced a single point again and again.  And it was this: Your fellow Americans are dangerous to you.  They could kill you.  And that includes your family, it includes your friends, it includes the people you sit next to at work.  All of these people are threats to you and only the Biden administration can save you.  "We're going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated coworkers."
• 
Think about that for a moment.  Does it make sense?  If the vaccine works — and they assure us adamantly that it does work and they punish us if we question how well it works — then how can the unvaccinated possibly pose a threat to the vaccinated?  How?  What exactly is the risk exactly to the vaccinated from the unvaccinated?
• 
Joe Biden didn't tell us the answer.  He didn't tell us because he doesn't know.  No one knows.  There is no answer.  The entire argument is transparently absurd.  And once you realize that, you realize that none of this endless talking about public health, at this point, is really about public health.
• 
If it was about public health, the authorities would simply make vaccines available to anyone who wanted the vaccine, call it a victory, which it would be, and leave it there.
• 
But that's not what it's about.  It's about power.  These demands are so obviously irrational, that forcing you to accept them without complaint is the whole point of the exercise. 
• 
It is a form of sadomasochism, it is dominance and submission.  It's about power.  If they can make you take medicine you don't want or need, they've won.  You are theirs.  You belong to them.  They want this.
• 
... the very moment Joe Biden accused the unvaccinated of wrecking our hospital system, they're going to flood the system – at that moment, actual hospitals around the country were beginning to deny critical services to patients because too many nurses had quit.  Why did the nurses quit?  Because of the vaccine mandates.  They left their jobs rather than get the COVID vaccine.
• 
... health care executive told ... that only about half of his front-line nurses who treat COVID every day have received the COVID vaccination.  The rest of those nurses have refused.  Half!
• 
Again, these are people who treat COVID for a living.  You can't dismiss them as uninformed.  They know virtually more than anyone in the world about this subject.  But they've refused the vaccine.  Why?
• 
No one's answered that question and until recently, no one thought we'd have to answer that question.  Because until recently, mandatory vaccines were unthinkable, even among Democrats.
• 
For a quick recap, a year ago they were telling you maybe you shouldn't take the vaccine because Trump created it.  A few months ago they were assuring you – Nancy Pelosi in April assured you – we're never going to require vaccines because we can't do that.  We don't have the power.  Your medical status is a matter, a sacred matter, of privacy.
• 
Leana Wen (CNN): "There are privileges associated with being an American.  That if you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated.  Travel, and having the right to travel in our state, it's not a constitutional right as far as I know to board a plane."
• 
"If you wish to have these privileges, you need to get vaccinated." The person who said that ... is the former head of Planned Parenthood.
• 
Her name is Leana Wen.  That's quite a statement to make.  So here you have a woman who moved to this country from China sitting authoritatively in a box on CNN, lecturing Americans that their most basic birthright — the right to travel within their own country, the country they were born in — is now, in fact, a privilege that the Democratic Party may decide to grant you if follow its demands.
• 
How dare somebody say something like that out loud on television?  What country is this?  But more to the point, why doesn't anyone in authority seem outraged by it?  Possibly because a lot of them hope that's our future.
• 
If that sounds like a fever dream or paranoia, rest assured it's not.  Without mass resistance, that's exactly what's coming, and it's coming soon.
• 
And once it does come, the question is where does it go from there?  In a moment of centralized tech surveillance, combined with mass social conformity, and that's exactly the country we're living in right now, there aren't many limits to where it could go.  9/14/21
• 
If they can force you to take a vaccine that you don't need, what can't they do?  Why don't they, I don't know, make you take psychiatric drugs if you're persistently disobedient?  Express the wrong view, get a Thorazine shot.  Why couldn't they do that?  What's the limiting principle on them?
• 
In fact, you can imagine a panel of CNN doctors explaining that we'd all be a lot safer if the mentally ill propagandists on the radical right got the treatment they need, and stopped spreading their dangerous conspiracy theories.  So giving them psychotropic meds is an urgent matter of public health.  Does that sound far-fetched?
• 
Suddenly things are moving very fast, and they're all moving in a very specific direction.  Just the other day, one of the most prominent members of the United States Senate — the former Harvard Law professor called Elizabeth Warren — wrote a public letter to Amazon demanding the site ban books she disagrees with...
• 
So here you have a self-described liberal, who was a law professor at a premier law school, calling for book burning.  Did you think you'd live to see that?  The most amazing thing is that no one seemed to notice.
• 
Most people understand it's all crap.  And they know it's crap because they live here.  And they know the greatest crisis that America actually faces is the disintegration of America itself — and not just of the social fabric — what do we have in common again?  — more than that.
• 
The physical reality of the country is disintegrating: the buildings, the natural landscape, and above all, the people.  A lot of them are falling apart. 
• 
Look around.  Yes, Americans are dying in large numbers, but it's not from a Chinese flu virus.  The real dangers to the population are much more obvious than that and they're omnipresent.
• 
It's loneliness, it's suicide, it's fast food, it's broken relationships, it's Xanax and fentanyl, and cheap beer.  Americans are dying in large numbers of self-inflicted deaths, caused by sadness and neglect.  That is true.
• 
New video was shot in downtown Philadelphia not along ago...  That's the real crisis that we face.  It's right in front of us.  The walking dead, haunting our cities and forgotten rural towns.  How did they get there?  There are hundreds and hundreds of them just in Philadelphia — shuffling, moaning, shooting up, dying — all under daylight in a major American city.  And by the way, right down the street from where our founding documents were written.
• 
Imagine the selfless geniuses who framed our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, returning 250 years later to see what their country has become.
• 
So that is the actual crisis that we face; it's the degradation of our people.  But rather than fix it or care about it, which is the first step toward fixing it, they increase the degradation.
• 
Bow to our will or we'll punish you.  Violate your own beliefs.  Give us your dignity.  And the very moment when the American population desperately needs to be loved, helped, understood, uplifted, they are being degraded and punished by their leaders.  How is that going to end?
      Tucker Carlson: Our military has been lying to us for 20 years  (Fox 09/04/2021)
• 
In July of 2017, every member of the joint chiefs of staff met with newly-elected President Donald Trump for the first time.  It didn't go well.  "You're all losers," the president told them...  "You don't know how to win anymore."
• 
It was a harsh assessment, obviously though arguably true, the joint chiefs of staff are the nation's highest-ranking military officers.  Their job is to follow the order of elected officials and protect the country, no matter how much their feelings may be hurt.
• 
According to U.S.  Army Major General Paul Eaten, the president's insults that day, and the similar comments he made in public, were a bitter humiliation for the nation's military leaders.
• 
"I was really shocked by how many of my former colleagues voted for the former president and openly supported him.  But when [Trump] turned on the military, well, the military turned on him."
• 
Keep in mind, that is not how democracy is supposed to work — military leaders report to the people you elect.  Again that's not what happened.
• 
... the military refused to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan, even though they were ordered to do so by the elected president of the United States — again no civilian control of the military.
• 
When Joe Biden finally became president, on inauguration day, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, was so excited he couldn't control himself.
• 
... no matter how badly our mission in Afghanistan was deteriorating — we were never clear on what that mission was — but clearly, our strategy of pacifying the nation was falling apart.
• 
No matter how bad it got in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and its spokesmen repeatedly told us they were making incredible progress.
• 
So if you're wondering why Americans are so confused that Kabul fell in an afternoon and the Taliban controlled the country we occupied for 20 years, maybe it's because they thought we were making progress.
• 
Lying to the rest of us about what is actually happening with our troops with our money in our name in a foreign country has been the philosophy of this nation's military establishment for the last twenty years, and it's also the philosophy of every high-ranking official in the Biden administration.
• 
We had twenty years to figure it out but we have no idea how many Americans including schoolchildren remain in Afghanistan because we're the adults in the room.
• 
It takes a special kind of arrogance, we used to call it cultural imperialism, to imagine other cultures want to ape your family structure for example.  Isn't it up to Afghans to decide what families they want?
• 
No.  We tried to impose our customs on them and they hated it and maybe that's one of the reasons the Taliban took over in a weekend.
• 
... while we've been leading with our diplomacy, we've given billions of dollars of American military equipment to the Taliban.
• 
So now, were arming the Taliban and marooning our own citizens in Afghanistan.  Who could possibly have seen that coming?
• 
See related On the Other Hand... (David Hitch, 08/22/2021)) cartoon from Government picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Texas abortion law demonstrates democracy still exists  (Fox 09/03/2021)
• 
Here's an interesting observation/theory: The slogans they yell the loudest are the ones they believe the least.
• 
The very same people who've told us for decades that it's "my body, my choice," and seemed to mean it — those people — immediately abandoned their own argument when Covid arrived.
• 
... the court upheld a Texas law that effectively bans abortion once a fetal heartbeat is detected.  Typically that's at about six weeks into pregnancy.  The law doesn't allow the government of Texas to enforce the ban.  No one's going to jail over abortion.  Instead, the new law lets citizens sue clinics that commit illegal abortions.
• 
No matter how you feel about abortion, it's hard to argue this is an especially radical law.  Intentionally stopping a person's heart from beating is the definition of killing.
• 
Government has a right to regulate that.  Deciding when it's OK to kill a person is, on the most basic level, the whole reason we have laws in the first place.
• 
So whether it's right or wrong or whether you like it or not, it's not a crazy statute.  It did however drive the media crazy.
• 
So few sane people are left with big platforms in this country that you almost never hear a sensible, logical, rational argument about anything.
• 
Just hours ago, the A.C.L.U.  released this statement.  Quote: "Far from compromising them, vaccine mandates actually further civil liberties." You have more civil liberties when they control your body.
• 
You can imagine the 1860s version: "Far from compromising civil liberties, slavery actually enhances personal freedom." It's not even Orwellian at this point.  It's post-Orwell.
• 
But millions of Americans do recognize this moment for what it is.  It's proof that democracy does still exist — voters can decide what they want for their communities, their states, their towns, and courts will potentially respect that right.  It's called self-government.
• 
The legislature in Texas legislature has realized this for months now.  They've passed laws banning vaccine passports, homeless encampments, racist struggle sessions in school, protests that block emergency vehicles from riding down the road.
• 
Those are laws specific to Texas and what the people of Texas want and a lot of those laws are still on the books.
• 
Why should Texas have to be exactly like California?  That problem is if that kind of thinking spreads nationally it gravely disempowers the people at CNN and the so-called civil rights organizations that think they are in control of everything.
• 
On the other hand, it might actually save civil rights for the rest of us and that might be a good thing.
      Tucker Carlson: Contrition is essential to fixing problems, our leaders don't have it  (Fox 08/31/2021)
• 
We've just learned from the commander of U.S.  troops in the region that at least some of these people — our countrymen, our fellow Americans — really are trapped in a nation controlled by the Taliban.
• 
They tried to flee, but it was too chaotic and dangerous.  As General McKenzie put it, they couldn't get to the airport in time.  So the U.S.  military just left.  Tough.  Call us if you make it to Tampa.
• 
It's hard to believe Kenneth McKenzie admitted this in public.  The reporters in the briefing room seemed to think it was all perfectly normal — just another Pentagon briefing.
• 
But it's not normal, not in this country.  It's appalling on every level.  It's the definition of dishonorable.
• 
What's the point of having a military that doesn't bother to rescue its own citizens?  Serious question.  Why do we have an army — all those guns and helicopters and missile systems?  Isn't the whole purpose to protect Americans?
• 
Apparently, there's another purpose, or at least that's the view of the man who oversees the military's central command.  Those trapped Americans aren't our problem, General McKenzie explained.  Let the State Department deal with them.
• 
Yes, Blinken confirmed, there are more than 100 Americans who've been abandoned in Afghanistan and are desperate to get out.  No, we have no actual way to guarantee their safe passage, the military's gone.  But no problem.  The medieval theocracy that now runs the country has everything under control.  The Taliban have given us their word American citizens in Afghanistan will be fine.  And with that, Tony Blinken left the stage.
• 
Clearly, we're watching a pivot point in our history.  The most obvious casualty — apart from 13 dead servicemen last week — is American power and prestige, both of which, in the span of just days, have been profoundly diminished.
• 
There will be huge consequences of this moment, both in the near term and through the generations going forward.  But for now, it's worth wondering, who's taking responsibility for it?  Who's paying for this disaster?
• 
Not so long ago, that would have been an easy question to answer: our leaders.  Until recently, the people in charge understood that leadership comes with obligations, not just privileges.  If you're going to make big decisions, you have to be willing to suffer if they go wrong.
• 
In the spring of 1912, Edward Smith ran his ship into an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  As the ship went down, Smith didn't blame climate change for the disaster.  He stood stoically in the wheelhouse and rode the Titanic to the bottom of the ocean and people applauded.  No one thought that was strange.  It was expected.  He was in charge.  He stayed until the end.
• 
Over time, an entire class of foreign policy experts and political leaders watched for 20 years as Afghanistan turned into a pointless mess in which Americans died and we were damaged beyond repair.  As this happened they said nothing.
• 
What's their punishment?  How many have been fired or resigned, or even apologized?  That's the best place to start always.  To our knowledge, none.
• 
This is a disaster, that is obvious.  That disaster is the result of a series of bad decisions made by people whose names we know.  Have any of those people been punished, explained themselves, or apologized?
• 
Instead of taking any form of responsibility for the disaster they've caused, the Biden administration is bewilderingly doing the opposite — bragging about what a great job it's done.  Biden's flack has already announced that the White House doesn't plan to punish anyone at the Pentagon or at the intel agencies for what we are watching now — no one. 
• 
Our intelligence agencies received a combined $85 billion in last year alone in federal tax dollars.  That's more money than Russia, Germany, and the UK all spend on their entire annual military budgets.  And after all that money, our generals and our spies were confident Ashraf Ghani would stick around for an "orderly transition." They say there was no way to predict otherwise.
• 
Meanwhile, no one — not the Pentagon, the C.I.A., or the State Department — could say where Ashraf Ghani was — they had no idea.  Out authorities have no problem finding, say, a middle-aged woman who committed the crime of waving a flag at the Capitol building in January, but not the president of Afghanistan.
• 
Keep in mind — Ghani, no background in any relevant discipline.  The guy was a college professor who worked at Johns Hopkins.  We picked an incompetent tool from American academia, rather than an actual Afghan who could run the country...
• 
But still, none of our leaders are apologizing for any of this — they're not even acknowledging they screwed up.
• 
Suddenly a lot of what we've seen over the past 20 years in Afghanistan, and in particular the past four months, makes a lot of sense.  The "experts" in the State Department and the C.I.A.  took trillions of dollars to install people in Afghanistan who are as clueless as they are...
• 
Contrition is an essential part of fixing a problem.  It's not just practically important, it's spiritually important.
      Tucker Carlson: We must hold someone accountable for what is happening in Afghanistan  (Fox 08/14/2021)
• 
The funny thing is Mark Milley didn't seem to see any of this coming.  His real expertise, as he explained recently to Congress, is something called White rage.
• 
The Taliban, by contrast, are slightly tanner, so they didn't seem as dangerous as, say, the January 6th protesters.
• 
Three years ago, the inspector general for Afghan Reconstruction found that the Afghan government controlled or had influence over just half the country.  That's it.  In other words, Afghanistan has been unstable for a very long time.  Always, actually. 
• 
"We're on the right track now," said Jim Mattis in 2010.  Four years later, another general said "the Afghan National Security Forces are winning."
• 
So based on those confident assessments, officials in Washington spent more than $130 billion on nation-building there.
• 
For some perspective, that's more than we spent on the entire Marshall Plan in Europe after the world was destroyed in 1945.
• 
... only about two in 10 Afghan recruits in the fabled security forces could read or write.  That meant, among other things, they could not reliably follow orders, and apparently, they haven't been.  For years.
• 
Meanwhile, Afghan commanders have routinely pocketed taxpayer money from the United States with so-called ghost soldiers.  Those are troops who appeared on the payroll but didn't actually exist.
• 
One recent assessment found that between 50 and 70% of police positions in some Afghan provinces weren't really alive.  They weren't people.  They existed only on paper.
• 
Did Mark Milley know this?  The troops who did exist sometimes use their weapons to commit crimes and shoot American troops or officials.
• 
One Norwegian observer estimated that more than 30% of Afghan police recruits would take their guns and, "set up their own private checkpoints to extort travelers."
• 
Between 2007 and 2013, insider attacks from Afghan forces killed or injured hundreds of coalition troops.
• 
Other soldiers, again, with the money that we sent them, began to sexually abuse children.  ... "Rampant sexual abuse of children has long been a problem in Afghanistan, particularly among armed commanders who dominate much of the rural landscape and can bully the population."
• 
... and American soldiers and Marines have been instructed not to intervene, in some cases, not even when their Afghan allies have abused boys on military bases.
• 
Meanwhile, the actual country, quite apart from our social engineering projects, is collapsing at high speed.  So that's tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds of millions worth, of mine-resistant vehicles, Humvees, drones that the Pentagon left behind in Afghanistan.  And all of it now belongs to the Taliban.
• 
Yet somehow the Biden administration is still pretending maybe they have a choice, that they're in charge.
• 
The U.S.  embassy in Kabul just sent out this tweet: "We're hearing additional reports of Taliban executions, of surrendering Afghan troops, deeply disturbing and could constitute war crimes."
• 
War crimes.  Hilarious.  So when will the tribunals start?  Who's going to run the tribunals?  We may need to invade Afghanistan again.
• 
But instead, here's another idea, let's figure out how this happened.  How did we spend 20 years, trillions of dollars, thousands of American lives to end up with absolutely nothing but more humiliation?  Pashtun tribesmen shooting at us with our guns as we run away?  That is the definition of disaster.
• 
So rather than just complain about it, let's hold somebody accountable for it for once.  Half the Biden State Department had a hand in our failed Afghanistan policy, yet they're still employed there.  Why is that?
• 
The Pentagon was supposed to build a functional national army in Afghanistan to protect the government, which we installed.  But they didn't do that.
• 
So people didn't do their jobs and then lied about not doing their jobs.  But they're still wearing the uniform of our country.  Why is that?  Good question.
• 
So for the first time in a long time, maybe we could hold our own leaders to account for the calamities they have caused.
• 
That's not simply a matter of justice, though.  It definitely is that it is the only way to prevent disasters like this from happening again.
      Tucker Carlson: Hungarian architecture proves Americans don't understand 'how bad it can get'  (Fox 08/10/2021)
• 
... Hungarian and Central European architecture is essentially a lesson to the West of how good Americans have it, to the point that they don't understand or can't fathom the world across the oceans from them...
• 
... pointed to bullet holes still lodged in the Gothic buildings – something few places in the U.S.  outside of towns like Gettysburg, Pa., or Franklin, Tenn., – can lay claim to.
• 
"I wish I lived in a city full of bullet holes in the building because every morning you look at them and you think to yourself, it could be really bad because it's been really bad.  There's a lot at stake."
• 
... the permanently damaged buildings remind Hungarians to "make wise, sober, long term decisions or else you could wind up with more bullet holes."
• 
"I could spend all day leveling very accurate accusations against the American foreign policy establishment, but the main one would be that they have no sense of how bad things can get."
• 
"America is an optimistic country, always has been," Carlson said noting that the pilgrims "showed up in this mostly untouched continent with the most fertile farmland in the world and an ocean to separate us from the lunatics."
• 
"And it gave us the feeling that anything is possible and everything has been possible.  And I've never stopped being grateful for that or proud of it.  But the downside to that, the flip side, the obverse, the other side of the coin, as you say in Hungary, is that Americans have no sense of how bad things can get, that it actually could be a lot worse.  Our physical isolation cuts us off from the history of the rest of the world."
• 
"There's not a passion to study what happened before in a place that you're building a new.  Right, right.  So we don't have a sense of that.  So I love your bullet holes.  Let me just say, I'm probably the only visitor to your nation has complimented your small arms and artillery scars ...The buildings are pretty.  The architecture uplifts.  So this is another this is another third rail of American politics."
• 
"Every Hungarian I have met, every from the driver to the waiter to the border guard had better English than our own president."
      Tucker Carlson: COVID has been good to Democrats, it got them to the White House  (Fox 07/30/2021)
• 
We're watching the lunatics in charge of our country spiral even deeper into madness, and as we watch that, we feel a duty to keep track of their decline.
• 
We do this to assemble a permanent historical record of the craziness, if only for the amusement of future generations.
• 
It's all enough to make you wonder if Democrats might be using COVID for political advantage.  Why wouldn't they?  The pandemic has been awfully good to the Democrats so far.
• 
Their allies in the federal bureaucracy helped to create the virus in the first place, with ghoulish taxpayer-funded experiments in China.
• 
Once the virus came here, they rode the panic all the way to the White House and control of Congress, not to mention to a socialized economy.  Now they're betting coronavirus will help them keep power forever.
• 
That's exactly what's happening.  The question is, why are Republicans in Congress still playing along with it?  Because they're afraid of being called science deniers by people who think men can have babies?
• 
Today Joe Biden announced that the COVID vaccine — which, we remind you, still hasn't been approved by the FDA — is now, nevertheless, mandatory for all federal workers, as well as federal contractors and the armed forces.  That's many millions of people.
• 
Washington, D.C.  is a COVID hotspot says the credit card shill turned epidemiologist.  What does that mean?  We checked.  It turns out the District of Columbia has recorded a total of two COVID deaths over the past two weeks.
• 
How many is that?  In the same period, considerably more people in the city have been murdered.  The crime epidemic is far more dangerous to human beings in Washington than COVID is.
• 
But Biden isn't sending the National Guard to protect poor neighborhoods in D.C.  to keep people from being murdered.  He's mandating injections of an experimental vaccine.
• 
This isn't normal.  People should never be forced to take medicine they don't want or need.  That's a foundational principle.  It's not just a preference.  Everything is based on it.
• 
And the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with it.  Overwhelmingly in both parties.  And here's the amazing thing: suddenly you can no longer say that out loud.
• 
It is no longer factually correct to believe you can control what the government injects into your body.  Do you want to live in a place like this?
• 
See related Coronavirus (Sean Delonas, 03/012/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: This isn't about the science, here's proof  (Fox 07/29/2021)
• 
If you're looking for a single snapshot that perfectly distills the pure, hallucinogenic absurdity of the moment we're living in, consider the Biden administration's new guidance on COVID.  We learned yesterday that America's children will spend yet another year with covered faces.
• 
We also learned yesterday that the administration will force federal employees to take the covid vaccine.  This mandate will start with government healthcare workers.
• 
But now, Kamala Harris will make them.  Ponder that for a moment.  Willie Brown's girlfriend is claiming she knows more about medicine than doctors and nurses do.  She's an expert on the subject.
• 
So, by the way, is her 78-year-old business partner, the one who seems adrift in fantasy a lot of the time, and tends to nod out in mid-sentence.  He's a medical expert too.  He explained that, once you've had the vaccine, you don't need to wear a mask.
• 
JOE BIDEN: I think it's a great milestone.  A great day.  It's been made possible by the extraordinary success we've had in vaccinating so many Americans so quickly...  When your country asked you to get vaccinated, you did.  The American people stepped up.  You did what I consider to be your patriotic duty.  That's how we've gotten to this day...  If you've been fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.  Let me repeat: If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask.
• 
"Let me repeat: If you are fully vaccinated, you no longer need to wear a mask." And we believed that.  It made sense.  That was the settled science just two months ago, in May.  Only Russian spies and white supremacists questioned that science.
• 
Of course, you don't need a mask once you've had the vaccine.  Why would you?  The COVID vaccine is a miracle, like the moon landing.  It's foolproof.  It's all you need.  We actually believed that, because why wouldn't we?  It made sense.
• 
And then we saw something very strange Kamala Harris and her husband — whose name is either Doug or Douglas, depending on the source — kissed each other in public with masks on.  And this is strange because we knew that both had been vaccinated.  That's when we started to wonder.
• 
Either this was some sort of weird fetish ritual they're into — get the mask, it's time to kiss!  — or else the White House wasn't telling us everything about the vaccine.  They're still not telling us everything, but yesterday they dropped more clues.
• 
The administration now says that all people, including people who have been vaccinated, will have to wear masks, but only depending on where they live.  If you're in something called "high or substantial COVID" region, prepare to put on your mask.
• 
What does that mean exactly?  For the answer, we turn to the man who helped to create COVID in the first place.
• 
FAUCI: The recommendations and guidelines have been changed to say If you are vaccinated, even though you are vaccinated when you are in an indoor public setting in an area of the country with a high degree of viral dynamics, namely the red and orange sections on the CDC chart, then you need to wear a mask even though you are vaccinated.
• 
... how do you know if you live in one of those places?  According to Dr.  Fauci, just check the "red and orange sections on the CDC chart." Oh, right!  The chart you keep in your wallet next to your AAA card.  Look carefully and you'll see the "red and orange" account for more than 60% of the entire country.
• 
... here's one example: In Florida, the Sun-Sentinel newspaper recently ran this headline.  "New COVID cases nearly double in Florida — the worst in the nation." Holy smokes.  Better run to Georgia.
• 
And to show how scary this is, they included a chart that shows an uptick in positive test results, and it looked terrifying.  But those are the test results.  But actually, who cares?  What matters is the harm. 
• 
What they didn't include is the chart showing COVID deaths.  I wonder why?  Because those are near zero.  That's a very different picture, and it's the one that actually matters.
• 
It wasn't long ago that all of us understood that.  People like Tony Fauci, in fact, told us the goal was keeping people from dying from COVID.  That sounded reasonable to everybody.  That's why they said we needed the vaccine.  That's why millions took the vaccine.
• 
Now that they have taken the vaccine, politicians have decided that actually, they can't part with the enormous, unprecedented amounts of power they've amassed over the last year, so they're going to keep ordering us AROUND, regardless of the science.  And of course, Tony Fauci will defend it all, because in the end, he's one of them.
• 
In the past year, Tony Fauci has gone from telling us not to masks, they're totally useless, and plus doctors need them, to wear masks, or you will die, to wear three masks, or you will die, to don't wear any masks at all, to now, you'd better wear masks.  Now he's telling us he'd never flip-flopped on masks.
• 
In fact, they're doing such a bad job that even Kamala Harris doesn't know what to think.  ... You don't have to wear a mask if you're vaccinated, says the vaccinated lady who's wearing a mask.
• 
Does your head hurt yet trying to follow this?  It might be easier to stop thinking entirely and just obey.  Maybe that's the real message.
• 
From 2019 to 2020, according to the CDC, a total of 124 children died of COVID.  From 2020 to 2021, 213 children died of COVID.  By comparison, influenza killed more than 400 children just last year.
• 
Now, we're going to pause here, and say why are we getting so precise about these numbers?  Because these numbers are being used to justify putting a mask on your third grader for an entire year at school.
• 
What's the effect on a child of doing that, of sitting in a classroom full of people whose faces he can't see, of breathing cotton fiber for ten hours a day, every day.  They're profound.  These numbers matter.
• 
But Rochelle Walensky doesn't care.  She is instead leading the charge for more mandates, for both children and adults.  According to Wolensky, we need vaccine passports to make sure that people who aren't vaccinated can't go outside or make a living.
• 
The Biden administration's lackeys in the media are pushing the same message.  ... "Words I never thought I'd write: Saudi Arabia is being more progressive than America.  Saudis will need to show proof of vax to enter schools, shops, malls, restaurants, concerts, public transport."
• 
Oh, that's progressive.  Forcing people to take medicine they don't want to take.  By the way, the vaccination rate in Saudi Arabia is far lower than the vaccination rate in the United States.  But they're more progressive, somehow.
• 
But the bigger question is: If the vaccine works, why are so many vaccinated people getting COVID?  It's not just happening to democrats who flee Texas.
• 
... it's becoming really clear the science is slightly more complicated.  It doesn't mean the vaccine doesn't work or it's not worth taking.  But don't lie to us.  It doesn't always work.  You know people who've gotten COVID after getting a double vax.  Again, it doesn't mean it's not worth taking, but stop lying to us.
• 
If you want us to have confidence in your medicine, then tell us the full truth.  But they won't.  They've been telling us for six months the vaccine is perfect.  But clearly, in some cases, it doesn't work.
• 
Don't take it from us.  That's not our theory.  Take it from the man who created COVID himself.  ... The level of virus is "exactly the same as the level of virus in an unvaccinated person." What?  What does that even mean?
• 
The other day, Pfizer's purchase agreement with the Albanian government leaked on the internet.  ... "Purchaser acknowledges the long-term effects and efficacy of the Vaccine are not currently known and that there may be adverse effects of the Vaccine that are not currently known."
• 
Reassuring?  What are those effects?  And why don't we know?  And why can't we ask?  No one is pausing to ask questions at this moment, though.  That's not allowed.
• 
CHIP ROY, R-Texas: We have a crisis at our border and we are playing footsie with mask mandates in the people's House.  I mean it is absolutely absurd what this body is doing – the people's House.  It is an embarrassment.  It is a mockery and the American people are fed up!  They want to go back to life, they want to go back to business, they want to go back to school without their children being forced to wear masks!!  To be put in a corner, to have mental health issues...  And the speaker comes down at ten o'clock in the morning saying we have to wear masks in the people's house!  While we have got thousands of people pouring across our border and Democrats don't do a darn thing about it... We are absolutely sick and tired of it and so are the American people.  This sham of an institution is doing nothing for the American people.  Nothing for the betterment of the people that send their representatives here.
• 
See related Why You Need 2 Masks... (Chip Bok, 02/25/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Pentagon leaders are trying to hide truth about illegal immigration from Americans  (Fox 07/14/2021)
• 
It's not a partisan talking point or any kind of exaggeration to say that Joe Biden has opened this country's borders to the world.
• 
Since Biden's inauguration in January, the Border Patrol has apprehended close to a million foreign nationals coming into this country overland through Mexico.
• 
That's enough people to change our country forever.  You may argue that's a good thing.  America will benefit from this influx of people from foreign countries.  If so, we'd love to hear that argument.  No one has so far explained how that works.
• 
But what you can't argue is that opening the borders was legal, or that anyone in the country voted for it.  The current mass movement of foreign nationals into the United States was never approved by Congress.  No one passed a law asking for it.
• 
The Biden administration just did it, unilaterally, without asking Americans what they thought of it.
• 
... the administration has enlisted the U.S.  military to move illegal immigrants secretly around the country.  It's happening at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas.
• 
"Over the next few days, weeks or months," the note began, "you may see passenger aircraft on our ramp transporting undocumented non-citizens.  Please review the attached public affairs guidance on the issue."
• 
... email then instructed uniformed military personnel to hide what was happening on the base from the country they're sworn to serve.  "Do not take photographs and refrain from posting anything on social media."
• 
... U.S.  military leadership at the Pentagon helping the Biden administration — with maximum, enforced stealth, with secrecy — to subvert the country's core immigration laws.
• 
Apparently, Americans don't have a right to know where foreign nationals are being resettled in their own country.
• 
Changing the electoral map, are we?  Serving the businesses that paid for you to get elected, are we?  Yes, we are. 
• 
What you're watching is demographic transformation, in our country, without our consent and in violation of our laws.  That is happening.  Our job is to shut up and accept it.  We know that they will call us names if we don't accept it.
• 
But no, thanks.  What's happening, what they're doing, is wrong.  It's moreover a violation of the most basic promise of democracy, which is that citizens get to control who runs the government.  We, as citizens, have an absolute right to know what they are doing.
• 
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Government forced sterilization, what's keeping them from forcing vaccines?  (Fox 07/09/2021)
• 
... begin with the most obvious observation of all: force works.  If you decide to make people do something — if you demand they do it and punish them if they don't — generally they'll do it.  They'll comply.  They don't really have a choice.
• 
If you tell them they have to take a dose of experimental medicine, for example, otherwise they can't have a job, and their kids can't be educated, most of them will take it.
• 
And in fact, most of them have.  According to the latest CDC data, 67% of all American adults have received the coronavirus vaccine so far.  Sixty-seven percent.
• 
That's a huge number in a country like this.  Try to think of anything else that 67% of American adults have done recently.
• 
For perspective, only about 24% of the country's population voted for Joe Biden in November, and that was enough to make him president of the United States.
• 
So in some ways, the administration has done something amazing.  Get the vaccine or else.  That was their message.
• 
Most people did.  But not everyone.  There are still holdouts.  These are not people who haven't heard of the vaccine or can't afford it, or can't just find a dose.  It's free, it's everywhere and the media never stop talking about it.  Every news hour is a Pfizer commercial.
• 
The Biden administration is no longer accepting excuses.  ... XAVIER BECERRA: "The federal government has spent trillions of dollars to keep Americans alive during this pandemic.  So it is absolutely the government's business.  It is the taxpayer's business...  We want to give people the freedom to choose but we hope they choose to live."
• 
We want to give people the freedom to choose, unfortunately, we can't.  No more freedom for you.  The Biden administration is no longer pro-choice.
• 
So, does the Biden Administration have a right, based on the money they spend fighting these diseases, to your medical information?  Do they have a right to know your HIV status?  Why not?  Can HHS force you to take antibiotics for your TB?  Xanax for your anxiety?  Thorazine for your mania?
• 
And while we're at it, why are we letting irresponsible, defective people reproduce?  Vagrants, mental patients, even QAnon people, can all have children?  Why's that?  Why aren't we sterilizing them?
• 
Sound crazy?  It's happened before, on a huge scale.
• 
In a landmark decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, whom we revere most of the time, ruled that the same legal framework that justifies mandatory vaccination laws also permits the government to sterilize people against their will.
• 
"The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes," Holmes wrote.  By 1930, dozens of states were forcing women to undergo involuntary sterilization, and more than 60,000 American women were sterilized by the government against their will.
• 
Things like that tend to happen when a distracted citizen population allows the government to dictate what medical procedures they get, what drugs they take.
• 
This is a well-known and horrifying chapter in American history, so you'd think the news media might point this out.  But just the opposite.
• 
The media demanding forced vaccinations.  That shouldn't surprise you.  They're not in the business to inform the public, they're in the business for power.
• 
Veterans' groups, for example, have stayed silent as the Pentagon floats the idea of mandatory vaccinations for all soldiers.
• 
Have you seen this movie before?  Yes, those of us who are older than 22 remember it well.  The Pentagon has forced soldiers to take untested experimental vaccines before, it happened in Iraq.  Troops there had to take the anthrax vaccine.  What happened?
• 
Many of those soldiers are eligible for disability benefits through the VA, because that vaccine caused serious long-term complications — including infertility, lupus, paralysis, blindness, and neurological damage.
• 
What's going on here?  It's so obviously unnecessary and vindictive that it makes you wonder what this is really about.  At the very moment that the risk for young people dying from the coronavirus hits zero, they're telling us that soldiers should be arrested and go to jail if they don't get the vaccine.
• 
They're telling you that you'll end up in a government database if you don't comply, and that government agents will be showing up and knocking on your door.  What's really going on?
      If you question critical race theory, crazed ideologues will attack you and hurt your children  (Fox 07/07/2021)
• 
Despite what you may read, day in and day out, this is still a great country.  Where are you going to go that's better?  Nowhere.  America is still full of happy, decent, independent-minded people.  The attitudes of our leaders may have changed dramatically in recent years, but the virtues of our population really have not changed.  That's the good news...
• 
The bad news is, the people in charge are working hard to make Americans hate our own country.  If you made the mistake of going online this weekend, you saw them pouring out their misery on social media.  Instead of enjoying hotdogs and fireworks with the kids they don't have, they were on Twitter yelping about slavery and White supremacy and what a terrible place the United States is.
• 
It's easy to ignore people like this.  You just turn off your screen and live your life.  Unfortunately, it's much harder to shield your children from them.  That's the problem.
• 
Last week, the largest teachers' union in the country, the National Education Association, announced that its new, and first, priority is making racist anti-American indoctrination, race-based indoctrination, mandatory in every classroom in the country.
• 
All K-12 schools, the union declared, must teach children that, "White supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-indigeneity, racism, patriarchy, cis-hetero-patriarchy, capitalism, ableism, and anthropocentrism" are embedded in every aspect of American "society."
• 
So, if you're a straight White American, even if you're a very small child, you're guilty.  It's your fault.  You're a bad person.  That's what teachers will be telling your children this fall.
• 
The teachers' union ended its statement with this, which is so hilariously revealing it belongs in a museum somewhere, and we hope it makes it.  "As the ancient African proverb says, Know Thyself."
• 
The African proverb.  Except it's not an African proverb.  "Know thyself" is, of course, Greek, as any literate person knows.  It was inscribed by the ancient Greeks in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
• 
But the teacher's union didn't know this.  Not only are these people crazed racist ideologues, but they're also stupid.  Your children are being taught by some of the most ignorant people in the country.
• 
How'd that happen?  God knows how it happened.  But you'd better not complain about it, or else Joe Biden's praetorian guard will denounce you on TV as a racist...
• 
... if you object in any way to the current obsession with race, the one subject no normal person really wants to obsess over, then you yourself are obsessed with race and must be stopped because you're dangerous.
• 
So what does the average person do about this?  What does it take to fight back against it?  Of course, you should be fighting back against it because everything's at stake.
• 
You can't have a multi-racial democracy if people retreat into their tribes and hate each other, as critical race theory teaches them to do.  So what do you do?
• 
Whatever you do, it takes courage.  Daniel Concannon learned that the hard way...  Like so many school employees, he was then forced to participate in training about the fundamental moral flaws inherent to white people.  As an American, and a normal person, someone who admires Martin Luther King, he objected to this.  On the other hand, he, like most people, had very little power to do anything about it.  He wasn't a rich person.  He was making around $30,000 a year.  He needed the job.  But in the end, his conscience wouldn't allow him to participate in something this poisonous.  So he resigned.
• 
You should read his resignation letter. He ends this way. "I wish the Trotsky disciples at Manchester School District nothing but failure in their ongoing request for civilizational degradation. I leave you with the only verbal response befitting an attempt at anti-White indoctrination. F** you."
• 
• 
It wasn't so long ago, that Daniel Concannon, and men and women like him, would have been considered heroes.  He's a man of conscience, who's willing to sacrifice his own job to do the right thing.
• 
The few that rise are muted so that no one will follow them.  Corporate media has no interest in amplifying their stories.  Here's a father who showed up at a school board meeting recently and decided to tell a few obvious truths.
• 
TY SMITH: You're going to deliberately teach kids that he's got it better than you because he's white?  You're gonna tell a white kid, ‘Oh, Black people are all down and suppressed.' How do I have two medical degrees if I'm sitting here oppressed?  Two medical degrees.  No mom or dad in the house.  Worked my way through college.  Hustled my butt off and got two degrees.  You're gonna tell me white folks are gonna keep me from doing that?  Are you serious?!  ... I do this stuff on a daily basis.  I'm in the hood.  I'm in the communities.  I'm out there with folks in their face.  I've been doing stuff since I was 18 years old, talking to Black folks.  You know what?  None of them are buying this nonsense...  Not one white person will ever keep them from getting there.  This CRT stuff is BS.
• 
So it is BS.  In fact, it's more than that.  It's civilization-ending poison.
• 
But it's everywhere.  How widespread is it?  Well, we can't really be sure until we finally get cameras in the classroom, as we put them on the chests of police officers.
• 
Until we finally bet a civilian review board in every town in America to oversee the people teaching your kids, forming their minds.
• 
But there are indications.  We know that these ideas, this poison, have made it all the way to expensive private schools in central Ohio.  Columbus Academy, one of the most prestigious schools in the state, is among them.  Tuition is more than thirty grand a year per student.
• 
When you make a mother mad about her children, it's hard to make her shut up.  So, last month, instead of punishing them, the school decided to punish their children.  Columbus Academy kicked their three daughters out of school.  They expelled them for what their mother did.  So, challenge the regime and we'll hurt your children.  The Soviets did it.  Columbus Academy did it too.
• 
According to Soderberg and Kass, by daring to complain about racism at Columbus Academy, the two mothers had caused, "pain, and even fear for physical safety, among students, families, faculty, and staff."
• 
In other words, if you dare to question us, we won't disagree with you, we'll attack you, well hurt your children, and we'll accuse you of assault.  You're making us afraid.
• 
See related Critical Child Abuse (Antonio Branco, 04/22/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Garbage in... (Bob Gorrell, 05/16/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related New Fathers Day (Gary McCoy, 06/17/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Abolishing the suburbs is major part of Biden administration's infrastructure plan  (Fox 06/29/2021)
• 
According to the Obama administration, Westchester was an instrument of white supremacy — not the good liberals who live in Westchester, Bill and Hillary Clinton and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, many others.
• 
No one accused them of being bigots.  The problem was the buildings they lived in.  All those single-family homes — row upon leafy row, set back from the street, well-tended lawns and mailboxes — were examples of racism — literally "structural racism."
• 
The only solution, the Obama people announced, was much greater density: more subsidized housing complexes in Westchester, more hi-rise apartment buildings, maybe some drug-addicted vagrants living on the sidewalk, begging for change.  Only if Westchester became more like the Bronx could it become non-racist.
• 
That referred to county regulations that restricted the heights on certain buildings and limited the placement of sewers to protect drinking water" — it sounds reasonable.
• 
But according to the Obama administration, those were "restrictive practices." "Restrictive practices" is a legal term that, under civil rights law, means they were racist.
• 
Why is this happening?  The goal isn't to eliminate racism.  The goal is to eliminate suburbs.  So rather than improve the lives of people who live in crappy places, the goal is to destroy the lives of people who live in nice places.
• 
Why would you want to do that?  There's a very clear political reason.  Suburbs are typically purple politically.  Republicans win as often as Democrats.
• 
You want to make suburbs into cities and if you did that, you'd win every time.  Democrats win cities.  Of the ten biggest cities in the United States, Democrats run nine of them.  Of the 50 biggest cities, they control two-thirds.  It doesn't mean they are good at running cities, they're not.  Many are on the verge of collapse.  But running things isn't the point.  Winning elections is the point.  Democrats are happy to admit this.
• 
Ayanna Pressley, MSNBC, June 27: This is about human and physical infrastructure.  Progressives in Congress have been leading this fight.  Care economy is infrastructure.  Climate justice is infrastructure.  Housing justice infrastructure.  Public transit justice is infrastructure.  These bold investments must be made to support workers and families in order for us to have a just, equitable, robust recovery from this pandemic...
• 
"Housing justice." It sounds like a new term that Ayanna Pressley just made up.  What's it mean?  If most people were asked, they would say it means you're not allowed to prevent people regardless of what they look like or where they're from, from moving into a specific neighborhood...
• 
It's been federal law for more than fifty years, you can't discriminate in housing sales and you shouldn't be able to.  But that's not what she's talking about, she's talking about something very different saying if neighborhoods look different then by definition, they are racist.  If one is nicer than the other, you have to make it less nice, or else that's not equity.
• 
In his new infrastructure plan, which you can read online — and you should — Joe Biden calls for dramatically expanding the federal government's power over suburbs.
• 
This isn't a conspiracy theory.  Very soon, it could be law — read the bill.  Abolishing the suburbs is a major part of the Biden administration's infrastructure plan.  That legislation is still being negotiated, and nothing is finalized yet.  But already, the media is rushing to defend it.  What shills they are, what liars.
• 
For Democrats, the goal of this infrastructure plan is permanent control over the federal government.  For multinational corporations like Black Rock, the point is driving down the costs of homes even further, and building more apartment high-rises in the suburbs.
• 
What's less clear is why more self-described conservatives — whose job it is to "conserve" things, like America's self-respecting independent middle class — aren't objecting to this.  It's not clear if they even notice it's happening.
• 
They are negotiating this bill.  The future of the way Americans live is at stake and you never hear them say that.
• 
See related Land of the Freebie (Antonio Branco, 04/27/2021) cartoon from General picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Democrats create problems and their solutions empower them  (Fox 06/22/2021)
• 
A year ago this month, a University of Chicago economics professor called Harold Uhlig questioned the wisdom of defunding the police.  Uhlig is German by birth and a macroeconomist by trade.  He's a fairly rational person.
• 
It struck him that maybe a functioning society might want to have police around from time to time — so that, say, old ladies don't get beaten on the way to the grocery store, and fewer people get shot to death.  The basics.  That seemed reasonable to him.
• 
Unfortunately for Uhlig, in the weeks after George Floyd's death, rational thinking of any kind had been prohibited.  Nothing true could be said out loud — the truer it is, the more forbidden it is.
• 
The Federal Reserve of Chicago promptly fired Uhlig from his job as an advisor, and then they went online and attacked him for his support of police as quote, "not compatible with our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion." All of which require no police apparently.
• 
Then the University of Chicago — his employer — began an investigation into Uhlig's racial views which went on for some time.  Janet Yellen, then the chairman of the Fed and now the secretary of the Treasury, denounced Uhlig, effectively, as a racist.
• 
"Defund the police!  We'll be safer if we do." That's what they were saying a year ago, everyone in charge.  It was lunacy — and precisely because it was lunacy, no one was allowed to disagree with it.
• 
Here's the formula: The more self-evidently absurd a statement is, the more viciously they attack anyone who points out that it's untrue, who dissents.*
• 
"Trans women are women!" "January sixth was a racist insurrection!" "Defund the police!" It's childish, it's all so ridiculous and no sane person believes a word of it.
• 
But until the fever of the moment passes, most people who have no power feel obligated to play along with whatever orthodoxy it is until reality re-emerges, as inevitably it does because you can't beat nature.
• 
Looting is reparations, you go looters!  They should apologize for that, they never will.  The leftist ideology destroyed America's cities but they will never under any circumstances admit it.  Instead, they'll blame you, that's guaranteed.
• 
... whatever Democrats propose to fix the problems they created will, in the end, make them more powerful.  See that?  They create a problem and the solution empowers them.  That's always the way it goes.
• 
BIDEN 2/4: We've taken steps to acknowledge and address systemic racism and the scourge of white supremacy in our own country (edit) BIDEN: 1/26: And yes, forcing us to confront systemic racism and white supremacy.  It's just been weeks since all of America witnessed a group of thugs, insurrectionists, a political extremist and white supremacist violently attack the capital of our democracy.  (edit) BIDEN: 1/26: I believe we are in a battle for the soul of this nation and the simple truth is our soul will be troubled as long as systemic racism is allowed to persist.
• 
There's no evidence but they say it anyway.  But even with the inflated numbers, the researchers could find fewer than 70 people in the entire country who died from white supremacist violence between 2015 and 2019.  Of course, it's too many — any death is too many.
• 
But, for some perspective, more people die every year from lightning strikes, literally.  So, no, white supremacist violence — as bad as it may be — is not a major threat.
• 
What's at the top of the list?  Crime.  There's no second place on that list.  In the year 2019 alone, there were more than 10,000 arrests for murder in this country.
• 
By the way, there were more murders than that, but 10,000 were arrested.  In 2020, more than 750 people were murdered just in the city of Chicago. 
• 
We can say with some confidence the overwhelming majority of those suspects in the city of Chicago were not practicing white supremacists.  How do we know this?  Well in some cases, there's video.
• 
A couple with a Puerto Rican flag waving from their car — apparently minding their own business — is ambushed by a mob and shot execution-style, right in the road.  The men who shot them take off.  Maybe the worst part, the victims just lie there bleeding.  No one comes to help.
• 
What country is this?  Who's running the place?  And why haven't we brought those people up on felony neglect charges?  They deserve it.  If we accept a country where things like this happen then we are the savages.
• 
Joe Biden does accept it.  He hasn't said a word about that shooting and he won't because there are no white supremacists to blame.
• 
Just days ago, officials in New York announced they were dropping charges against hundreds of rioters and looters who were arrested last year.  So you wreck the city and you're not punished.
• 
Now we have that: sociopaths celebrating a shooting by twerking.  What kind of society produces people like that?  Who would behave like that?  Do you know anyone who would behave like that?
• 
When you see people behave like that you have to ask yourself — what is society doing wrong?  Is it no fathers, is it the schools?  Who knows what the answer is, but if we're not trying to find the answer, there's going to be guaranteed more of it.  Anybody who celebrates a shooting is not someone we want to share a country with.
• 
Instead, our irresponsible, low-IQ political leaders patronize us with the same mindless talk about gun control and assault weapons.  Like AR-15s are the problem and not our political class which is clearly the problem.
      Tucker Carlson: Government agents may have helped organize the Jan.  6 Capitol riot  (Fox 06/16/2021)
• 
This weekend, police in Columbus, Georgia arrested a 39-year-old man called Justin Tyren Roberts.
• 
Over the course of a single day, Roberts shot five separate people in two different states.  We know this because Roberts has admitted it.
• 
He also said why he did it.  In his confession, police say, Roberts, "explained [that] throughout his life, specifically white males had taken from him." So he decided to kill them.
• 
In one case, Roberts walked up behind a white man, a total stranger, as he was getting out of a car and shot him in the back.
• 
By any definition, these were crimes of viciousness motivated by race hate.  They're not unique in this country — not by a long shot.  If we wanted to — and we don't — we could do a whole show on crimes like these.  Nor are they especially surprising, when you think about it.
• 
If you really believed the propaganda from the Democratic Party and BLM are telling you — that white males are intentionally destroying the world — you might be motivated to hurt someone.  Why wouldn't you?
• 
What's striking is how little attention Justin Tyren Roberts' shooting spree has received.  Imagine if the colors here were reversed.  Roberts would be leading every newscast tonight.  Needless to say, he's not.
• 
A multi-racial country can only survive if it self-consciously deemphasizes race — if it treats every person as an individual and not a member of some larger group that's guilty or innocent.  That should be the goal, it's our history, and we should get back to it as soon as we can.
• 
But that's not what our leaders are doing.  They're doing just the opposite.  They're working hard to divide us into warring camps with lies.  They're telling us a story that is completely — and very much intentionally — disconnected from reality.
• 
They're claiming that something called white supremacy, a term they never define, is the greatest threat we face.  A greater threat than Al Qaeda or ISIS.  Our thoroughly craven attorney general told us that very lie today.
• 
MERRICK GARLAND: In the FBI's view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocated for the superiority of the white race.
• 
That was the Attorney General of the United States stating a fact backed up by the FBI.  So it's fair to ask the obvious questions.
• 
Who are these violent white supremacists exactly?  What are their names?  What crimes have they committed?  We still don't know.  Merrick Garland didn't tell us.
• 
He spent most of his speech talking about the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, an event that had nothing whatsoever to do with race.  But Merrick Garland lied about that.
• 
He, like the rest of the liars you see on television, wants you to believe and wants history to record, that January 6th was an attempted insurrection by white supremacist revolutionaries bent on taking over this country.
• 
We came this close, Garland said.  And that's why "We must adopt a broader societal response to tackle the problem's deeper roots."
• 
Because of January 6th, says the chief law enforcement officer in the United States of America, and many other members of Joe Biden's cabinet, we must now use law enforcement and military force to arrest, imprison, and otherwise crush anyone who leads opposition to Joe Biden's government.  That's their position.  They say it out loud.
• 
So what is this, exactly?  Well, it's a big change in the way the U.S.  government treats its own citizens.  We're looking at the transformation of a democratic republic into something else.  We're looking at growing authoritarianism.
• 
... those are entirely fair questions.  Who did shoot Ashli Babbit?  Why don't we know?  Are anonymous federal agents now allowed to kill unarmed women who protest the regime?  That's OK now?
• 
And why are all those January 6th protesters still in prison on trespassing charges, while so many Biden voters who torched federal buildings are walking free?
• 
And speaking of January 6th, why are there still so many things, basic factual matters, we don't know about that day?  Why is the Biden administration preventing us from knowing?
• 
Why is the administration hiding more than 10,000 hours of surveillance tape from the U.S.  Capitol?  What could possibly be the reason for that?  Even as they call for more openness.
• 
We ought to be asking those questions, urgently.  Because as the attorney general reminded us, a lot depends on the answers.
• 
We know the government is hiding the identity of many law enforcement officers who were present at the capitol on January 6, not just the one who killed Ashli Babbitt.  According to the government's own court filings, those law enforcement officers participated in the riot.  Sometimes in violent ways.
• 
We know that because, without fail, the government has thrown the book at most of the people who were in the Capitol on January 6.  There was a nationwide dragnet to find them.  Many of them are still in solitary confinement tonight.
• 
But, strangely, some people who participated in the riot haven't been charged.  Look at the documents.  The government calls these people "unindicted co-conspirators." What does that mean?  It means that in potentially every case, they're FBI operatives.
• 
So it turns out this white supremacist insurrection was, again, by the government's own admission in these documents, organized, at least in part, by government agents.
• 
Are you shocked?  You shouldn't be.  In March, the FBI director admitted the bureau is infiltrating as many dissident groups as it possibly could.
• 
... there's a huge difference between using an informant to find out what a group you find threatening might do, and paying people to organize a violent action, which is what happened, apparently according to government documents, on January 6.
• 
That's a line, and the FBI has crossed it.  And that's not the first time.  They crossed that line in Michigan.  Remember that plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer?  And Whitmer is able to cover some of her own incompetence, although not all, by pointing to the fact that she's not a victim.
• 
The whole story was a farce.  Insulting really.  But if you read the government's charging documents carefully, and you should, you'll see that it gets even more ridiculous.  It turns out that one of the five people in the planned "Gretchen Whitmer kidnap van" was an FBI agent.  In the van.  Another was an FBI informant.  ... In other words, nearly half the gang of kidnappers were working for the FBI.
• 
If you empower the government to violate civil liberties in pursuit of a foreign terror organization, and there are foreign terror organizations, it's just a matter of time before ambitious politicians use those same mechanisms to suppress political dissent.  That's what we're seeing now.  We should have seen it earlier.
• 
"Crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior, which is allowed and good, to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself."
• 
So they're doing that to Islamic radicals, what are they doing to American citizens?  That should worry you.
• 
In a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, a former FBI Assistant Director called Frank Figliuzzi explained on MSNBC.  The goal is to round up political dissenters and throw them in solitary — including members of Congress.
• 
FIGLIUZZI: What have we learned from our experience with international terrorism?  In order to address that problem, arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a roadblock.  In order to really tackle terrorism, this time domestically, you've got to attack and dismantle the command and control element of a terrorist group...That may mean people sitting in Congress right now.
• 
Round up duly-elected democratic members of Congress because they oppose the machine?  Even Vladimir Putin's not doing that.  And a former Assistant Director of the FBI called for it on television, and no one noticed.
• 
Why not round up the FBI operatives who were rioting on January 6?  Why not identify the guy who killed Ashli Babbit?  This is crazy, and we should resist it.
      Tucker Carlson: COVID passport could be just the beginning  (Fox 06/02/2021)
• 
If you're a middle-aged American, you can probably still dimly remember back to what things used to be like in this country, say, 13 or 14 months ago.
• 
Way back then, before the revolution, pretty much everybody agreed that segregation was the worst thing this country ever did.
• 
Forcing certain categories of citizens into separate, lesser accommodations, barring them from public places, treating them like lepers or untouchables — that was completely immoral and wrong, we were told that a lot and most of us strongly agreed.  It was wrong. 
• 
So imagine our confusion today looking out across the country now.  The very same people who just the other day told us that segregation was wrong are now enforcing segregation.
• 
Does it make sense?  Why would people who've had the vaccine fear being near people who haven't had the vaccine?  Aren't the vaccinated protected?  Isn't that the whole point of getting the shot?  Sure.
• 
Maybe from a health perspective that's technically true, if you want to be precise about it.  But this clearly isn't about health or science.
• 
It's bigger than that.  It's about good and evil.  It's about discovering who's a decent person, and who, by contrast, deserves to be punished for sin.  It's about finding out who has obeyed. 
• 
But it does make you wonder: is this the end, or is it the beginning?  Whys should it end here?  The coronavirus is transmissible, and it can be dangerous.  But it's hardly the only illness that fits that description, there are many.
• 
The precedent has been set.  And by the way, say goodbye to those HIPAA protections you thought you had.  It used to be illegal to demand people's confidential medical information.  Not anymore.  What's illegal now is trying to hide it.
• 
"Absent an informed consent or presidential waiver, the United States cannot demand that members of the armed forces also serve as guinea pigs for experimental drugs."
• 
It's always the same people, isn't it?  It's those White Republican men, the very ones Joe Biden just told us today are more dangerous than ISIS.
• 
The White Republican men are dangerous, and they can sit at the back of the bus.  In fact, they can walk.  They shouldn't even be allowed in public buildings.  That's the story you keep hearing: No group in America is more likely to turn down the vaccine than White Republican men.
• 
We've heard that so many times that just the other day we decided to check the number, because not all the numbers you hear, even from the podium from the White House, are true.
• 
Here are the numbers, as collected by the U.S.  government.  As of two weeks ago, 50% of Asian-Americans had been vaccinated against COVID.  That number among White Americans was about 40%.  Among African Americans, it was 27%.  Among Hispanics, it was 29%.
• 
Turns out — and we know you're shocked — what they told you is not really true.  In fact, it's a total lie, like everything they say.  It's the opposite of the truth.
• 
It seems like the new segregation looks a lot like the old segregation.  You wonder how they're going to explain that.  We can't wait to hear.
      Tucker Carlson: Fauci, the WHO, and mainstream media lied about COVID origins for more than a year  (Fox 05/25/2021)
• 
... the debate among serious people over the origins of COVID appears to be pretty much winding up.  Pretty much every sane person acknowledges at this point that the government of China likely caused the single worst man-made disaster in human history.
• 
As if we need more evidence, over the weekend, the Wall Street Journal reported that the first people infected with COVID-19 were probably researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  In November of 2019, three of them were taken to the hospital with symptoms.
• 
The Journal did solid reporting, but it wasn't entirely new.  Back in January of this year, the State Department issued a fact sheet telling the entire country the same thing.
• 
They said the first COVID patients were not hungry patrons of the local wet market, reckless diners who gorged themselves on pangolin and bats.  No, they weren't.
• 
The first patients were researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  Clearly, they'd been infected at work, while working on the virus.
• 
If you were trying to understand where COVID came from, and you should be if you want to prevent future pandemics, that State Department in January told you a lot.  Yet it was ignored. 
• 
... Tony Fauci himself — the man in charge of our whole response to COVID-19 — told CBS News that he never even heard about the State Department's findings on the Wuhan lab.  He had no idea. 
• 
In other words, Fauci's own employers, the U.S.  government, publicly released compelling evidence that the virus that he has devoted his life to fighting, did not come food, but instead escaped from the very bio lab that Tony Fauci has sent American tax dollars to fund.
• 
Yet somehow Tony Fauci didn't know this.  He didn't know it till he read this weekend's Wall Street Journal.  It was news to him.  Bolt from the sky.  Totally new information.
• 
Can we really believe that?  No, of course, we can't.  ... Fauci has known from the beginning the virus may very well have come from that lab.  Many people have known that.  Fauci just lied about it for more than a year.
• 
Now that we know what we know about the Wuhan lab — and we know that, of course, Fauci has known it too for a very long time, how could he not — it's pretty remarkable to go back and look at Fauci's public statements about COVID and the government of China.
• 
... you look back over the last year in light of what we now know, and you ask yourself, how does Tony Fauci still have a job?  Seriously.  What kind of country gives this much power to someone who's proven himself to be serially dishonest and incompetent?
• 
It's scary we'd allow that.  Especially in public health.  Meanwhile, and this is the most galling part, those few journalists and scientists who told the truth about what happened in Wuhan were punished for telling the truth.
• 
The WHO, which followed China's instructions and told the world that COVID wasn't really transmissible by air, now has the full support of the Biden administration.  In fact, Joe Biden rejoined the WHO, with no conditions.
• 
Even as of now, the U.S.  government has not launched any broad and serious investigation into where the coronavirus came from.
• 
At the same time, they're telling us we need a 9/11-style commission to understand every facet of the January 6th events at the capitol.
• 
But the pandemic that killed three million people and destroyed the west?  Which it has.  Never mind.  We'll let someone else figure it out.
• 
See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
      Tucker Carlson: In some schools, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is out, sexual propaganda is in  (Fox 05/14/2021)
• 
... Loudoun County is now the single richest county in the entire United States.  And that's been a problem, because any place you find easy money, you'll also find large numbers of unhappy white liberals, those brittle neurotics with masks on, screaming at everyone else to get in line.
• 
Loudoun County has a whole bunch of those people now.  It also has a huge number of immigrants.  One out of every four people in Loudoun County was born in another country.
• 
In general, most immigrants are not very liberal, at all, actually.  In fact, many of them have what would now be described as extreme right-wing positions on social issues.  If you ever have the chance, ask a Salvadoran what he thinks of transgenderism.  It'll make you laugh, probably nervously, you'll look around and see if anyone heard it.
• 
Immigrants vote overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party.  Their votes give more power not to them, but to those unhappy white liberals who want to blow everything up.  That's why, mystery solved, a lot of places with a lot of recent immigrants tend to be far more liberal than those immigrants themselves.
• 
Take a look at the schools if you don't believe it.  Loudoun Country used to have famously good schools.  People wanted to send their kids to those schools.
• 
Now, those schools are run by lunatics who hate the country.  It happened fast, it always does.  Below is what was said at a county school board meeting two days ago.  The first person speaking is a middle school teacher called Andrea Weiskopf.
• 
ANDREA WEISKOPF: It's funny how they are so afraid of having their children seeing another view of sexuality, gender or religion...If you want to talk about books that are assigned, let's read To Kill a Mockingbird together.  If you aren't able to consider the racial trauma this assigned book causes black children with its white saviorism, then you have no business discussing any books.
• 
... if she looks familiar, there's a reason for that.  You've heard a lot of lectures like this recently.  From people like Andrea Weiskopf.  Stupid people telling you what you're allowed to say and read.  That's essentially 2021 summed up in a single sentence.
• 
The scary thing is, they're telling your kids the same thing.  All day, every day, in school.  What effect is that having on your kids?  On all of our kids?  On the country itself?  Well, over time, the effect is unimaginable.
• 
For the last year, most parents have put up with this.  Either they didn't know it was happening, or they felt powerless to stop it from happening.  They were afraid to object, to speak up, as lunatics like Andrea Weiskopf hurt their kids.
• 
But that's changing, finally.  Some parents have had enough.  Here's what one mother said at this week's Loudoun County school board meeting.
• 
SHAWNTEL COOPER: [Critical race theory] is not an honest dialogue, it is a tactic that was used by Hitler and the Ku Klux Klan on slavery very many years ago to dumb down my ancestors so we could not think for ourselves.  Critical race theory is racist, it is abusive, it discriminates against one's color.  Let me educate you.  An honest dialogue does not oppress or implement hatred injustice.  We don't need your agreement.  We need action and a backbone for what we ask for today: To ban CRT...I had to come down here today to tell you to your face that we are coming together and we are strong.  This will not be the last greet and meet – respectfully.
• 
... it's now federal policy.  Last month, the Department of Education proposed a regulation that directs tax dollars to race hustlers who traffic in this poison.  The administration specifically cited the work of Ibrim Kendi (real name Henry Rogers), as well as the entirely fraudulent 1619 Project, headed by Nikole Hannah Jones.
• 
So what are these people like?  Well here's an example.  ... ETHAN JOHNSON: One of the things that is really important, I think is to not frame slavery as a legacy but as it's still here.  Its legacy suggests that it's over and there's some remnants of it moving forward.  And I would suggest that no, slavery is right here...the idea of what a slave is, is still here.  And we're living that.
• 
The Civil War never happened.  Turns out that your ancestors weren't killed or maimed trying to end slavery.  Abraham Lincoln never signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
• 
Slavery is still underway.  That's view of some guy who's literally claiming to be a college professor.
• 
But he's not alone.  People like that are in charge of the schools now.  Low-IQ vandals, wrecking what they did not build, from the very bottom to the very top, they are everywhere.
• 
Just hours ago, the state of California has announced its new "Mathematics Framework" for students across the state.  ... One of the authors of it is a Stanford professor called Jo Boaler.  Here's how she explained the plan.  "I am very pleased to announce the new Mathematics Framework for California.  Some highlights: a strong social justice orientation; all students should take the same courses, kindergarten through tenth grade.  Viva La Maths Revolution!"
      Tucker Carlson: If you don't get the COVID vaccine, you may be an agent of Russia  (Fox 05/13/2021)
• 
You hear that a lot: "They're anti-vaxxers.  They don't believe in vaccines." But pause for a second and think about it.  That's a pretty strange way to talk about science.  Science never asks us to believe in anything.
• 
Just the opposite.  Science is a never-ending attack on settled belief, on faith, on what we imagine we know, on what we assume.  Science doesn't tell us what's true.  Science shows us what's true.  It demands proof, not faith.
• 
... we've long ago left the realm of science, and are instead in a state of mass hysteria and mass manipulation.  Many Americans are too scared to think clearly.
• 
... you're afraid because you've been told for more than a year that you are required to be terrified.  And the arrival of the vaccine has not calmed you at all.  Instead, demagogues have instructed them to channel their fear into hate, and turn it on anyone who disobeys their orders.
• 
That's not rational.  That's not science.  It's something much darker than that.  What began as public health measures have become instruments of social control.
• 
Here's how MSNBC responded last night.  BRIAN WILLIAMS: This is Senator Ron Johnson on Fox News tonight
• 
RON JOHNSON: People ought to respect other people's freedom and liberty in their ability to choose whether or not to get vaccinated or not...I am concerned now about them trying to push it on children, who, let's face it, aren't in a position of informed consent.  We do need to recognize that this is not a fully approved vaccine.
• 
BRIAN WILLIAMS: So Doctor, I know really smart, educated, substantial people who believe him to be a witting or an unwitting asset of Russia — who would sound a lot like that — in American society.
• 
An asset of Russia.  If you choose not to get the vaccine — even on the advice of your physician, taking medical advice from a practicing doctor — then you're working for Putin.  You're a traitor, doing the bidding of a foreign power.  You've committed treason.
• 
Here's some guy on CNN calling for people who haven't been vaccinated to be arrested if they try to enter buildings:
• 
JOHN BERMAN: Is that my concern that someone who's chosen to be unvaccinated is making a bad choice.  And question two is, maybe there should be laws that allow them to be kept out of the building. 
• 
BECERRA: Well, you've hit right on the point, John, how do we get to a point where we get everyone to be as safe as possible?
• 
"Maybe there should be laws that allow them to be kept out of the building," says the dumbo on TV.  They'll say anything.
• 
What's amazing, is the response from Joe Biden's Cabinet secretary.  Absolutely, says Joe Biden's cabinet secretary.
• 
You'd like to think we'll look back on this and laugh someday.  But we're starting to wonder if that day will ever come.
• 
Maybe the fear will never go away.  It's too useful.  Maybe anyone who asks questions will be called an agent of Russia or China or Syria, or wherever.
      Anthony Fauci let the coronavirus pandemic happen, why isn't there a criminal investigation?  (Fox 05/11/2021)
• 
How do we assess the Biden administration's response to COVID?  Well, here's one marker: it tells you pretty much everything that the White House that is supposedly so committed to science chose as its head COVID coordinator a man with no background at all in science or medicine.
• 
His name is Jeffrey Zients.  Zients ran Joe Biden's presidential transition team, that's his qualification.  He's a former management consultant from Bain, who sat on the board of Facebook.  Jeffrey Zients is a political operative.  That's who's overseeing COVID response for Joe Biden.
• 
The good news is because Zients isn't even close to being an actual scientist, he doesn't talk like one.  Occasionally he says things whose significance the rest of us can clearly understand.
• 
JEFFREY ZIENTS: And the light at the end of the tunnel is brighter and brighter.  Let's keep up our guard.  Let's follow the CDC guidance.  And the CDC guidance across time will allow vaccinated people more and more privileges to take off that mask.
• 
There it is.  "The CDC guidance across time will allow vaccinated people more and more privileges to take off that mask." A sentence like that raises so many questions, it's hard to know where to start.
• 
How about here: If the vaccines work, why are any vaccinated people wearing masks anywhere, ever?  Seriously.
• 
Our public health authorities act as though masks are absolutely critical.  But are they absolutely critical?  Where are the serious studies that prove that?  Do they exist?  If they do exist, is there a reason they're being hidden from us?
• 
And, finally, when did masklessness become a privilege?  For thousands of years, until 12 months ago, masklessness was the global status quo.  Virtually everyone on earth lived without masks.  That wasn't considered weird.  Masks were weird.  They were unhealthy and menacing.
• 
Yet Jeffrey Zients has just informed us that things have changed.  Going forward, not wearing a mask, even after you've been vaccinated, is "a privilege"...
• 
What does that mean, exactly?  How long will this terrifyingly irrational exercise continue?  For the answer to that question, we go to a man even more partisan than Jeffrey Zients.  The nation's most highly credentialed political operative, Tony Fauci, let us know that, actually, this mask thing is never going to end.
• 
DR.  ANTHONY FAUCI: You know, that's quite possible.  I think people have gotten used to the fact that wearing masks, clearly, if you look at the data, diminishes respiratory diseases...So it is conceivable that as we go on a year or two or more from now, that during certain seasonal periods when you have respiratory-borne viruses like the flu, people might actually elect to wear masks to diminish the likelihood that you'll be spreading these respiratory-borne diseases.
• 
"A year or two or more from now." In other words, never — you're never taking off the mask.  Get ready for a lifetime of filthy wet cotton covering your mouth, reduced oxygen flow to your brain, and a world where every stranger looks the same because no one has a face.
• 
... it's not public health.  It's a kind of punishment.  Tony Fauci is punishing the country — you, us, everyone.  The question is: why is he doing that?  Maybe he liked it, that's possible.
• 
But you've got to think that at least part of Fauci's authoritarian germ hysterical is a cover for something else.  Could it be that Tony Fauci is trying to divert attention from himself and his own role in the COVID-19 pandemic?
• 
We can't recommend more strongly a new piece by Nicholas Wade, who for more than 50 years has been one of the preeminent science writers in the world. ... explains where the virus almost certainly came from. In it, Wade makes it clear that, more than any other single American, Tony Fauci is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 
Wade lays out a nearly insurmountable amount of evidence that this virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Central China.
• 
At the time the outbreak began last fall, the Wuhan lab was conducting experiments on how to make bat viruses infectious to human beings.  Those experiments were funded by American tax dollars, the funding for those experiments was approved and directed by Tony Fauci in Washington.
• 
... job was genetically engineering coronaviruses so that they infect human beings, and do so as easily as possible.  The work, Wade notes, involved, "doing gain-of-function experiments designed to make coronaviruses infect human cells."
• 
Why was this research going on?  You'll have to ask the scientist who did it.
• 
But the facts remain, these were some of the most dangerous experiments ever conducted by mankind.  And yet we know that China wasn't taking the necessary safety precautions.
• 
Several years ago, U.S.  diplomatic cables warned about lax standards at the Wuhan Lab.  The Wuhan facility was classified as a "bio-safety-level two laboratory."
• 
What does that mean?  ... that's approximately the same level of safety that you would find in a dentist's office in America.
• 
So that lab, conducting research on the coronavirus, and how to make it transmissible to human beings, resulted almost certainly infected a lab researcher and spread from there.
• 
The first coronavirus patients didn't come from the so-called wet market as we heard.  That was a lie.  The first patients of the coronavirus were employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• 
Once again, why would the Wuhan lab be conducting experiments like that in the first place?  Well, we know that Tony Fauci had authorized payment for the research.
• 
For five years — from 2014 to 2019 — the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci runs, and has for decades, pumped money to a group called the EcoHealth Alliance.
• 
The EcoHealth Alliance, run by a man called Dr.  Peter Daszak, contracted with Dr.  Shi to conduct gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
• 
Just before the pandemic became public knowledge — on December 9, 2019 — Peter Daszak sat for an interview that was streamed online.  In that interview, he bragged about how easy it is to manipulate coronaviruses in lab experiments.
• 
Just days after he said that, it became clear that this new version of coronavirus, this novel coronavirus, what we now call COVID-19, was running rampant through Wuhan then China then the world.
• 
Since the pandemic began, Peter Daszak, not surprisingly, has appeared on virtually every media platform available to him to deny, in the most strenuous and dismissive terms, that the Wuhan lab could be in any way linked to the outbreak, since he has very personal motives for claiming that.
• 
A lot of smart people knew that right away.  One of those people is Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT.
• 
She bravely wrote a paper about how the coronavirus's genome hadn't changed much over time, and that was odd because that genome had gone through trillions of replications.  According to Chan, that fact implied that the virus was designed for human-to-human transmission from the outset.
• 
The former director of the CDC also clearly understood this.  He too argued the virus came from the Wuhan lab.
• 
Millions of people have died of COVID-19, so it's not a matter of score-settling or blame-assignment to figure out where it came from.  If you want to prevent the next global pandemic, you have to figure out how this one started.
• 
The WHO's investigation into the origins of the virus was fraudulent, and that matters to public health globally.  But one thing you'll notice is that Tony Fauci did not say that.  Why?  Because once again, he's implicated in it, personally.
• 
The gain-of-function research ... in fact, been banned explicitly by the U.S.  government.  There was a federal moratorium on the funding of exactly the kind of gain-of-function experiments that went on in the Wuhan lab, to disastrous effects.
• 
So why didn't the feds halt its funding to the lab in Wuhan?  That is a central question, and Nicholas Wade looked into it.
• 
"...  'An exception from the research pause may be obtained if the head of the USG funding agency determines that the research is urgently necessary to protect the public health or national security.'"
• 
And that's exactly the loophole that was exploited.  Who signed off on this?  Tony Fauci — possibly along with Francis Collins, the director of the NIH — invoked that special exception in order to keep funding the Wuhan lab, and the deadly experiments that were going on there.
• 
This wouldn't have happened if Tony Fauci didn't allow it to happen.  That is clear.
• 
It's an amazing story.  It is a shocking story.  In a functional country, there would be a criminal investigation into Tony Fauci's role in the COVID pandemic that has killed millions and halted our country, changing it forever.
• 
So why isn't there a criminal investigation into Tony Fauci's role in this pandemic?
• 
See related Why You Need 2 Masks... (Chip Bok, 02/25/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: How many Americans have died after taking the COVID vaccine?  (Fox 05/06/2021)
• 
... how many Americans have died after getting the vaccines designed to prevent the virus?  Do you know the answer to that question?  Do you know anything about the downside?
• 
... what about the potential risks?  You'd think you would know more about that than you do.  We talk about vaccines constantly...
• 
Joe Biden was on TV yesterday talking about vaccines.  He wants you to get one.  Everyone in authority wants you to get one.  In fact, you've probably already had your shot, and good for you.  If you haven't had your shot, you're under enormous pressure to get your shot.
• 
There is a lot of pressure to comply.  At some point, you probably will comply.  It's just too difficult not be to vaccinated in this country.
• 
But before you make the appointment: do you know anything about the potential risks?  Probably you don't know much.  We all assume the risks are negligible.  Vaccines aren't dangerous.  That's not a guess, we know that pretty conclusively from the official numbers.
• 
Every flu season, we give influenza shots to more than 160 million Americans.  Every year, a relatively small number of people seem to die after getting those shots.
• 
To be precise, in 2019, that number was 203 people.  The year before, it was 119.  In 2017, a total of 85 people died from the flu shot.
• 
Every death is tragic, but big picture, we don't consider those numbers disqualifying.  We keep giving flu shots, and very few people complain about it.
• 
So the question is how do those numbers compare to the death rate from the coronavirus vaccines now being distributed across the country?  That's worth knowing.
• 
We checked today.  Here's the answer, which comes from the same set of government numbers that we just listed: Between late December of 2020, and last month, a total of 3,362 people apparently died after getting the COVID vaccines in the United States.  ... that's an average of 30 people every day.
• 
The data we just cited come from the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System — VAERS — which is managed by the CDC and the FDA.
• 
Some critics have argued for a long time that VARES undercounts vaccine injuries.  A report submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services in 2010 concluded that "fewer than one percent of vaccine adverse events are reported" by the VARES system.
• 
Fewer than one percent.  So what is the real number of people who apparently have been killed or injured by the vaccine?  Well, we don't know that number.
• 
... it's clear that what is happening now, for whatever reason, is not even close to normal.  It's not even close to what we've seen in previous years with previous vaccines.
• 
Most vaccines are not accused of killing large numbers of people.  The Menveo vaccine, for example, is given to people around the world, often children, to prevent bacterial meningitis.  In this country, only one person died from that vaccine in the entire period between 2010 and 2015.  One.
• 
So, compare that to what's happening now.  In just the first four months of this year, the U.S.  government has recorded more deaths after COVID vaccinations than from all other vaccines administered in the United States between mid-1997 and the end of 2013.  That's a period of fifteen and a half years.
• 
Again, more people, according to VAERS, have died after getting the shot in four months during a single vaccination campaign than from all other vaccines combined over more than a decade and a half.  Chart that out.  It's a stunning picture.
• 
If the vaccine injury reporting system is flawed — and it clearly is flawed — why hasn't it been fixed?  And more to the point, why has there not been an independent vaccine safety board to assess what's happening.
• 
But amazingly, none of that has been done.  No one even mentions the numbers.  And in fact, you're not allowed to.  You'll be pulled off the internet if you do.
• 
The people in charge do not acknowledge them.  Instead, they warn us about what might happen if we don't take the vaccine.  Like Joe Biden.
• 
JOE BIDEN: You know, there's a lot of misinformation out there, but there's one fact I want every American to know.  People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from covid-19...This is your choice.  It's life and death.
• 
"People who are not fully vaccinated can still die every day from COVID -19," Biden said.  As a factual matter, that is true.  But it's also misleading.  Not all Americans are at a similar risk of dying from COVID-19. 
• 
Some are at relatively high risk: the old and the sick.  They might want to get vaccinated, and most do.  Some are at very low risk of dying: the young and the healthy.
• 
... the White House – the official policy-makers who are designing the vaccine rollout – do not acknowledge that those categories even exist.  Health Authorities are pretending that everyone's health and risk potential is exactly the same as everyone else's.
• 
This might be an acceptable policy – it would never be an ethical policy – but it might be acceptable to the country if COVID vaccines we could show conclusively came with no risk, and if we truly understood the long-term effects of those vaccines.
• 
But neither one of those things is true.  We know that according to the government reporting system, thousands of people have died after getting the shot.
• 
Vaccines are complicated medicines, and as with any drug, it can take a long time to get it precisely right.  The dosage, for example.
• 
And this is not the first time people have been hurt during a vaccination campaign.  That is bound to happen.  What's different this time, and so striking, is the reaction to these numbers.
• 
Here's a contrast for you: in 1976, the U.S.  government vaccinated 45 million people with a vaccine for the swine flu.  Fifty-three people reportedly died after getting that shot.
• 
The U.S.  government immediately halted the vaccination program.  Authorities decided it was too risky, it wasn't worth it.
• 
Contrast that with what is happening now.  This time, our health authorities have reserved their energy for anyone who dares to question vaccines.
• 
LifeSiteNews, a nonprofit news organization, just found itself permanently banned from Facebook.  Why?  Because it reported government numbers from the VAERS database.
• 
We're not precisely sure what the risks are.  It is a lie to say there are no risks.  There are risks in everything, including in getting a vaccine.  So why not rationally weigh the risk/reward ratio, as we do with every decision we make.
• 
There's a reason many states have more vaccine doses than they can use.  Some people just don't want the vaccine.  That's their right.  Period.  Not all of them are crazy.  Health decisions used to be considered personal choices.  We didn't ask about them.  They were considered personal as recently as last fall.
• 
... at the vice presidential debate, Harris was if anything more emphatic on the subject.  "If Donald Trump tells us we should take" the vaccine, she declared, "I'm not going to take it."
• 
Kamala Harris has, of course, since changed her mind.  She's no longer skeptical of the vaccine, nor does she tolerate the skepticism of others.  Instead, she's an enthusiastic participant in COVID theater.  And that's really the only name for it.
• 
It is the crudest kind of propaganda, designed by the cynical for the benefit of a population they consider stupid and weak and malleable.
• 
If American citizens are going to be forced to take this vaccine or any other medicine, they have an absolute right to know what the effects of it might be.  And they have an absolute right to ask that question.
• 
No amount of happy talk or coercion or appeals to false patriotism can change that.  Period.
      Is the CIA's new wokeness virtue signaling or an attempt to infiltrate the American left?  (Fox 05/05/2021)
• 
The CIA is the most heavily-armed, and supposedly the most sophisticated intelligence-gathering operation on the planet.  And yet somehow, they produced this video, and then put it on social media.
• 
"I am a woman of color.  I am a mom.  I am a cisgender millennial who's been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder." And then she told us — hilariously — that this new spunky new CIA lady is also "intersectional," but — and pause for laugher here — "my existence is not a box-checking exercise."
• 
Well of course not.  Box checking?  Just a cisgender Latina millennial mom of color with a certified emotional disability.  Not a hint of box-checking here.
• 
In fact, it sounds like pure meritocracy — if by "meritocracy," you mean a system in which narcissism is the highest achievement.  At Joe Biden's CIA, the spies talk mostly about themselves.
• 
"The CIA used to be about mission to country.  Now it's now about demanding — and getting — accommodation to fix an emotional wound or advance a personal agenda.  America is less safe with this new CIA, and dangerously more political."
• 
For months now, the Biden administration has told us that a group called "white supremacists" are America's most dangerous enemy.  White supremacists don't live in the Middle East.  Their caliphate is right here in America...
• 
How can you tell a white supremacist?  How do you know when you're in presence of one?  It's simple: anyone who objects to be being called a racist without evidence must be a white supremacist.  That's the working definition.  Beyond that, no one has defined the term.
• 
People in Washington just repeat the line, again and again, and again, in the apparent belief that frequent repetition makes it scarier.  And apparently, it does.
• 
JOHN BRENNAN: The members of the Biden team who have been dominated or have been appointed are now moving in laser-like fashion to try to uncover as much as they can about what looks very similar to insurgency movements that we've seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of the country, and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance frequently of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.
• 
That's quite a list.  "Religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists.  Even libertarians." Yes, says John Brennan with a visible quiver, even libertarians.  Even libertarians, even the guys at the Cato Institution.  That's how deep this white supremacist threat really is.
• 
You may be surprised to hear that.  You imagined in your naivete that professional libertarians were merely ridiculous, with their stupid little theories that no one's ever tried because they're so self-evidently absurd they'd evaporate like steam if they ever made it beyond the walls of a Koch-funded think tank, which of course they never will.  But no.  It's much worse than that.
• 
That's what John Brennan has told us.  That's what they're all telling us.  They repeat it daily.  The question is, does anyone with an IQ over 80 actually believe a word of this?  Does anyone in power really think something called "white supremacy" is the greatest threat America faces?
• 
No, of course not.  Susan Rice knows that isn't true.  So does Barack Obama.  So do all the other architects of the lie.  They made it up in the first place, so of course, they know precisely how false it is.
• 
They may be liars, but they're not delusional.  In real life, they understand perfectly well what threatens America.  They've seen it up close.  It's the culture that produced them.
• 
It's the decadent rich people from their class at Harvard.  It's the gender studies department at Cornell.  It's the cat cafes in Austin and Asheville.
• 
Those are the people who actually detest the country.  They're the ones working through the night to destroy it.  They're the people who are committing and excusing violence.
• 
So, if you wanted to save America, these are the people you'd be worried about.  They make the Iranian nuclear program look like nothing.
• 
So maybe the CIA actually does know this.  Maybe they really have it figured out.  Maybe the intersectional lady with the emotional problems is just a deep-cover operative.  Think about that.  It makes sense, actually.
• 
For a mission like that, we're going to need a brand new kind of spy.  The old kind will not do.  Imagine James Bond trying to infiltrate the Queer Dance collective at Brown.
• 
This progressive new CIA agent ... would never be discovered.  They wouldn't suspect her for a minute.  She's just like them: They're unhappy.  So is she.  They got diagnosed with emotional disorders.  So does she.  They can talk about themselves for eight hours at a time.  She can too.  Talk about deep cover.  This woman is a natural mole, the Kim Philby of wokeness.
• 
The Biden administration appears to be training a lot of spies like this.  They know this war won't be won in a day.  Existential struggles never are.  So they're marshaling all the forces of government, from DHS to the president's own personal flak.
• 
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR OFFICIAL: "I acknowledge the place-based knowledge of these peoples and I'm grateful for their ancestral and current stewardship of these lands, my pronouns are she/her.
• 
You read that and you think, that can't be real.  Let's hope you're right.  Let's hope it's a ruse.
      Tucker Carlson: Why Republicans no longer recognize their own party  (Fox 05/01/2021)
• 
There are a lot of nice people in the Republican Party, but the point of a political party is not to be nice, it is to represent the interests of its voters.  That's the only reason political parties exist.  There is no other reason to have them except to represent their voters.
• 
Yet year after year, on issue after issue, the leadership of the Republican Party fails to do that.  We're not guessing about this.  We know what Republican voters care about.  They tell pollsters all the time.
• 
Since they kept getting ignored, in 2016 they elected Donald Trump, just to make it incredibly clear what they cared about.  If that wasn't a wake-up call, nothing would be.
• 
However, it remains true that the priorities of the people who run the Republican Party are very different — in some cases, completely different — from the priorities of the people who vote Republican.
• 
Why is that?  Well, there are lots of reasons, probably, but Frank Luntz is definitely one of them.  ... For decades, Frank Luntz has told elected Republicans what to say and exactly how to say it.
• 
Frank Luntz is a smooth salesman.  He's been around for a while.  The problem is that Frank Luntz's views are very different from those of your average Republican voter.
• 
Frank Luntz is a conventional liberal.  His main clients are left-wing corporations like Google.  When Frank Luntz gives advice to congressional Republicans, he's got Google's perspective in mind.  That's a huge problem.
• 
So why does Frank Luntz remain a fixture in Republican politics at a time when the companies he works for are explicitly opposed to the Republican Party?
• 
Well, in part because he is particularly close to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy R-Calif., and has been since McCarthy entered politics.
• 
In an interview earlier this year, Luntz described Kevin McCarthy as a personal friend.  That relationship gives Frank Luntz outsized influence over the Republican Party's policy positions.
• 
He'll conduct something called a "focus group," a moderated conversation between several people that has no actual relevance to anything.  It's just random people yammering.  Your ninety-second exchange with the UPS guy this morning meant more than a Frank Luntz focus group.
• 
Yet purely on the basis of that irrelevant conversation, Luntz manages to make pronouncements about the country and how the Republican Party should respond to it.  Most of those pronouncements, as you can imagine, tend to comport perfectly with his own views, as well as the views of Google executives.
• 
What did Frank Luntz supposedly find out about immigration?  It turns out that Republican voters are actually dying to give amnesty to as many foreign nationals as possible.  They're demanding it right away.  It's a top priority for them.
• 
You see?  Amnesty has broad bipartisan support.  There's a national consensus in favor of opening the borders.  So Republicans had better get on board, because Frank Luntz's research proves they definitely want it.
• 
This is pretty close to fraud.  Who's served by it?  That's always the question in Washington.  Well, Luntz's corporate clients are served by it, of course, but the Democratic Party is aso served by it, a party whose priorities Frank Luntz appears to support.
• 
In 2012 he told the rest of us that, according to his highly scientific surveys of a dozen people in some shopping mall somewhere, most Americans actually really want the government to take their guns away.
• 
Luntz's comments were Democratic Party talking points.  But if you'd like more, there's this: an interview from last summer in which Luntz explains that the phrase "law and order" is somehow offensive to most people.  Keep in mind that at the very moment Frank Luntz was saying this, American cities were on fire and people were dying.  Why?  Because there was no law and no order.
• 
FRANK LUNTZ: Well I was critical that he [Trump] used the words law and order.  He's assuming that we have the same politics as 1968 ... Donald Trump doesn't realize that you can govern in a strong, stable, successful way and still use language that is warm and kind and empathetic.
• 
If that sounds a lot like something a corporate HR executive might say, you shouldn't be surprised.  As we said, Luntz's main business is not helping the Republican Party.  No, his main business is working for left-wing companies that despise the Republican Party, are horrified by Republican voters and all they believe.
• 
Luntz's long list of corporate clients includes Jeff Bezos' Amazon, Facebook, Nike, Coca-Cola, Disney, Delta Air Lines, and the Chamber of Commerce.  These are the people who pay Frank Luntz's bills.
• 
In his spare time, Frank Luntz tells Kevin McCarthy how to run the Republican Party.  You can see the conflict there.  You wonder how it's been allowed to continue.
• 
The question is to ask what's really going on here.  Would you take medical advice, for example, from Frank Luntz?  Should you have to?
• 
If you've listened to him recently, he very much wants you to take the vaccine.  Vaccines are great.  Only a crazy person wouldn't get the shot.
• 
Frank Luntz hasn't said a lot, however, about his longtime work for Pfizer.  Nor does he brag about his work for Purdue Pharma, the company that got rural America addicted to opioids.
• 
In 2003, as the opioid epidemic devastated entire regions of the United States, Frank Luntz encouraged more people to take OxyContin.  Are we making this up?  No, we're not.
• 
"I am a proponent of the pharmaceutical industry," Frank Luntz told PBS.  "I am a supporter of a very famous medication right now, OxyContin, because I think that this is a miracle drug which allows people to get through the day."
• 
This is the guy Republican leaders went to just this week for "messaging guidance on hot topics." And you wonder why you no longer recognize the party that you vote for.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden says he's in charge and will brook no opposition  (Fox 04/30/2021)
• 
Language is designed to communicate ideas, but not when Joe Biden uses it.  Wednesday night's speech was a cluster bomb of cliches meant to knock you senseless and make you surrender.
• 
Americans choose "hope over fear," Biden droned, "truth over lies," "light over darkness." We lost track after that.  Our brains shut down.  Mission accomplished.
• 
The news media didn't care.  They didn't even notice.  They weren't listening to him.  They have no interest in what Joe Biden says.  They got him elected.  He's their guy, and that's that.
• 
Technically, Biden is now the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world.  Maybe someone, somewhere ought to keep track of what he's doing.
• 
But no, reporters covered Joe Biden like he's an actor on a press tour for the hot new summer blockbuster alongside his dazzling co-star, Kamala.
• 
Wait a second.  Was that the president of the United States talking?  No, that's what you thought.  In fact, it was Jesus in aviator glasses.
• 
What Joe Biden said was beautiful.  It was intimate.  Grandfatherly.  Indeed, Rooseveltian.  Joe Biden spoke to the soul of America.
• 
He connected with people who didn't even deserve to be connected with.  Hopeless sinners, redeemed by his voice alone — a voice that is not, and we want to be clear about this, the fading monotone of a 78-year-old man losing his grip.
• 
No, it's not.  Joe Biden's voice modulates.  It has the capacity to change pitch in a way that is — and we're quoting now — "rather extraordinary."
• 
We could keep going with this, if we wanted — cable news is a rich vein — but we'll stop now and return to reality.  A powerful politician gave a speech about how he plans to change your life.
• 
So what did Biden actually say?  Well, he said that people who disagree with him are terrorists, more dangerous than the jihadist who destroyed the World Trade Center.
• 
JOE BIDEN: One hundred days since I took the oath of office and lifted my hand off our family Bible and inherited a nation that was in crisis.  The worst pandemic in a century.  The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.
• 
Really?  The worst attack on our democracy in 160 years?  How about the Immigration Act of 1965?  That law completely changed the composition of America's voter rolls, purely to benefit the Democratic Party.
• 
That seems like kind of an assault on democracy, a permanent one.  But no.  That was a good thing, because, in the end, it helped Joe Biden.
• 
What's bad is when anyone other than Joe Biden has power.  That's an attack on democracy, and the people who commit that attack deserve to be in solitary confinement in the D.C.  jail, even if they only, technically speaking, committed misdemeanor trespassing.
• 
So abandon those silly racist assumptions about how you have "rights" derived from some ancient piece of parchment decorated with a quill pen.  The Bill of Rights?  Come on.  As Joe Biden reminded us last night, no constitutional amendment is absolute.  They are subject to his approval:...
• 
JOE BIDEN: We need a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.  Don't tell me it can't be done ... I'll tell you that there are too many people today who are able to buy a gun but shouldn't be able to buy a gun ... And no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.  You can't yell fire in a crowded theater.
• 
"No amendment to the constitution is absolute." Good to know.  Stupidly, we assumed the document was real.  ... The only thing that is absolute at this point is the power of the Democratic Party.  And don't you dare resist it.
• 
"You can't yell fire in a crowded theater," Biden pointedly told us last night.  But of course, that depends entirely on the condition of the theater.
• 
If it actually is on fire, you should say so, loudly.  If you think the presidential election was stolen, by God, speak up.  That's the right that's really at stake here — the right to speak your conscience.  To say the obvious.  To tell the truth.
• 
BIDEN, APRIL 8: But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.  You can't yell ... "Fire!" in a crowded movie theater and call it freedom of speech.
• 
So, you can't yell "Fire", even if the theater's burning.  You must read the script.  That's the message.  You thought you could say what you wanted in a free country.  That was your birthright.  But it's not anymore.
• 
Your opinion isn't legitimate if it deviates from Joe Biden's opinion.  You yourself aren't legitimate.  If you disagree with Joe Biden or the afternoon panel on MSNBC that represents him, you're a White supremacist.
• 
By definition, you have lost your rights.  The national security state has determined that you're a terrorist.
• 
BIDEN: And we won't ignore what our intelligence agencies have determined to be the most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today.  White supremacy is terrorism.  We're not going to ignore that either.  My fellow Americans.  Look, we have to come together to heal the soul of this nation.
• 
We have to come together to heal the soul of the nation by attacking our fellow Americans using a phrase no one will define.
• 
What does coming together mean?  Well, it means that because of a concept called "White supremacy," a phrase often invoked, but never defined, your civil liberties have been suspended.  (By the way, the whole point of the Derek Chauvin murder trial was to inform you of that.)
• 
Traditionally in this country, we've forced ourselves to assume criminal defendants are innocent until proven otherwise, even if we have video.  That's our system; innocent until proven guilty.  Not anymore.
• 
Once you've been identified as a White supremacist, you don't get a fair trial.  You're not entitled to one.  A sitting member of Congress can threaten to burn a city down if you're not convicted, and the people in charge will applaud her as she does.
• 
That was the message of last night's speech: The only remaining principle in this country is that you can't oppose the people in charge.
• 
See related Biden\\\'s Glory (Mike Shelton, 01/22/2021) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related A Dark Winter (Antonio Branco, 01/20/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Smear Job (Antonio Branco, 02/08/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Democrats cry, 'Let them use knives,' because teenage knife fights are human rights  (Fox 04/23/2021)
• 
Stabbing people has long been taboo in this country, especially for those under 18.  ... No more.  Knife fights are human rights.  Stabbing can finally come out of the closet.
• 
Now, not everyone embraced this news.  Some called it a form of child sacrifice.  Of course they did.  As Kamala Harris often points out, bigots hate progress.  They want to take this country back to the Dark Ages, a time when America's residential neighborhoods were safe and people liked each other.  But there's no going back.
• 
If your first thought upon hearing "someone's trying to stab us and get our grandma.  We need a police officer here now." was, "Calm down, racist.  Stabbing people is an important part of childhood development," give yourself an equity ribbon.
• 
Then we saw clearer tape of what happened next, and we'll concede for a moment we wondered if allowing kids to kill people with knives was really the enlightened idea they told us it was.
• 
A teenager called Ma'Khia Bryant was seconds away from plunging that knife into someone else when the police arrived.
• 
It doesn't matter who you voted for or what your views of modern America are, you don't need to guess what was happening when you watch the video.
• 
If you listen carefully, you can hear someone say it on the tape: "I'm gonna stab the f** out of you." There's no question that she was going to do that.  Her hand was in the air.  The knife was heading into the down stroke.
• 
The other girl was just an instant from being stabbed.  If the cop wanted to save that girl, he had to shoot.  So he did.
• 
Kiara Yakita of the Black Liberation Movement of Central Ohio had a different take ... "As soon as the officer got out of the car, he had the gun ready to shoot somebody.  Law enforcement and city officials are rushing to make excuses because she had a knife.  Those excuses are not valid to me."
• 
Using a gun to save a life isn't affirming.  It's not equity, even if the girl the cop saved was also African-American.
• 
If that police officer had read Ibram X.  Kendi, if he'd been trained in the principles of anti-racism, he would have produced a pair of soft foam nunchucks and disarmed the assailant — or else just let the other girl get stabbed.
• 
In the meantime, MSNBC pointed out, we know for a fact that the cop was a racist, because he didn't even bother to ask Ma'Khia Bryant what her grade point average was, or whether she had a popular TikTok account, if you can even imagine.
• 
The ACLU affirmed this.  "We'll say it again," the former civil liberties organization declared on Twitter, "a system that kills children with impunity cannot be reformed."
• 
According to Bree Newsome, "Teenagers have been having fights, including fights involving knives, for eons," meaning a very long time.  "We do not need police to address these situations by showing up to the scene and using a weapon against one of the teenagers."
• 
As the mayor of Columbus, a Democrat called Andrew Ginther, put it after the shooting: "How did we get here?  This is a failure on the part of our community.  Some are guilty, but all of us are responsible."
• 
But wait a second, you might be asking yourself.  My kid didn't try to stab anyone.  In fact, my kid could have been stabbed.  How am I responsible for any of this?
• 
And now I'm "responsible" for attempted murder?  How does that work, exactly?  Why don't you explain it to us, Mr.  Mayor?
• 
Well, it works by the magic of systemic racism.  Systemic racism is the means by which you get blamed for things you had nothing to do with.
• 
Joe Biden's frowny little flak made that point immediately after this happened in Columbus.  In response, she said, the White House will work "to address systemic racism and implicit bias head on." Whose?  Yours.  Your racism, your bias.  That's what caused this.
• 
That's right, agreed Obama bag woman Valerie Jarrett, who took a quick break from getting rich to set America straight about what really happened: "Demand accountability," she wrote.  "Fight for justice."
• 
Let them use knives!  Or else.
      Tucker Carlson: Derek Chauvin verdict seals devil's bargain between America and BLM  (Fox 04/22/2021)
• 
Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted Tuesday on all counts.  The trial went on for more than a month.  At times, the testimony was complex and technical.
• 
But at the center of the case, there was always really just one piece of relevant evidence: the videotape of George Floyd's death in a Minneapolis street last May.
• 
If you haven't seen the tape recently, it remains as shocking as the day it was shot.  Watch it, and you can see that George Floyd knows on some level he's going to die, and in the end, he does.
• 
It's crushing.  Millions of Americans saw this and they were horrified.  Many decided as they watched it that Officer Chauvin must have committed an act of criminal brutality.
• 
So it's really not surprising that the jury concluded the same thing.  The images in that tape seemed to tell the whole story.  In fact, even if no one outside the courtroom had ever seen that tape, it's possible that Derek Chauvin still would have been convicted.  The tape is that powerful.  That's totally possible.
• 
The George Floyd video went around the world.  It became the centerpiece of a new political movement.  Political actors harnessed the emotion over that video and Floyd's death to control the country and change it forever.  And then, and this is the key, in the last month, some of these same people went further than that.
• 
They worked to change the outcome of Derek Chauvin's trial.  That's the one thing we can never allow, no matter how we feel about a specific case.
• 
Civilized countries have impartial justice systems.  That's their hallmark.  It's what separates the countries you want to live in from places you don't even want to visit.
• 
Civilized countries demand, above all, that every citizen is held to precisely the same standard under the law as every other citizen is — and that applies no matter how popular or unpopular a particular defendant might be.  It applies no matter what the alleged crime is.
• 
Civilized countries do not tolerate jury intimidation.  You see it, you stop it.  They don't allow the threat of violence to influence the outcome of a trial, ever.  Not under any circumstances.  That would be the opposite of justice.  That would be mob rule.
• 
America used to strive hard to be like that.  And yet just Tuesday, we saw the President of the United States throw his backing behind Chauvin's prosecution even as the jury in Minneapolis was still deliberating the case.
• 
We saw one of the most powerful members of Congress tell a group of angry people they should act out in violence if the jury dared to acquit.
• 
We watched the city of Minneapolis concede responsibility for the death of George Floyd right in the middle of the trial, before Chauvin's lawyer could even sum up his case.
• 
Most ominously of all, we watched thugs threaten a defense witness with death — smearing blood on the door of what they thought was his house — and then get away with it.  No one in authority seemed especially interested in catching them.
• 
These were terrifying acts.  It doesn't matter whether you think Derek Chauvin was guilty and deserves what he got.  It doesn't matter who you voted for.  It doesn't matter what you think about anything else.
• 
Seeing mobs try to influence this trial should shock and horrify you at least as much as the George Floyd video did.  This is a country moving backwards at high speed.
• 
But the strange thing is, most people didn't seem shocked or upset by any of this.  They seem relieved by the verdict.  They'd, of course, seen the boarded-up buildings.  They'd watched the troops in the streets.  They understood very well what an acquittal would mean.  They believed that a conviction, justified or not, would buy the country peace.
• 
Many people thought this, and not just cynical people.  Most people, including many Republicans, said as much.  If we obeyed Maxine Waters and ignored the pig blood, hopefully the chaos would end.
• 
And you could see why they felt that way.  After 11 months of mostly unrestrained violence and intimidation from BLM, Americans decided to pay the ransom.  They understood Derek Chauvin as a sacrifice for the sins of a nation.
• 
On television, they told us this was the case in the clearest terms.  America is on trial, they told us.  It's not just Chauvin, one cop from Minneapolis on the stand.  It's all of us — our history, our culture, our system.
• 
We internalized that, and we went along with it.  But we were foolish to go along with this.  A wise country stands on its principles.  It puts down mobs.  It doesn't obey mobs because mobs are never sated.  No matter what demands you follow, they demand more.
• 
And now they are demanding more, not surprisingly.  Here were the two most powerful people in the United States reacting to yesterday's verdict.
• 
Keep in mind that no one has ever shown that race or skin color played any role in the death of George Floyd.  If you watched the trial, you know that.
• 
These people didn't watch the trail.  They're not interested in the details.  Their plan is to use the trial the way they used George Floyd.
• 
KAMALA HARRIS: A measure of justice isn't the same as equal justice.  This verdict brings us a step closer and the fact is we still have work to do.  We still must reform the system.
• 
JOE BIDEN: No one should be above the law.  And today's verdict sends that message.  But it's not enough.  We can't stop here.
• 
The attorney general has announced that the investigation into the death of George Floyd — overseen, presumably, by avowed racist Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division — is "ongoing."
• 
Ongoing?  Didn't we just have a month-long trial that presented all the evidence?  Yes we did.  But once again, that was just the start.
• 
So what we can expect next?  Hard to know exactly but there are signs.  BLM activists, for example, celebrated the Chauvin verdict in New York.  George Floyd died 1,200 miles from New York, in an entirely different region.
• 
Presumably, they didn't know Floyd.  They probably didn't watch the trial.  But for people like this, justice for George Floyd isn't the point.  Never-ending ethnic conflict is the point.
• 
Protesters yelled "Stay the f** out of New York," "We don't want you here," "We don't want your f***ing money," and "We don't want your f***ing taqerias owned by f***ing White men!" outside a Brooklyn restaurant.
• 
They're doing it for one simple reason: it gets results.  Radicalism works.  Violence works.  That's the lesson.  We have taught the mob that lesson.  And at least one BLM activist is willing to say it out loud:...
• 
BLM ACTIVIST HAWK NEWSOME: It was a mixture of violent and nonviolent protest that yielded this result.  That's the bottom line.  America doesn't listen to us when we march peacefully.  I'm not saying people will be back in the street but America must know that if you continue to allow us to be murdered in the streets without justice, we will raise hell in America.
• 
It's that simple: violent protests get results.  That's a threat, obviously.  But it's also, unfortunately true.  Rioting does work.  When you burn cities, you get what you want.
• 
You get rich from corporate handouts.  You get the jury verdicts you've demanded.  Rioters know this very well, even if the rest of us won't admit it.
• 
By allowing Wendy's to be torched and Macy's to be looted and police stations to be destroyed, the rest of us have relinquished our power as citizens and instead handed it to the most violent, unreasonable, and least productive people in the country.
• 
... don't kid yourself.  Derek Chauvin's conviction didn't settle accounts.  It merely increased the debt.
• 
IBRIM X.  KENDI: So now what?  Chauvin is headed to jail but is America headed to justice?  Is justice convicting a police officer or is justice convicting America?  ... It's easy to just blame individual officers like Derek Chauvin but the problem is structural.  The problem is historic ... Justice has convicted America.  Now we must put in the time transforming this nation.
• 
So, we've all been convicted of murder.  And by the way, you can't blame Ibram X.  Kendi.  That guy's gotten many millions of dollars from our captains of industry.  He's incubated within the academy.  You may be paying tuition to support his salary.
• 
Why are you doing that?  Why are the rest of us doing that as he calls for punishing you for a murder you didn't commit?
• 
See related Weighing the Options (Antonio Branco, 04/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Jury verdict in Derek Chauvin trial a cry of 'please don't hurt us'  (Fox 04/21/2021)
• 
The jury in the Derek Chauvin trial came to a unanimous and unequivocal verdict Tuesday afternoon: "Please don't hurt us."
• 
The jurors spoke for many in this country; everyone understood perfectly well the consequences of an acquittal in this case.
• 
After nearly a year of burning, looting, and murder by BLM, that was never in doubt.  Last night, 2,000 miles from Minneapolis, police in Los Angeles preemptively blocked roads.  Why?  They knew what would happen if Derek Chauvin got off.
• 
In the end, he didn't get off.  If given the maximum sentence under the law, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.
• 
Is that a fair punishment?  Is the officer guilty of the specific crimes for which he was just convicted?
• 
We can debate all that, and we will.  But here's what we can't debate: no mob has the right to destroy our cities.  Not under any circumstances, not for any reason.
• 
No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury, and no political party has the right to impose a different standard of justice on its own supporters.
• 
Those things are unacceptable in America, but all of them are happening now.  If they continue to happen, decent, productive people will leave.  The country as we knew it will be over.  So we must stop this current insanity.  It's an attack on civilization.
• 
That stake is far more than the future of Derek Chauvin or the memory of George Floyd.  At stake is America.
• 
So before we consider the details of Tuesday's verdict, a bigger question, one we should all think about: Can we trust the way this decision was made?
• 
That's the promise of our justice system – that it's impartial, that it's as fair as human beings can make it.
• 
That the cop who killed Ashli Babbitt will be held to the very same scrutiny as the cop who was just convicted of killing George Floyd.
• 
That political or ethnic considerations will play absolutely no role in jury deliberations.  That justice will be blind.
• 
Can we say all of that in this case?  And if we can't, why can't we?
• 
See related Weighing the Options (Antonio Branco, 04/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Democrat court-packing push shows change coming too far, too fast  (Fox 04/16/2021)
• 
Things are changing fast, in case you haven't noticed; much too fast.  People can't metabolize change at this pace...  Human beings are not designed for relentless, abrupt changes to the way they live or the way they think.
• 
For most of human history, they didn't have to deal with those changes because they didn't happen much.  Societies evolved slowly.  Fourth-century France was very much like fourteenth-century France.
• 
Then, in the 1700s, someone perfected the steam engine and nothing was ever the same.  Life for average people began to change.  It moved faster and faster, and then exponentially faster.
• 
This continued until the present day, a moment in which nearly every morning, you awake to a brand new world.
• 
If you're over 40, you may have trouble recognizing your own country.  It's just too unfamiliar.  The self-righteous children on social media don't care to notice this and when they do, they dismiss any complaint about change as bigotry.
• 
But it's not bigotry.  It's human nature: Abrupt change always causes social chaos.  Human beings develop customs and habits and generational expectations for a reason.  It's not random.
• 
Continuity is comforting to people.  If you eliminate familiar things overnight, societies fracture.  Populations tend to explode.
• 
We've seen that happen.  The last industrial revolution, in the end, provoked armed revolutions.  Hundreds of millions of people died.  Germany got Hitler.  Eastern Europe got Stalinism.
• 
Yes, we did wind up with antibiotics in the end.  You can thank technology for that, and we do.  But we also got genocide and atomic bombs.
• 
There's a lesson here: if you're going to change things, go slowly.  Choose the incremental over the immediate.  Explain yourself as you do it.  Reassure people.  Acknowledge the reality of evolutionary biology.
• 
Human beings aren't born to be machine components.  You can't bang out improved versions of your citizens on a 3-D printer.  People in real life are complicated and stubborn and hard to control.  Even the most open-minded ones get jumpy and bewildered when suddenly everything's different.
• 
You'd think this would all be obvious and that wise leaders would know it intuitively.  If you're going to have relentless technological change — and apparently we are — you can't inflict relentless social change and expect your society to survive.  Things will fall apart if you do that, guaranteed.
• 
Yet that's exactly what our leaders are currently doing.  They're changing everything, whether we like it or not: a new language, new values, new biology, new curricula, new social mores and hiring standards and body types.  A brand new national population.
• 
And then, because that's still not enough change, a whole new system of government.  All of that in three months.
• 
What will the consequences of that revolution be?  In your bones, you know the answer.  It's terrifying.  And it doesn't have to happen.  What America needs more than anything is a pause, a moment to catch our national breath.
• 
Take stock.  Assess what just happened — a lot — and calmly consider the best way forward.  You want unity for the country?  We all do.  That might bring us unity.  But no.  The kaleidoscopic barrage of unending change continues.
• 
On Thursday, Democrats informed us, they plan to dismantle the last trusted branch of our government, the Supreme Court.  A Congressman from New York explained why they're doing it.  His name is Mondaire Jones.  He's 33 years old.  He went to Stanford and Harvard Law School, meaning that in his short life, he produced essentially nothing.  None of it is real to him.  So he's happy to blow it up.
• 
"Our democracy is in crisis.  The insurrection on January 6th made that clear.  This crisis didn't arrive overnight or by accident.  The Supreme Court helped bring us here.  In fact, the Court has been actively dismantling our democracy for years ... It gutted the protections of the Voting Rights Act and paved the way for a new era of racist voter suppression.  It helped install Donald Trump in the White House and he returned the favor by appointing more justices who are hostile to our democracy ... We the people can break the far right, anti-democratic grip on our democracy.  We can expand the Supreme Court.  And together we can finally restore government by the people instead of government by the powerful."
• 
That was a slick campaign ad.  He didn't make it in his basement.  It cost money to make the ad.  Where'd that money coming from?  We'd love to know.  Was it funded by some of the big corporations that have just finished telling us that asking people to show ID when they vote is Jim Crow racism?
• 
It's possible.  ... We asked Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey, Delta CEO Ed Bastian, longtime Amazon head Jeff Bezos, and Merck CEO Ken Frazier.  All of these business titans have been happy to weigh in with full force recently on what form of government the rest of us must have.  It's their business, it's up to them now.
• 
RUTH BADER GINSBURG TO NPR IN 2019: I have heard that there are some people on the Democratic side who would like to increase the number of judges ... If anything would make the court appear partisan, it would be that, one side saying, "When we're in power, we're going to enlarge the number."
• 
JOE BIDEN, 2019: I would not get into court packing.  We add three justices, next time around we lose control, they add three justices.  We begin to lose any credibility that the court has at all.
• 
... in real life, the bill we are talking about may not pass.  But the sad thing is, it doesn't matter whether or not it does, because the damage has already been done.
• 
People who are paid to care about the country have proven they don't.  They'd wreck the place as long as they got to control it.
• 
That's not a reassuring message.  Americans are highly anxious right now.  They're paranoid and distrustful.  They don't think any of their institutions are on the level.
• 
But instead of reassuring them everything will be OK, leading Democrats just showed them they have every reason to feel that way.
      Tucker Carlson: America is now one nation with two very different justice systems  (Fox 04/15/2021)
• 
The ironically-named "Civil Rights Division" of the Biden Justice Department announced Wednesday there will be no charges brought against the man who shot and killed protester Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol back in January.
• 
In cases like this, the benefit of the doubt usually does goes to law enforcement, and as we've often said, we're fine with that.  It should.
• 
But still, in a free society, the rest of us have a right to know roughly what happened.  In this case, who shot Ashli Babbitt and why?
• 
No one will tell us.  The Biden administration says the man who killed Babbitt is a Capitol Hill police officer, and he did the right thing.  That's all they've said.
• 
We know that Ashli Babbitt was short, female and unarmed.  There's no evidence the officer who killed her gave any kind of verbal warming before he pulled the trigger.
• 
Is that standard procedure?  We'd imagined the rules of engagement for federal agents limited the use of deadly force to situations where law enforcement has reason to believe they or the people around them are in imminent danger of being harmed.
• 
You can't just shoot people without warning because they're in the wrong place.  That's not allowed.  Except now, apparently, it is allowed.  When did these rules change?
• 
And, once again, who exactly shot Ashli Babbitt?  Journalists exist to ask questions like these, but they're not.
• 
"Authorities determined that there was insufficient evidence to prove Babbitt's civil rights were violated," the Post declared.  That was it.  The rest of the piece was a personal attack on Ashli Babbitt and her political views.  She deserved to die.  That was the point of the Washington Post story.
• 
How amazing to read something like this, especially now.  Eleven hundred miles from Washington, in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, a police officer accidentally reached for her gun instead of a Taser and killed a man called Daunte Wright.
• 
It was a tragedy, as all shootings are.  But we know that officer's name because every news organization in the country printed it immediately.
• 
She has now resigned and is facing charges.  Her mugshot is all over the Internet.  Two nights ago, a mob showed up at her house, forcing her to flee.
• 
She's not the only one.  Last August, a police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin shot a man called Jacob Blake.  Remember that?  Riots erupted immediately.  Yesterday, that officer was cleared of all charges.  When that story broke, NPR put that police officer's name and photograph on the front of their website.
• 
So that's the standard, except in this case where they are still hiding the identity of the man who shot Ashli Babbitt.
• 
The standards that big news organizations use to cover shootings depend entirely on the political views of the people who get shot.
• 
In the case of Ashli Babbitt, we'd know next to nothing about how she died, and we wouldn't know anything if her shooting hadn't been captured on video by people who don't work at the Washington Post.
• 
On Jan.  6, Samuel Montoya took what may be the clearest video of Ashli Babbitt's death.  When you watch the video, there are a lot of things to notice.  Ashli Babbitt had no weapon.  She wasn't attacking anyone.  She couldn't attack anyone, because she was climbing through a window at the moment she was shot.
• 
But what's most striking is that several Capitol Hill police officers in paramilitary gear were standing directly behind Babbitt when she was killed.  They were carrying what Joe Biden refers to as weapons of war — loaded AR-15s.
• 
So tell us again how Ashli Babbitt posed an imminent physical threat to anyone when she was shot.  She didn't.  Samuel Montoya's footage proves it.
• 
And we're grateful we have that tape.  If we didn't, The New York Times would be telling us that Ashli Babbitt was beating people to death with a fire extinguisher when she was killed.
• 
Yesterday, a large group of armed federal agents showed up at his house in Austin.  They smashed Montoya's front door, confiscated his electronic devices and threw him in jail.  He's behind bars right now.  What was his crime?
• 
The FBI says it began investigating Montoya after one of his family members provided "proof that Montoya was physically inside the U.S.  Capital near the shooting of a woman on January 6, 2021." To be clear, Montoya didn't shoot the woman.  He just happened to be nearby.
• 
So why is journalist Samuel Montoya behind bars tonight?  Well, he committed a crime: "Interfering with government business." In other words, trespassing.
• 
If this happened in Ukraine, what are the chances NBC News would describe Samuel Montoya as a "dissident journalist," and then describe Ashli Babbitt an "unarmed pro-democracy demonstrator". 
• 
But this is America, and they're not saying that.  Instead they're telling us that Ashli Babbitt deserved to die.
• 
What's amazing is not simply the grotesque cruelty of assessments like that — a young women is shot to death and the media applaud — but what's more amazing is the contrast between this and the coverage of other violence that's now in progress.
• 
Tuesday night, Biden voters burned a police building in Portland, Oregon.  Did you know that?  Probably not, it didn't get much coverage.
• 
In the wake of Daunte Wright's death Sunday, riots broke out all over the country, in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Minneapolis.
• 
People were stealing stuff off store shelves, but don't call it looting.  It's a peaceful demonstration.  We know that because the mayor of Brooklyn Center, Mike Elliott, told us so.
• 
"Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to go talk to these peaceful protesters, Our city is calm now." Here's the funny thing: the mayor's wearing a Kevlar helmet in the picture, which was not taken in Syria, but in his own town.  That's how peaceful it is.
• 
Others, by contrast, have decided to drop the pretense entirely.  BLM leader Bree Newsome no longer talks about "peaceful protests." She doesn't want those any more.
• 
"I'm definitely in the camp of defending rioting and looting as a legitimate, politically-informed response to state violence," she wrote in a tweet that the Twitter censors have pointedly left up.
• 
What's really striking is that Newsome once committed a more aggressive version of the offense that Samuel Montoya is changed with.
• 
A few years ago, she trespassed at the Capitol in South Carolina and ripped down the flag.  She also trespassed in a state lawmaker's office and refused to leave.
• 
Is she rotting in jail?  No.  She was arrested briefly, then drew praise from no less than Hillary Clinton herself.  Hillary endorsed that particular insurrection.  But not everyone gets the same treatment, you may have noticed.
• 
That should worry you, no matter who you voted for and no matter how fervently you may support Joe Biden.  This is a huge, society-ending problem.  Laws have no meaning if they're not applied equally.
• 
When they are not applied equally, they are not even laws.  They're just tools of political persecution.  You don't want to live in a country like that, even if the people you don't like are the ones being persecuted.
• 
A panel of privileged people tell you to abolish the police.  But they're not saying actually abolish the police.  We often claim they are, but listen very carefully.  They say they want to abolish American policing as it currently exists.  And that raises the question: how does policing currently exist?
• 
Here's how: local communities get to control it.  So the cops walking down your street, you hired them.  That's what Rashida Tlaib doesn't like.  That's what offends MSNBC.
• 
The thing they hate about it is that they don't control it.  They can't use your local police department to punish you for your political views.  For that, they have to go to the FBI.  It drives them crazy.
• 
Abolishing the police doesn't mean getting rid of people with guns.  It merely and specifically means stripping you of any control over local law enforcement.
• 
It's just a more ambitious form of gun control, meant to disempower the citizenry, not protect them.  When your police department answers to them, things will be very different.
• 
In the past few days, federal prosecutors have essentially dropped half a dozen federal felony cases that arose from those famous riots in Portland last summer.  The feds reached non-prosecution agreements, which ensure that people who committed felonies will walk away with no criminal record of any kind.
• 
One of them, a woman called Alexandra Eutin, was charged with beating a Portland police officer in the head with a wooden shield while he was trying to make an arrest.
• 
Another defendant, called Alexa Daron Graham, was charged with trying to bring down a police aircraft with a laser pointer.
• 
Now that's bad, obviously.  But it's not quite as bad as, say, voting for Donald Trump, or walking around the Capitol building with a camera.
• 
Alexandra Eutin and Alexa Graham won't have a criminal record by the end of this.  Samuel Montoya could spend the next seven years in jail.
• 
You see what's going on.  Two systems of justice — one for the allies of the people in charge, and a very different one for their enemies.
      Tucker Carlson: Disagree with AOC?  You might want to start looking over your shoulder  (Fox 04/10/2021)
• 
If you had to sum up this moment in American history, what would you call it?  Maybe the "Age of Fraud."
• 
We're living in a time when the most powerful people in the world masquerade as the least powerful, a time when billionaires pose as helpless victims (don't criticize Bill Gates!), when a women who literally identifies as "the Duchess of Sussex" tells Oprah she's oppressed and Oprah nods in empathy, because Oprah's oppressed, too.
• 
In a moment like this, it's not surprising that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feels deeply sorry for herself.  Ocasio-Cortez was elected to Congress a few years ago at the age of 29, beating a longtime incumbent in a race no one thought she could win.
• 
Her previous job, famously, had been waiting tables and tending bar at a taco place in Union Square.
• 
People made fun of that, but we haven't.  Say what you will about Ocasio-Cortez's views, that's a legitimately impressive achievement.  If your daughter did that, you'd be proud.
• 
But Ocasio-Cortez doesn't seem proud.  She seems aggrieved.  With every passing year, as her fame and power grew, she appeared angrier and more brittle.
• 
Within a month of arriving in Washington, Ocasio-Cortez had amassed a larger social media presence than any member of Congress.
• 
As of Friday, she has 12.6 million Twitter followers, nearly twice as many as Nancy Pelosi, who has been doing this for half a century.
• 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has one of the largest political megaphones on earth.  But she wants more.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez now insists that not only should she be able to speak totally unfiltered to millions, but that no one should be allowed to disagree with what she says.
• 
In February, her office sent a mass email to supporters asking them to report anyone who criticizes her to the tech monopolies for punishment.
• 
"Scan your social media to find posts with misleading information," the email read, "use the built-in report feature to flag them for moderators."
• 
What is this?  It's pretty straightforward, really.  Here you have one of the most powerful politicians in the country using the most powerful companies in the world to censor her political opponents.
• 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't a power-mad demagogue.  No, she's a vulnerable young woman just trying to protect herself from assault.  To disagree with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is to injure her.
• 
At 31, she's a much sought-after voice on every possible topic, from economics to the way society is designed to the details of complex foreign policy questions.  ... she was asked how to bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis.  "...We value Jewish and, rather, we value Israeli, uh, uh, uh, we value the safety and human rights of Israelis, we value the safety and human rights of Palestinians."
• 
It went on like that for a bit, but you get you the idea.  "Centering people's humanity," "Protecting people's rights," blah, blah, blah, blah.  It was vapor.
• 
If you were her mother, or a college roommate, or a close friend, you might give her a pass for this.  "Pretty brave of her to weigh in on a subject she knows nothing about," you might think to yourself, if you were being charitable.
• 
But if you were a sincere progressive, watching from home and hoping for a leader, you'd be deeply disappointed.  This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after all, lioness of the left.  Where was the full-throated defense of the Palestinians and their rights?  Where was the truth to power?
• 
That was Ryan Wentz's reaction.  Wentz is a man of the left, an anti-war activist in California.  He wasn't impressed by what she said, and he said so.  On Twitter, Wentz wrote this: "Her response was incredibly underwhelming, to say the very least."
• 
A week later, the police showed up at his house.  Two plainclothes officers from the California Highway Patrol arrived, calling his name.
• 
They explained they'd been sent by the U.S.  Capitol Police in Washington to respond to a threat against a sitting member of Congress.
• 
Wentz hadn't threatened Ocasio-Cortez or anyone else.  He'd merely disapproved of her opinions.
• 
But the police seemed unconvinced.  As he explained ... "they just wouldn't back down from this accusation that I threatened to kill her."
• 
But here's the spookiest part: Ryan Wentz hadn't included any personal information in his social media profile.  Yet the police knew his name and exactly where he lived.  How'd they find him?
• 
It seems likely that Twitter turned Wentz in to authorities on behalf of their friend Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
• 
It's hard to believe this is happening in America, but it did.  The California Highway Patrol confirmed it Friday.  The Capitol Police told ... they referred Wentz's name because he was mentioned in a "threatening" message.  They denied that Ocasio-Cortez requested an investigation.
• 
For her part, Ocasio-Cortez also denied direct involvement in any of it, but she didn't seem especially upset that it happened.  She certainly didn't launch into an impassioned speech about civil liberties.
• 
Why would she?  Threatening people for daring to criticize the powerful is normal now.  ... no one was defining the terms very clearly.  What's an "extremist"?  How is that different from someone who disagrees with the people in charge?
• 
So, what is an extremist?  A lot of people assume an extremist must be someone who voted for Donald Trump or reads forbidden websites.
• 
No.  It turns out it's someone who disagrees with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, from the right, or even the left.
• 
See related Almost Died... (Michael Ramirez, 02/09/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Biden wants to take your guns, but leave criminals with theirs  (Fox 04/09/2021)
• 
Nothing the Democratic Party advocates for is more dishonest than gun control.  Everything about that specific issue is false.
• 
You might deeply dislike taxes, for example, but you can still acknowledge it's fair to charge people for the services they receive from government.  The other side isn't crazy, they've just arrived at a different number than you did.
• 
Gun control is not like that.  Gun control is entirely fraudulent.  The Democratic Party claims that guns cause violence.  That's the core claim, and it is a lie.
• 
It's provably untrue.  The places in this country that have the most guns and the loosest controls on those guns also have the least gun violence and the fewest killings.
• 
That's the bottom line.  You could look it up; the statistics are available to anyone.
• 
Anyone who tries to restrict your legally owned firearms is not trying to make America safer.  The point is to disarm you and strip you of your autonomy, your power, your right to self-defense.
• 
Gun control is not about guns.  Gun control is about who controls America.  Is it the population, as in a democracy, or does all control go to a small group of authoritarians, as in an oligarchy?
• 
Those are the stakes in the gun control debate.  It's not about guns, it's about who runs the country.
• 
With that in mind, Joe Biden's speech Thursday calling for more gun control should make you uncomfortable.  Almost nothing the president said was true.
• 
It was a speech aimed to mislead rather than to inform.  Before he announced how he plans to restrict your Second Amendment rights, Joe Biden wanted to remind you that those rights are not real in the first place.  They are not, as he put it, "absolute."
• 
BIDEN: Nothing I'm about to recommend in any way impinges on the Second Amendment.  There are phony arguments suggesting that these are Second Amendment rights at stake, for what we're talking about.  But no amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute.
• 
(By the way, if you watched the speech live, you heard the sirens in the background responding to the skyrocketing crime rate in the city Biden presides over.)...
• 
The right to keep and bear arms "shall not be infringed," the Constitution promised.  But according to Joe Biden, that's not an absolute right, despite what the text says.
• 
No, that right is subject to his approval and his interpretation.  Joe Biden is in charge of the Constitution now.
• 
Joe Biden defines its terms and Joe Biden has decided that something called "stabilizing braces" can no longer be allowed.
• 
... a stabilizing brace is used by target shooters to hold heavy firearms.  They play zero role in the murder epidemic now underway in our cities.
• 
So why is Joe Biden banning them without the approval of Congress?  Probably because up to 40 million law-abiding Americans own this device.
• 
Under Biden's order, every one of those people will have to alert federal authorities and pay hundreds of dollars in fines for the crime of owning a harmless piece of plastic that was legal yesterday.
• 
If they don't comply, Joe Biden's federal authorities can drag them off in handcuffs, seize their property, and charge them with a felony.
• 
So with a single stroke of a pen, Joe Biden just turned tens of millions of overwhelmingly Republican voters into criminals.  Is it starting to make sense now?
• 
Think about that for a minute and you'll begin to understand why the Democratic Party is so focused on what they call "weapons of war."
• 
You might know them as semiautomatic, small-caliber sporting rifles that normal people use for hunting and target shooting and home defense.
• 
Here's the thing: No subject is more carefully cataloged than gun violence.  Guns like these so-called "weapons of war" play no meaningful role in crime.
• 
Virtually all gun murders in this country are committed with handguns (again, don't take our word for it, you can look this up).
• 
A small number of people are responsible for most of the violence and they use a small variety of weapons to commit it (again, you can look this up).  Those weapons are not rifles.
• 
So if you actually cared about making the country safer and keeping people from getting murdered, you would target handguns in big cities.  That's where the murders are.  That's where the violence is.
• 
But the Biden administration is doing the opposite of this, the mirror image of this.  The Biden administration is letting big city criminals go.  People who use guns for violence are walking out of jail.
• 
And instead, the Biden administration is using the full force of government to disarm peaceful voters in zip codes that voted for Donald Trump.  It is that simple.
• 
... David Chipman suggested that people who fail background checks should be arrested on the spot.
• 
While at ATF, I conducted studies involving people who failed background checks to determine how many later committed crimes with a gun — many did.  This is a perfect opportunity to arrest people before committing crimes rather than responding after the fact."
• 
Arrest people before committing crimes." That's a new concept in American law, though the Chinese are highly familiar with it.
• 
However, it does raise a point of pressing interest to the Biden family.  Joe Biden just appointed a guy who thinks people who lie on federal firearms background checks should go to prison.
• 
Do you know any people like that?  Hunter Biden purchased a handgun illegally.  He lied on a federal background check.
• 
So the question is, will David Chipman arrest the president's son?  And if he doesn't arrest the president's son, the question is: How exactly are you obligated to follow these rules?
• 
That's a serious question.  Can you live in a country where the rules don't apply to the president's son, but you could go to jail for violating them?  How can you participate in a system like that?
• 
If you bought a gun to protect your family, your business or your home during the riots that these people unleashed on the country, the conspiracy nut running the ATF calls you crazy.
• 
Across the country, criminals who commit violence with guns are going free.  Murder rates are hitting record levels.
• 
Meanwhile, you haven't hurt anyone.  You haven't done anything wrong.  But suddenly, Hunter Biden has a fat book contract from Simon & Schuster, and you're a felon for trying to defend your home.
• 
You can see what's going on here.  Again, they're not trying to control guns.  They're trying to control you.
      Tucker Carlson: Pilot ability no longer matters to United Airlines, but skin color does  (Fox 04/08/2021)
• 
On his very first day in office, Joe Biden signed something called an "Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities."
• 
You ought to read it and see if you can figure out what it means.  The document uses the term "equity" a total of 21 times, yet, revealingly, never defines the word.
• 
So, what is equity?  Joe Biden never tells us, never even hints.  His order proclaims that America will be getting "an ambitious whole-of-government equity agenda."
• 
So whatever it is, equity is ambitious, and it will be everywhere.  We know that it will be everywhere.  But we're not allowed to know what it is.  That's odd.
• 
For three months, we've been trying to guess: What is this "equity" that is now our country's main reason for existing?  We know it's not the same as "equality," or even closely related.
• 
In the name of equity, for example, the Biden administration supports open discrimination against Asian college applicants.  They're Asian, therefore they can't get in to school.  It's that simple.
• 
We used to call that kind of behavior "racism" and had laws against it.  Now we call it "equity" and we have laws demanding it.  It turns out that racism and equity are pretty much the same thing.  Who knew?
• 
Here's the latest illustration of the principle, and it comes not from the Biden Administration, but from United Airlines.  United used to be a conventional commercial air carrier.  It flew airplanes from place to place, most of the time uneventfully.  That was the old United Airlines.
• 
The new United is very different.  It's a combination of a hyper-aggressive corporate HR department, and a left-wing political action committee.  The new United is big on moral pronouncements and mandatory social engineering.  United has embraced equity.  Here's its latest directive, spelled out yesterday on Twitter:...
• 
"Our flight deck should reflect the diverse group of people on board our planes every day.  That's why we plan for 50% of the 5,000 pilots we train in the next decade to be women or people of color."
• 
When Coca-Cola embraces some equity scheme, you can understand why: they're hoping that by hiring more Black executives, no one will ask how many Black Americans have gotten diabetes from drinking Coke.  For Coca-Cola, equity is purely a defensive PR move, and it makes sense.
• 
But airlines are different.  An airline pilot transports hundreds of people at a time in a thin-walled metal tube going nearly 600 miles an hour, 35,000 feet off the ground.
• 
Flying a commercial airliner is dangerous.  Like performing heart surgery, no matter how many times you've done it, it's inherently high stakes.  People die if you screw up.  In the airline business, as in medicine, not killing people is all that matters.
• 
So, how will racial and gender quotas make United Airlines safer?  That's the only question that matters.
• 
"Only 7% of United pilots are female!" fretted CBS.  "Only 13% aren't White!" OK, but why exactly should we care about those numbers?  An airline pilot's job is to land the plane safely.  Everything else is irrelevant.
• 
If 100% of United pilots were Black women, or Malaysian Muslims, or for that matter, White men from Alabama, not a single sane person would complain about it as long as the airplanes didn't crash.  Safety is all that matters.
• 
But you'll notice the CEO of United didn't mention safety.  Safety is no longer that airline's top concern.  Identity politics is.  United will dispute that characterization, of course.
• 
... in the airline business, there's only one standard that matters, and it's not race or gender.  It's competence.  The way people look is totally irrelevant.  How they perform is all that matters.  Once you forget that, airplanes tend to crash.
• 
Everyone knows that's true, very much including the people who run this country.  Many of them don't fly United.  They don't fly commercial.
• 
They use NetJets, the largest private airline in the world.  Has NetJets embraced equity or hiring quotas?  Of course not.  Check out the NetJets website if you have a minute.
• 
They'll tell you exactly what they're looking for in an airline pilot they hire.  Here's the first line: "We seek individuals who demonstrate an unwavering dedication to safety." That's the first requirement on their list.  We couldn't find any mention of race and gender.
• 
That shouldn't surprise you, because once again, race and gender are literally irrelevant to who flies your airplane.  Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry and the rest of our private-jet-dependent ruling class know that perfectly well.  They won't be demanding quotas at NetJets any time soon.  Their families fly on NetJets airplanes.
• 
So if hiring on the basis of irrelevant criteria will, over time, get people killed, why are they demanding it?  Because they don't care.  They're ideologues.
• 
They're suffering from an incurable brain disease called wokeness.  Reality means nothing to them.  It's merely an impediment to their plans.
• 
... the CEO of United is saying ... that we need to replace the pilots currently flying airplanes because they're the wrong skin color.  Only diseased people think like this.  Imagine if we applied this same standard to other professions.  How about professional sports?
• 
African-American men account for roughly 6% of the American population, yet about 75% of players in the National Basketball Association are Black men.  That doesn't sound like equity.
• 
So what if, to remedy that lack of equity, the NBA announced tomorrow that going forward, at least half of its players had to be White, Asian, Hispanic or female to better represent the fans in the stands?
• 
How would we respond to that?  We'd understand immediately, and we would say so, that it's a racist policy.
• 
No one had even alleged that NBA players were doing a bad job.  We'd all assumed, correctly, as we do with airline pilots, that the players were hired in the first place because they were the very best players the NBA could find.  But nevertheless they had to be replaced because they were the wrong race and gender.
• 
That's sick.  You think it couldn't happen?  Why wouldn't it happen?  By the logic of identity politics, it has to happen.  NBA players make a lot more than airline pilots.  At some point, someone will notice that.
• 
That's the whole problem with this diseased way of thinking.  You don't want to live in a completely racialized country, where a person's genetics are the most important thing about them.  Where you are dehumanized and reduced to your DNA.
• 
But that's exactly the society they're creating.  And what's the result of what they're doing?  Every action provokes a reaction.  That's the most basic principle in physics.  When you attack people for qualities they can't control, over time you will make them radical.  That's guaranteed.
• 
You've got to wonder if it's ever occurred to the morons pushing this equity garbage that everyone on earth has an identity.  If you make identity politics mandatory, and they have, how long until you get White identity politics?  Ever consider that, you reckless fools?
• 
How long before there is no national identity at all, only warring tribes fighting each other for the spoils?  Does anyone want to raise children in a society like that?  Only the racists want that.  But that's exactly where they're pushing us, and at high speed.
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Biden administration lying to Americans, hiding key facts about the border crisis  (Fox 04/06/2021)
• 
In the fall of 2018, not long before that year's midterm elections, President Donald Trump ordered a small group of active-duty soldiers to the American border with Mexico.
• 
In some ways, sending the troops was a symbolic gesture.  Only about 5,000 participated.  For perspective, that is about half the number of troops that the Democratic Congress sent to Washington this winter to protect itself from an imaginary QAnon threat.
• 
"Deploying troops to our own border for no national security reason is one of the biggest scandals of his presidency," declared Sen.  Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, with what looked like carefully simulated outrage.
• 
The so-called "national security community" claimed to be every bit as upset as their partners in the Democratic Party.  "It's a craven misuse of the U.S.  armed forces for an obvious political stunt," said a former National Security Council staffer called Kelly Magsamen.
• 
How is the border doing these days?  ... Well, our military is still involved in the immigration crisis, but not in the ways that you might expect.
• 
American troops are now occupied serving the needs, not of Americans, but of foreign nationals who have flagrantly violated our laws.  The Biden administration is turning our military bases into housing for illegal aliens.
• 
So you break into our country and in return we give you free housing and medical care.  What's interesting is to note who's not getting that treatment.
• 
Last night, more than 500,000 Americans spent the night in makeshift shelters or on the streets.  They're homeless, but the Biden administration isn't even considering the use of the U.S.  military to help them, despite the fact that many are veterans.
• 
Instead, the administration is boasting about all they're doing for the people who have demonstrated pure contempt for our system, the system that some of us prefer and would like to preserve.
• 
Sources familiar with internal Customs and Border Protection data have confirmed ... that officers so far have encountered 171,000 illegal immigrants in the month of March alone.
• 
That's a 418% increase from March of last year.  But that does not represent the total of people who crossed over.
• 
Those are the ones who were caught, the ones that we know about.  The real number is higher, much higher.
• 
How high is it?  High enough to change this country forever in every conceivable way.  High enough to devalue your political power as a voter.  High enough to subvert democracy itself.  High enough to make this country a different place.
      Tucker Carlson: 'No one should care' what 'race baiter' AOC thinks about border crisis  (Fox 04/01/2021)
• 
"It's just interesting to come to a place where a low IQ race-baiter like that has an important voice in national policy.  Like, who cares what she thinks?  She is totally reckless and she's racist, like openly.  I think the key to this, though, is to think clearly about what's best for the United States."
• 
"Obviously, the border policy now is a disaster.  To be fair, it's been a disaster for a long time and doesn't serve the interests of most Americans, and it won't because people like that use the magic word, which is racism, to cow the rest of the country into submission."
• 
"She wants to change the population.  She wants her party to be more powerful.  I get it.  But we're allowing her and people like her to do that because we're afraid of being called names."
• 
"Until decent people would shed their fear of being smeared by someone whose opinion you really shouldn't care about, that we're never going to have a rational immigration policy that helps everybody."
• 
"And one last thing.  How does it help Ecuador or El Salvador or Guatemala or any of the countries from which these people are coming to have your most ambitious people leave?  It's a disaster for them, too."
• 
"And for us, it doesn't help any good person to have this kind of uncontrolled migration into our country.  ... No one should care what she thinks."
      Tucker Carlson on NBC anchor Lester Holt's 'grotesque' idea of media fairness  (Fox 04/01/2021)
• 
"They're grotesque.  Fairness is never overrated ... If you don't strive to be fair, you are certain to commit moral atrocities, but again, not just true for network newsreaders.  By the way, when did newsreaders become philosophers?  I think Lester Holt seems like a perfectly nice guy, but you don't turn to Lester Holt for deepthink.  The truth is, he's saying that we know what we know, and we shouldn't question it, when in fact the reality of life suggests that's completely wrong."
• 
... said Holt's viewpoint was arrogant, given there are plenty of things people may think they know but actually don't.
• 
"We, for thousands of years, imagined that the sun revolved around the Earth, The point of journalism is to continuously press against what we think we know, demand evidence, and show it to the public.  It's not to affirm what the ruling class declares, which is basically what he's saying.  It's demented, actually."
• 
... Holt and other elite reporters' worldview was to "make the other side shut up" and run interference for the world's most powerful people.
• 
"That's like a perfect inversion of what journalism is supposed to be.  It's supposed to, in the famous formulation, make the powerful uncomfortable and comfort the afflicted.  But that's the opposite of what it does."
• 
"They take the weakest people in our society and they hurt them, and then they suck up to the most powerful.  That's why everyone hates them, and for good reason."
      Tucker Carlson: Why the media, scientific community and WHO won't investigate COVID origins  (Fox 03/31/2021)
• 
A remarkable twist in a tragedy, still ongoing, with effects that have transformed this country forever: just days before authorities reported the first cases of the coronavirus in Wuhan, a top inspector at the World Health Organization sat for an interview that was broadcast on YouTube.
• 
He spoke about his research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which had been going on for more than 15 years.
• 
... discussed his nonprofit organization, which had received millions from the U.S.  government.  ... channeled a substantial percentage of that money to the lab in Wuhan, which he described as, "world-class lab of the highest standards."
• 
Some of that work, paid for by American taxpayers, went to something called "gain-of-function research." It involved manipulating viruses in a laboratory to make them more transmissible and more deadly.
• 
... the grant money that supported it, was necessary to create a vaccine to prevent the next global pandemic.  ... even explained how easy it is to manipulate a coronavirus.
• 
"Coronavirus is a pretty good... You can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily.  It's spike protein.  Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus, zoonotic risk.  So you can get the sequence, build the protein.  And we worked with Ralph Barrack at UNC to do this.  Insert into a backbone of another virus and then do some work in the lab."
• 
"You can manipulate them pretty easily" in a lab.  That recorded on December 9, 2019.  ... Wasn't there an advanced virology lab with a history of sloppy containment protocols, very close to where the first out outbreak occurred?  Well yes there was.
• 
But Peter Daszak didn't want to talk to about that.  So he and other bureaucrats at the World Health Organization came up with an alternative explanation for the pandemic.
• 
The virus, they told the world, had most likely emerged from an exotic mammal that form some reason was being sold in a seafood market in Wuhan.  That's what happened.
• 
The media bought that explanation.  Later we discovered that was not true.  There was never any evidence that COVID infections originated in a pangolin eaten for food.
• 
The locals in Wuhan laughed at that idea.  Peter Daszak didn't apologize.  He just kept deflecting attention from the lab.
• 
"The idea that this virus escaped from a lab is just pure baloney.  It's simply not true.  I've been working with that lab for 15 years.  They're some of the best scientists in the world."
• 
Last summer, he wrote an op-ed in The Guardian entitled, "Ignore the conspiracy theories: scientists know Covid-19 wasn't created in a lab."
• 
"[Gain-of-function] research has nothing to do with the origin of COVID unless you believe the conspiracy theories.  Why mix the two together if the virus came from bats, which is what all the evidence suggests?"
• 
Almost every media outlet in this country dutifully repeated Daszak's claims as fact.  "A wet market Wuhan, China, is catching the blame as the probable source of the current coronavirus outbreak that's sweeping the globe."
• 
That was fast.  It was a few days into the pandemic, and it wasn't clear that NPR had sent anyone to the ground in Wuhan, but somehow they knew exactly where the virus came from half a world away in central China.
• 
National Geographic, famous for its expeditions, also determined, somehow, that the issue was settled.  "Wet markets launched the coronavirus," they wrote.  "Here's what you need to know."
• 
So, the investigative reporters were satisfied with no investigation.  But some people still had questions.
• 
One of them was Alina Chan, who's a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT.  Chan noticed something odd about the coronavirus.
• 
Its genome hadn't changed much over time, even though it, the virus, had undergone trillions of replications.  That's strange.
• 
Normally, viruses that jump from animals to human have to adapt quickly to their human hosts.  That's what the last SARS virus did, in 2003.  Early-stage SARS viruses looked very different from SARS viruses later in the pandemic.
• 
But this coronavirus wasn't behaving that way.  In fact, it seemed like it was custom-built for human transmission.
• 
When Chan published a paper on her findings, Peter Daszak attacked her to any reporter who would listen.  He called Chan's conclusions "preposterous" and a "conspiracy theory." Most media organizations followed suit, and the story went away.
• 
That's, of course, exactly what happened to a Chinese virologist, Dr.  Li-Meng Yang, whom we spoke to on this show.  Yang was working in Wuhan in the early days of the pandemic, but the American media dismissed her as a, nut, a conspiracy theorist.  There's nothing to see here.  Go away, crazy Chinese lady.  And so she did.
• 
But going forward, it may be much more difficult to dismiss this story.  On Sunday, the former Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Robert Redfield, told CNN that based on everything he knows, he too believes the coronavirus likely came from the lab in Wuhan.
• 
"I am of the point of view that I still think the most likely ideology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, escaped.  Other people don't believe that.  That's fine.  Science will eventually figure it out.  It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect the laboratory worker."
• 
Redfield is a former Army officer who has spent his life studying virology.  That doesn't mean he's always right about everything, and in fact, he's often been wrong during this pandemic.  But it does mean that what he says is worth assessing carefully.
• 
That's supposed to be what journalists do for a living.  They look into claims that have some merit, not proven, but should be looked into.  Especially claims that have enormous implications for this country.
• 
There isn't conclusive evidence in either direction.  So why were these self-appointed TV doctors and talking heads instantly making it political and instantly claiming something they can't prove.
• 
Intelligence officials said that they will, "continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan."
• 
So, why are so many trying to dismiss these claims out of hand, as if they know?  Why are they trying to make the former CDC director be quiet?
• 
Part of the answer, of course: to protect China.  The World Health Organization is funded by China, and they're certainly working hard to do that.  This week, the WHO Released what it called a "report" on the origins of the coronavirus.
• 
There was only one researcher based in the United States who participated in the WHO's investigation into the origin of the virus.  Guess who it was?  Peter Daszak.  Surprise, surprise.
• 
Now guess what Daszak and his colleagues discovered in their "investigation"?  A lot of Chinese innocence.
• 
In the WHO's 120-page report on the origins of the coronavirus, only two pages were devoted to the possibility the virus may have come from a lab.
• 
"Although rare, laboratory accidents do happen, and different laboratories around the world are working with bat coronaviruses," the report admits.
• 
And yes, it says, "The Wuhan CDC laboratory moved on 2nd December 2019 to a new location near the [wet] market.  Such moves can be disruptive for the operations of any laboratory."
• 
But don't get the wrong idea, says the WHO.  It is "extremely unlikely" the virus came from a lab.  Why is it so unlikely, exactly?
• 
"There is no record of viruses closely related to [the coronavirus] in any laboratory before December 2019, or genomes that in combination could provide a SARS-CoV-2 genome." other words, we didn't find a paper trail because China didn't leave one.
• 
But, the WHO would like you to know, if anyone could keep deadly viruses from escaping into the rest of the world, it's the Wuhan Institute of Virology.  "The three laboratories in Wuhan working with either [coronavirus] diagnostics and/or [coronavirus] isolation and vaccine development all had high quality biosafety level facilities that were well-managed."
• 
Case closed.  By the way, this is contradicted by first-hand testimony of American diplomats who went into the lab and said "wow, this looks dangerous." But according to the WHO, China and the World Health Organization did nothing wrong, so stop asking questions.
• 
And yet it's interesting that people won't stop.  Some people are continuing to ask.  On Sunday, a former national security official told CBS that the WHO report has all the credibility of a North Korean evening news broadcast.
• 
"I wouldn't really call what's happened now an investigation.  It's essentially a highly-chaperoned, highly-curated study tour...Everybody around the world is imagining this is some kind of full investigation.  It's not.  This group of experts only saw what the Chinese government wanted them to see...It was agreed first that China would have veto power over who even got to be on the mission...WHO agreed to that...Imagine if we have asked the Soviet Union to do a co-investigation of Chernobyl.  It doesn't really make sense."
• 
So why are so many people in positions of authority, including the so-called scientific community, so adamant that there's nothing to see here?
• 
"For the substantial subset of virologists who perform gain-of-function research, avoiding restrictions on research funding, avoiding implementation of appropriate biosafety standards, and avoiding implementation of appropriate research oversight are powerful motivators."
• 
Another scientist, Antonio Regalado from MIT, was more direct about it.  If it's determined the virus came from a lab, Regalado said, it would, "shatter the scientific edifice, top to bottom."
• 
The scientific edifice is one thing everyone in Washington would like to see preserved.  It's what gave politicians the power they've abused for the past year — the power to change elections, to eliminate thousands of small businesses, to make certain industries much richer and more powerful and destroy others.
• 
... the Biden administration is not going to announce a new investigation into the origins of the coronavirus.  They're happy with the WHO report.  Instead, they're going to announce one of the largest tax hikes in this country's history.  Maybe the largest.
• 
It's projected to total between three and four trillion dollars.  Most of the cost will fall on the middle class.
• 
Meanwhile, China, whose recklessness and dishonesty knocked America from global preeminence and destroyed millions of lives in the process, doesn't have to pay a cent.  They're richer, and we're getting poorer.  Expect that trend to continue.
• 
Here's the interesting thing: no one's even suggesting reparations from China for COVID.  No one can even utter the word.  Reparations are for America to pay, always.
• 
See related Assurance (Chip Bok, 04/10/2020) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related WHO (Gary Varvel, 04/09/2020) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Foreign Affairs (Antonio Branco, 05/16/2019) cartoon from World picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Unsafe cities, divisive mainstream media the real legacy of George Floyd's death  (Fox 03/30/2021)
• 
If your job is to make Americans hate each other, if your job is to divide the country (and that's how they see their job), the opportunity to talk about George Floyd all day is like your Super Bowl.
• 
It's not about George Floyd, obviously; it never was.  No one on CNN cared about George Floyd while he was alive.  He was unemployed and on drugs.
• 
Like a lot of people in this country, they paid him no attention.  For that matter, no one on CNN actually cares about George Floyd now.  What they care about is you and your role in the systemic racism that supposedly killed George Floyd.
• 
If the Floyd trial ends in acquittal, there could be riots.  We accept that as a fact of life in this country.  No civilized country should, but suddenly we do.
• 
If there are riots, innocent people may die, as they did in large numbers this summer.  CNN will downplay those deaths or justify them as they did this summer and as they have so many times before when those deaths are politically convenient.
• 
The point isn't to save people from dying.  The point is to punish you and to change America.  So from that perspective, it's worth it.
• 
That's why they're replaying that video of George Floyd dying in the sidewalk, to remind you of your culpability in his death.  That's why, even as they rub the country's face in the death of George Floyd, there are many other tragic deaths — some on video — they ignore completely.
• 
Here's one: A 66-year-old Pakistani immigrant called Mohammad Anwar died in Washington recently.  As in George Floyd's case, Anwar's death was on video.  Unlike George Floyd, Mohammad Anwar was not a violent career criminal with a drug habit.
• 
He worked at the very bottom of the so-called gig economy and made his living driving for Uber Eats.  It's a tough gig.
• 
On Tuesday, he was driving near Nationals Park in southeast Washington when two girls assaulted him with a Taser.
• 
The girls were 13 and 15 years old.  Mohammad Anwar resisted.  It was his car, the key to his living, and he didn't want to lose it.
• 
Anwar's last words were, "This is my car", and it was.  Bystanders watched all of this happen, but no one stepped forward to help Mohammad Anwar.
• 
The two girls hit the gas, flipping the car over.  Anwar flew out of the vehicle and landed face down on the sidewalk, dead.  The girls who killed him didn't seem bothered by this.
• 
"My phone is in there!  My phone!" one of them screamed.  She cared more about her phone than the life of the man she just killed.
• 
This raises all kinds of questions, not only about them, but about us.  What kind of society produced children like this?
• 
Who raised them?  What does it say about our country that no one jumped in to help this poor man before he was killed?
• 
Like clockwork, six months after they defunded the police department, Washington, D.C., recorded its highest murder rate in 15 years.  When you defund the police, people die.  That happens every single time.
• 
And that's why Mayor Muriel Bowser must surround herself with cops.  She doesn't want to get hurt, though she doesn't care if you do.
• 
They defunded the police across the country, and our leaders are ignoring the consequences.  Some places are doubling down.
• 
So Baltimore has equity now.  What a relief.  ... What does that look like?  Last week, Baltimore recorded seven murders in six days.  That's a killing every day of the week, plus two on Saturday.
• 
That's deeply equitable and it's happening in cities across the country.  Once again, no one's noticing this, but if you live in one, you well know what's happening.
• 
This is happening everywhere is we advance toward a full year of mourning the death of a single man on the sidewalk in Minneapolis.  Thousands of Americans have been murdered thanks to the policy changes justified by the death of that man.
• 
Ponder that for a minute.  Has there ever been a more perverse moment in this country?
• 
It's not clear what we can do about it, but you can start by telling the truth out loud.  According to The Washington Examiner, the murder rate in virtually every city in the United States is at its highest levels in more than two decades.
• 
Last year, there were more homicides in the United States than in any year since 1998.  How did that happen?
• 
Oh, BLM.  Thanks, BLM.  BLM did this to us while the people who are funding them were posturing about how great they are and how this is going to make America more equitable.
• 
Poor people were paying the price with their lives.  #No one has admitted this, no one is accepting responsibility for it, and no one has been punished for it.
• 
It's not all political.  The 13 and 15-year-old girls who killed the Pakistani Uber Eats driver weren't acting out of political solidarity with anybody.  What is that exactly?  Why do people do that?
• 
... if you took the out of wedlock birthrate, broke it down by demographic group, and put it next to the crime rate, one thing you notice they track exactly or close enough to suggest a profound connection.
• 
Why is no one interested in pursuing that?  No one even asks why this is happening.
• 
... if you look away from the propaganda and you look toward the reality of what's happening to your country on the streets of Washington or Chicago or Minneapolis, you might have a few questions for the people in power.
• 
They're the ones who created this society.  They're the ones responsible, and that's exactly the conversation they don't want to have.
      Tucker Carlson: US military has gone full woke, waging war on those who disagree with them  (Fox 03/27/2021)
• 
Special Operations Command is very significant in the U.S.  military, and in our country.
• 
It oversees Delta Force, the SEAL teams and the rest of our most-celebrated, best-trained and most lethal war-fighters.
• 
The tweet announced that a man called Richard Torres-Estrada is now the, "Chief of Diversity & Inclusion" of America's Special Forces.
• 
The question is: wWho exactly is Richard Torres-Estrada?  His Facebook page gives us some indication of who he is.
• 
On it, you'll find an attack on the police, you'll find crude BLM propaganda, you'll find a picture of Donald Trump holding a Bible in front of a church.
• 
Next to Trump is a photograph of Adolf Hitler.  The point is, they're the same.  So, this is the guy who now oversees hiring for the SEALs.
• 
If you're wondering whether our military leadership has gone woke, consider that question settled for good.  The Pentagon is now the Yale faculty lounge, but with cruise missiles.  That should concern you.
• 
Meanwhile, the rest of the world rolls on and gets more menacing by the day.  Tonight, the Suez Canal, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, is blocked by a stranded container ship.
• 
Was it an accident?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  We don't know.  What we do know is the Suez Canal is vital to the world's economy.  That's not an overstatement.
• 
The Suez Canal is one of about a dozen strategic choke points that control virtually all global trade.  Now it's closed.
• 
This is a challenge to America's critical national interests.  How is the Pentagon responding to this challenge to critical American interests?  They're occupied with other things right now.
• 
For the last month, the entire U.S.  military has been operating under a so-called "stand-down" order issued by the new Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, the defense contractor who is now running the military.
• 
Lloyd Austin believes the real threat to America is not the Chinese government or paralyzed global trade.  The real threat is people who didn't vote for Joe Biden.
• 
"And if confirmed, I will fight hard to stamp out sexual assault and to rid our ranks of racists and extremists ... The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies.  But we can't do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks."
• 
Forty-three Senate Republicans voted to confirm Lloyd Austin, and they have said virtually nothing about him since, because they're paralyzed.  They're paralyzed because Lloyd Austin has no problem calling his opponents racist immediately.
• 
"Ridding our ranks of racists and extremists." The key question is, how does Lloyd Austin define a racist or extremist?  The definition matters.  This show has been denounced as a dangerous White supremacist organ for the crime of reading Martin Luther King quotes on the air.
• 
So it's worth finding out what those words mean.  But Lloyd Austin doesn't provide a definition.  That's not accidental, because what you're seeing is not an attempt to make the military better.  What you're seeing is a political purge of the military.
• 
"I am concerned about the way that some people are looking at the current environment and what they are thinking, they can do and act upon based on their personal beliefs."
• 
Colon-Lopez said he was working hard to, "make sure that military members understand the difference between Seattle and Washington, D.C." What are those differences exactly?  Here's one: BLM, he explained, is a, "social injustice organization," and therefore not extreme.
• 
Also, "When the military was called upon to go ahead and support an effort [in Washington], we did.  We never got called for the law enforcement issue that was happening in Seattle."
• 
Oh.  So the mayor of Seattle never called the National Guard to put down Antifa.  Therefore, Antifa isn't an extremist organization.  That's ludicrous, obviously.  In fact, it's not even true.  In fact, the National Guard did deploy to Seattle during the riots last year.
• 
SENATOR TAMMY DUCKWORTH, D-ILL., MARCH 18: We absolutely need to look at any type of White supremacists that are still members of the military and how they are being targeted for recruitment by White supremacist groups and we need to weed this out ... This whole idea of police officer on police officer violence with those officers who have been turned by White extremists is really scary to me.  And I know it's got to be scary for the other police officers.
• 
SEN.  MAZIE HIRONO, D-HAWAII, MARCH 9: I am considering legislation to create a standalone punitive article in the Uniform Code of Military Justice to address violent extremism in the ranks and to send a message of deterrence, that this kind of conduct will not be tolerated in the military.
• 
REP DEBBIE WASSERMAN-SCHULTZ, D-FLA., MARCH 12: We've seen a lot of reports highlighting how many of the attackers were veterans, and there's been really a growing recognition that the military has to do more to address extremism in its ranks.
• 
It's really amazing.  Hirono and Duckworth are extremists.  They're the most extreme members of the U.S.  Senate.  They went on television this week to tell us people with the wrong skin color couldn't be hired for federal jobs.
• 
Every two months, senior enlisted leaders in the military gather for something called "the Commanding General's Stewardship of the Army Profession forum." In January, the forum included a "professional dialogue" on the racist hate tract "White Fragility" by lunatic Robin DiAngelo.  No one condemned Robin DiAngelo's obvious extremism.  They celebrated it.
• 
Just last month, Lt.  Gen.  Brad Webb, the commander of the Air Force Education and Training Command, made it explicit.  He acknowledged that the Air Force was recruiting candidates with a private pilot's license.  That might seem like a wise course — flying planes is what the Air Force does — but to Lt.  Gen Brad Webb, no, that's systemic racism:...
• 
LT.  GEN.  BRAD WEBB: One of the other areas in line with that has been aptitude tests.  In fact, the chief mentioned that one as well in his talk the other day.  But we are deep underway updating pilot tests and also officer candidate tests that, at its root, you know, you get a weighted score ... if you have a private pilot license.  Well, that's a socioeconomic influencer.  In other words, if you're rich enough to afford to have private pilot time, you can get a license.  That ought not be weighted in such a way that you exclude, you know, various ethnic groups.
• 
The real question is: how does a doughy moron like that end up with an important job in the U.S.  military?  This isn't the Department of Transportation.  It's not the DMV.  This is a serious thing.  This is the federal agency to which we give the most money and exists to protect the rest of us from foreign threats.  And guys like that have power?
• 
In October, the head of Air Force recruiting office, Major General Ed Thomas, published a piece on Yahoo entitled, "86% of Air Force pilots are [W]hite men.  Here's why this needs to change."
• 
You have to wonder what the families of the thousands of American White pilots who have died defending this country over the last hundred years think of that.
• 
We had a long conversation, but he never explained the only thing that matters: How his race-mongering was supposed to make the country safer.  He obviously didn't care.  He clearly hadn't even thought about it.
• 
How did someone like that get power in the U.S.  military?  There are a lot of generals like that.
• 
Rep.  Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., represents thousands of military personnel, people who joined the services because they love the country and they want to protect it.  No one is speaking up for them right now.  So at a hearing in Congress the other day, Matt Gaetz did.
• 
GAETZ: How long until MAGA hats are considered an extremist symbol?  How long until Catholic or pro-life groups or those who believe in two genders are too extreme for the ruling Woke-topians?  Today is about nothing more than cancel culture coming for our military and it is disgusting.
• 
Disgusting.  Usually that's hyperbole.  In this case, it's understatement.
      Disgraceful Duckworth, Hirono join progressive, Democrat history of race hatred  (Fox 03/25/2021)
• 
It's funny how no one really covers the big stories.  Instead the news media bring us minutia, all the time.  Cartloads of it.
• 
A middle-aged professional golfer hurts his leg in a car accident, and the networks go wall to wall.  They literally give his car crash more coverage than they give the bombing of Syria.
• 
Then, a few weeks later, some weird, fake duchess from Los Angeles gives a boring interview to Oprah and we stop the presses.  It's all we talk about for days.  Meanwhile, something legitimately momentous happens, and it's crickets.
• 
On Tuesday, for example, two sitting members of the United States Senate announced they oppose the entire foundation of American civil rights law, and then proceed to attack the core principle, the main principle, of our country.
• 
Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Mazie Hirono of Hawaii publicly informed the White House that until the Biden administration puts more people they like in powerful jobs, they will refuse to confirm White nominees.
• 
"I am a no vote on the floor on all non-diversity nominees," Duckworth said, out loud, with cameras rolling.  "I will vote for racial minorities and I will vote for LGBTQ, but anybody else, I'm not voting for."
• 
And then Mazie Hirono backed her up.  "Tammy's position is that until she gets a commitment from the White House that there will be more diversity representation in the Cabinet and senior White House advisory positions, she will not vote to confirm anyone who does not represent diversity.  So this is not about pitting one diversity group against another.  I think this is a well-articulated, focused position, and I am prepared to join her in that."
• 
So here you have two actual U.S.  senators announcing in public they will deny jobs to people who have the wrong skin color.  That's not news?
• 
In their defense, Hirono and Duckworth are well-known as the dimmest politicians in Washington.  Neither one could carry a dinner conversation.  But not everyone in Congress is stupid or oblivious.
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., certainly isn't.  The Senate Majority Leader misses nothing.  Chuck Schumer has spent his entire life telling us at high volume that racial discrimination is wrong, which obviously it is.
• 
Then, this week, two of his colleagues went on television to demand racial discrimination.  What did Chuck Schumer think of that?  Schumer didn't say a word about it.  No one in the Democratic Party did.
• 
... whatever their motives, the fact that his happened in public and no one in power said anything about it seems like a turning point in the history of our country.
• 
To recap the most basic principle we have: All Americans have an inalienable right, given by God and guaranteed by the Constitution, to be judged solely and exclusively on the basis of what they do and of what they choose.
• 
Not on the basis of their race, or their genes or who their parents were.  That is the entire promise of the country.
• 
It's why we're different.  It's why people move here from other countries.  It's why we're a self-governing republic, because everyone is equal.
• 
It's also, in addition to everything else, federal law.  It's written down.  What Mazie Hirono and Tammy Duckworth did is not simply morally repugnant (although it is).  It's also illegal.
• 
Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act opens this way, "No person in the United States shall, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."
• 
You cannot deny an American a federal job because of his race.  That is against the law, and has been for nearly 60 years.
• 
Racial discrimination in government hiring is a crime.  You may have heard that before.  It's on the wall of every break room in every office in the United States.  In fact, the Civil Rights Act may be the most famous law we have.
• 
Critical race theory is not a new idea, despite what they tell you.  In 1964, a third of Senate Democrats voted against the Civil Rights Act.  One of those who did was a man called Robert Byrd.
• 
Byrd was a strident supporter of "equity" — or, as it was called at the time, Jim Crow.  In 1944, at the height of the Second World War, Robert Byrd wrote a letter to Theodore Bilbo, who represented Mississippi in the Senate.  Byrd was upset that the Roosevelt administration was giving federal jobs to people with the wrong skin color.  Robert Byrd was the Tammy Duckworth of his day.
• 
"I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side," Byrd wrote, amazingly.  "Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds."
• 
That's real.  Robert Byrd wrote that.  At the time, he was working as a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan, which was very much the Yale University of the time, the source of so much poison in our society.
• 
Shortly after he wrote that, Byrd abandoned his Klan career, which never paid well.  Instead he decided to run for office as a Democrat.  Robert Byrd served in Congress for nearly 60 years.
• 
When Byrd died, during Barack Obama's first term, the entire leadership of the Democratic Party came forward to slobber over his memory — including, amazingly, Barack Obama himself.
• 
"It is almost impossible to imagine the United States Senate without Robert Byrd," said Hillary Clinton.  "He was not just its longest-serving member, he was its heart and soul.  From my first day in the Senate, I sought out his guidance."
• 
"While some simply bore witness to history," remarked an emotional Nancy Pelosi, "Senator Byrd shaped it and strove to build a brighter future for us all."
• 
Vice President Joe Biden, always big on memorials, went on perhaps the longest.  Biden described Robert Byrd as "a very close friend of mine, one of my mentors." Joe Biden even misquoted William Shakespeare as he celebrated his Klansman mentor.
• 
"When I learned of his death, I was on an errand for the President in Cleveland, and I said, you know, to paraphrase the poet, we shall not see his like again ... Mr.  Leader, we're not going to look upon your like again.  I'm not even going to ask God to bless you because he already had and I know where you are."
• 
Underneath it all, they never really disagreed with the core idea.  Only the colors have changed.
• 
There exists in the darkest parts of human nature the instinct to form a mob and attack other people for how they were born.  "Fear of the other," is what sociologists call it.  They say it's a function of evolutionary biology.
• 
Whoever it comes from, however you describe the phenomenon, it's real, and it's a grave threat to America.
• 
This is an enormous, complex — and, yes, diverse — society.  We have very little in common with each other, apart from the fact we're all Americans.
• 
There are 350 million people living within the borders of our country.  Most of us can't leave, so we have to live together.
• 
If you want Americans to live peacefully without hurting each other, you have to treat them as individuals, not as members of warring tribes.
• 
You have to guarantee every American identical opportunities to work and live and go to school, as well as identical judgement under the law.  Equality under the law.
• 
You can't just announce that Americans of a certain color can't have jobs.  If you do that, things will tend to fall apart very quickly.  We fought a war over this once, by the way, one that killed 700,000 people.
• 
Not that long ago, all Americans understood this.  But then a new generation of Robert Byrds took control of the Democratic Party, and dark and primitive forces have been unleashed.
• 
You see them everywhere, so you hardly need to be reminded, but here's one example...  It was written by a Harvard Law graduate named Elie Mystal.  The open reads, "I've said, here and elsewhere, that one of the principal benefits of the pandemic is how I've been able to exclude racism and [W]hiteness generally from my day-to-day life.  Over the past year, I have, of course, still had to interact with [W]hite people on Zoom or watch them on television or worry about whether they would succeed in reelecting a [W]hite-supremacist president.  But [W]hite people aren't in my face all of the time.  I can, more or less, only deal with [W]hiteness when I want to ... White people haven't improved; I've just been able to limit my exposure to them."
• 
That's someone who went to Harvard Law School.  That's not normal, and it's not healthy.  It's open race hate, and it's the beginning of our actual destruction.
• 
As with Senators Hirono and Duckworth, no one in power says a word about it.  So naturally, exhibitions like that accelerate and it becomes more dangerous.
• 
Last week, a corporate-owned website called The Root published a kind of terrorist manifesto written by a New York Times contributor named Damon Young.
• 
The tract begins like this: "Whiteness is a public health crisis.  It shortens life expectancies, it pollutes air, it constricts equilibrium, it devastates forests, it melts ice caps, it sparks (and funds) wars, it flattens dialects, it infests consciousness, and it kills people."
• 
With that established, Young wrote this: "White supremacy is a virus that, like other viruses, will not die until there are no bodies left for it to infect.  Which means the only way to stop it is to locate it, isolate it, extract it, and kill it."
• 
"And kill it." You have to ask yourself, where is this going?  Let's pull back now before we find out.
      The left, mainstream media turn Boulder shooting into yet another racial powder keg  (Fox 03/24/2021)
• 
After lunch on Monday, a man walked into a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado and shot 10 people to death.
• 
Police responded quickly to the massacre and they arrested a 21-year-old suspect.  Here's how CNN described the scene.
• 
"We know that the suspect is in custody.  He was injured.  They have not released any details about who he was, but we did see footage of a White man.  He was wearing shorts.  No shoes, no shirt.  He seemed to be bleeding down his leg and he was handcuffed."
• 
In other words, CNN told you: "We don't really know anything about what just happened, but we do think a 'White man' did it." That was CNN's first observation.  What they cared about most was the gunman's race.
• 
To CNN, that was the all-important thing; not the 10 people lying dead or the grieving children they left behind.  No, the shooter's skin color.
• 
So this is what "wokeness" is.  This is how you see the world when you've been so corrupted by ideological mania that you consider even a mass shooting a perfect opportunity to push your race-based political agenda.  He was a White man.  That's all you needed to know.
• 
Then we learned the suspect's name: Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa.  That fact raised an immediate problem for the race mongers.  Does Ahmad Alissa qualify as a White man?  No.
• 
Honestly, you may be wondering, who cares?  He just shot 10 people.  That's the only fact that matter.  By the way, for what it's worth, Ahmad Alissa looks pretty pale to us, too, not that decent people ought to care one way or the other about his race.
• 
But to the bigots in charge of America's increasingly convoluted and politicized system of racial classification, his race is the only thing that mattered.
• 
They decided that people called Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa cannot be White men no matter what they look like.  People with names like that are oppressed.  Therefore, they're not White.
• 
Now, that's insanity, but it's where we are right now.  It's where they've taken us.  So, of course, once we learned his name, the entire storyline had to be rewritten immediately.
• 
You may not even have noticed because you hear things like this every single day.  You hear them constantly.  And if you step back, you've got to wonder how long the rich and the powerful ... can continue this, can keep attacking a single racial group before our country breaks apart.  We may find out in the end because no one seems to be stopping them.  No one even mentions it.
• 
But to those who were interested in Monday's tragedy, the question remains: Who was this Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa?  Here's what we know: Apparently, he's an immigrant from Syria who came here as a child and is now a naturalized American citizen.
• 
He's political, but likely not a QAnon sympathizer.  He's not a right-winger.  In fact, his social media posts seem to track pretty consistently with CNN's prime-time editorial views.
• 
A former classmate told ... that Alissa saw himself as an oppressed victim of racism in high school.  He would "talk about being Muslim and how if anyone tried anything, he would file a hate crime [report]."
• 
Three years ago, he was charged with violently assaulting a classmate.  ... Alissa's name was "previously known to the FBI based on an ongoing investigation into one of his associates."
• 
Then the Associated Press reported that Alissa may have been delusional.  Of course, he was delusional.  He apparently shot 10 people.
• 
However, that did not prevent the usual tragedy buzzards from circling the crime scene and speculating in the most destructive possible ways about what might have happened.
• 
Rep.  Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, specializes in shocking recklessness.  It's what she does.  After the mass killings in Atlanta last week, none of which seem to have anything whatsoever to do with the race of anyone involved.
• 
Omar tried her best to make Americans hate each other even more.  That's how she's repaying the country that rescued her from a refugee camp in Africa.
• 
"It isn't hard to understand why it's so normalized for law enforcement to protect the humanity of white mass murderers and their willingness to continually make excuses them."
• 
Law enforcement, Omar said, with zero evidence of any kind, works to protect "the humanity of [W]hite mass murderers." What does that even mean?  We have no idea, though obviously it is bristling with racial hostility.
• 
So MSNBC just rolled with it.  "Scapegoating is the evil cousin of White supremacy, and together they reinforce the notion that White is always in the right ... The indifference to lives not White must stop.  The disregard for the fear of White terror must stop ... We must not be cowed by the terror unleashed by White men drowning in the deep end of racism, xenophobia and misogyny."
• 
White supremacy!  That's the culprit, no matter what color the criminal was.  It doesn't matter what the criminal's color was because it's systemic racism.  Like carbon monoxide, it's an invisible poison.  That is suddenly a very common view on the left.
• 
It's certainly Barack Obama's position.  More than any other contemporary American leader Barack Obama is a racial arsonist.  He emerges at our most vulnerable moments to deepen the wounds that divide us.  He sows hate.
• 
Why does Barack Obama do this?  It would take a psychiatrist to answer that question fully, though it seems obvious that deep loathing of some kind plays a role.  It must.
• 
Tuesday, Obama took a break from being one of the richest men in the world to issue a statement blaming "racism and misogyny" for Monday's killings.
• 
So a guy who appears to be White shoots a group of White people and Barack Obama calls it racism.  How exactly does that work?  Can you speak slowly and tell us?
• 
Well, the former president didn't say, but he didn't need to.  Barack Obama had managed to divide Americans a little more than they were yesterday.  And so, from his perspective, mission accomplished.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker: Even the Chinese know America won't survive with 'woke' liberals in charge  (Fox 03/20/2021)
• 
We spend a lot of time talking about China: its intentions, its crimes, its treatment of dogs.  We've got pretty clear views on the Chinese government.  Polls show most Americans do.  #But here's a question we rarely ask: What do the Chinese think of us?  Most of the time, we have no real idea.  China's on the other side of the world, and its leaders are cagey enough to keep their opinions to themselves most of the time.
• 
But occasionally, we get a glimpse of what they really think.  ... Here, for starters, is the Chinese government's assessment of our democracy:...
• 
"Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States, and they have various views regarding the government of the United States."
• 
Many Americans don't have confidence in their own democracy, he said.  In other words, maybe the last presidential election was fraudulent.  Suddenly China's top diplomat sounded a lot like one of those right-wing White supremacist insurrectionists you're always hearing about on CNN, the ones the Biden Justice Department has put in prison.
• 
"We do not believe in invading through the use of force, or to topple other regimes through various means, or to massacre the people of other countries, because all of those would only cause turmoil and instability in this world ... It is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world."
• 
Ouch.  This is not the traditional language of diplomacy, elaborately polite, oblique and indirect.  This is talk radio.  The Chinese government has utter contempt for the Biden administration, and doesn't feel like hiding it anymore.
• 
When it came time for a showdown with one of the leaders of the Communist Party of China, all Blinken could muster was this:
• 
"I have to tell you, what I'm hearing is very different from what you described.  I'm hearing deep satisfaction that the United States is back."
• 
A slogan straight from the bumper sticker.  Really?  You're hearing that?  From whom?  Tony Blinken didn't say.  Nor could he manage to press any point that might conceivably benefit the United States.
• 
For example, where did COVID come from?  We still don't know.  The Chinese government likely does know, but they're not telling.
• 
Scientists would like to know, because they'd like to prevent future global pandemics.  So we ought to find out.
• 
But Tony Blinken didn't dare mention any of this.  Notice COVID's conspicuous absence from his list of concerns: "We'll also discuss our deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyberattacks on the United States, economic coercion of our allies."
• 
Listening to the secretary of state, you'd never know the Chinese government is still, to this day, stonewalling international efforts to find the origin of the coronavirus.  Even officials at the World Health Organization, which China pays for, have complained about it (privately, of course).
• 
China has consistently lied about COVID-19 for more than a year.  The Chinese government delayed the release of genetic information about the virus that could have helped scientists understand it, fight it, and save lives.
• 
This is a crime of enormous proportions.  It affects the entire world and endangers all of us.
• 
As one of his first acts as President of the United States, Biden signed an executive action ordering federal agencies to stop making reference to the pandemic by the "geographic location of its origin."
• 
So, as a matter of official U.S.  policy, no more linking a Chinese virus to China.  No more talk about where it came from.  None of that lab theory.  This is now the official position of the Democratic Party.
• 
Rep.  Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., announced that when you criticize the Communist Party of China, people in the U.S.  die of hate crimes.
• 
"This surge did not spontaneously arise only out of fears regarding the coronavirus pandemic.  Some of this blame lies squarely on political leaders who have demonized China — both because of the virus and ongoing geopolitical tensions."
• 
Here you have a sitting member of Congress flacking for China, our most dangerous rival.  You'd think the Chinese would appreciate this.  It makes their job easier.  But they don't appreciate it.  In fact, it just increases their contempt for our leaders.
• 
"There are many problems within the United States regarding human rights ... and the challenges facing the United States in human rights are deep-seated.  They did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter.  It did not come up only recently."
• 
So there you have the Chinese government using Black Lives Matter as a weapon against the United States.  You have the Chinese lecturing us about human rights.  You never thought you'd see the day that happened.
• 
... they have a name for our self-hating professional class.  They call them "baizuo." The rough translation from Mandarin is "White liberal," and it is definitely not a compliment.
• 
Chinese state media describes baizou as people who, "only care about topics such as immigration, minorities, LGBT and the environment, who have no sense of real problems in the real world, who only advocate for peace and equality to satisfy their own feelings of moral superiority, and who are so obsessed with political correctness that they tolerate backward Islamic values for the sake of multiculturalism."
• 
As Chinese state media notes, "former US [sic] President Obama was considered an advocate of baizuo ideology."
• 
Other observations about baizuo, as reported by Chinese state media, include the fact that they "advocate inclusiveness and anti-discrimination but cannot tolerate different opinions."
• 
Baizuo's political opinions are "so shallow that they tend to maintain social equality by embracing ideologies that run against the basic concept of equality."
• 
According to one scholar from Peking University, "baizuo are phony and hypocritical and will make the situation in the West go from bad to worse."
• 
A study of Harvard's admissions policy, for example, found that if the school admitted students solely on merit, as we thought they did, the percentage of Asian students in a given class would double to 43%.
• 
Harvard doesn't want that many Asians, so it denies admissions to Asians because they're Asian.  That's the definition of discrimination.  That's what racism is.
• 
But it's everywhere.  It's going on in all elite schools right now, as well as in almost every major corporation.  The current administration wholeheartedly supports it.
• 
We have standardized tests for a reason.  They're created so that people who have no social connections – ambitious and talented immigrants, for example – could succeed in this country too.
• 
People like that have no one to write recommendation letters for them — no rich uncles who sit on the board of this or that school — but they're smart and they work hard and we wanted a place for them in our hierarchy.  (This is the land of opportunity, remember?)
• 
So we created standardized tests so they could make it too.  People from nowhere could succeed on their own talents.  That was the idea.
• 
But, not anymore.  Standardized tests are disappearing, thanks to lobbying by baizou - from woke Democrats.  The meritocracy is racist, they claim.  So is succeeding through hard work.
• 
In Boston, as in so many places around the country, public schools have suspended an "advanced work" program due to quote "concerns about equity." The real concern is the skin color of the students in the program.
• 
We all see this happening.  No one in this country mentions it.  You know who else notices it?  The Chinese.  Why wouldn't they?
• 
On one hand, they're offended, because the baizuo's so-called "equity programs" always wind up hurting people who look like them.
• 
On the other hand, the Chinese government is pleased as they watch this.  Because no country that penalizes people for intelligence and hard work can last very long.
• 
The Chinese have been around long enough to know that's true.
      Tucker Carlson: Media ignoring facts about Atlanta shooter to boost their political agenda  (Fox 03/19/2021)
• 
On the afternoon of March 16, police say, a 21-year-old man called Robert Aaron Long walked into a massage parlor outside Atlanta and shot five people.  Long then drove to two other massage parlors in the city and shot another four.
• 
Of the nine people Robert Long is accused of shooting, two were White, one was Hispanic, and the other six were Asian women.
• 
... the police took a long and detailed statement from Robert Long, and to restate, here's what they found: Long immediately confessed to the crimes.  But while he admitted to committing multiple murders — a death penalty offense in the state of Georgia — Long denied having any racial motivation.  Instead, he told police he had a sex addiction and an "issue with porn," and that he shot up massage parlors in an effort to eliminate his own temptation to visit them.
• 
Police arrested Long as he was heading to Florida, where he said he'd planned to kill more people in the sex industry.  So, Robert Long was fixated on prostitution and pornography, and that's why he said he committed the murders.
• 
A ninth victim, 30-year-old Elcias Hernandez-Ortiz, remains in the hospital in critical condition.  According to police, Hernandez-Ortiz had nothing to do with prostitution whatsoever.  He just happened to be walking past a massage parlor on the way to another business when Long shot him.
• 
So, those are the facts as we understand them.  An honest reporter might follow those facts in a number of obvious directions.
• 
Robert Long seems deranged, but his obsessive and violent behavior seems sadly familiar if you follow the news closely.
• 
An increasing number of Americans struggle with mental illness.  It would be worth knowing much more about Robert Long's life, if only to try to prevent the next mass shooting.
• 
Then there's the very real question of sex addiction, which we should not laugh off.  Why is there so much prostitution in Atlanta?
• 
Google business listings show more massage parlors in the city than Starbucks outlets.  Who works in these places and under what conditions?
• 
That's not a hard question to answer.  Wikipedia has an entire entry on human trafficking in the state of Georgia.  According to the Department of Justice, "Atlanta is a major transportation hub for trafficking young girls" and "one of the fourteen U.S.  cities with the highest levels of child sex trafficking."
• 
A competent media might tell us more about this.  Knowing more facts and rationally assessing them might improve this country.  But it's not the coverage we're getting.  It's not even close to the coverage we are getting.
• 
Instead, the usual liars are describing the massacre in Atlanta as the one thing it apparently wasn't: A racial attack.  "White supremacy and hate are haunting Asian Americans," CNN confidently announced in a headline.
• 
David Leebron, the president of Rice University in Texas and a man who is supposed to be a scholar, may have been watching this.  He immediately issued a statement...  "The deliberate use of such terms as ‘the China virus' to foster bigotry has played a significant role.  Sadly and predictably, this escalation of racially-based hatred has led to violence."
• 
Leebron is telling us it was all entirely predictable, because once you describe a Chinese virus as Chinese, people are naturally going to start murdering Korean women.  You could have seen that coming.
• 
Harvard couldn't resist involved too.  Bigotry against Asians is a sensitive subject at Harvard University, given that it is one of the very few institutions in American life that has publicly admitted committing it.
• 
Many schools do, but Harvard got caught.  Over the course of many years, Harvard has denied admission to Asian students precisely because they are Asian.
• 
If there's a clearer definition of bigotry than this, it's hard to imagine what it might be.  Harvard doesn't want to talk about it, and a mass murder in Atlanta was the perfect way to change the subject.
• 
"For the past year," Harvard administrators wrote, "Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders have been blamed for the pandemic." Once again, if you dare note that the novel coronavirus came from Wuhan, a mentally ill sex addict is certain to shoot up a brothel in Atlanta.
• 
Seem far-fetched?  The White House press secretary agreed with it.  "You know, I think there's no question that some of the damaging rhetoric that we saw during the prior administration, blaming — you know, calling COVID, you know, the ‘Wuhan virus' or other things led to, you know, perceptions of the Asian-American community that are inaccurate, unfair..."
• 
Asian-Americans do suffer quite a few violent attacks in this country, unfortunately, but there's zero evidence that a rise in White supremacy is driving those attacks.
• 
We don't have to guess about this, because the Justice Department keeps the numbers.  According to federal statistics, African-American perpetrators are more likely than any other group to attack Asian-Americans.  It happens quite a bit.
• 
Most racial violence in this country, most violence of all kinds, occurs within racial groups.  Whites are the most likely to attack Whites, Blacks are the most likely to attack Blacks, etc.
• 
The only exception we found were Asians.  Asians were more likely to be attacked by African-Americans than by members of their own ethnicity.
• 
Why is that?  We can't say for sure, and we're not going to speculate.  Unlike the other cable channels, we will not draw grand and divisive conclusions from this or any data about race.
• 
It's always wrong to blame an entire group for anything, ever.  Treat people as individuals first — that's the whole point of America.
• 
We can say this has been going on for quite a while, as anyone who lives in a city well knows.  Tensions between African-Americans and immigrant Korean store owners, for example, were a central factor in the 1992 Los Angeles riots.  It wasn't QAnon that made violent threats against Asian shopkeepers in New York in the 1980s.  It was Al Sharpton.
• 
And so on.  As noted, this kind of violence has a long history, though the media have done their best to ignore it.
• 
But now they're lying to us at very high volume.  Why are they doing that?  Because they need to.  The Democratic coalition is profoundly unstable, and becoming more so.
• 
The rise of BLM, and the riots they led over the summer, is a big part of why that is happening.  Decadent White liberals loved the whole thing, but no one else did.
• 
BLM came out in favor of abolishing the nuclear family, and looting and burning small businesses.  If you're a bearded nihilist living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with a degree in gender studies from Oberlin, that might sound pretty great.
• 
If you're an immigrant Chinese or Salvadoran, running a restaurant or a dry cleaning business, it definitely doesn't sound great.  You care most of all about your family.  You desperately need your business.
• 
So, the Democratic Party is at risk of losing voters...  At this point, the media's job is to remind these voters they need to stay in the Democratic Party because the real enemy is straight White men.  So that's what they're doing.
• 
... keep in mind, the more they say it, the more people believe it, and the more power they can grab on the basis of those lies.
• 
We have seen that happen in the two months since Jan.  6.  At first it was almost amusing to hear them call that a "White supremacist insurrection." It was so stupid.  But now, two months later, it's all but established history.
• 
They're changing the country on the basis of those lies.  They repeat them until people believe them, and then they act.  Never underestimate the power of propaganda.  That's why they use it.  It's not an accident.
• 
The mayor of New York is calling for armed thought police in America's biggest city.  Laugh if you want at that.  "De Blasio's a joke," right?
• 
Just wait.  What sounds absurd today becomes established practice sooner than you think.
      Tucker Carlson: No country could survive Biden's border policies  (Fox 03/18/2021)
• 
Under this administration, they don't have to, and they don't.  Illegal aliens are exempt from the public health measures that have been imposed by force on the rest of us by the U.S.  government.
• 
Illegal aliens come and go as they please.  No one seems to care if they spread deadly viruses to the rest of the American population.
• 
... DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted in congressional testimony that the Biden administration is releasing foreign nationals into American neighborhoods without even bothering to check if they're infected with COVID.
• 
Given the authoritarian lockdowns the rest of us have lived under for the last year, the ones that have crushed the country, it's hard to understand this policy as anything but an act of violence and hostility toward our country.
• 
It is an utter betrayal.  They don't care about you.  They're saying that clearly as they possibly can.
• 
Joe Biden is saying it too.  A reporter recently asked Biden if he planned to visit the border to see for himself the disaster unfolding there.  "Not at the moment," he replied dismissively, as if he had better things to do.  We'd love to know what those things are.
• 
That same day, a reporter asked Kamala Harris what she knew about the current immigration crisis, the one her administration caused.  More than 100,000 foreign nationals are flooding in every month like the border doesn't exist.  Some of them are gang members.  Others appear to be on FBI terror watch lists.  More than 13,000 of them are children, unaccompanied minors, now in U.S.  custody.
• 
It's an enormous, possibly unprecedented, wave of humanity coming into America right now.  But Kamala Harris didn't seem to have any idea it was happening.  "I haven't been briefed on anything today about it," she said.
• 
She was too busy promoting critical race theory, and making sure there are boys on your daughter's track team.  Has there ever been an administration this reckless and destructive?
• 
What's happening on the border tonight will change our country forever.  A lot of things won't, but this will, and you should know that.  Unlike other disasters, mass illegal immigration is permanent.  No one ever really gets sent home.
• 
El Salvador is a charming country in a lot of ways, but it's still a very poor place.  So, when American politicians offer free education and free healthcare, and free all kinds of things to anyone who can just make it across the border, millions of Salvadorans accept their offer.  And why wouldn't they accept it?
• 
No one says it, but imagine if a third of the boldest, most ambitious people in your country just left.  What would that mean for your future?
• 
The overfunded NGO's and self-satisfied compassion-mongers who promote open borders haven't thought for a moment about that, because they don't care.
• 
... the border gets more porous by the day.  That's intentional, the Biden administration has made it that way.  Early indications suggest this month will see the largest surge of illegal entries in a generation.
• 
So, who are all those people coming?  Well, we don't really know who they are, and we don't really have a good way to find out, and that's the scariest part.
• 
In the last day, we've learned that at least four people arrested recently at the southern border were identified by law enforcement as "known to be or reasonably suspected of being involved in terrorist activities."
• 
Biden's now trying to blame the whole thing on Trump, of course.  Apparently, the promise of a border wall was a massive lure to Central Americans trying to sneak in.  Pretty funny.
• 
But at the same time, not so subtly, Biden is telling more illegal aliens to come here.  He was ... letting the world know that America's top priority is making foreign nationals comfortable in the United States.
• 
Has any country ever promised something like this to the world?  Can any country survive once it has?  Joe Biden hasn't thought about that.  He doesn't care.  None of them care.
• 
All they know is that the Democratic Party will never lose again once they pull this off, and that's all that matters to them.
• 
      Tucker Carlson: Is the military more concerned with wokeness than winning the next war?  (Fox 03/12/2021)
• 
Our military is the last functional institution of any size in this country.  It's the last institution most people trust and respect.  It is by far the most important.  A weak military means no country.  Period.
• 
... Joe Biden pledge to bring an "intensity of purpose and mission to really change the culture and habits" of the U.S.  military...
• 
"Some of it's relatively straightforward work where we're making good progress.  Designing body armor that fits women properly, tailoring combat uniforms for women, creating maternity flight suits, updating requirements for their hairstyles."
• 
Perhaps maternity flight suits have been around for a while.  We've never heard of them.  But here was the President of the United States promoting them at a press conference.
• 
The rest of us depend on the U.S.  military to protect our families and to protect the country itself.
• 
Joe Biden doesn't see it that way.  Finding the most effective military pilots — or infantry officers, or SEAL teams — is not his priority.  It's not even close to his priority.  Identity politics is Joe Biden's priority.  It's all that matters.
• 
You see this attitude throughout the U.S.  government, as well as in the corporate world.  Key positions filled on the basis of physical appearance, without any reference to ability or experience.
• 
Now, you can get by with that if you're Citibank, which now cares more about wokeness than about banking.  (They can explain the results to their shareholders ten years from now.)
• 
But it is not fine if your only job is to protect the United States from people who want to kill the rest of us.  That is the worst kind of dereliction of duty.
• 
Yet it's happening right now on an enormous scale.  Just this week, the Biden administration announced that the Pentagon will pay for gender reassignment surgery for active duty personnel.
• 
How do sex changes in the military make this country safer?  That's not a trick question, it's another volley in the culture war.
• 
It's the only question that matters — literally.  But no one bothered to ask it, probably because no one can remember why the U.S.  military exists.
• 
Here's a reminder: the U.S.  military exists to fight and win wars.  That is its only purpose.
• 
The U.S.  military is not an NGO.  It is not a vehicle for achieving equity.  It is not a social experiment.
• 
It's definitely not an employment agency; nobody has a God-given right to work in the military.
• 
Making people feel valued and included is a good thing, but it is not the point of the U.S.  military.  It cannot be the point of the U.S.  military, or else we're done.
• 
Joe Biden has put a man called Lloyd Austin in charge of the Pentagon.  Biden plucked Austin from the cynical world of private equity, but you're not supposed to notice that.  You're supposed to notice only that Lloyd Austin is Black.
• 
For centuries, our military has been self-consciously non-partisan.  In a democracy, it has to be that way.  No country can survive if its armed forces become the tool of a specific political party.
• 
We know that because it happens all the time, all over the world, and the consequences are always horrifying.  It has never happened here.
• 
However, Lloyd Austin is openly political.  In his first days on the job, Austin made the entire armed services submit to a kind of political purity test.  Anyone with views that he found "extreme" had to leave.
• 
Then Austin set about accelerating poisonous trends already in progress at the Pentagon, the worst of these being the use of irrelevant criteria in hiring and promotion.
• 
In order to meet the demands of various Democratic interest groups, the Pentagon has dramatically lowered standards in the services.
• 
Now, if you dare to point any of this out, they become hysterical because they can't defend their own policies.  When people can't defend what they've done, they yell.  They can't even clearly explain what those policies are, at least publicly.  So they attack.
• 
Every American citizen has a right, maybe an obligation, to know what the military they pay for is doing because our lives may depend on it.
• 
The Department of Defense has never been more aggressively or openly political.  There are, at present, 2,500 American troops stationed in Afghanistan.  They remain there to prevent the fall of Kabul to extremists.
• 
Simultaneously, there are 5,000 troops in our own Capitol, also as protection against "extremists," meaning people who voted for the losing candidate in the last election.
• 
Judging by those numbers, the Pentagon is twice as focused on controlling our own citizens as it is on controlling the Taliban.
• 
Meanwhile, as Lloyd Austin hyperventilates about White supremacy, there are real threats out there, and the biggest ones continue to be ignored.  Those threats aren't in Syria or suburban Virginia, and they're not domestic extremism, at least not right now.
• 
The main threat we face, as everyone who is honest knows, is the government of China.  China is ascendant.  Their economy will soon outpace ours.  China now has the largest navy on the planet.
• 
Why do they have that?  Why did they feel the need to build it?  Does that have potential consequences for us?  Yes.
• 
If China moved against Taiwan, how would we respond?  More likely, if the Chinese decided to close international shipping lanes, it would cripple our economy.
• 
If they decided to shut down our internet, it would bring our life to a halt.  If they decided to occupy Malaysia, that would be a grave concern to the world.
• 
If any of these things, or 100 other things that might take place, actually happen, what exactly would our Pentagon do about it?  Can the U.S.  military still win a real war?
• 
Those are the questions that matter.  Those are the only questions that matter, which may be why Joe Biden wants to talk about maternity flight suits.
      Tucker Carlson: Everything the media didn't tell you about the death of George Floyd  (Fox 03/11/2021)
• 
The death of George Floyd changed the United States, profoundly and forever.  George Floyd, we were told, wasn't simply an individual.  He was every African-American in this country.
• 
Derek Chauvin wasn't just a cop.  He was the physical embodiment of America's institutions.
• 
We were told that when Chauvin murdered George Floyd, he was doing to one man what our country has done to all African- Americans.
• 
Many people told us this, including Joe Biden: "I just want to say a few words about the horrific killing of George Floyd in Minnesota ... It sends a very clear message to the Black community and Black lives that are under threat every single day ... They speak to a nation where too often just the color of your skin puts your life at risk ... George Floyd's last words spoke to a nation where the color of your skin dictates the safety of you and your future ... I'm a white man.  I think I understand.  But I can't feel it."
• 
George Floyd was murdered because he was Black.  That's what they told us.  They demanded that we believe that, and if you doubted it in any way, if you had any questions about the facts of the case, then you were effectively as guilty as the racist cop.
• 
One theology teacher at a Catholic high school in Columbus, Ohio, learned that the hard way.  During a virtual class, teacher Deborah DelPrince noted that the cause of George Floyd's death was "disputed."
• 
That's literally true.  The trial hadn't even begun yet, a dispute is at the core of every trial.  But, for the crime of observing this, the Catholic Diocese of Columbus fired Deborah DelPrince.
• 
According to the Diocese, DelPrince had made, quote, "unsupported personal assertions and opinions" about the death of George Floyd.
• 
We're going to do what you're not allowed to do in Catholic high schools in Columbus, or anywhere else in America.
• 
We're going to assess, calmly and as honestly as we can, what happened to George Floyd on Memorial Day.
• 
George Floyd's death was sad.  Every death is sad, as we often point out.  But the question is: Was it murder?
• 
That question matters deeply, because Floyd's death has been used to reshape how we live in this country.
• 
Because he died, we have something called "equity." Under the pretext of equity, our leaders have enshrined open racism in nearly all of our institutions, from corporate hiring quotas to woke kindergarten lesson plans.
• 
Americans have been told that George Floyd's death was a racist murder, and they're responsible for it.
• 
"It is not incumbent upon Black people to stop racism.  To stop this, it is incumbent upon people who hold the power in this society to help to do that, to do the heavy lifting.  And guess who that is?.."
• 
"White people" are responsible.  CNN said that out loud, but many others joined them.  That assertion led to rioting that killed at least 19 people, and may continue to kill more.  It destroyed hundreds of businesses.  Minneapolis, where this all began, may never return to normal.
• 
Nothing BLM has done in Minneapolis has improved the lives of the people who live there.  On Saturday night, a man was shot to death in the neighborhood.  A reporter from The Washington Examiner, Joe Simonson, tried to get to George Floyd Square to find out what happened.
• 
But he couldn't.  He was informed no White people were allowed in.  That is a snapshot of the equity George Floyd's death has been used to justify.
• 
The second reason we're going to assess what happened to George Floyd is that it's likely Derek Chauvin won't receive a fair trial.
• 
You may not care, but you should.  That should matter to you, regardless of who you voted for.  Every American deserves a fair trial, period.  That's the whole point of this country.  Equal justice under the law.  There is no other point.
• 
Hundreds of activists – some dressed in all black – have been staring down National Guard troops outside the courthouse in Minneapolis all week.
• 
They shut down streets outside the courthouse on Monday.  "We need justice, people," one shouted.  "Justice by any means necessary."
• 
In other words, if you vote to acquit Derek Chauvin, the mob is saying, the community will burn because we will burn it.
• 
... where's the Justice Department?  Where's the so-called Civil Rights Division to protect the civil rights of Derek Chauvin?
• 
Yes, even accused cops have the right to a fair trial.  Your civil rights are not suspended when you're accused.  This is America.
• 
... several would-be jurors expressed a reluctance to have anything to do with the case.  Would you want to be a juror in this trial?  I don't think so.  One prospective juror explained the threats he would face:...
• 
"It's more from a safety, security standpoint.  As far as I'm concerned I feel comfortable and safe.  But I just wouldn't want any issues or harm to come to my wife or my family ... If certain individuals who were out to intimidate or cause harm, if they knew where I lived, there's potential [they] could damage the house or spray paint the house or garage door.  Or break a window."
• 
So the jurors are intimidated.  That's the point of mob justice.  It was the point of mob justice 100 years ago in the American South, it's the point of mob justice in Minneapolis today.
• 
The thugs outside the courthouse don't want jurors to focus on the evidence.  They know that evidence might not help their case.  Most of that evidence hasn't been seen by most of the American population.
• 
The effort to hide that evidence began immediately after George Floyd died.  Everyone saw the footage of Derek Chauvin with his knee on George Floyd's neck.  It was horrible.  It is also confusing.  When you watch it, you ask yourself "Why would a police officer act like that?  Of course, it must be illegal."
• 
No one in the media thought to tell us that, in fact, using a knee to restrain an uncooperative suspect is the official policy of the Minneapolis Police Department.  In fact, it's taught at their academy.
• 
Nor did anyone in the press think to report what happened before Derek Chauvin put his knee on George Floyd's neck.
• 
Authorities in Minnesota made certain no one saw the body camera footage that showed it.  Body cameras exist so that we can know what happened, but they hid this footage.
• 
The video showed officers working for about 20 minutes trying to detain a man who they believed had just committed the crime of passing a fake $20 bill, a man who clearly had lost all sense of reality.
• 
The footage showed George Floyd begging officers to stay with him.  He was clearly suffering.  The tape is wrenching, it really is.
• 
By the end, you're filled with sympathy for George Floyd.  But it's not the picture of a murder.
• 
The incident began around 8 p.m.  on May 24, when a grocery clerk called police to report that George Floyd had tried to make a purchase using a counterfeit bill.
• 
Officers found George Floyd in a car nearby.  Immediately, it was very obvious that something was very wrong with him.
• 
George Floyd was emotionally out of control, and that's why you feel so deeply for him as you watch that video.  He's panicked, he's terrified, he's hysterical.  The question is, why?
• 
The Minneapolis Police Department does not have some fabled history of brutality, and this certainly wasn't George Floyd's first encounter with law enforcement.
• 
Between 1997 and 2007, police in Texas arrested Floyd a total of nine times, on charges ranging from drug possession to theft.
• 
Then, on Aug.  9, 2007, George Floyd barged into a woman's home and held a gun to her abdomen in front of her toddler.
• 
It was a home invasion, and George Floyd got five years in prison for participating in it.
• 
If he'd been in custody before, why was George Floyd on the verge of hysteria?  The police officers wondered the same thing.  "You've got foam around your mouth," one says.  A bystander tells Floyd, "You're gonna die of a heart attack." "Are you on something right now?" one police officer asks.  "No," says George Floyd.
• 
But that wasn't close to true.  According to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner's Office, George Floyd wasn't just high.
• 
He had a lethal dose of fentanyl in his system, in addition to methamphetamine.  The autopsy report showed that Floyd had 11 nanograms of fentanyl per milliliter of blood in his system when he was tested at a hospital.
• 
That's more than three times the amount of fentanyl that can kill a healthy person.
• 
Again, that's not our judgment.  That's directly from the autopsy report, the one people didn't see until after the riots.
• 
"Signs associated with fentanyl toxicity include severe respiratory depression, seizures, hypotension, coma and death.  In fatalities from fentanyl, blood concentrations are variable and have been reported as low as 3 nanograms of fentanyl per milliliter of blood."
• 
No one is denying this.  The Floyd family's own lawyer admits that it's true.  It's "true that the Hennepin County medical examiner's office autopsy showed that Floyd had fentanyl in his system," he conceded, but then he insisted that George Floyd was actually killed by racism.
• 
According to a press release from the medical examiner's office, Floyd's cause of death was, "Cardiopulmonary arrest complicating law enforcement subdual, restraint, and neck compression" Contributing factors included, quote, "arteriosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease; fentanyl intoxication; recent methamphetamine use."
• 
... a conversation the prosecutor's office had with Andrew Baker, the chief Hennepin County medical examiner.  Andrew Baker told prosecutors that, "if Mr.  Floyd had been found dead in his home (or anywhere else) and there were no other contributing factors, he would conclude that it was an overdose death." The memo noted that Baker said Floyd's fentanyl levels were "pretty high" 'and that it is a "fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances."
• 
In a separate memo, Baker announced that "the autopsy revealed no physical evidence suggesting that Mr.  Floyd died of asphyxiation."
• 
Well, Floyd was having trouble breathing.  That's the the most notable part of the videos.  What explains that?  Why was George Floyd telling officers "I can't breathe?"
• 
Here's one possible explanation: One of the primary symptoms of fentanyl overdoses is "slowed or stopped breathing," leading to "unconsciousness" and death.
• 
That might also explain why George Floyd was saying "I can't breathe" long before any police officer's knee was anywhere near him.
      Tucker Carlson: School closures show triumph of equity over equality in America  (Fox 03/04/2021)
• 
Six weeks into the Biden administration and there still has been no solo press conference from the president.  That is the longest stretch of silence from any new president in at least a century.
• 
In their spare time, Joe Biden's scribes produce an awful lot of presidential proclamations.  One of his very first proclamation was entitled "An Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government."
• 
This was the document that introduced the administration's new equity plan, which is going to "eliminate systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits for people of color and other underserved groups."
• 
It's quite a mouthful, but what does it mean?  Has anyone asked what it means or did everyone in Washington graduate from Yale and thus intuitively understands sloppy, meaningless words like this?
• 
The rest of us might still like to know what a "systemic" barrier is and how Joe Biden plans to eliminate it.  That's easy, with equity, of course.
• 
But that raises a whole new question: What exactly is equity and how is it different from equality, the central principle this country was founded on?
• 
Well, the first thing to know about equality is that it's designed to challenge power.  Equity, by contrast, is designed to protect power.
• 
Equality is what allowed Andrew Jackson to rise from a childhood of bitter poverty in the Carolina woods and make it all the way to the White House.
• 
Equity is the opposite.  Equity is what allowed Kamala Harris, the privileged child of two PhDs, to stay privileged and become one of the most powerful people on the planet, despite having achieved nothing impressive or worthwhile over the span of 56 years.
• 
So Andrew Jackson and Kamala Harris — both Democrats, one the child of equality, the other the child of equity.  That's the difference in a nutshell.
• 
Equality challenges power.  Equity protects power.  That principle has never been on starker display than in the case of the teachers unions, which are some of the most powerful institutions in America.
• 
They are using the term "equity" to justify their own prerogatives as they hurt the weak — in this case, school children and their increasingly desperate parents.
• 
So purely because the most privileged government workers in the United States won't work, an entire generation of children is being destroyed.  That's equity: The strong hurt the weak and call it justice.
• 
Everyone who thinks about this, even for a moment, knows that it's true.  That's why you never hear equity debated or even defined.  They won't define the term because they can't defend its definition.
      Tucker Carlson: So how many illegal aliens are really in the US?  (Fox 02/25/2021)
• 
Have you ever noticed that nobody in Washington can agree on a number?  You would think that people with functioning calculators could come to similar math- based conclusions once in a while, but not in D.C.
• 
With all of that in mind, it's pretty amazing to watch virtually everyone in Washington, Republican and Democrat, repeat precisely the same number when discussing one of the most critical problems that we face.
• 
That number is 11 million.  That number, they tell us, is exactly how many foreign nationals currently live here illegally.
• 
It's almost like a script now.  People have different views on what we ought to do about illegal immigrants, but nobody questions how many there are.  There are 11 million, period.
• 
A month before last year's presidential election, Joe Biden promised: "Within 100 days, I'm going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people, and all of those so-called Dreamers, those DACA kids, they're going to be immediately certified again to be able to stay in this country and put on a path to citizenship."
• 
Joe Biden is in the White House now.  His party controls everything, so he can make good on that promise and he plans to do so.  In fact, it's one of the very first things he's doing.  How's it going to affect you?
• 
First of all, it's kind of a big deal.  All but seven U.S.  states have fewer than 11 million people living in them.
• 
It doesn't take an economist to know that giving free "health care" to 11 million new people could easily capsize the U.S.  economy.
• 
As Milton Friedman once wisely noted, you can have a welfare state or you can have open borders, but you cannot have both.
• 
However, we're getting both.  We may, in fact, be getting a great deal more than that.
• 
We all assume that 11 million is the real number of illegal aliens in this country, but is it?  No, it's not.  In fact, it's a totally fake number which people endlessly repeat either because they are badly informed or dishonest.  They've been repeating that number for more than 15 years.
• 
Many illegal immigrants don't respond to census takers.  ... "There is no magic bullet that anyone has discovered to count this population [illegal immigrants].  This is really very difficult to estimate."
• 
... all the assumptions that there are 11 million illegal immigrants in this country are based on a separate assumption: That 90% of illegal immigrants are willing to cooperate with the Census Bureau.  That assumption, in turn, is based on a survey showing nearly half of all illegal immigrants refused to fill out the survey.  This is bad math at the very least.
• 
"After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers' 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean."
• 
... There could easily be 30 million (or more) illegal immigrants living in this country.  That's more people than live in the entire state of Texas.
• 
So how would amnesty for that many people affect our "democracy"?  In effect, it would end our democracy.
• 
People who have lived here all of their lives, paid taxes, followed the rules, been good citizens, would find their votes diluted to the point of irrelevance.
• 
It would also ensure permanent rule by the Democratic Party, which is the point of it.
• 
Of course, they won't tell you the total number.  They want you to believe it's 11 million, always and forever.
• 
By the time you figure out they're lying to you, it'll be too late to do anything about it, obviously.
      Tucker Carlson: The far-left agenda your children are being taught every day  (Fox 02/19/2021)
• 
Nothing changes a society more over the long term than the way we teach our children, what we teach them, and how we teach them.
• 
If you want to pass on your values, you tell your kids about them.  So school matters maybe more than anything.
• 
... we have covered the way our schools are changing and the indoctrination that your kids are suffering through.  Over the past four-plus years, the curricula in so many schools has turned from the extremely left-wing to the outright totalitarian.
• 
"Do Black Lives Matter in America?" it begins.  By the end of the lesson, it declares, "Students will be able to understand the need for the Black Lives Matter movement."
• 
Here you have a school district explicitly endorsing a political movement, and that's in a lesson plan for little kids.
• 
By the time they hit the fifth grade, students in Buffalo are reading advanced BLM studies.  Students learn about BLM's core platform, including "Disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure."
• 
At the end of the program, students are asked: "What do you think about our society being organized into separate, nuclear family units?"
• 
The implication, of course, is that it's immoral, that your own family is immoral, and that's just the beginning.
• 
Buffalo Public Schools go on to suggest that George Washington, the man who founded this country, was a fraud; that Colin Kaepernick is a moral hero; and that we should celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day instead of Thanksgiving.  Apparently, we have no right to give thanks for a country that isn't ours.
• 
By the time they hit high school, students in Buffalo are ready to go out into the world to destroy buildings and statues.  That's what they're being trained for.
• 
They're asked this explicitly: "Why would someone engaging in rioting be protected under the First Amendment?"
• 
We don't mean to single out Buffalo.  This is happening in middle schools all over the country.
• 
The lesson plan requires children to "examine the ways the Black Panther Party successfully functioned to preserve the values of Black families and villages."
• 
Again, that's the Black Panther Party; racial separatists with a history of murdering people.  Of course, that part's not included.
• 
This is Khmer Rouge propaganda, not education.  But again, that's just the beginning.  Some schools have eliminated biology.  They're teaching children that biology isn't real.
• 
One of the guiding principles in the Black Lives Matter at School curriculum, of course, is to be "transgender affirming," so they have no choice.  Out with biology, in with BLM.
• 
Here's how one pre-kindergarten teacher at a New York public school described this principle: "Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind.  Everyone gets to choose if they are a boy or a girl or both or neither or something else, and no one gets to choose for them."
• 
Again, this is being taught to children in schools in lieu of actual science.  This is religion, this is insanity, and this is also required.
• 
... the point is to adopt a "transformationist white [sic] identity" where "white [sic] folks are attempting to come to terms with race in a real way and question the systemic issues that have caused whites [sic] to be so much in a superior position."
• 
"See race.  Listen to and learn from people of color.  Acknowledge the reality of racism.  Acknowledge the reality of white [sic] racial privilege.  Transcend guilt.  Educate other white [sic] people.  Confront racist behaviors, attitudes and practices.  Use your privilege to work for racial and social justice."
• 
Someday, we're going to look back at this and see it for what it is: Race hate.
• 
This is happening all over the country in school districts your kids may attend, and you may not know about it.
• 
What can we do about it?  What effect is it having on our children?  On our society?
      Tucker Carlson: What we still don't know about the Capitol riot  (Fox 02/11/2021)
• 
It's funny how change happens.  You thought the big change came on Election Day, when the incumbent president lost, but that turned out to be nothing compared to the change that came two months later.
• 
On Jan.  6, supporters of Donald Trump swarmed the Capitol building.  Some forced their way inside, and Washington has never been the same.  It may never be the same.
• 
As a result of what happened on Jan.  6, your descendants will live in a very different country.
• 
Some in Congress have compared that day to 9/11.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has likened it to Pearl Harbor, which spurred America's entry into the Second World War.
• 
Every day we hear new and more florid comparisons from Democratic partisans.  But Tuesay night, CNN outdid all of them by comparing what happened Jan.  6 to the Rwandan genocide.
• 
Keep in mind that close to a million people were murdered in Rwanda in 1994, about 70% of all ethnic Tutsis in the country.  Entire towns were hacked to death with machetes.  People were set on fire and crushed alive by bulldozers.  Hundreds of thousands of women were raped.  It was among the most horrifying crimes in human history.
• 
How does a country recover from something like that?  Well, first, obviously, you punish the guilty quickly and severely.
• 
Then, and this is more important, you set about reordering your society from top to bottom to make certain nothing like that ever happens again.
• 
So you purge the military, suspend basic civil liberties, send troops to the capital, tear down the old, destroy all vestiges of the past in order to save the future.
• 
However, before we remake America to prevent future genocide at the Capitol, maybe we should know a little bit more about the crime that occurred on Jan.  6, if only to understand the justification for overturning our lives permanently.  What exactly did happen that day?
• 
You may be surprised to learn how little we know, even now.  In fact, it's remarkable how many of the most basic questions remain unanswered more than a month after the fact.
• 
Let's start with the headline of the day: Five Americans died on the Capitol grounds on Jan.  6.  You've heard that, but it doesn't really tell you very much.
• 
It's the details, as always, that matter.  Who were these people and how did they die?  That's how you understand what actually happened.
• 
So with that in mind, here are the facts: Four of the five who died that day were Trump supporters.  The fifth was a Capitol Hill police officer who apparently also supported Donald Trump.
      Why is this relevant?  Of course, the political views of the deceased shouldn't matter, but unfortunately, in this case, they  ()
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and many other elected Democrats claim the mob was coming for them that day.
• 
Yet the only recorded casualties on Jan.  6 were people who voted for Donald Trump.
• 
The first among them was a 34-year-old woman from Georgia called Rosanne Boyland.  Authorities initially announced that Boyland died of a "medical emergency".  Later video footage suggested she may have accidentally been trampled by the crowd.
• 
The second casualty was 55-year-old Kevin Greeson, who died of heart failure while talking to his wife on a cell phone outside the Capitol.  "Kevin had a history of high blood pressure," his wife later said, "and in the midst of the excitement, suffered a heart attack."
• 
The third was 50-year-old Benjamin Phillips of Ringtown, Pa.  Phillips was a Trump supporter who organized a bus trip to Washington for the rally that day.  He died of a stroke on the grounds of the Capitol.  There is no evidence that Phillips rioted or was injured by rioters or even went inside the Capitol building.
• 
The fourth person to die, the only one from intentional violence, was 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt, a military veteran from San Diego.  Babbitt was wearing a Trump cape when she was shot to death by a Capitol Hill police lieutenant.
• 
Babbitt's death was caught on video, so hers is the best-documented death that took place that day.  Yet it is surprising how little we know about it.
• 
Babbitt was shot as she tried to crawl through a broken window into the Speaker's Lobby within the Capitol, and that's essentially the extent of what we know.  ... We may never know exactly why this unnamed Capitol Hill police officer took her life.
• 
According to that officer's attorney, "There is no way to look at the evidence and think that he is anything but a hero." Of course, we can't actually look at that evidence, because they're withholding it.
• 
Killing an unarmed woman may be justified under certain specific circumstances, but since when is it heroic?  When the dead woman has read QAnon websites?  Republicans aren't asking that question.
• 
Rep.  Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., has said he immediately hugged the officer who shot Ashli Babbitt and told him, "Listen, you did what you had to do."
• 
Did the officer really have to do that?  We don't know.  We do know that Ashli Babbitt was not holding a weapon when she was killed.
• 
Nevertheless, at the impeachment trial this week, Rep.  David Cicilline, D-R.I., described what happened at the Capitol as "an armed insurrection."
• 
Cicilline is a former mafia lawyer from Providence, so presumably he knows what it is to commit a felony with a firearm.  There are no reports of rioters at the Capitol building Jan.  6 discharging weapons or threatening anyone with a gun.  So what exactly is David Cicilline talking about?
• 
Apparently, he's referring to the death of Officer Brian Sicknick.  In the hours after the riot, The New York Times reported that Trump supporters had brutally beaten Oficer Sicknick to death with a fire extinguisher.
• 
That account forms the basis of the myth that Democrats have constructed around Jan.  6.  Sicknick's remains lay in honor at the Capitol building.  Streams of politicians, who just months before had told us that cops were racist by definition, praised Brian Sicknick as a hero.  They had finally found a police officer who served their political uses.
• 
Just one problem: The story they told was a lie from beginning to end.  Officer Sicknick was not beaten to death, with a fire extinguisher or anything else.
• 
... there's no evidence that Brian Sicknick was hit with a fire extinguisher at any point on Jan 6.  The officer's body apparently bore no signs of trauma.
• 
In fact, on the night of Jan.  6, long after rioters at the Capitol had been arrested or dispersed, Brian Sicknick texted his brother from his office.  According to his brother, Sicknick said he'd been "pepper sprayed twice" but was otherwise "in good shape".  Twenty-four hours later, Officer Brian Sicknick was dead.
• 
How did he die?  The head of the Capitol police union has said he had a stroke.  His body was cremated immediately, and authorities have refused to release his autopsy.  No one has been charged in his death, and no charges are pending.
• 
Whatever happened to Brian Sicknick was tragic, obviously, but it was also very different from what they have told us.  They have lied about how he died.  They've lied about a lot.
• 
How did this riot start, anyway?  Was it a spontaneous event incited by a reckless president in a fit of vicious pique?
• 
Was the riot long-planned, the result of a conspiracy?  Those are two theories of what happened and both cannont be true.
• 
... the newspaper reported that it was well-known that a group of Trump supporters was headed to the city to cause trouble.  The FBI almost certainly knew this.  They likely had paid informants in the ranks of protesters.
• 
So if the authorities knew that violence might be coming to the Capitol, where was the necessary security?  It wasn't there.
• 
We're not sure what all this means and we're not going to speculate.  We do know for certain that the known facts of what happened on Jan.  6 deviate in very important ways from the story they are now telling us, including the story Democrats are telling in the impeachment trial.
• 
In many places, the known facts bear no resemblance to the story they're telling.  They're just flat-out lying.  There's no question about that.
      Tucker Carlson: Have questions about the COVID vaccine?  'Shut up and take it,' says Big Tech  (Fox 02/10/2021)
• 
After months of hearing that life could never return to normal until we get a vaccine, we got a vaccine (two, actually), but life did not return to normal.  In fact, life got worse.
• 
We were instructed to take the new vaccine as soon as possible and then to put on more masks.  Anyone who complained about that was punished.
• 
Most people obeyed the orders (not like they had a choice), but the whole thing made them nervous.
• 
Why exactly did the rules change all of a sudden?  Was there a good reason for that?  When are we finally going to repeal corona law?
• 
And what about this vaccine?  Why are Americans being discouraged from asking simple, straightforward questions about it?  How effective are these drugs?  Are they safe?
• 
These questions are not conspiracy theories, they're the most basic questions in a democracy.  Every citizen has a right to know the answer, but instead we got fluff and propaganda...
• 
Most Americans already supported vaccines.  They didn't need to be browbeaten in order to be convinced.  They were grateful their kids no longer get tetanus and polio and chickenpox.  They weren't anti-vaccine.
• 
And yet from the very first day, the way the authorities handled the coronavirus vaccine did not inspire confidence.
• 
From the moment the vaccine arrived, the most powerful people in America worked to make certain that no one could criticize it.
• 
Here's Bill Gates' wife Melinda on CNN back in December: "The Internet and the rise of social media has happened so quickly that really the regulations and the good policymaking hasn't stayed out in front of it.  And quite frankly, it needs to catch up."
• 
Quite frankly, she says, we need to censor people's views on the COVID vaccine.  Remember, Melinda Gates is not a scientist.  ... She worked in the marketing department at Microsoft, but she's the wife of a billionaire.  That's why she's on television, and it's why she's allowed to control what you're allowed to say about the drug she is demanding you inject in your body.
• 
Is this really science?  Not even close.  It's oligarchy, and all the billionaires are participating in it.  The tech companies announced early they would not allow anyone to criticize this vaccine, and anyone who did would be kicked off their platforms right away.
• 
CNN identified a group on Facebook called "COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Stories" .  The group was exactly what it sounds like: People talking about their experiences with the vaccine.
• 
Last week, that group was among the top 20 groups on all of Facebook.  Tuesday, it couldn't be found, not even if you searched specifically for its name.
• 
Search for the word "vaccine" on Facebook now and you will find a lot of material that precisely matches the storyline approved by Melinda Gates and her fellow non-scientist billionaires...
• 
"Twitter suspended me for saying that vaccines have known side effects".  Of course vaccines have side effects.  Physicians who develop vaccines concede that.  But at the moment, you are not allowed to say it.
• 
... tens of millions of Americans have been vaccinated and most of them seem fine.  On the other hand, scientists are now conceding on the record that the vaccine may trigger a fatal blood disorder in a small number of people.
• 
Science can't live in an environment like this.  Without relentless skepticism, science dies.  That's what science is, relentless skepticism.
• 
And when it leaves, inevitably it's replaced by witchcraft and superstition.  Are we there yet?  You decide.
      Tucker Carlson: Bank of America handed over customer data to feds following Capitol riot  (Fox 02/04/2021)
• 
There has been an enormous amount of talk — not just this week, but over the last month — about violent extremism and the people who embrace it.  Those people, we're told, are domestic terrorists who must be put down by force.
• 
We're hearing those words nonstop, not just on cable news, but from elected officials, including some Republicans.
• 
We're hearing it from the leaders of federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence agencies.  We're hearing it from the Pentagon.
• 
Just this week, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin ordered the entire U.S.  military to "stand down" while investigators cleanse the ranks of political extremists.
• 
And, of course, we're hearing it from the business establishment, from Wall Street and the tech monopolies, from the massive multinational corporations that increasingly control the contours of American life.  All of them are now on the hunt for political extremists.
• 
At one level, that does not sound bad No sane person is for political extremism, especially violent extremism.  We're for moderation, for incremental change and the consent of the governed.
• 
But it's not enough to be against something.  You have to be more precise than that.  In order to root out a problem, you have to know what the problem is.  You need a sense of what you're looking for, a clear picture.  You have to define the terms.  The remarkable thing about this public conversation we're having is that no one is doing that.
• 
Have you noticed that none of these newly energized and highly empowered extremist hunters have told us exactly what an "extremist" is?
• 
We're left to guess, to look around nervously to see if we can spot one.  They're not talking about us, are they?  And if they are, what exactly are they doing?
• 
How are they hunting these "extremists" they keep telling us about but will not describe?
• 
Bank of America is, without the knowledge or the consent of its customers, sharing private information with federal law enforcement agencies.
• 
This is the moment when, for the sake of our country and our grandchildren who will live here, we need to pause and breathe deeply avoid hysteria and ask, "What are the rules?  What, for God's sake, is a political extremist?"
      The powerful are abusing history to get their way — and Americans will bear the consequences  (Fox 02/04/2021)
• 
On Nov.  22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald murdered the president of the United States.  There are a lot of questions about what happened, but there was never any question about who Lee Harvey Oswald was.
• 
Oswald was a passionate and committed Communist.  In 1959, he gave up his American passport and defected to the Soviet Union.  There, he married a Russian woman and lived in Minsk.
• 
Three years later, he returned to this country and immediately began attending rallies in support of Fidel Castro.  In the fall of 1963, Oswald traveled to Mexico City and met with KGB agents there.
• 
A few months before in Dallas, he had tried to murder Gen.  Edwin Walker because Walker had given speeches attacking Communism.
• 
Lee Harvey Oswald never hid his politics, not for a moment.  He talked incessantly about Communism to anyone who would listen.
• 
And yet many Americans never really understood what Lee Harvey Oswald believed, because news outlets didn't tell them.
• 
Instead, almost immediately, the media began spinning a very different story.  President Kennedy, they suggested, had been murdered by conservatives, possibly by conservatism itself, "by hate," as they often put it.
• 
The explanation was never very precise, but the idea was always the same: Right-wingers killed John F.  Kennedy.
• 
The Soviet Union, naturally, was happy to agree with the assessment.  As a Soviet spokesman put it, moral responsibility for the Kennedy assassination lay squarely with, "Barry Goldwater and other extremists on the right."
• 
In the end, the coordinated lying paid off.  A year later, Goldwater lost to Democrat Lyndon Johnson in a historically lopsided presidential election.  By that point, many voters associated Goldwater with murder.
• 
As the decades passed, the media kept repeating this lie.  On the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, The New Yorker magazine was still blaming anti-Communism for the fact that an avowed Communist had murdered the president.
• 
Just because it's absurd doesn't mean they won't say with a straight face.  By now, it's likely that most Americans believe that's exactly what happened.  And why wouldn't they believe it?  That's what they've been told.
• 
History is a political tool, not simply a record of what happened.  History is a way to shape the future.  History is used to hurt some people and to help other people gain power.  History is never neutral.
• 
We are watching our own history being written before us right now.  Consider the below statement, which was uttered on MSNBC Tuesday night by historian Michael Beschloss:...
• 
"This was a president of the United States inciting an insurrection, a terrorist attack on Congress ... We observe 9/11.  We remember the fact that there were attacks that landed, one that almost landed, which was an effort to fly an airplane into the Capitol [and] kill lot of members of Congress.  That almost happened.  Here is a terrorist attack that did happen."
• 
As Beschloss has said repeatedly and pointedly over the last 24 hours, we must "never forget." Now, it's true that Michael Beschloss is a historian in the same sense that 7-Eleven is a restaurant, but he sells what is called popular history, the kind of history that sticks.
• 
For Americans under 30, history is written exclusively on social media, and that's where the real demagogues live.  Tech platforms are the domain of people for whom factual reality is not even a consideration.  What actually happened in a given place at a given time is totally and completely irrelevant.  Ideology is all that matters.
• 
Sandy Cortez is a master of this medium, of course.  Here's her description of the events of Jan.  6, as broadcast to kids across the country on Instagram.
• 
"I jump into my bathroom and I close the door and I just keep hearing bang, bang, bang ... I open the door when all of a sudden I hear that whoever was trying to get inside got into my office ... and I just hear, "Where is she?  Where is she?  And this was the moment where I thought everything was over."
• 
... People will believe this crap; some already do.  Anyone who was physically present at the Capitol that day knows it's ridiculous.  There were no rioters in Sandy Cortez's hallway.
• 
Trump voters weren't trying to kill her.  A lot of the rioters were angrier at Mitch McConnell than they were at any Democrat.
• 
To some extent, what you saw on Jan.  6 was an intraparty struggle, an act of mindless destruction aimed at Republican leaders and born of long simmering frustration.
• 
The people who run the Republican Party don't care about the people who elect them.  That has long been true, but Republican voters finally figured it out.  On Jan.  6, they exploded.
• 
Lindsey Graham was likely in graver danger than Sandy Cortez or Ilhan Omar.  They were literally calling poor Mike Pence's name.  He didn't do anything, but they were furious with him.
• 
That's not a defense of rioting or even an ideological point.  It's just true; it's what happened.
• 
But at this point, the truth doesn't matter.  What matters is who gets to write the history of what happens, who gets to define what the truth is.
• 
There's a reason that within hours, Democrats begin describing the riot as a racial attack.  It was confusing to hear that at first, if you watched it and knew what happened.
• 
As awful as it was, there was nothing racial about what happened that day.  Claiming otherwise is an absurd fantasy and a lie.
• 
But no one pushed back against that lie, so they kept repeating it.  Now, weeks later, it is the accepted version of what happened.
• 
Powerful lawmakers just say it from the House floor like it's fact, like it's been proven in some objective inquiry.
• 
Why are they claiming that it was some kind of "What nationalist insurrection," to use the words of Adam Schiff?  You know the answer.  Everyone does, though almost everyone is too cowardly to say it out loud.
• 
They're saying that so they can lump you in with the people who broke into the Capitol and punish you for crimes you did not commit and never supported.
• 
If what happened on Jan.  6 was a riot, and it was, then we can arrest the rioters and punish them, and we should.
• 
If what happened on Jan.  6 was an insurrection, a failed revolution, an attempted coup, then it's something else entirely.  Then we need a military response, a new war against our own population.  Not surprisingly, that's exactly what they're calling for.
• 
... a piece by a former CIA officer called Kevin Carroll.  According to Kevin Carroll: "We saw five dead in the Jan.  6 attempted coup d'etat."
• 
Now, Carroll didn't explain who exactly those five people were or how exactly they died.  It would be nice to know that, but facts were not the point.  The point was that this was an attempted coup d'etat and the U.S.  government needs to act accordingly.
• 
"We defeated al Qaeda [sic] and can do the same to the fascist thugs who attacked our democracy last month, But only if we take similar hard measures against the enemy within."
• 
Treating Americans like Al Qaeda, the enemy within.  Apparently, that's the new conservative position on the riots of Jan.  6.
• 
And why wouldn't it be the position of everyone in this country?  Because that's the history they are writing and we're letting them.
• 
But we should be prepared for the consequences of that history.
      Tucker Carlson: NYU's farce of a study on Big Tech censorship of conservatives  (Fox 02/03/2021)
• 
... the biggest threat to Americans' basic freedoms is huge, publicly held corporations, particularly the tech monopolies.  Unlike the federal government — which, while stupid and dangerous, you theoretically have some control over — these corporations aren't interested in what you think, and yet they have enormous control over your life.
• 
... a pair of NYU researchers released what they described as a study of social media and censorship.  The study authors didn't hide their conclusions in footnotes.  They got right to it in the title.
• 
This new paper is called "False Accusation, The Unfounded Claim that Social Media Companies Censor Conservatives."
• 
On page 16, right there in black and white, we learn that "Conservatives frequently point to Twitter's practice of suspending or permanently banning account holders as evidence of bias against the right."
• 
Happily, the study concludes, "facts don't support this claim.  Conservatives do get suspended or banned for violating Twitter's rules against such things as harassment, hateful conduct, or, as in Trump's case, glorifying violence.  But liberals are excluded in this fashion, as well."
• 
Can we get some numbers on that, NYU?  No, actually we can't.  In the words of the study, "[p]inning down precise proportions is impossible because Twitter doesn't release sufficient data."
• 
Are you following the reasoning here?  Their conclusion is that Twitter is not biased and we can be certain it's not biased because Twitter refuses to release data on who it bans.  Case closed.
• 
What we do know is that shutting down the New York Post's entire Twitter account right before the election because the newspaper printed stories that were unflattering to the Biden family was not censorship.
• 
According to NYU, shutting down a newspaper's account for its political views during a presidential election is not censorship.  It is instead "reasonable."
• 
Why is it reasonable?  Well, because presumably — and unlike, say, the Pentagon Papers or virtually every scoop The New York Times has ever published — the New York Post used information that was not publicly available in its stories about Hunter Biden.
• 
That's totally wrong, and it should be censored, which is not actually censorship.  It's just common sense.  It's "reasonable."
• 
The following headline in the New York Daily News, which we should tell you is a direct competitor to the New York Post, gives you a flavor of the reaction from the guardians of the First Amendment: "Big tech doesn't censor conservatives: A careful review of evidence shows that's fake news."
• 
So, to be clear: This NYU study has proven there is no censorship from the tech monopolies.  But if you persist in complaining about this censorship, which does not exist, you may be spreading disinformation.
• 
This so-called academic study was, in fact, paid for by Big Tech.  It was funded by a man called Craig Newmark, one of the many Silicon Valley billionaires who paid for the Joe Biden for President campaign.
• 
Are you following how this works?  Is it becoming clear?  In 2021, billionaires fund their own studies and in return for that investment, they get the conclusions they have paid for and the rest of us get to obey those conclusions.  That's called science, ladies and gentlemen, and suddenly it's everywhere.
• 
Ask yourself, just for example, who has more influence over our national COVID policy: Physicians who treat COVID patients in hospitals every day, scientists who work to find an effective treatment for the virus, or Bill Gates, who is not a physician or a researcher but is worth more than $100 billion?
• 
That's why billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros now gets to decide how our laws are enforced.
• 
It's why his fellow billionaire hedge fund manager, Tom Steyer, gets to determine America's response to climate change.
• 
It's why Jeff Bezos, who sells brightly-colored garbage from China for a living, gets to tell Congress what to do from the editorial page of their hometown newspaper, The Washington Post.
• 
That's a lot of power and it was only a matter of time before the people who wield that power decide they should control democracy itself.
• 
So they're trying.  In the last election, 36-year-old billionaire Mark Zuckerberg spent at least $350 million to influence who in America would vote and whose votes would be counted.
• 
At the same time, Facebook, Zuckerberg's company, decided who could share certain political opinions online.
• 
We all watched this happen and in the end, of course, those efforts had a great effect.
• 
You'd think someone, somewhere would push back against this, but no one in the Democratic Party dares to do that.  The last one who tried was Bernie Sanders, and look what happened to him.
• 
Just the other day, Sanders was dismissed in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, which you would think would be a friendly news outlet, as someone who "manifests privilege, white [sic] privilege, male privilege and class privilege."
• 
Honestly, it's hard to feel too sorry for Sanders right now.  He knew perfectly well that the real divide in this country isn't race or sex, but class.
• 
He used to say that out loud, but in the end, he was too much of a coward to criticize identity politics.  It was ascendent, and he wanted to ride the waves.  Big mistake.
• 
What's so interesting, and what you should meditate on, is who has White privilege and who doesn't.
• 
Apparently, beat cops who risk their lives for $60,000 a year have White privilege, a ton of it.  We know that firemen have white privilege, along with construction workers, roofers, Uber drivers, the guys who hang drywall, and anyone who doesn't take Nancy Pelosi seriously.
• 
But what about Bill Gates?  When was the last time someone told you that Bill Gates had White privilege, or Jeff Bezos or George Soros or any other politically active billionaire?  Never.
      Tucker Carlson: The media wants you fixated on Marjorie Taylor Greene.  You should ask why  (Fox 02/02/2021)
• 
No presidential administration has changed so many basic facts of American life as quickly as Joe Biden's administration has over the week and a half that it's been in charge.
• 
... the Biden administration plans to make the tiny District of Columbia our 51st state, a more corrupt, English-speaking version of Monaco.  As if lobbyists in Washington didn't have enough control over your life, now they'll be U.S.  senators.
• 
... Biden officials informed us that after almost 65 years of working to build a nuclear weapon, the nation of Iran may be "weeks away" from getting a bomb.
• 
You already know how that story is going to end.  Another pointless foreign war, trillions spent, many dead, the United States gaining nothing.  We've seen that a lot, and it's happening again.
• 
Oh, and by the way, Joe Biden just sent American troops to Syria.  What, you didn't know that?  Yes, hours after he became president, American soldiers crossed into the nation of Syria.  Sending them to Syria was one of the first things Joe Biden did as commander-in-chief.
• 
Somehow, most the media forgot to mention that.  In their defense, Washington, D.C.  looks like occupied Sarajevo, a small city overflowing with soldiers.
• 
The troops came last month, tens of thousands of them.  We were told they were going to protect the capital from the inevitable right-wing violence that would accompany Joe Biden's inauguration.
• 
Then Joe Biden was inaugurated and there wasn't any violence.  Donald Trump didn't chain himself to the North Portico.  Trump voters didn't rush the stage.  The Trump restoration never happened.
• 
And yet the troops stayed.  As of Jan.  28, National Guard troops from 23 states were stationed in Washington.  That number seems to have risen over the past few days.
• 
Gov.  J.B.  Pritzker was not so shy about the purpose.  In a statement announcing the deployment of more soldiers to Washington, D.C., Pritzker explained that "we must root out the dark forces of racism, white [sic] supremacy and disinformation that have created this moment."
• 
Let that sink in.  The military has been deployed to Washington, D.C.  to fight disinformation.  So if you say something a Democratic governor doesn't like, he will send troops.
• 
This is not the way things are done in America.  It's not the way they have been done since the Civil War.  No one alive has ever seen anything like this.
• 
So why is everyone pretending it's totally normal to have thousands of troops in the capital to fight disinformation?
• 
Because obviously, they're in favor of it.  They think it's fine to mobilize the army in order to put down domestic opinions.
• 
This week's enemy is freshman Rep.  Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who is apparently so dangerous that in the name of democracy, she must be expelled from Congress.  She was elected months ago with 75% of the vote, roughly the same percentage that Nancy Pelosi got out in San Francisco.  There's no question that her voters very much wanted her to represent them in Washington.
• 
On the other hand, what do her voters have to do with democracy?  That's not how democracy works.  In the new democracy, CNN gets the veto.  If cable news doesn't like your views, you have to leave Congress.  That's the rule.
• 
The test is entirely ideological.  You don't actually have to harm anyone to lose your job.  This new member of Congress has barely even voted, but CNN says she has bad opinions.  Therefore, she's the greatest threat we face.
• 
Now, if you're skeptical about any of this, our advice is keep it to yourself, because free inquiry is dead and unauthorized questions are hate speech.
• 
Anyone who suggests that this one member of Congress is not really America's greatest enemy is by definition one of America's greatest enemies.
• 
Why, you ask?  Simple: Donald Trump is gone now.  That's very bad news for the many people who made a living yelling at Donald Trump.
• 
And it's especially dangerous for their political party, whose nonsensical coalition can only hang together by collectively throwing rocks at whomever happens to be at the center of the hate circle on a particular day.
• 
If there's no more Donald Trump, that means you get to be Donald Trump.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Democrats' meaning of 'equity and inclusion' is 'believe what we say, or else'  (Fox 01/27/2021)
• 
Let's begin with a basic point: The United States government should never, under any circumstances, favor one race of people over any other race of people.  That is immoral.
• 
We are all citizens.  We are all human beings.  We are all created by God.  We are all equal.
• 
Every one of us has a right to equal treatment by our government.  That right is guaranteed by our Constitution.  It's the heart of countless laws passed with well-deserved fanfare by our Congress over many decades.
• 
... Susan Rice announce on television Tuesday that every agency in the U.S.  government, the largest and most lavishly funded organization in human history, must "place equity at the core" of its policy design specifically and for the benefit of "marginalized communities."
• 
Rice's speech was carried live by many news outlets, but as far as we know, not a single one of them paused to ask what exactly she was talking about.  They should have.
• 
The federal government is, above all, an enormous printing press, dispensing trillions of dollars every year.
• 
According to Rice, much of that money will now be distributed on the basis of equity.  That means it will go to people who do not possess "privilege." So let's get very specific about what that means.
• 
What precisely is privilege?  Can it be measured?  If so, how exactly are we measuring it?  Is there a formula?
• 
We should see it because a huge amount turns on the definition of this word.  Some Americans won't get jobs because it's been decided they have too much privilege.  Others won't get into college or get promoted or win federal contracts.  Others will see their neighborhoods change dramatically in ways they may not like because of their privilege.
• 
Before any of that happens, the rest of us deserve a clear explanation of what's going on, who's getting rewarded, who's getting punished and why.
• 
We don't have to ask politely.  We're American citizens.  This is our government.  No matter who we voted for, we're paying for it, so we can demand an answer.
• 
But of course, there isn't an answer.  That's the point.  They can't really define privilege.  They can't tell us who, in a country with no majority culture, actually qualifies as a "minority."
• 
They only want to have this conversation at all because their views are indefensible.  That's why they're trying to make us be quiet.  You see those efforts all around you now.
• 
Never in American history has there been press censorship on this scale.  Fox News is the last significant media organization remaining in this country that allows its employees to tell obvious truths in public.  The rest of them have been muzzled or shut down completely.
• 
The last to go was the social media site Parler, which was created as a free speech alternative to the Silicon Valley monopolies like Twitter and Facebook.
• 
A few weeks ago, those very same monopolies pulled it right off the Internet.  Parler no longer exists.
• 
When the history of this period is written, the destruction of Parler will get its own chapter, and so will the mindless corporate shills who applauded its destruction.
• 
Amazon Web Services, the largest Internet hosting service in the world, was allowed to simply unplug Parler, to destroy it with no debate or coherent explanation.
• 
It certainly wasn't because they were morally offended by Parler.  Last year, according to the group Parents Together, a total of 69 million photos and videos of children being sexually abused were reported to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
• 
Only eight of those reports came from Amazon Web Services, which was hosting quite a few of them.
• 
"Amazon Web Services has vast resources, controls a third of cloud infrastructure services and handles billions of uploads and downloads.  Their abysmal failure to report child sex abuse material makes it clear they're not looking for it."
• 
... Amazon Web Services provides hosting services to Twitter and according to one lawsuit, Twitter "benefited from and neglected to remove an exploitative video — featuring a [minor boy] and another minor — which was retweeted thousands of times and received at least 167,000 views on the platform."
• 
You're getting the picture.  There's a lot of garbage floating around on Amazon Web Services and on Twitter, but according to our media class, none of it would justify shutting down Amazon Web Services.
• 
You should also know that Amazon Web Services provides Web services for the CIA.  You're paying for that.
• 
Amazon has built data centers in China.  According to a report by the Horizon Advisory Group, Amazon runs a "innovation center" in close partnership with the Communist Party of China.
• 
It's not clear what they're innovating, but whatever it is, it's not a problem for our leaders because no one in the Chinese government voted for Donald Trump, so it's not like they're dangerous.
• 
But you know who is dangerous?  Any American citizen who doesn't agree with MSNBC.
• 
Equity and inclusion means that you will believe what they tell you to believe, or else you're a terrorist and they can hurt you because we hurt terrorists.
• 
Listen to America's new grand inquisitor, Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif.  "We have been urging for some time that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security raise the priority to domestic terrorism, to White nationalism as it threatens the country, and we're going to continue sounding the alarm and make sure that they're devoting the resources, the time, the attention, just as we did after 9/11 to the threat from international terrorism, we need to give the same priority and urgency to domestic terrorism."
• 
Got that?  Vote the wrong way, and you are a jihadi.  You thought you were an American citizen with rights and just a different view, but no, you're a jihadi and we're going to treat you the way we treated those radicals after 9/11, the way we treated bin Laden.
• 
Get in line, pal.  This is a war on terror.  Keep in mind, as you listen to people talk like this — and Adam Schiff is far from the only one — they're talking about American citizens.  They're talking about you, but nobody seems to notice or care.
• 
One who does notice and who cares quite a bit, one of the only Democrats willing to stand up and oppose this transparently fascist purge (for that's what it is) is Tulsi Gabbard, the former member of Congress from Hawaii.
• 
"The John Brennans, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style surveillance are also domestic enemies, and much more powerful and therefore dangerous than the mob that stormed the Capitol."
• 
Those words are absolutely true, and God bless Tulsi Gabbard for saying so out loud.
• 
See related Out of Books (Mike Lester, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related Torquemada (Antonio Branco, 01/21/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Democrats' sweeping 'For The People Act' would 'enshrine fraud,' as lawmakers seek to stifle dissent  (Fox 01/26/2021)
• 
Democrats will control the federal government for decades or more if a sweeping new proposal touted as comprehensive government reform becomes law...
• 
"The 'For The People Act' is the foundation of the Democratic Party strategy to control the federal government well into your grandchildren's middle age."
• 
"Like most revolutionary documents, it's not a very exciting read — nothing sounds especially radical at first.  The bill begins by declaring that — contrary to Article I of the United States Constitution — Congress has an " ultimate supervisory power over federal elections."
• 
... handling of elections is largely left to the states, but that the Democrats' bill would essentially nationalize what he called the Californian election system.
• 
"Under our current loss, states get to decide how much fraud they will tolerate: Florida requires you to show photo identification in order to vote.  California just wants you to vote Democrat."
• 
"If H.R.  1 passes, all 50 states will be California — the entire country will have ballot harvesting and mail-in voting.  Think about that."
• 
... Democrats are essentially taking the exact opposite message from the right-wing riot at the Capitol on January 6.
• 
... throngs of people turned to civil unrest because millions were convinced the 2020 election was not fair, and that they did not come to that conclusion because "the last president told them so."
• 
"You are hearing that now as if they are animals who take commands and do what they're told — but they're not animals, they're American citizens who can see what is happening and come to their own conclusions about it: They saw the radical increase in mail-in voting, and it corroded the public's faith in the system of our of elections.  They were enraged by that and some of them exploded."
• 
"According to the Democrats, the lesson of that terrible day was that we needed more of the corrupt policies that caused it in the first place.  We need more mail-in voting, we need more ballot harvesting: More corruption!  That will unite the country."
• 
"Under H.R.  1, [people] could freely go house to house and apartment to apartment collecting unknown thousands of ballots and then dump them all in a ballot dropbox.  No one would have any idea if those ballots had been tampered with at any point along the way or would there be any way to prove it if they had been tampered with."
• 
"H.R.  1 also makes it harder for election observers to file complaints about any of this because complaining is racist."
• 
"A system like that is suicidal for democracy and no other free country would tolerate it."
• 
... Canada and France have prohibitions on mail-in ballots, while the party in power in the U.S.  seeks the opposite remedy.
• 
... went on to contrast the Democrats' call for open, unaccountable voting with surprising contravening messaging from an entity he said is otherwise friendly to the left: Jeff Bezos' Amazon.
• 
"When it's their power at stake Democrats have a totally different position," ... remarking on Amazon corporate's criticism of mail-in type balloting for its unionization election in Alabama.
• 
"You should know this is not considered hypocrisy.  They don't mind if they are caught breaking their own rules, they are not offended by double standards.  They want power, this is a power grab and that's all it is."
• 
... went on to point to legislation from Rep.  Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., noting that the Orlando lawmaker is proposing a bill that would, in the host's words, "ban anyone with the wrong opinions from having a significant job in the federal government."
• 
"Believe forbidden things and you don't get a security clearance.  You can't work here, Murphy's bill would require federal investigators to ask all applicants whether they had 'associated with or knowingly engaged in activities conducted by an organization or movement that spreads conspiracy theories and false information about the United States government'."
• 
"At this point [Murphy's bill's criteria] would include everyone pretty much currently in power, Yes, they were knee deep in conspiracy theories that actually hurt our country in measurable ways — but this legislation isn't designed to punish them — just the opposite — this legislation is designed to protect them from your criticism."
• 
"Under Stephanie Murphy's bill, anyone who criticizes Stephanie Murphy could be punished.  Make sense now?"
      Tucker Carlson: Biden cancels Keystone Pipeline, opens the border and shows who he really is  (Fox 01/22/2021)
• 
Thursday was Joe Biden's first day in office.  You can tell a lot about what people value on their first day in any job, so what's at the top of Joe Biden's to-do list?  Opening the borders and crushing our country's last remaining independent economic sector.
• 
First, Biden signed an executive order revoking the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline.  Now, no matter how you feel about fossil fuel (and if you drive a car or fly on airplanes or use the hospital or enjoy electricity, you might want to think carefully about how you feel about fossil fuel), there is no getting around the economic effect of this decision.
• 
Millions of Americans don't have jobs right now, but with a single shaky signature, Joe Biden just put another 11,000 people out of work.
• 
But he wasn't done.  Biden also instructed the Department of Homeland Security to halt deportations of illegal aliens.
• 
And when we say illegal aliens, we mean millions of illegal aliens, not just the countless undocumented Americans that Joe Biden tells us are busy curing cancer, winning Nobel Prizes and in general being a lot more impressive than you have ever been.
• 
Biden's order also covers criminals, rapists, murderers, and others who are dangerous to you and me.
• 
So the message is clear: If you break our laws to get here and commit violent felonies once you arrive, sometimes against American citizens, Joe Biden will reward you with blanket amnesty.  It's a pretty strong straight statement to make on your first day as president.
• 
In a typical 100-day period last year, for example, ICE agents removed 46,800 immigrants with criminal convictions or pending criminal charges.  Now they're all staying, and that's fine with Joe Biden.
• 
One thing is for certain, they're definitely not aliens.  That's another change we learned about this week.  Henceforth, the totally-modern-and-not-at-all-radical Biden administration demands that federal agencies refer to illegal aliens as "non-citizens."
• 
That language is less precise, obviously, but it's way less racist, so it's better.  In the name of unity, people should not be allowed to use certain words or have certain thoughts.  Everyone must think exactly the same thing all the time.
• 
Now, if that seems like terrifying mandatory conformity to you, you're wrong.  It's unity.  That's why on the Biden administration's website, you can now select your preferred pronouns as you fill out the contact form.
• 
We do have one nagging question, though: What exactly is the point of all of these things that have been done in the last 24 hours?
• 
Will any of these changes, these bigger things that Joe Biden has enacted on his very first day in office, actually help any living American?
• 
We're pretty sure the pronoun thing will appeal to whatever tiny group of deluded, unhappy people still believe that destroying nature's gender roles is a form of liberation, but what about everyone else?
• 
How, for example, does amnesty and the waves of mass illegal immigration that inevitably will follow make this a better, more united country?
• 
You're not supposed to ask that question, but it's totally fair.  We have a right to know.  Anyone who tries to answer that question, not that anyone has so far, should first have to explain whatever happened to the state of California, the state with the most illegal immigration by far.
• 
How, in the course of a single generation, did the best state in the Union become the worst state?  How did the place that so many Americans desperately wanted to move to become the place that millions of Americans are fleeing?
• 
The Biden administration's immigration plan is not designed to improve the United States of America.  It's not intended to make Americans happier or richer or more secure or more united.
• 
You might think those would be the aims of every government policy ever but no, not in this case.  The point of Joe Biden's immigration plan is "racial equity."
• 
Now, we've got to be completely honest with you, we're not exactly sure what that means.  But as of tonight, it sounds a lot like punishment.
• 
Mass immigration, explains Joe Biden, isn't something that will make your life better.  It's something you deserve.
      Tucker Carlson: Joe Biden declares war on 'White supremacy.' What does he mean by that?  (Fox 01/21/2021)
• 
Inauguration Day is always a big moment for this country, and so it was Wednesday.
• 
There were solemn speeches, sworn oaths, belted anthems, all echoing against the backdrop of 26,000 smartly attired federal troops guarding our capital city from unseen threats.
• 
If you watched and listened to most of the media coverage, you got the impression that Joe Biden will bring hope and decency back to America and fill the yawning void where empathy should be.
• 
His arms, lean and hard from decades of empathetic labor on our behalf, will encircle us like lights from the Lincoln Memorial.
• 
Joe Biden and his wife Jill are the father and mother of this nation, may their names emerge from our lips in praise forever.  And so on.
• 
The funny thing is, every person with a microphone in every TV studio in America knew the fuller truth.  They knew, for example, that Joe Biden isn't well.  Everyone in Washington knows that, but no one said it out loud.
• 
One particular passage of the speech stuck out, one we found very hard to disagree with:
• 
"On this January day, my whole soul is in this: Bringing America together, uniting our people, uniting our nation, and I ask every American to join me in this cause ... With unity, we can do great things, important things."
• 
To which we say, "Amen." Unity is precisely what this country needs more than anything.  We are all in this together, and we have no choice but to hang together.  Let's finally accept that we are one country, act like we are and make this a better place for everyone.  If Joe Biden can bring unity to this country, he will be a legitimately great president.
• 
But there's a catch.  There always is a catch.  Unity doesn't mean every single American because not everyone who was born within our borders really is an American.
• 
Some of us are beyond the pale of citizenship.  ... Here's who Joe Biden says those people are.  "A rise of political extremism, White supremacy, domestic terrorism that we must confront and we will defeat."
• 
On one level, this is not very remarkable.  Not many Americans support White supremacy.  Most people in this country find it disgusting, and they should.
• 
But the question is, what does it mean to wage war on White supremacists?  Can somebody tell us in very clear language what a White supremacist is?
• 
This is not a question of semantics.  Joe Biden is the president of the United States, not a high school debate coach.  He controls the largest military and law enforcement agencies in the world.
• 
He has now declared war, and we have a right to know, specifically and precisely, who exactly he has declared war on.
• 
Innocent people could be hurt in this war.  They usually are.  There could be collateral damage in this war, and the casualties will be Americans.
• 
So, again, what is a White supremacist?  You might be surprised to learn just how broad the definition has become.
• 
Bloomberg News has described a wall along our southern border as "a Monument to White Supremacy," so be certain not to support that.
• 
Colin Kaepernick, who seems to have the unequivocal support of corporate America, calls the Fourth of July an example of White supremacy.  Better put away the fireworks and the hot dogs.
• 
The United States Army, a trusted institution if there ever was one, has an entire manual on what is and what is not White supremacy.
• 
Apparently, among the tell-tale signs of a committed White supremacist are these: Celebrating Columbus Day, using the term "American exceptionalism" , any support for federal border security or English-only measures or "education funding from property taxes" .
• 
Using the phrase "there's only one human race" is White supremacy, too, according to the Army.
• 
Here's the problem: Let's say you don't buy those definitions.  Let's say you're, for example, White but poor and you have trouble accepting the idea that you're benefiting from some kind of structural advantage.
• 
Well, you'd better shut up about it if you know what's good for you, because according to the United States Army, the "denial of White privilege" is a classic sign of, yes, White supremacy.  So no complaining.
• 
You know who does have power?  Private equity has power, a lot of it.  So does Google, Citibank, the government of China, even silly Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her massive social media accounts.
• 
Those are the people who run our country and they don't like to be criticized.  On the other hand, they don't care to defend themselves directly with reason and fact, often because they can't.
• 
So instead, they denounce you and their critics as White supremacists, and then they just ignore what you say.
• 
They're getting the FBI and the Pentagon involved in this hunt for people who may criticize them.  That's a very big change, and you should understand what it's really about.
      Tucker Carlson: As troops swarm our capital, Democrats send clear message: We're in charge now  (Fox 01/19/2021)
• 
Our capital city is currently under military occupation.  By Inauguration Day, there are expected to be more than 26,000 armed federal troops in Washington.  No living American has seen a moment like the one we're watching now.
• 
For comparison, Lyndon Johnson sent a total of 13,600 federal troops and D.C.  Army National Guardsmen to quell the race riots in Washington that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.  Those riots injured hundreds of people and killed at least 13.
• 
In 1864, as the Civil War raged on the other side of the Potomac and Americans died every day in large numbers on the battlefield, there were fewer federal troops protecting Washington, D.C., than there are right now.
• 
But according to our leaders, the so-called "insurrection" of Jan.  6 was much worse than any of that.  So in response, they have assembled the largest military presence in Washington in all of American history during peacetime.  It's truly a national force, with Guardsmen from every state in the Union as well as Puerto Rico.  The question is, why?
• 
For decades, Washington, D.C., had the highest per-capita law enforcement presence in the country and one of the highest in the world.  There was no need to fly in troops from Alaska to keep the city safe.
• 
But keeping the city safe is hardly the point of this exercise.  The murder rate in the District of Columbia has risen with terrifying speed over the last six months.
• 
Men, women and children have been shot to death in the streets, but no one in charge seems to care about that or even notice.
• 
So no matter what they are telling you, those 26,000 federal troops are not there for your safety.
• 
Instead, unmistakably, the Democratic Party is using those troops to send the rest of us a message about power: "We're in charge now.  We run this nation, from Honolulu to our colony in the Caribbean and everywhere in between, very much including where you and your family live.  Do not question us men with guns.  We control the Pentagon." And indeed, they do.
• 
The mask is off our military leadership.  The very same generals who howled at the idea of deploying American troops to stop an invasion of our southern border sent tens of thousands of soldiers with rifles to Washington purely as a show of force on behalf of the political party they support.
• 
Once they did that, they allowed Democratic politicians to degrade and politicize the military itself.
• 
Democrats in Congress demanded that the troops sent to Washington this week submit to a political purity test — "ideological vetting", as they put it — to make certain that every soldier professed loyalty to the new regime.
• 
Not loyalty to our country, not loyalty to our Constitution, but loyalty to the aims of a specific political party.
• 
Nothing like that has ever happened in America and just a few months ago, it would have been unimaginable.  Suddenly it's compulsory.
• 
Rep.  Steve Cohen, D-Tenn., has even gone so far as to say that every White man in this country is a potential murderer, that every White man in America should be under suspicion — purely on the basis of being White and male — of planning a presidential assassination.
• 
On Nov.  5, 2009, Army Maj.  Nidal Hasan opened fire on innocent people at Fort Hood, Texas.  He shot 45 people and 13 of them died.
• 
When it emerged later that Hasan was an Islamic extremist and the Army had failed to notice his extremism or in any way protect the public from it, no one at the Pentagon was court-martialed.
• 
Instead, the rest of us sat through months of lectures about how we had no right to come to broader conclusions about what had happened at Fort Hood.
• 
Yes, the shootings were bad, though not — President Barack Obama made this clear at the time — an act of terrorism.
• 
But far worse than mass murder, we were told, would be the sin of drawing any connection between Nidal Hasan's beliefs and the beliefs of anyone else in our country.  Nidal Hasan was literally a lone gunman, not a stand-in for all Muslims.
• 
That's what they told us.  And by the way, it's OK that they told us that.  Most Americans are decent people who don't blame entire groups for the crimes of a few.  Bigotry is immoral and so is collective punishment.  There is nothing more un-American than that.
• 
But collective punishment is now the official policy of the federal government, and it's enforced by the Pentagon.
• 
In the meantime, you've got to wonder what the Guardsmen themselves think of all of this.  ... they've been deployed to their country's own capital city and they've been given orders to shoot their fellow Americans if necessary.  That's a lot to ask.
• 
Now, on top of all of that, they've been told that if they were born a certain way, if they're White and male and therefore evil and dangerous, they themselves are under suspicion of being the enemy.  They're potential killers, assassins, betrayers of a nation.
• 
The Democratic Party is using the military of the United States as a political weapon.  But Republicans in Congress just can't be bothered to notice that.
• 
You'd also think officers at the Pentagon would be outraged by this, but as far as we know, not a single one has resigned in protest of conducting background checks on people because of their race or sex or their political views.
• 
On Monday, The Daily Beast, the home page of our highly credentialed but none-too-bright ruling class, ran a piece with this title: "Can U.S.  Spy Agencies Stop White Terror?" Other countries, the story pointed out, have domestic spy agencies to fight extremists at home.
• 
So, of course, we need one right away.  What the piece does not mention is that those other countries include China, North Korea, and Kazakhstan.  Domestic spy agency is a not-very-subtle euphemism for secret police.  That is what they're calling for.
• 
Something awful has been unleashed on our country.  Unchecked, it will inevitably lead to more awful things.  Every action provokes a reaction.  That is both physics and human nature.
• 
Citizens, Lincoln said, "seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose."
• 
... let's pray that the people planning a war on American citizens find their reason and their decency and stop talking like that immediately, much less planning to act on it.
• 
Most Americans are good people, even if you hate how they voted.  We don't need a war within our borders.  Only the worst people will win that war.
      Tucker Carlson: The latest 'national crisis' and the coming crackdown  (Fox 01/15/2021)
• 
Last week's deadly riot at the U.S.  Capitol was not an act of racism, nor was it an insurrection.  It was not an armed invasion by a brigade of dangerous White supremacists.
• 
Those are lies.  Why are they demanding that you believe those lies?
• 
What happened last week was not new or unusual.  The riot was the perfect illustration of why we should oppose all mob action.  Left uncontrolled, mobs boil over, violence erupts, and people get killed.
• 
That has happened many times through human history.  That's the way mobs are.  Wise leaders know that, and it's why they don't encourage mobs.
• 
We had hoped that everyone in Washington had learned that lesson, but of course, they haven't.  Instead, they're trying to use this moment to increase their own power, so they're lying about what you saw.
• 
They're calling it a precisely orchestrated coup attempt.  They're telling you the Chewbacca guy you saw on video, the guy with the painted face and the Viking hat, was actually the leader of some super secret commando unit here to overthrow our government.
• 
It's absurd and insulting, yet it's working.  What happened last week is being used to justify the most sweeping crackdown on civil liberties and free speech in the history of this country.
• 
You shouldn't be surprised, however.  We lived through something similar that showed the template for what they'll do and what they plan to do.
• 
Over Memorial Day weekend, George Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody.  The usual frauds and demagogues leveraged that moment to change this country forever.
• 
They used hysteria to subdue the population and crush anyone who dared to ask questions about what they were doing.
• 
To this day, they maintain strict ideological orthodoxy through threats and fear rather than argument and reason.
• 
Meanwhile, and this was the point all along, a small number of genuinely radical haters and nihilists have stepped into the void where our national conversation used to be and taken total control of the floor.
• 
They say things that virtually no one in this country actually agrees with, but since no one else is allowed to talk, they have a monopoly on what we do next.
• 
We were told the death of George Floyd was a national crisis, and in any national crisis, you've got to make some sacrifices.
• 
Well, guess what?  Every one of your sacrifices is going to make vacuous little totalitarian morons like Sandy Cortez more powerful.
      That's how national crises work.  Something bad has happened, therefore, you've got to hand the worst people in the world the keys to your  ()
• 
... feeling unsafe is not new for Ayanna Pressley, particularly when she attended the single most expensive private school in Chicago growing up.  And it was even scarier when she arrived, like her friend Sandy Cortez, on the mean streets of Boston University.  Ayanna Pressley knows well what it's like to be persecuted and oppressed.
• 
And that, friends, is why you should no longer be allowed to speak in public or read the websites you like or watch this show.
• 
The New York Times has published a column by Nick Kristof that made this entirely sensible point: "I'd like to see pressure on advertisers to withdraw from Fox News so long as it functions as an extremist madrasa, and cable providers should be asked why they distribute channels that peddle lies."
• 
You won't be surprised to learn that the rest of the media, our competitors, strongly agree with that sentiment: The government needs to shut down Fox News.
• 
People who watch Fox News, meanwhile — that would be you — need to be "deprogrammed" , presumably in some kind of residential facility.
• 
Reeducation camps, if you will.  We can't say specifically what the plan is.  Honestly, we haven't thought a lot about it.  MSNBC, though, has thought a lot about it.
• 
EUGENE ROBINSON: There are millions of Americans, almost all White, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed.  It's as if they are members of a cult, that Trumpist cult, and have to be deprogrammed.  Do you have any idea how we will start that process?
• 
It turns out that many Democrats do, in fact, have some ideas on how to start the process.
• 
Sandy Cortez, by the way, has been thinking about this since sociology class at BU and she has concluded that we need a government commission to shut down media outlets that might criticize her.
• 
OCASIO-CORTEZ: There's absolutely a commission that's being discussed ... Several members of Congress, and some of my discussions, have brought up media literacy because that is a part of what happened here ... We're going to have to figure out how we rein in our media environment so that you can't just spew disinformation and misinformation.
• 
This is all moving pretty fast, but then it always does move pretty fast.  But don't you worry, it's for your safety.  You see how that works, right?  You're protected when you can't speak.
• 
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey knows that.  He looks like a pothead, but he's pretty clever and he takes the long view on these things.
• 
DORSEY: We are focused on one account right now, but this is going to be much bigger than just one account and it's going to go on for much longer than just this day, this week ... I don't believe this is going away anytime soon.  And the moves that we're making today around QAnon, for instance, [are] one such example of a much broader approach that we should be looking at and and going deeper on.
• 
So this is "much bigger" than silencing just one man, and it's going to go on "much longer" than just this week.
• 
Maybe Jack Dorsey isn't so bright.  He just admitted out loud with the rest of them are still denying: This isn't really about Donald Trump, and it never was.  It's definitely not about what happened last week at the Capitol.
• 
It is about controlling you, and the country you thought was yours, forever.  Sorry, there's a national crisis going on and we have no choice.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Why Democrats wanted to impeach Trump again, and why the GOP went along  (Fox 01/14/2021)
• 
President Trump was impeached Wednesday with bipartisan support.  No matter how angry you may be at Trump over what happened at the Capitol building last week, watching this happen may confuse you.
• 
The chaos of an impeachment trial is hardly the peaceful and orderly transition of power both parties assure you they want.  So why are they doing this?  There has to be a reason, and indeed there is one.
• 
First, let's be clear about what that reason is not.  Legitimate moral outrage will play absolutely no role whatsoever in whatever happens next, no matter how many times House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, D-S.C.  goes on television and talks about the civil rights movement or how often you see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., read lines like this:...
• 
"We know that we face enemies of the Constitution.  We know we experienced the insurrection that violated the sanctity of the people's Capitol and attempted to overturn the duly recorded will of the American people.  And we know that the president of the United States incited this insurrection, this armed rebellion against our common country.  He must go.  He is a clear and present danger to the nation that we all love."
• 
At this point, it's worth recalling that for decades, and not that long ago, the two most powerful Democrats in the United States Senate were Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd.
• 
Ted Kennedy left a young woman to drown in a drunk driving accident.  Robert Byrd was a recruiter for the Ku Klux Klan.  Democrats did not seem bothered by any of that.  They praised Kennedy and Byrd at every turn, including at their funerals.
• 
So, no, Democrats are not actually outraged in any moral sense by Donald Trump.  They never have been.
• 
So spare us the self-righteous indignation.  What's happening here instead is old fashioned, hard-eyed politics.  Democrats have every practical reason for wanting to see Trump impeached during his final days in office.
• 
The first and most obvious reason is to make Republicans weaker.  Every loss diminishes a political party, and impeachment is nothing if not a loss.
• 
But there's another thing: Democrats need to keep talking about Donald Trump, next week and forever, if they're going to keep their own party together.
• 
Most political coalitions are built on shared interests.  The Democratic coalition is built on shared genetics.  The basic idea is that everyone who's not a straight White man must be united as one in unshakable solidarity.
• 
The problem is that can't happen because it's not true in real life.  Many Democrats have nothing in common with each other.
• 
Once Donald Trump leaves the scene and it's time to divvy up the spoils of the United States Treasury to begin the great pinata party of 2021, various components within the Democratic Party — the fabled communities you hear so much about — will turn on each other with feral ferocity.  It's going to be ugly.
• 
Democrats would like to delay that disaster as long as they can, so they need to keep Donald Trump at the center of the conversation.  They're impeaching him so they can continue to give speeches about him.  It's that simple.
• 
But why are Republicans playing along?  They don't really have a sound political rationale for any of this, they're just dumb and guilty.
• 
Here's how it works from the perspective of the Republican leadership: It would be best if Donald Trump just went away forever.
• 
He's embarrassing.  They don't want to talk about him.  They'd like him to disappear.  So that's their plan with impeachment.
• 
Make it so that Trump can never run for office again, not that he actually planned to, and then disgrace Trump so thoroughly that he cannot appear in public ever again, then pretend that Donald Trump never happened.
• 
By impeaching the president during his final week in office, Congress will not succeed in discrediting Trump among Republican voters.  In fact, it will enhance Donald Trump among Republican voters, obviously.
• 
Who does your average Republican voter trust more, Donald Trump or the many people who hate Donald Trump?  Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell?  Donald Trump or CNN?  You know the answer.
• 
It's not complicated, but apparently it's too complicated for the dummies in the Republican Party who think impeachment will help them in the long run.
• 
They have no idea what you really think.  They haven't spent five minutes wondering why you voted for Donald Trump in the first place, and by the way, they don't care.
• 
At no point does it seem to have occurred to McConnell or any of the geniuses clustered around him that what is really at stake right now is not the future of Donald Trump, but instead the future of his voters, tens of millions of them, who in the space of the last seven days have seen themselves recast as domestic terrorists.  That has happened, but Republicans in Washington don't seem to have noticed.
• 
Just today, former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling announced that he has had his personal insurance policies canceled by his insurer.
• 
Why?  Because Curt Schilling wrote a social media post defending Donald Trump, and in 2021, that's not allowed.  You could lose your insurance for that.
• 
You could also lose your bank account, your website, your access to email and social media, your ability to communicate with the outside world, and there's nothing you can do about it because you can also lose your lawyer.
• 
How long before they cut off your water and electricity?  Before UPS won't deliver your packages?  And not to wreck your day, but guess what?  Amazon is now one of America's biggest grocery providers.  Good thing you don't need to eat.
• 
But no problem, says Mitch McConnell, the real problem is Donald Trump, and once he's gone, everything will be fine.
      Twitter brazenly deplatforms conservatives, then reminds Uganda that censorship is bad  (Fox 01/12/2021)
• 
It's been a very tough week in the United States of America.  A spasm of mob violence has been followed by an unprecedented crackdown on our basic civil liberties.  This is the darkest time many Americans can remember.
• 
But even in the midst of this disaster, there have been flashes of comedy and we're grateful for every one of them.
• 
We got one Tuesday in the form of a statement from a group called the Global Public Policy Team at Twitter.
• 
Now, you may have thought Twitter was just a social media company run by some bearded, ethereal pothead in downtown San Francisco, but not anymore.
• 
While you were sleeping, Twitter got bigger than you ever imagined it could.  Twitter is now an independent nation-state with its own National Security Council, an inner agency constellation of foreign policy experts whose job it is to manage the world's affairs.
• 
• 
We actually had to check and make sure the above statement was real, which it is.  Twitter actually sent that, which only proves that the tech monopolies are even worse than we thought.
• 
Not only are they cruelly authoritarian and totally dishonest as well as limitlessly ambitious, but they are also — and we didn't know this — childishly stupid.  They have no idea how they appear to others.  They can't see themselves.
• 
They lack even a glimmer of the ironic self-awareness that is a prerequisite for wisdom.  They are idiots.  They don't even get their own jokes.
• 
On the other hand, none of this is really very funny.  It's terrifying.  We don't need to convince you of that.
• 
You have seen the crackdown and the censorship all week long and you sense all of it is going to get worse.  And you're right about that, it is going to get worse.
• 
See related Jack (Gary Varvel, 10/19/2020) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Who will stand up for everyday Trump voters facing retribution from the left?  (Fox 01/07/2021)
• 
Within minutes of Trump supporters breaching the U.S.  Capitol building Wednesday, virtually every powerful person in the country erupted in rage at the president.
• 
Business leaders demanded that Trump be removed from office immediately under the 25th Amendment.
• 
Members of Congress clamored to impeach him, and at least one Democrat suggested that anyone in Congress who supported his claims of election fraud must be expelled.
• 
Meanwhile, the media set about denouncing Trump as a terrorist and a murderer, etc.
• 
Notice a theme?  The reaction was all about Donald Trump.  The people in charge of every institution in American life spend all day talking about Donald Trump.
• 
You may not have noticed, because that's not very different from any other day over the past five-and-a-half years since he announced his candidacy.
• 
Just for a moment, let's think about what life will be like next month.  Two weeks from Thursday, Donald Trump will no longer be in control of our nuclear arsenal.  He will not have command of federal agencies or even, most likely, his own Twitter account. 
• 
The rest of us, and this is key, we'll still be here.  We've got nowhere to go.  So what is life going to be like for us on Jan.  20?  Not many people seem to be thinking about that, up to and including the people we pay to think about it.
• 
Who's got your concerns top of mind?  Who wakes up in the middle of the night worried about your family?  As far as we can tell, no one.
• 
The point of the Republican Party is not to protect the personal reputations of its leaders, but its voters.  In practice, that means protecting the Bill of Rights, the bedrock promises of American life.
• 
Without them, you wouldn't want to live here.  Those freedoms are incalculably more important than any single politician.
• 
... if America becomes a place where you have to violate your own conscience in order to hold a job, you're not allowed to protect your family from mob violence and your children can't afford to get married and raise your grandchildren because employers don't like their skin color, then what's the point of all of it?
• 
Wednesday's riot is already being used as a pretext for an unprecedented crackdown on civil liberties.  Just in the last several hours, we have heard people in positions of power demand that those who support Donald Trump should no longer be allowed to publish books or use the Internet or fly on airplanes.  Driving cars, holding jobs and staying in hotels, will certainly be next and we're barely exaggerating.
• 
To justify these mind-bending, terrifyingly un-American demands, they are, as usual, relying on lies and hysteria.  What happened Wednesday wasn't simply a political protest getting out of hand after the president recklessly encouraged it (Which is, you know, what actually happened).  Instead, they're calling it domestic terrorism and needless to say, White supremacy.
• 
Why are they doing that?  Simple.  They know that if they keep saying it, history will record it as true.  They understand the power of language, and that's why they try to control it.  They know that words have consequences.
• 
This is scary, and the party that should be stepping in to stop it, to push back, to tell the truth in the face of lies and to protect its voters from this deception and the destruction that inevitably comes next, does nothing.  Often, in fact, they join in.
• 
With bodyguards like this, tens of millions of Americans have no chance.  They're about to be crushed by the ascendant left...
• 
Why is no one defending them?  The main problem, and this really is the main problem on the right, is that the people who run the Republican Party don't really like their own voters.
• 
Many Republicans in Washington now despise the people they're supposed to represent and protect.  In fact, it's not just Republican leaders who feel this way, but our entire leadership class.
• 
So if you want to understand the hatred — not just disagreement, but gut level loathing and fear of Trump in, say, New York or Washington or Los Angeles — you've got to understand that first.  It's not really Trump, it's his voters.  The new money class despises them.
• 
Trump didn't despise them, and that really was his secret.  In the end, Donald Trump did not judge his own voters.
• 
Thirteen days from now, tens of millions of these voters will not have Donald Trump to protect them.  They won't have anyone.
• 
And unless the Republican Party decides to wake up and push back against the lies and acknowledge the purpose of those lies, which is an unprecedented crackdown on the way you live, you have no chance, either.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: A death in the Capitol, and what we must do now  (Fox 01/07/2021)
• 
Amid the bombardment of images of what took place at the U.S.  Capitol Wednesday, too little time has been spent thinking about why it happened.
• 
Anyone who is trying to understand the significance of what's going on ought to watch video of the last moments of Ashli Babbit, the woman who was shot and killed in the chaos.
• 
Footage, which can easily be found online, shows Babbit standing in a hallway right off the House floor with an American flag tied around her neck.
• 
The scene around her is chaotic.  People are bumping into each other, yelling, trying to get through the door into the chamber.
• 
Suddenly, with no warning, there is gunfire.  You hear a shot and Babbit falls.  People in the hallway scream.
• 
The camera closes in on her face.  Babbit looks stunned.  She's staring straight ahead.  You can see that she knows she's about to die, which she did.
• 
So what can we learn from this?  It's not enough to call it a tragedy.  Imagine for a second that Babbit was your daughter.  The last time you spoke to her, she was heading to Washington for a political rally.
• 
Now, she's dead.  You'll never talk to her again.  That's what we're watching, and we may be watching a lot more of it in the coming days.
• 
Political violence begets political violence.  That is an iron law.  We have to be against that, no matter who commits the violence or under what pretext, no matter how many self-interested demagogues assure us the violence is justified or necessary.
• 
We have a duty to oppose all of this, not simply because political violence kills other people's children, but because in the end it doesn't work.
• 
No good person will live a happier life because Ashli Babbit was killed in the hallway of the Capitol today.  So our only option, as a practical matter, is to fix what is causing this in the first place.
• 
You may have nothing in common with the people on the other side of the country (increasingly, you probably don't), but you're stuck with them.  The idea that groups of Americans will somehow break off into separate peaceful nations of like-minded citizens is a fantasy.
• 
The two hemispheres of this country are inseparably intertwined, like conjoined twins.  Neither can leave without killing the other.  As horrifying as this moment is, we have no option but to make it better, to gut it out.
• 
The second thing to consider, and it's related to the first, is why Ashli Babbit went to the rally in the first place.
• 
She bore no resemblance to the angry children we have seen wrecking our cities in recent months — pasty, entitled nihilists dressed in black, setting fires and spray painting slogans on statues.  She looked pretty much like everyone else.
• 
So why was she there?  We ought to think about that.  If you want to fix it, you have to think about that.
• 
The only reason this country is rich and successful is because for hundreds of years, we have enjoyed a stable political system.  The only reason that system is stable is because it's a democracy, responsive to voters.
• 
Democracy is a pressure relief valve.  As long as people sincerely believe they can change things by voting, they stay calm.  They don't burst into the House chamber.  They talk and they organize and they vote.
• 
But the opposite is also true if people begin to believe that their democracy is fraudulent, that voting is a charade, that the system is rigged and it's run in secret by a small group of powerful, dishonest people who are acting in their own interests.  Then, God knows what could happen.
• 
Actually, we do know what could happen, because it's happening right now.  It's happened in countless other countries over countless centuries.  And the cycle is always the same because human nature never changes.
• 
"Listen to us!" scream the population.  "Shut up and do what you're told," say their leaders.
• 
In the face of dissent, the first instinct of illegitimate leadership is to crack down on the population, but crackdowns never make it better.  They always make the country more volatile and more dangerous.  The people in charge rarely understand that.  They don't care to learn or listen, because all of this conversation is a referendum on them and their leadership.  So they clamp down harder.
• 
Millions of Americans sincerely believe the last election was fake.  You can dismiss them as crazy.  You can call them conspiracy theorists.  You can kick them off Twitter.  But that won't change their minds.
• 
Rather than trying to change their minds, to convince them and reassure them that the system is real, that democracy works — which you would do if you cared about the country or the people who live here — our new leaders will try to silence them.
• 
What happened Wednesday will be used by the people taking power to justify stripping you of the rights you were born with as an American: Your right to speak without being censored, your right to assemble, to not be spied upon, to make a living, and to defend your family.
• 
These are the most basic and ancient freedoms that we have.  They're why we live here in the first place.  They're why we're proud to be Americans.  They're what make us different, and they're all now in peril.
• 
When thousands of your countrymen storm the Capitol building, you don't have to like it.  We don't.  You can be horrified by the violence, and we are.
• 
But if you don't bother to pause and learn a single thing from your citizens storming your Capitol building, then you're a fool, you lack wisdom and self-awareness, and you have no place running a country.  We got to this sad, chaotic day for a reason.
      Tucker Carlson: Democrats are on the verge of unchecked power.  Where was the GOP?  (Fox 01/05/2021)
• 
In-person voting reduces fraud, and reducing fraud and the appearance of fraud used to be important to us.  We wanted people to believe the results when they came in.
• 
We wanted to protect the system that made all of our good things possible.  We wanted democracy to continue.  But then everything changed.
• 
... think about that for a second.  If you can go to the grocery store — and most people can and do — then you can go to a polling place.  There's no medical reason that you can't vote in person.
• 
When Republicans complain about it, the left doesn't answer the question.  They just get hysterical and start screaming about racism.
• 
This scam will continue for as long as people keep falling for it, and they do keep falling for it.  Everything Democrats don't like is Jim Crow.
• 
Republicans recently argued that thousands of Georgia voters should be excluded from participating in the election for this simple and obvious reason: Post office change-of-address records showed they had left the state, and were no longer in Georgia.  Therefore, they couldn't vote in Georgia because they're not in Georgia.
• 
That seems simple and obvious, but that standard does not meet the burden of proof in the court of U.S.  District Judge Leslie Abrams Gardner.  Who is Leslie Abrams Gardner?
• 
She happens to be the sister of Stacey Abrams, the Democratic pretender to the governorship of Georgia.  The case in question, by the way, involves a group funded by, you guessed it, Stacey Abrams.
• 
Because this is an amazing time in our history, Gardner explained her refusal to recuse herself from the case like this: "One can only assume that the argument is something to the effect that if my sister is actively engaged in a cause, I cannot be impartial ... This argument is mere speculation."
• 
... stop asking questions, America is racist.  That's the answer to everything, but it would be nice if someone disagreed with that claim, because that claim is totally false.
• 
It's poisonous and it's wrecking what has been, for a couple of hundred years now, a pretty great country.
• 
But increasingly, no one pushes back.  In fact, recently, a lot of Republicans have been saying the same thing.
• 
Last May, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., didn't bother holding hearings on election integrity or mail-in balloting.
• 
That might have been nice.  No, McConnell was busy attacking police officers and eulogizing George Floyd.
• 
Sen.  Mitt Romney, R-Utah, was on the street mouthing Black Lives Matter slogans on camera in a sort of Jane Fonda moment.
• 
Meanwhile, two Republican senators called for replacing Columbus Day, a day that celebrates the discovery of this country, with Juneteenth.
• 
If Democrats win both Georgia Senate runoffs, they're not going to be too concerned about Juneteenth.
• 
They have much bigger goals in mind, like eliminating the filibuster, adding new states to the union, packing the Supreme Court, ending the independence of the judicial branch, and giving citizenship to tens of millions of illegal aliens, now known as their base.
• 
None of that should come as a surprise, we've seen it coming for a long time.  The question we need to ask right now is, why did so few Republicans do anything to stop it?
      Tucker Carlson: Forget Trump phone call, here's what really matters about Georgia Senate runoffs  (Fox 01/04/2021)
• 
A year ago at this time, the biggest story in the world was getting almost no attention in our country.
• 
A terrifying new form of the coronavirus was spreading through central China.  From the very first moments of the outbreak, it was clear to many scientists it may have been engineered by the Chinese government and escaped from a lab in Wuhan.
• 
For a variety of reasons, the people in charge of this country didn't want to talk about it.  So instead, they told us that the biggest thing happening on Jan.  4, 2020, was the impeachment of Donald Trump, and nothing was more important than removing him from office.
• 
Trump's crime, you may remember, was a 30-minute phone call with the president of Ukraine.  In that call, Trump suggested there might be something corrupt about Joe Biden's son making $40,000 a month from Ukrainian energy company, despite having no relevant work history in either Ukraine or the energy business.
• 
Fast-forward a year later and the people in charge are saying pretty much the same thing: Donald Trump must be impeached over a phone call, this time one one that took place over the weekend.
• 
On Saturday, the president spoke by telephone to the secretary of state of Georgia for about an hour.  They talked about vote counting in Georgia.
• 
The president, as you may have heard, believes the election was stolen from him.  Georgia's secretary of state, whose job it is to oversee elections, disagrees.
• 
No matter what you conclude about vote counting in Georgia, we're willing to bet that you won't decide Donald Trump's latest phone call is the single most important thing happening in the world right now, probably not even close.
• 
On Tuesday there are two U.S.  Senate elections in Georgia, and the outcome of those races will determine who controls the entire U.S.  government.  If the Democrats win both races — and at this point, that is entirely possible, even likely — the Democratic Party will run everything in Washington and they will be able to do whatever they want.
• 
The Democratic Party and its marionettes in the news media would rather you didn't get involved, and so they're encouraging you to think about Trump's phone call instead.  If they didn't at some point, you might start asking bigger, more disruptive questions.
• 
Here's one: How exactly did Joe Biden win more votes than any other presidential candidate in the history of the United States?
• 
After 50 years of uninterrupted mediocrity in Washington and two spectacularly unsuccessful presidential campaigns in which he was rejected resolutely by Democratic primary voters, did Americans suddenly decide they wanted to be led by Joe Biden?
• 
Joe Biden got his party's nomination for one reason: Because Bernie Sanders turned out to be more popular than anyone expected him to be.  Sanders was an actual threat to the Democratic establishment.
• 
No one expected that, least of all Biden.  Once he was chosen, virtually every power center on earth joined the cause.  Big business, Wall Street, the defense establishment, pharma, the permanent bureaucracy in Washington and above all, Silicon Valley worked tirelessly from the day Biden got the nomination until Election Day to bypass voters and get Joe Biden to the White House.
• 
Google changed its famed algorithm to obliterate traffic to websites that criticized Joe Biden.  Facebook and Twitter did essentially the same thing.
• 
If that's not rigging an election, there's no meaning to that phrase.  The people who control the flow of virtually all information in English became unpaid consultants to the Joe Biden for president campaign.
• 
Those are the new rules, and they are unsustainable.  You can't have a democracy in a system like that because people can't get the information they need to make informed decisions.  You bypass the First Amendment.
• 
But if Democrats take over the entire federal government Tuesday, that's it, there will be no way to stop it.  In fact, it will accelerate because it benefits a specific political party.
• 
You'll have plenty of time to think about what happened on Tuesday come Wednesday morning when Democrats are in charge and there's nothing you can do about it, now or ever.
      Tucker Carlson: Congress tells struggling Americans to take their $600 and shut up  (Fox 12/23/2020)
• 
After tense negotiations and multiple rounds of televised theatrics, Congress has passed a spending bill.
• 
It's 5,593 pages long, and allocates $2.3 trillion, including more than $900 billion in COVID relief.
• 
That's a lot of money, but on the other hand, there's a lot of need.  Thanks in part to government lockdowns, more than 100 million Americans are out of the workforce.  One in six restaurants is closed.  Huge parts of the retail sector are in tatters.
• 
If there was ever a time that Americans need relief, it's right now.  So be glad to know there is something for you in this bill: It is entirely possible that you could get a $600 check, courtesy of the U.S.  Congress.
• 
That money, should you receive it, is yours with which to do what you wish.  Buy a moderately sized television set and watch the free channels all night.  Rent a Tesla for a day and drive it until the power runs out.  Order two appetizers off the tasting menu at The French Laundry in Napa County (Tip not included).  The sky's the limit here.  Go crazy.  It's good to be an American.
• 
On the other hand, it's also pretty good to be a Jordanian.  The same bill passed (but not read) by Congress allocates $500 million for border security in that country.  Congress wants to help Jordan build a wall along its 275-mile long border with Syria.
• 
Apparently, Congress is worried about illegal immigration in the Middle East, which is why it allocated another $250 million for additional border security in Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman.  God knows those countries need it.  Borders make a nation, remember that.
• 
Except here in the United States, which is unique among nations through history, borders are not relevant.  In fact, borders are racist.  And that's why this very same bill defunds American border security.
• 
It slashes funding for ICE detention space and blocks requests to hire more deportation officials.  Immigration authorities in this country will have 11,000 fewer detention beds starting this year.
• 
There's also $33 million for what are called "democracy programs" in Venezuela, because we're experts on democracy.  We're spending $231 million to help pay down the national debt of Sudan, debt being another area we know a thing or two about.
• 
And just in case you were worried that American society wasn't divided enough, this bill creates two new monuments to the interest groups that have the most political power at the moment.  So the Smithsonian will create a women's history museum, as well as what's called the National Museum of the American Latino.
• 
There's a whole lot more for the rest of the world.  This bill spends $10 million on what it calls "gender programs" in Pakistan.  Now, Congress doesn't specify exactly what those are...
• 
"Overreach." I hear you say.  "These are the same people who can't get the votes counted in a congressional election." Yeah, but they've got bigger aspirations than that.  And those aspirations are all over this bill.
• 
On one page, you will find tens of millions of dollars set aside to recruit and retain women in the Afghan army.  Why is the U.S.  paying for this?  Is that something that will help the United States in some measurable way?  Why are we doing this?
• 
The real reason Congress is spending that money, of course, is because crazy ideologues and various interest groups and the federal bureaucracy would like to change one of the world's last remaining traditional societies.
• 
Someday, some unhappy 26-year-old foreign service officer can write her master's thesis in gender studies on how she undermined the patriarchy in Southwest Asia.  That's the whole point of it.
• 
Meanwhile, no one in the State Department or Congress has paused to think about what the Afghans think.  The very same people who lecture you about cultural imperialism think it's totally irrelevant what the native population might think of this.
• 
It's possible Afghans may not consider this progress.  Maybe they are happy with their ancient culture, unsavory as we may find it.  That culture existed a thousand years before ours, and maybe they'd like to keep it.
• 
Come to think of it, why would anyone in Pakistan ever take advice from us on how to organize a society?  "You must allow market forces to destroy your gender roles." says a civilization that's become miserable by doing the exact same thing.
• 
Foreign aid is the most effective possible way for the academic left to export its poisonous social programs to the rest of the world.  ... Before long, our aid budget will consist entirely of advanced weapons systems for the Middle East and taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgeries for Africa...
• 
But how will you feel about it?  Well, who cares how you feel about it?  You get $600, so shut up.
      Public confidence in the coronavirus vaccine won't be achieved by Big Tech censorship  (Fox 12/18/2020)
• 
The rollout of the coronavirus vaccine has been accompanied by the kind of corporate image campaign you typically associate with high-end consumer products...
• 
How are the rest of us supposed to respond to a marketing campaign like this?  Well, nervously.
• 
Even if you're strongly supportive of vaccines — and we are — even if you recognize how many millions of lives have been saved over the past 50 years by vaccines — and we do — it all seems a bit much.
• 
It's too slick.  Better to treat Americans like adults, explain the benefits, be honest about the risks, and let the rest of us decide.
• 
In this country, we control our own bodies.  They're always telling us that.  But now the rules have changed.  On the question of the coronavirus vaccine, our leaders are definitely not pro-choice.
• 
Their view is, "Do what you're told and don't complain." No uncomfortable questions.  Those aren't just suggestions, they're rules, and Silicon Valley plans to enforce them.
• 
Twitter has announced a new policy to censor any unauthorized inquiry about the vaccine or, as the company put it, "false or misleading narratives about COVID-19 vaccinations."
• 
So whatever you do, don't say this is social control.  If you do, the richest, most powerful people in the world will act in perfect coordination to shut you down immediately.
• 
To repeat: There is no social control going on here, but if you suggest otherwise, Twitter will censor you.
• 
... Facebook has now decided it must "build demand for vaccination in communities worldwide" by sharing "reassuring information" about getting the vaccine.  ... Facebook has announced it will squelch "any misinformation" it sees about this vaccine.
• 
None of this inspires confidence.  Censorship will not convince a single person to take the coronavirus vaccine.  In fact, it will have the opposite effect.
• 
If you wanted to roll out a national vaccination campaign, the first thing you would need after the vaccine itself is social trust.
• 
People have to believe that the authorities know what they're doing, otherwise they won't participate.  Censorship is the enemy of social trust.
• 
Once the population understands that you are holding back critical information, trust evaporates and people become suspicious.
• 
They start wondering if the vaccine is as safe and effective as you claim it is.  Why do you have to lie about it?  Why are you threatening us if we don't take it?
• 
If you want people to take your vaccine, they must trust your vaccine, and if you want them to trust it, you have to let them speak freely about it.  That has always been true, but authorities have long been slow to grasp it.
• 
If you want people to get vaccinated, you need to convince them to get vaccinated and you must do it with reason.  Lying and force do not work.
• 
Yet with our current leadership, you sometimes get the impression that lying and force are the whole point.
• 
If they can keep ordering you around like you're an animal, if they can censor you when you start asking hard questions, maybe you won't notice how totally incompetent they are.
• 
In this respect, the coronavirus vaccine is not merely a vaccine, it is the source of their power.
• 
... a noted medical expert called Dr.  Vin Gupta explained that the point of the vaccine is not for you to resume your normal, productive, happy, unmasked life.  ... "Just because you get vaccinated with that second dose does not mean you should be participating in things like traveling in the middle of an out-of-control pandemic or that you're liberated from masks.  Everything still applies until all of us get the two-dose regimen ... Don't let your guard down just because you got vaccinated."
• 
To be clear, most Americans support vaccines.  The track record for vaccines is better than for any other part of medicine.  It's the basis of modern medicine.
• 
But it's people like Gupta who discredit vaccines, not the conspiracy theories.  People like him create conspiracy theories because they're so clearly lying.
      Tucker Carlson: George Soros, George Gascon and the fall of Los Angeles  (Fox 12/16/2020)
• 
Many of the most important elections are the ones you hear nothing about.  The news media barely covers them and most voters don't know they're happening.
• 
As a result, a small group of committed extremists get to control the outcomes of those elections, often with disastrous results.
• 
Bill de Blasio, for example, was elected to his current term as New York City mayor with the support of 8.5% of the city's population.
• 
De Blasio then used that non-mandate from a non-representative election to completely destroy the biggest city in our country.
• 
That's not democracy as we were taught it, but it is increasingly how things work here.
• 
George Soros understands that.  He became extraordinarily rich by finding ways to exploit the weaknesses in systems that he did not build himself.
• 
In the early 1990s, Soros became a billionaire by shorting the British pound, crushing the Bank of England in the process.
• 
He went on to repeat those tactics in countries around the world.  Then he turned his attention to the United States, and decided he would fundamentally change our society.
• 
Soros began funding politicians and political initiatives that had very little popular support.  But because so few were paying attention to what he was doing, he often got his way.
• 
On those rare occasions when Soros was criticized for subverting our democracy, he and his allies in the media claimed bigotry.
• 
If you're wondering why so many people are being robbed, raped and killed in American cities right now, George Soros is part of the reason.
• 
Soros has funded the campaigns of left-wing extremists in district attorney races in cities like Philadelphia, St.  Louis, Chicago, and Boston.
• 
Traditionally, a prosecutor's job is to enforce the law, but Soros wanted rigid ideologues who would instead let murderers and rapists go free while allowing our society to degrade and collapse.
• 
In Los Angeles, Soros won his biggest victory so far.  In the most recent election, Soros backed George Gascon for district attorney, spending more than $2 million on his campaign.
• 
What happened next was the entire point of the exercise.  Gascon stopped enforcing the law in Los Angeles Tuesday.  He is now moving to dismiss all sentencing enhancements against an alleged double murderer accused of killing a Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputy.
• 
The details of this story are important, and here they are: On June 10, 2019, off-duty deputy Joseph Solano was standing in line at a Jack In The Box restaurant in suburban Alhambra, Calif., when authorities say the suspect, Rhett Nelson, shot him execution-style.  An hour earlier, police say, Nelson opened fire on a group of skateboarders in downtown Los Angeles, killing 31-year-old Dmitry Koltsov.  Solano was taken off life support two days later.
• 
In a functioning society, prosecutors are allowed, if they wish, to seek longer prison terms for criminals who, for example, inflict great bodily harm on their victims or carry out gang assassinations in public.
• 
George Gascon is getting rid of those additional penalties, along with cash bail and the death penalty.  Why is he doing this?  Because George Gascon, like the billionaires who made his current job possible, is far enough removed from the consequences of crime that he can identify with the criminals rather than with their many victims.
• 
Gascon believes that poverty causes crime, an idea for which there is no evidence in actual social science.  However, it's the kind of thing that halfwits learn in college, repeat, and turn into policy when they get power.
• 
The irony is, we know exactly what policies like those Gascon is imposing on Los Angeles will do and who they will hurt.  They will affect people who live in the neighborhoods with the most crime, and those are the poorest neighborhoods.
      Tucker Carlson: Does Joe Biden believe in democracy or oligarchy?  (Fox 12/15/2020)
• 
If you didn't know better, you might think everything is better now.  The Great Orange Emergency is finally over, it's 1996 again, and we can exhale.
• 
"In this battle for the soul of America," Joe Biden told us, "democracy prevailed."
• 
"Politicians don't take power," the president-elect's speechwriter wrote, "people grant power to them."
• 
Joe Biden wants you to know he didn't run for president three times because he craves power or because he seeks to enrich ne'er-do-well relatives or because he has a vast, empty space inside that only the adulation of strangers can fill.  No, he ran for president because he deeply cares about you.
• 
What matters, Joe Biden wants you to know, is that this is a democracy.  Always has been, always will be.
• 
And by electing Biden and the small, secretive group of billionaires who choreograph his every move, this country has become even more democratic.
• 
... for example, Bill Gates announced that the lockdowns we're enduring are going to have to continue for a long, long time.
• 
Bill Gates is not an epidemiologist or a research scientist.  Bill Gates is a retired 65-year-old from Seattle who used to make mediocre software for office computers.  But now he's a billionaire.
• 
Therefore, Bill Gates gets to decide our national health policy, much the same way retired hedge fund operator Tom Steyer gets to tell you what to think about the weather, or how 78-year-old Mike Bloomberg decides which guns you can buy or how George Soros can choose your prosecutors or how Tim Cook of Apple runs our trade policy or how Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook can keep America's borders open just because he feels like it, but nobody says anything because his friend owns Washington, D.C.'s hometown newspaper and may soon buy CNN.
• 
That is the democracy Joe Biden is talking about, the kind of democracy in which 11 left-wing billionaires who fund his campaigns run everything.
• 
That's the Chinese model of democracy that Joe Biden and his friends so admire.  In China, people in power don't have to answer questions, so neither does Joe Biden.
• 
People may grant politicians power in America, but it turns out the people granting that power don't get answers.  What we do know is that Joe Biden is "very proud" of his son and his son's federal criminal investigation, and that's all you need to know.
• 
So why isn't Joe Biden willing to answer even basic questions about his son's foreign business dealings, the ones where he had very lucrative arrangements with companies directly tied to the Communist Party of China?  It could be because Joe Biden himself was directly involved in those deals and has been lying about them.
• 
... Hunter Biden wrote to his building manager: "[P]lease have keys made available for new office mates: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden, Gongweng Dong (Chairman Ye CEFC emissary)."
• 
So, the new office mates included the former vice president, his wife and a representative of CEFC, the Chinese energy company that — according to emails published by The New York Post — was reserving a 10% equity stake for Joe Biden.
• 
... offered Hunter Biden a three-year, $30 million contract for "introductions alone." To whom?  His dad, Joe Biden.
• 
If all this seems a little dodgy to you, you should know that back in 2019, Joe Biden wasn't repeating the same line about being proud of his son.
• 
No, he went on the record and denied he knew anything about his son's business relationships abroad, including with Chinese communists.
• 
The point of the Biden political operation — one of them, anyway — from the very beginning has been to make as much money through influence-peddling as possible.
• 
How many 10,000-square-foot homes has Joe Biden, who's been in public office at the federal level since 1972, been able to live in?  A number of them.
• 
How do you do that on a government salary?  How did Hunter Biden go from unemployable to rich virtually overnight?  You know the answer.
• 
... offer another window into the kind of life the Bidens were living: "Since you couldn't have lived on approximately $550,000 a year, ..." So here you have Hunter Biden, a person who became so dependent on peddling influence that he couldn't live on a $550,000-per-year salary.
• 
If you're going to restore democracy, the rest of us have a right to know exactly where the money came from, what they did for it, and what effect it is going to have on the country going forward.
• 
In a democracy, that's a very basic request, and there's nothing democratic about ignoring the question.
• 
In fact, it just confirms what's obvious, which is that Biden and his cronies don't plan to govern this county as a democracy, but instead as an oligarchy.
• 
• 
See related Steal Team Six (Antonio Branco, 10/20/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: How to fix the post-COVID economy and keep the socialists at bay  (Fox 12/12/2020)
• 
If you still don't know that dishonest people can easily manipulate data to tell you any story they want to tell you, consider the condition of our economy.
• 
Stock prices, 401(k)s and upscale home sales have all risen dramatically.  There are a lot more billionaires than there ever have been in this country.  In fact, billionaires as a group have increased their wealth by 30% overall this year.  At the same time, the unemployment rate is falling, so it's all good, right?
• 
Well, that is one way to look at it, but it's not the whole story.  America has a very different economy now from the economy we had even just last year.  People at the very top are thriving, but many other Americans are withering away.
• 
Tens of thousands of independent businesses have been shut down for good, entire sectors of the economy have been wiped off the map.
• 
That's a lot of people out of work.  So where are they?  Why does the federal government tell us the unemployment rate is down?
• 
Here's the simple answer: The official unemployment numbers don't count unemployed people who have stopped looking for jobs, and there are a lot of those.
• 
There are 10 million fewer jobs available in this country than there were in February, when politicians decided to destroy countless small businesses in the name of slowing the spread.
• 
So what is our government's solution to the disaster they created?  Well, more money from the Federal Reserve, printed out of nowhere and backed by nothing.
• 
Trillions of new dollars spent to fix a problem they created, and more on the way soon.  Keep in mind, this is stimulus money, designed to help those hurt by the lockdowns.  In many cases, it did help and it will help.
• 
But in many other cases, the money has gone to people with the right political connections.
• 
You can't keep printing trillions of dollars without getting serious inflation.  There's no getting around it.
• 
The people making these decisions know that perfectly well.  But thats the secret: They want inflation.  In fact, they need inflation.  Why?  Because they've gotten rich from debt.
• 
If Democrats retake the Senate in January, they've committed to passing something called the HEROES Act.  Just who are these heroes they plan to help?
• 
Not the thousands of small business owners whose lives they destroyed.  No, this legislation will help rich people in the Northeast who were hurt by the Trump administration's last tax cuts.
• 
Why wouldn't you assess, say, Amazon and Apple and Goldman Sachs and Google and Netflix and Walmart, all the big winners in this pandemic?
• 
Why wouldn't you assess them a one-time COVID fee, take it out of their record profits and make them pay for the next bailout?
• 
... why not make Harvard and Yale and Stanford and Princeton use their endowments to pay off some of the student debt they caused?  There's no reason ordinary taxpayers should be on the hook for their spending.
• 
Here's the bottom line: The rich are getting richer, everyone else is getting poorer.  That's not a talking point.  It's true and measurable.
• 
Why is it a problem?  Because if it continues, we're going to wind up with an even more volatile society in which everybody hates each other and is consumed by envy.  Along the way, capitalism itself will be discredited, and you don't want that.
• 
You may have noticed there are an awful lot of socialists around these days.  It's because the people in charge of our economy are discrediting our system.
• 
They are giving capitalism a bad name because what they're participating in is not a free, open market economy.
• 
It's a closed game, run for their benefit and their benefit alone.  Long-term, this is a disaster for all of us and not even so far in the future.
• 
In four years, for example, Sandy Cortez will be eligible to run for president.  Now, you may laugh at Sandy Cortez, and you should.  She's a vacuous idiot, another rich-girl narcissist with an overheated Twitter account.
• 
But that doesn't mean she couldn't win.  If we keep up with this economic craziness, she absolutely could.
      Tucker Carlson: Hunter Biden fiasco shows dishonesty, arrogance of mainstream media elites  (Fox 12/11/2020)
• 
In October, the New York Post, the oldest daily newspaper in this country, published a trove of documents showing that members of Joe Biden's family have been selling access to the former vice president to a number of foreign governments, including the communist government of China.
• 
That's a blockbuster, but the rest of the media decided to kill it before you could read it.  Social media companies banned their users from sharing the Post's reporting.  Other news organizations simply ignored it.
• 
On Oct.  22, 11 days before the presidential election, National Public Radio — an organization that is literally state media, funded against your will by your tax dollars — explained that they would not say anything negative about the Bidens.
• 
"We don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories.  and we don't want to waste the listeners' and readers' time on stories that are just pure distractions."
• 
And so it went across the entire American news media until the presidential election.  Now, six weeks later, it is finally safe to speak freely.  We now know the New York Post was right all along...
• 
Wednesday, millions of Americans learned — some for the very first time — that the Biden family has indeed been deeply enmeshed in a series of sleazy international business deals that undercut America's core interests.
• 
We learned that there is an active federal criminal investigation into Joe Biden's son, Hunter, for that very reason.
• 
What's interesting is how we found this out.  The media didn't tell us, and neither did the Justice Department.
• 
... the Biden-Harris transition team broke the news in the form of a bizarre press release that informed us with a straight face that Joe Biden was "deeply proud" of his boy Hunter, who, by the way, may have had some minor tax trouble that he will clear up the minute his accountant returns from Cabo.  No big deal, and Happy Holidays.
• 
But actually, and you may have guessed this part, it turns out there's more.  A report in Politico reveals that Joe Biden's younger brother, Jimmy, is involved, too.  Jimmy Biden is under federal criminal investigation over alleged corruption in the hospital business.
• 
"And I remember looking at Jim Biden and saying, 'How are you guys getting away with this?  Like, aren't you concerned?' And he sort of looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, 'Plausible deniability.'"
• 
An independent media wouldn't be fooled by plausible deniability, either.  They'd demand answers.  Except they didn't.
• 
When the New York Post published the outlines of this story, the media raced to find its own plausible deniability, to find some reason, any reason not to report the story.
• 
Any reporter who broke rank and decided to state the facts was quickly disciplined and brought to heel.
• 
Now, we're being told to pretend that none of this ever happened.  ... "evidence of the larger [Hunter Biden] probe was apparent in the markings on a series of documents that were made public — but went largely unnoticed — in the days leading up to the November election."
• 
One group who did notice were the professional liars in our so-called intelligene community, the ones who work hand-in-glove with so-called journalists in our media.
• 
Shortly after the New York Post story ran, a number of these all-star propagandists like Jim Clapper and John Brennan — people who have lied in public under oath and never been punished for it — denounced the New York Post series as Soviet-style disinformation.
• 
The stories, they said had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.  They didn't explain what that meant, but they didn't need to.  The media class ate it up like the seals they are and clapped and barked in unison.
• 
Now there are calls for a new special prosecutor to investigate what we have learned so far about the Biden family's business dealings abroad.
• 
Robert Mueller spent millions of dollars and ruined many lives purely as a favor to people who could not believe that Donald Trump really beat Hillary Clinton.
• 
This country might not survive another investigation like that.  On the other hand, you've got to wonder how long a democracy can survive a leadership class like the one we have now.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Meet Patrick Gaspard, George Soros' man in Biden's would-be Cabinet  (Fox 12/05/2020)
• 
After a lifetime of serving the Democratic Party, Joe Biden has no fixed beliefs.  He can't have any; the party has changed too much.
• 
That's the world Joe Biden grew up in.  His "Joe from Scranton, son of a coal miner" shtick is a relic from that era.  He still whips it out occasionally at events, but only for nostalgic reasons.
• 
Joe Biden became a Democrat back when Democrats represented America's working-class wage earners, heavily Catholic and concentrated in the big cities and industrial states.
• 
Democratic voters of that era tended to be populist on economic matters — they liked Social Security and Medicare — but they were basically conservative on social questions.  They believed in biology, and most of them got married and went to church.
• 
The modern Democratic Party no longer represents wage earners.  It is now funded almost exclusively by Silicon Valley and the finance establishment, the billionaire class.
• 
Its foot soldiers don't work in factories.  They're community organizers.  They're members of interest groups that have coalesced around a specific race or sex or sexual orientation.
• 
None of these groups exist for the benefit of the United States.  They exist only for their own benefit.
• 
Their purpose is very clear: To leverage our political system in order to collect as much money and as much power as they can for their own members and for their members alone.
• 
This is called identity politics and it is the most divisive way possible to run a government.
• 
Identity politics is zero-sum.  No group can benefit except at the expense of other groups.  There is no such thing as the common good.
• 
A system like that never ends well, to put it mildly.  But in 2020, there are no options left on the left.  The Democratic Party is about identity politics and identity politics is about redistributing the spoils.
• 
So, of course, Joe Biden is on board with it.  ... "The first eight members [are] the most diverse Cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced.  There are three, three White men, there are — excuse me — the three men.  There are five women.  There are five people of color, three White people."
• 
It sounds like the setup to the kind of joke you can't tell anymore.  Jokes like that are considered insensitive because they reduce people to qualities they can't control.
• 
In America, you are more than your ethnicity.  Life here is not determined by your DNA.  That was the promise, anyway.
• 
And for a time, roughly from the end of the civil rights movement to the beginning of Barack Obama's first term, that seemed to be working fairly well.
• 
We all agreed to try to drop the stereotypes and try to judge people for what they do, not on how they were born.
• 
But no longer.  We've got new rules now, rules that in fact are very old rules.  They stretch back to the antebellum South and the ancient caste systems of India.
• 
Of course, everyone in charge lies about this and calls it progress.  ... "Joe Biden is building a team that looks like the people it serves," slobbered the newspaper.  And in fact, there's some unintentional truth in that.
• 
Joe Biden apparently intends to hire a man called Patrick Gaspard.  Gaspard was Barack Obama's political director, then U.S.  ambassador to South Africa.
• 
Most recently, though, and this tells you everything, Gaspard has been the president of the Open Society Foundations, funded by George Soros.  Patrick Gaspard could soon be America's labor secretary, a Cabinet official. 
• 
So if you're asking yourself, "Does a 90-year-old, left-wing Hungarian financier have enough control over the way my country operates?", the answer is decidedly, "Yes." George Soros definitely has enough power now, much more power than you have, for sure.
• 
In Patrick Gaspard, George Soros has found someone as radical as he is.
• 
Three years ago, South Africa's ruling party, the African National Congress, endorsed a plan of taking land from farmers based on skin color without compensating them.  They called it land reform.
• 
Neighboring Zimbabwe had already done this under its bloodthirsty lunatic leader, Robert Mugabe, and promptly became the single poorest country in the world, killing a lot of people in the process.
• 
No sane person thought or thinks this was a good idea.  But Patrick Gaspard thought it was a great idea.
• 
Ah, more equity, just like in Zimbabwe.  Gaspard added in many forums that anyone who disagreed with both this point of view and land reform generally was, of course, an irredeemable racist.
• 
Gaspard later said that he found the South African constitution superior to America's constitution, and George Soros would no doubt agree with that.
• 
But would many South Africans agree with that?  How many have fled that country in just the past 10 years?
• 
Patrick Gaspard doesn't care.  Like George Soros, he is an ideologue.  For him, as for all ideologues, outcomes are far less interesting and far less important than theories.
• 
Here's Patrick Gaspard in the streets this past June protesting the police.  "Earlier today, President Obama told us all that we have to make people in power uncomfortable, so I'm out here marching with a diverse group of incredible New Yorkers as we all get ready to violate curfew, as we march for peace and we march for justice.  This is a powerful community of dissent that cannot be quarantined and that will not be silenced until real change arrives.  Whose streets?  Our streets."
• 
"Just taking on the powerful," says the man who runs George Soros' foundation.
• 
Could this moment get any more perverse?  Could the lying be any more obvious?  Could it be more Orwellian?  But it doesn't matter what you think, that man could soon be your labor secretary.
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The coronavirus pandemic is a global fraud perpetrated by China, abetted by the powerful  (Fox 12/03/2020)
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Why weren't elected officials demanding a coherent account of where this virus that has changed American history forever came from, how it got to the United States and how it spread through our population?  Why don't we know that yet?
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Because nobody seemed to care.  Our elected officials were too busy enjoying their newfound power.  They were shutting down small businesses and arresting people for kayaking without masks.
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Back in January, 11 months ago, the Department of Homeland Security warned that American airports could be ground zero for a new pandemic, but Congress yawned.
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On Jan.  24, a day when, these blood samples now prove, the virus had already spread across the continent, the Trump administration held a classified briefing on the coronavirus for the entire U.S.  Senate, but only 14 senators showed up for it.
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Why?  Well, Jan.  24 was the final day of House Democrats' opening statements in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump.
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So the people in charge of protecting the country were not worried about coronavirus, but were standing in front of their mirrors rehearsing the moment when they could finally confront Alan Dershowitz about the dreaded Zelensky phone call.
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Now they're claiming the pandemic caught them completely by surprise.  How do they get away with that?  They get away with it because our public health establishment gives them cover and has all year.
• 
Two days before that classified Senate briefing that only 14 senators showed up for, Dr.  Anthony Fauci went on Fox Business Network's "Bulls & Bears" to reassure Americans they could trust the Chinese government.
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"From what I can see right now, they really are being much, much more transparent than what happened with SARS, where they really kept back information for a while.  It was embarrassing to them.  They're really transparent now.  They put the sequence of the virus up on the public database right away.  So in that respect, they've been transparent."
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In a well-functioning country, a line like that would ensure that you never work in public policy again.
• 
China has in fact been transparently dishonest about the virus.  Beijing officials are now claiming the virus came to their country from somewhere else, that it arrived in frozen food, possibly as a bioweapon staged by the U.S.  military.
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They're not saying this in secret.  They're saying it on social media.  But so far, Twitter hasn't bothered to fact-check that claim.  Like Fauci, Silicon Valley trusts China far more than they trust you.
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On Jan.  8, the WHO — funded, of course, by the Chinese government — released a similar message: "Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement and demonstrates China's increased capacity to manage new outbreaks."
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In other words, the rest of us ought to be thanking the government of China for the blessing of COVID-19.
• 
A week later, WHO was back with more demonstrably untrue propaganda straight from their overlords in Beijing.
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"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China."
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That was yet another dangerous lie that unquestionably cost American lives, but Twitter didn't fact-check that either.
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Instead, the American media dutifully amplified the message.
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They told us anyone who suggested this thoroughly Chinese virus came from China was, by definition, a racist.
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... interviewed a Chinese virologist, Dr.  Li-Meng Yan, who fled her country with this message for us: This virus came from a government lab in China.
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She said she knew that in her own country she would have been punished, possibly killed, for saying so.  So she came here, to the land of the free.
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What did she find?  She found her words censored by American tech companies working in tandem with the tyrants she fled.
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Internal documents now prove that Chinese officials knew they were facing a coronavirus pandemic — something they'd never seen before — but they hid that information from the world and they arrested those who tried to report it.
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More critically, millions of people continued to travel through the city of Wuhan in central China, the epicenter of the pandemic.  Then more than a million Chinese citizens flew to the United States.
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It wasn't until Jan.  20 that Chinese President Xi Jinping finally admitted the virus could be contagious.  At best, that's criminal negligence.  At worst, it's something like mass murder.
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But no, said the WHO.  In fact, it was just more evidence that the Chinese Communist Party was doing an extraordinary job managing the pandemic.
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"Right now, there's very, very few countries that have actually been able to reverse this epidemic and bring their cases down to [a] very low level.  And in fact, the only country that has done that is China.  It was the passion, the diligence, the sense of responsibility, the seriousness of the average Chinese — and I want to use that term very carefully because they weren't average.  They were extraordinary people, but they were driven by a sense of collective responsibility."
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Got that?  The Chinese are driven by "a sense of collective responsibility." Contrast that with us fat, lazy Trump-voting Americans.  We demand to go to church on Sundays or go out to dinner with our families once in a while and then deservedly, we get sick and die.
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That's the message from the media, our health establishment, and our elected officials, and it has been for almost a year.
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See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
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See related Assurance (Chip Bok, 04/10/2020) cartoon from World picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Yes, the election was rigged for Joe Biden.  Here's how  (Fox 11/24/2020)
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You've heard a lot over the past few days about the security of our electronic voting machines.  This is a real and serious issue, no matter who raises it or who tries to dismiss it out of hand as a conspiracy theory. 
• 
Electronic voting is not as secure as traditional hand counting.  It never will be as secure.
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Other countries don't use electronic voting because they know it undermines confidence in democracy.  A system cannot function if no one trusts the vote.
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Going forward, we need to find out exactly what happened in this month's presidential election, no matter how long it takes the investigation to unfold or how much it costs.
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Once we get answers from that investigation, we ought to revert immediately to the traditional system of voting, the one that served our democracy for hundreds of years.
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But we also shouldn't let our focus on voting machines distract us from all that happened earlier this month.  The 2020 presidential election was not fair, and no honest person would claim that it was.
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The system was rigged against one candidate and in favor of another, and not in ways that were hidden from view.
• 
The media openly colluded with the Democratic nominees.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris refused to explain what they would do if they were elected.  That's never happened before in any presidential election in American history, but the media allowed them to do it.
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At the same time, beginning in the spring, Democrats used our public health emergency for nakedly partisan ends.
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They punished Trump supporters for trying to gather, but they exempted their own activists — rioters and vandals from Black Lives Matter and Antifa — from the COVID lockdowns entirely.
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The restrictions they did enforce crushed America's small businesses, the heart of the Republican Party, while making their own donors fantastically richer.  Jeff Bezos alone saw his net worth jump by more than $70 billion during the pandemic.
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They used the courts to neutralize the Republican Party's single most effective get out the vote operation, which for generations had been the National Rifle Association.
• 
But above all, Democrats harnessed the power of Big Tech to win this election.
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Virtually all news and all information in the English-speaking world travels through a single company, Google.  A huge percentage of our political debates take place on Facebook and Twitter.
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If you use technology to censor the ideas that people are allowed to express online, ultimately, you control how the population votes.  And that's exactly what they did.
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They rigged the election in front of all of us and nobody did anything about it.
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      Tucker Carlson: The election that narrowly saved America  (Fox 11/05/2020)
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The outcome of our presidential election was seized from the hands of voters, where it rightly belongs, and now resides in the control of lawyers and courts — and highly partisan, clearly corrupt big city bureaucrats.
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No matter what happens next, that is a tragedy.  Many Americans will never again accept the results of a presidential election.
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But believe it or not, there is some good news in spite of everything else that has happened.  First, and most importantly, America remains.  That was not a foregone conclusion; we almost lost it.
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Democrats didn't harness the full power of Big Tech and the billionaire class simply to make Joe Biden president.  No, what they really wanted was total control over everything.  No more democracy, no more dissent, permanent obedience from the rest of us, and they came shockingly close to getting that.
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If Democrats had won the White House and the Senate Tuesday night, the country as we know it would have ended, not because Democrats have bad ideas (though they do), but because Democrats planned to impose an entirely new system on our country.
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Not an agenda, a system.
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With nothing to check their power, the left fully intended to eliminate the traditional American balances within our government, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that constrain their power.
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Joe Biden's party planned to turn our highest court into a partisan political weapon.  They admitted that.  They even wrote magazine articles about how they plan to do it.
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... they planned to pack the Congress of the United States, the legislative branch, by adding new states to our union purely for the Senate seats.
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... they planned to pack the electorate itself — the ultimate corruption in a democracy — by adding 20 million foreign nationals to our voter rolls overnight.
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How would any of that improve the United States of America?  Well, they never claimed that it would.  Making this country better was never the point.
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The point was to create a permanent Democratic majority, a one-party state with complete control over the population.
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Never in our history has any mainstream political party proposed an agenda more radical than this.
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They didn't talk about it much, and there's a reason for that.  They didn't want to scare you, but it was entirely real.
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This isn't a matter of opinions and the difference between those opinions.  This isn't about policy.  It's about the system that all of us live under that governs this country.  That's what's at stake.  So keep that in mind as we move forward.
      Tucker Carlson: Hunter Biden scandal shows media collusion with powerful is the real threat to America  (Fox 10/30/2020)
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For five years, we have watched the news media treat Donald Trump in a way that no American president has ever been treated.
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Reporters hate Trump with an all-consuming mania.  They hate him so intensely that at times it's been amusing to watch.
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If you're a fair minded person, all this has been infuriating.  Not only is it dishonest, it's also patronizing because it's almost unbelievably stupid.
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Reporters are supposed to be tough on people with power.  That's why we have journalism, to keep a close eye on those who have outsized influence over our lives.
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The people we should watch carefully include business moguls, the intelligence agencies, prominent academics, cultural figures, military leaders, and most obviously, our politicians.
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The rest of us can't really know what the people in charge are doing at all times.  A reporter's job is to find out and tell us.
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So in the end, the real threat to America isn't too many nasty questions from reporters.  It's the opposite of that.  The real threat is collusion.
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When journalists strike secret alliances with the very people they're supposed to be holding accountable, we are in deep trouble.
• 
Lies go unchallenged.  Democracy cannot function.  And that's what we're watching right now.
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... we learned that the FBI is conducting an active investigation into Joe Biden's son for business deals that apparently included his father, the former vice president.
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Former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski sat for a five-hour interview with six FBI agents last week.  They asked him about his business dealings in China with the Biden family.
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Now, we don't know if this investigation will result in indictments, but we know that it could.  That's significant because Joe Biden, as you may have heard, is running for president.
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This is a criminal investigation into business deals that we know for a fact Joe Biden was party, too.
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So why haven't you heard more about this?  If you don't watch Fox News, you've likely heard nothing at all.  Not a word.
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Do you know why?  Because the media are collaborating with the Democratic Party.
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They're collaborating with the intelligence agencies that spy on Americans with impunity.
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They're collaborating with the tech monopolies that have choked off the average person's access to legitimate information.
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The people you're supposed to be able to trust are dismissing a completely legitimate, verified news story.
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So you have to ask yourself: At some point, why would they tell you what they know is not true?  Because these people are not your allies.  They're not trying to help you or inform you.
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Just the opposite.  These people are your enemies.  They are misleading you so that you will obey, and maybe it'll work.
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Maybe they will get Joe Biden elected president next week without asking the most basic questions or vetting him in any way.
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See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: What we learned at the final presidential debate  (Fox 10/23/2020)
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We learned that self-control pays off.  Donald Trump pulled back a little bit on stage and he was never better than he was Thursday night.
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At the same time, we learned that if you really want to wreck Joe Biden, let him talk without a script for two minutes at his age.
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We also learned something that we already knew: Donald Trump drives a certain sort of person completely insane.  He could recite the words from the "Happy Birthday" song and these people would hear machine gun fire.
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... at one point during the debate, the president tried to explain why the human smuggling of children into the United States is a bad thing.  ... "Children are brought here by coyotes and lots of bad people, cartels, and they're brought here and they used to use them to get into our country."
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... human smugglers — coyotes, as they're often called along the border — bring children into this country illegally, sometimes without their parents.  That's true, and that's what the president said.
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Dar'shun Kendrick is an elected Democrat in the state of Georgia.  She's one of her party's leaders in the State House there, and she wasn't buying it for a second.  "How the hell does a coyote bring a whole human across the border?" she wondered...
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You should know that Dar'shun Kendrick is an attorney and a self-described investment adviser.  You're going to want to hand your retirement portfolio to her as soon as you can.
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At one point, Joe Biden told us that hundreds of these children brought here by coyotes, possibly dragged, have been separated permanently from their parents by the Trump administration, which hates families — 545 children, to be exact.
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It's not even close to true.  The vast majority of the parents of these children have been located by federal authorities and they are refusing to reunite with their children.
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A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson says that in one lawsuit currently pending, the plaintiffs have been able to contact the parents of 485 children separated at the border and yet "they've yet to identify a single family that wants their child reunited with them in their country of origin."
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In many cases, the parents in question are not in the United States.  They're still back home in their country of origin, usually in Central America.  In some cases, they never even tried to come to the United States.  Instead, they set their children up with someone else, a coyote possibly, to bring them here.
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All the people howling about children in cages and family separations have no idea what they're talking about or don't care.  And of course, they have no answers to the problems they claim are plaguing their consciences.
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... like virtually everyone else in Washington at the time, Joe Biden voted to stiffen drug penalties.  That was an enormously popular thing to do in the middle of a drug epidemic and the murder epidemic that inevitably followed.  It was popular with people in Black neighborhoods, who were suffering the most.
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But now Joe Biden is pretending it was all a big racist mistake.  "In the '80s ... All 100 senators voted for a bill on drugs and how to deal with drugs.  It was a mistake..."
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The bill that Joe Biden just referred to passed in 1986 and it passed the United States Senate with 97 votes.  That bill was co-sponsored by the then-chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.  The House approved it by a 376-vote margin.
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The majority of the Congressional Black Caucus supported the crime bill.  They're now telling us it was written by the Klan (and by the way, Republicans are saying that too, mindlessly).
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Joe Biden knows that these bills weren't mistakes.  We don't put people in jail in this country for being Black.  People go to jail for committing crimes.
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Not all of our anti-crime laws are smart.  But the bill wasn't written to punish an ethnic group.  It was written to control what was a very real problem, including in Black neighborhoods, and that was drug-fueled crime.  People were dying from it in big numbers in 1994.
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Not only is Joe Biden now telling us these crime bills were mistakes, now he's telling us that any law that puts any drug offender in prison is a mistake.  Would that include the opioid dealers who haveve killed hundreds of thousands of Americans in recent years?
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... what exactly is the HEROES Act and what does it do?
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Among other things, the HEROES Act would allow illegal immigrants to retroactively receive coronavirus stimulus checks.  People who are here illegally would get tax dollars retroactively.
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The bill contains a prison break provision, allowing inmates with asthma or diabetes to get out of jail.  It bans voter ID laws, because of course it does.
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It also allows marijuana businesses and their service providers access to banking and insurance services.
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The bill would bail out left-wing jurisdictions that had financial problems going back many decades, long before coronavirus.
• 
And of course, the bill would allow paid political operatives to collect ballots in bundles and return them to polling stations.
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So consider those provisions and ask yourself, who exactly do they help?  Americans who haveve lost their jobs because of the lockdowns?  Small business owners trying to save their livelihoods?
• 
At this point, we should mention that this virus has a 99.9% percent survival rate for the vast majority of Americans.  The lockdowns, on the other hand, hurt everyone.
• 
The economic and psychological costs of them are, in many cases, irreversible.  Thousands of businesses will never come back.  The families that own those businesses are destroyed even as Google and Amazon get stronger.
• 
And what about our children?  Students who have already spent a year away from school are now preparing to stay away from school indefinitely and they're learning nothing.
• 
Joe Biden essentially ... saying, "Do not open until you get this under control." What does that mean?  According to Joe Biden, that's what the public health experts are saying. 
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These are the same public health experts who say you can't go outside unless, of course, it's to attend a Black Lives Matter rally or loot a Wendy's.  But you must listen to them.
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These are the same people who told you that the riots were, in fact, not a threat to public health.  They were necessary, but any demonstration against the lockdowns was a threat to public health.
• 
... our public health infrastructure is supposed to be nonpartisan.  Instead, it's become completely corrupted by partisan interests, and it's making decent people cynical.
• 
The people in charge, once again, have revealed themselves to be completely unserious, and yet they still demand that we pay attention to them.
• 
That was the theme of the night.  It's the theme of the age.
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See related Watch This... (Jake Fuller, 2019)") cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: America's most powerful people want you to shut up about Hunter Biden  (Fox 10/21/2020)
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What happened to Joe Biden?  Remember him?  Longtime senator, Obama's VP, now running for president and on the ballot in two weeks?  He was last seen a couple of days ago buying milkshakes in North Carolina.  Given Biden's present condition, that is worrisome.
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Biden's campaign team assures us there is no cause for concern.  The final presidential debate is on Thursday, and he's just preparing for that.  ... Maybe Joe Biden really does need a week to prepare for a 90-minute debate moderated by an MSNBC correspondent.
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But there are other potential explanations as well.  Last week, we learned how Vice President Joe Biden altered this country's foreign policy to help his son's lobbying interests.
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Big Tech and the national media tried hard to kill that story, but it hasn't really gone away.  Facts are like that.  They tend to persist.  They're hard to erase.
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... an undated photograph that shows Joe and Hunter Biden posing with a man called Kenes Rakishev.  Rakishev is an oligarch from the nation of Kazakhstan, the former Soviet republic.  He has close ties to that nation's corrupt government.  Reportedly, Hunter Biden helped Rakishev stash his fortune here in the United States.
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It would be worth knowing a lot more about this before we vote in two weeks.  For example, how much money changed hands?  What did the Bidens do in return for that money, if anything?  We should know and maybe we'll learn the answers because there's an awful lot of material on that laptop.
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Leaders of the Democratic Party are very aware of that, of course, and it terrifies them.  So they're doing everything they can to prevent you from seeing that information before you make up your mind.
• 
And that includes concocting ludicrous and potentially dangerous conspiracy theories about foreign interference in our political system.  ... A group of 50 former U.S.  intelligence officials signed a letter claiming that the New York Post story could very well be part of a secret Russian operation designed to help Vladimir Putin's fellow Slavic dictator Donald J.  Trump cling to power.
• 
Who are these people?  They're the very same people who missed 9/11 and who endorsed the Iraq War.  They're the same people who illegally spied on American citizens for years.  Those people.
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"Our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case," the letter reads.
• 
Now, these are so-called "intelligence operatives." But they offered no evidence to support that reckless, very serious claim.
• 
Why didn't they offer any evidence?  Because there is no evidence.  None exists.  Instead, they simply asserted it, which means they simply lied.
• 
They lied to the American public in order to influence the outcome of a supposedly free and fair election.  Isn't that what they claim Russia does?
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In the final days before we vote, they're not even bothering to hide what they're doing or their methods.  Senior figures in our vast national security state are working in concert with the Democratic Party to get Joe Biden elected.
• 
... Sen.  Chris Murphy, D-Conn.  ... is telling us the former mayor of New York City is a Russian asset.
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Keep in mind, for 50 years, Rudy Giuliani has worked for the American government at all levels, from local to federal.  But now a sitting senator tells us that Giuliani is a traitor, a treasonous Russian spy.  It's too bad you can't sue sitting senators for libel.
• 
Both Brennan and Clapper signed the letter claiming the Russians are behind Hunter Biden's emails.
• 
What does this mean?  ... This is an ominous moment.  When every power center in the nation — that includes Big Tech, big media, the finance establishment, the federal spy agencies — when every power center aligns behind a common political goal, you have a very dangerous axis.  That is far too much power concentrated in one place.
• 
Normal people will inevitably be crushed and they are being crushed.  ... The media tell us they deserve to be crushed because anyone interested in learning more about the emails on Hunter Biden's laptop is effectively colluding with the Russians.
• 
Again, none of them are saying that the emails are fake.  They're not going to claim that because they know it's not true.
• 
The emails are not fake, they are real and everyone knows they're real.  And the laptop is real.  Hunter Biden signed for it.  His lawyer asked for it back.
• 
And to this day, no one has shown or even claimed that a single photograph or video or document or email or text message on that laptop — tens of thousands of them — is fraudulent, not one.
• 
So they're not even really trying to convince you that Russia did this.  They're trying to bully you into shutting up and they're using lies.  "Russia did it!  Russia, our sworn and former enemy, an empire more evil and more threatening to America even than the twin perils of Poland and Hungary."
• 
Those are nations that Joe Biden described just the other day as "totalitarian regimes." Bet you didn't know that Poland and Hungary, tiny peaceful nations in Central Europe, were threats to American national security.  Did you know that?
• 
Well, they are.  Unlike, say, China, which pays far higher consulting fees to everyone in D.C.
• 
On Monday, Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe tried to put an end to this.  He confirmed that there is precisely zero evidence showing the Russians planted that laptop or invented any of the documents on it or conspired to leak it.
• 
Tuesday, a senior federal law enforcement official told ... that the FBI and DOJ concur with that assessment.  Another law enforcement source has confirmed that the emails are authentic...
• 
In the mad scramble to unseat the president, our core institutions are being destroyed: A free press, fair elections, spy agencies that won't turn their dark arts on the public, all of that is disappearing.
• 
We should be very concerned about that and we should fight to get those institutions back, no matter what you think of Trump.
      Media, intel agencies collude to spread real 'disinformation' about Hunter Biden story  (Fox 10/20/2020)
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One very newsworthy series of emails showed that as vice president of the United States, Joe Biden tailored American foreign policy — our foreign policy, which Joe Biden does not own — in order to help his son's business interests.
• 
Biden intervened aggressively in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation, Ukraine, and his son got paid for that.
• 
Something then happened that was bigger and far more dangerous to our country than anything the New York Post found on Hunter Biden's laptop: The most powerful people in the world aligned to censor the news, to keep it from the population of the United States.
• 
Twitter prevented its users from sharing the story.  So did Facebook.  When Americans searched Google to read the New York Post story, many couldn't find it.
• 
So within hours, the premise of a free press, the basis of American democracy for 250 years, just disappeared.  One minute we were America, the next minute we were China.
• 
Perhaps most horrifying of all, our news media applauded it.  The self-described guardians of the First Amendment cheered the destruction of the First Amendment.  The New York Times actually ran an op-ed attacking the idea of free speech.
• 
Every power center in America vehemently agreed with that and most ominous of all, the U.S.  intelligence community, the secretive federal agencies that have nearly unlimited power, joined in.
• 
Those agencies colluded with the news media to hide information from the American public weeks before a presidential election.
• 
"Federal authorities are investigating, " the paper declared, whether the story about Hunter Biden's laptop was "part of a smoke bomb of disinformation pushed by Russia."
• 
The newspaper never bothered to assess whether the core story was true, nor did the article explain how this Russian plot might have worked in practical terms.
• 
"FBI probed if purported Hunter Biden emails are a Russian plot," declared Bloomberg News.  PBS, which you pay for, said a "senior former intelligence official" — whose salary you also paid — claimed that Rudy Giuliani was likely channeling Russian disinformation.
• 
In this frenzy to find this new batch of Russian spies, the media did miss a few obvious things.  For example, two people reporters forgot to call were Joe and Hunter Biden.
• 
Presumably the Bidens could have confirmed whether or not the famous laptop was real.  That would have ended the speculation and would have informed the rest of us, but somehow no one thought to do that.
• 
What you're watching is the most powerful people in America aligning as one to hide legitimate information from the public.
• 
This is not the way our country used to operate.  Are you terrified yet?  You should be terrified because it worked.  That's why they do it, because it works.
• 
At some point, you've got to be honest and say, who cares what's on Hunter Biden's laptop?
• 
This is the real threat: The most powerful in our country, colluding to dismiss legitimate questions, using a fake threat of Russian disinformation.  That's scary.
• 
"Joe Biden and all of us should be furious that media outlets are spreading what is very likely Russian propaganda.  I've seen the intel.  The mainstreaming of misinformation is Russia's 2020 goal."
• 
That's both worse and dumber than anything Joe McCarthy ever said.  "I've seen the intel." Notice that Murphy didn't tell us what the so-called intel said, much less show it to the rest of us so we could evaluate it for ourselves.
• 
Powerful people have seen the intel.  You haven't.  You must take their word for it.  Otherwise, maybe you're working for Vladimir Putin.  Maybe you're a Russian spy.  Want to get accused of that?  Of treason?  I don't think so.  So just take it on faith, pal.
• 
Once again, no one in Joe Biden's campaign has said these emails or text messages are false.  They're not even claiming that.  So these claims are coming from anonymous sources and media hacks and that's it.
• 
But in fact, many are saying they're inauthentic.  False claims of Russian interference in our democracy are now a well-established fact of American political life, like fears about climate change and White supremacy.
• 
They are very useful to the people in charge because those fears can be leveraged to strip you instantly of your constitutional rights.  And that's exactly what's going on now.
• 
Now you know why they're doing it for the next two weeks.  The point is to defeat Donald Trump and they may succeed in doing that.  But for the rest of us who plan to stay in this country, the real worry is what happens after that.
      Tucker Carlson: New emails reveal exactly what Burisma wanted from Joe Biden  (Fox 10/16/2020)
• 
Not everything you hear is untrue and not every story is complex.  At the heart of the growing Biden-Ukraine scandal, for example, is a very straightforward question: Did Joe Biden subvert American foreign policy in order to enrich his own family?
• 
In 2015, Joe Biden was the sitting vice president of the United States.  Included in his portfolio were U.S.  relations with the nation of Ukraine.  At that moment, Vice President Joe Biden had more influence over the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian economy than any other person on the globe outside of Eastern Europe.
• 
Biden's younger son, Hunter, knew that and hoped to get rich from his father's influence.  Emails published Wednesday by The New York Post, documents apparently taken directly from Hunter Biden's own laptop, tell some of that story.
• 
If these emails are fake, this is the most complex and sophisticated hoax in history.  It almost seems beyond human capacity.  The Biden campaign clearly believes these emails are real.  They have not said otherwise.
• 
... a Burisma executive called Vadym Pozharskyi emailed Hunter Biden and his business partner, Devon Archer.  The purpose of the email, Pozharskyi explains, is to "be on the same page re our final goals ... including, but not limited to: a concrete course of actions."
• 
So what did Burisma want, exactly?  Well, good PR, for starters.  Pozharskyi wanted "high-ranking US [sic] officials" to express their "positive opinion" of Burisma, and then he wanted the administration to act on Burisma's behalf.
• 
"The scope of work should also include organization of a visit of a number of widely recognized and influential current and/or former US [sic] policy-makers to Ukraine in November, aiming to conduct meetings with and bring positive signal/message and support" to Burisma.
• 
The goal, Pozharskyi explained, was to "close down for [sic] any cases/pursuits" against the head of Burisma in Ukraine.
• 
It couldn't be clearer what they wanted.  Burisma wanted Huter Biden's father to get their company out of legal trouble with the Ukrainian government.  And that's exactly what happened.
• 
"Hello all ..." it began.  "This morning, the White House hosted a conference call regarding the Vice President's upcoming trip to Ukraine.  Attached is a memo from the Blue Star Strategies team with the minutes of the call, which outlined the trip's agenda and addressed several questions regarding U.S.  policy toward Ukraine."
• 
So here you have a PR firm involved in an official White House foreign policy call.  How could that happen?  Good question.  But it worked.
• 
Days later, Joe Biden flew to Ukraine and did exactly what his son wanted.  The vice president gave a speech slamming the very Ukrainian law enforcement official who was tormenting Burisma.
• 
If the Ukrainian government didn't fire its top prosecutor, a man called Viktor Shokin, Biden explained, the administration would withhold a billion dollars in American aid.
• 
Now, Ukraine is a poor country, so they had no choice but to obey.  Biden's bullying worked.  He bragged about it later. 
• 
The obvious question: Why was the vice president of the United States threatening a tiny country like Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor?  That doesn't seem like a vice president's role.  Well, now we know why.
• 
Viktor Shokin has signed an affidavit affirming that he was, in fact, investigating Burisma at the moment Joe Biden had him removed.  Shokin said that before he was fired, administration officials pressured him to drop the case against Burisma.  He would not do that, so Joe Biden canned him.
• 
That's how things really work in Washington.  Your son's got a lucrative consulting deal with a Ukrainian energy company, you tailor American foreign policy — our foreign policy — to help make him rich.
• 
Even at the State Department, possibly the most cynical agency in government, this seemed shockingly brazen.
• 
Five years later, Joe Biden still has not been forced to explain why he fired Ukraine's top prosecutor at precisely the moment his son was being paid to get him to fire Ukraine's top prosecutor, nor has Joe Biden addressed whether or not he personally benefited from the Burisma contract.
• 
But there are tantalizing hints.  ... yet another email from Hunter Biden's laptop.  It's a note to one of his children.  At the end of the email, there's this quote: "But dont [sic] worry unlike Pop I won't make you give me half your salary."
• 
What does that mean, exactly?  Well, we don't know.  There may be more detail on the laptop, but unfortunately, we don't have access to that.
• 
But the question remains, how has Joe Biden lived in extravagance all these years on a government salary?
• 
No one has ever answered that question.  And the tech monopolies are working hard to make certain no one ever does.
• 
One email describes a "provisional agreement that the equity will be distributed as follows ... 10 held by H for the big guy?"
• 
The big guy?  Is the big guy Joe Biden?  If so, how much did Joe Biden get and how much of that came from the Communist Chinese government?  Those are real questions, this man could be elected president in three weeks.
• 
But Twitter doesn't want you to wonder.  It won't allow you to ask those questions.  Twitter restricted the New York Post story as "unsafe"...
• 
All day Thursday, they deflected questions about Joe Biden's subversion of our country's foreign policy by invoking Twitter's ban on the New York Post story.
• 
So the tech monopoly censors information to help their candidate, that candidate uses that censorship to dismiss the story.  One hand washes the other.
• 
It doesn't matter who you plan to vote for Nov.  3, you should be terrified.  Democracies cannot exist and never will be able to exist without the free flow of information.  That is a prerequisite and without it, we're done.
• 
But companies like Facebook and Google and Twitter do not care because they don't believe in democracy.  They worship power and they don't need to be consistent.
• 
Melania Trump's private phone conversations, the president's stolen tax returns, they were happy to publish all of that.  But if you criticize the Democratic candidate, their candidate, you are banned.
• 
"Facebook and Twitter have policies to not spread things that are utterly unreliable, that have been debunked, and where their origin is untrustworthy," Sen.  Chris Coons, D-Del., said Thursday.
• 
Not one word of this story has been debunked, not one word in those emails has been "debunked." And if it is debunked, we'll be the first to report it because we're not liars.
• 
But none of their garbage, their lunatic lies about Russia is ever censored by the tech monopolies.  It's not "unsafe" because it helps Joe Biden.  Therefore, you can read it.
• 
And where are the real journalists, now that we need them more than ever?  They're gone.  They're cowering.  They're afraid.  They don't want to upset power.
• 
These people are craven.  They have no standards.  They have no self-respect.  Like their masters in Silicon Valley, they worship power alone.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: The Joe Biden story Twitter and Facebook don't want you to read  (Fox 10/15/2020)
• 
Most of us never imagined it could happen in this country, and yet Wednesday, it did happen.
• 
A major American newspaper published a story, apparently an entirely accurate story, about a presidential candidate.  The tech monopolies that control American media feared this story might hurt that candidate, whom they favor.  So three weeks before a national election, they shut the whole thing down.
• 
They prevented the public from reading the news.  They didn't apologize for doing this.  They didn't bother to make up reasonable-sounding justifications for it.
• 
They just did it, exactly as the Chinese government does.  These are monopolies.  They have all the power, you have none.  They don't have to care about what you think and they don't.
• 
This was mass censorship on a scale that America has never experienced in 245 years, and it's a threat to all of us.
• 
Democracies only function when there is a free exchange of information between citizens.  We no longer have that.
• 
... the New York Post published a series of emails that describe Hunter Biden's lucrative relationship with a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma, and then describe how his father, then the vice president of the United States, intervened to help his son peddle influence.
• 
These e-mails came from an Apple laptop that was dropped off at a Delaware computer repair shop last year and then abandoned there.  After a certain number of days with no payment, the shop's owner took legal possession of the laptop.
• 
When he looked inside, he found tens of thousands of emails, including exchanges with representatives of foreign companies and foreign governments.  The laptop apparently belonged to Hunter Biden.
• 
The shop owner was stunned by this, by the appearance of corruption, and he was afraid for his family.
• 
So late last year, he gave the laptop to the FBI and kept a copy of the hard drive for himself.  He never heard back from the FBI.
• 
By May, he was anxious.  So he made overtures to Senator Mike Lee's office and at least one conservative nonprofit, but no one responded.
• 
Finally, the man contacted Rudy Giuliani's office.  And Wednesday's story is the result of that.
• 
The tech monopolies crushed the story the moment it appeared.  An executive at Facebook called Andy Stone, a former Democratic staffer, announced that his company would censor the New York Post story.  As he put it, Facebook would be "reducing its distribution on our platform."
• 
Twitter quickly followed suit by locking the New York Post's entire Twitter account.  One of the biggest newspapers in the world was banned from Twitter, which then prevented its users from sharing the story, both privately and publicly.
• 
Those who tried to share it got this message: "Your tweet couldn't be sent because this link has been identified by Twitter or our partners as being potentially harmful."
• 
In a separate explanation, Twitter wrote this: "We don't permit the use of our services to directly distribute content obtained through hacking that contains private information, may put people in physical harm or danger, or contains trade secrets."
• 
That's the same Twitter that just promoted a New York Times story about the president's private tax returns, obviously obtained illegally.  And who, by the way, was hacked here?  No one was hacked.  Twitter never addressed that.
• 
As for "trade secrets," there were none.  We already knew that Hunter Biden was trading on his father's office to make $50,000 a month from the Ukrainians.  In October, he admitted it.
• 
So we knew the outlines.  What we didn't know until Wednesday was how brazen this was.  Hunter Biden didn't simply sell access to his father, the vice president, or take cash to influence American foreign policy.
• 
As he schemed to extract more money from Burisma, Biden didn't refer to his father as his father.  He referred to Joe Biden, the vice president, as "my guy." ... wrote to his business partner, "The announcement of my guy's upcoming travels should be characterized as part of our advice and thinking."
• 
Hunter Biden added that he needed to be "protected financially" and wanted a long term role with Burisma: "The contract should begin now - not after the upcoming visit of my guy.  That should include a retainer in the range of 25k" .
• 
... just weeks after Hunter Biden joined the board of that company, a top executive there let him know explicitly why he was being paid: "We urgently need your advice on how you could use your influence to convey a message/signal, etc., to stop what we consider to be politically motivated actions."
• 
What message does that mean?  Well, another e-mail from the same executive ... explains in very clear terms what it means.  "Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC [sic] and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together.  It's realty [sic] an honor and pleasure."
• 
That's what you're not allowed to read.  And you can see why Facebook and Twitter don't want to allow you to read it.
• 
If Joe Biden met with Burisma executives at the request of his son for the profit of his own family, it becomes very clear that Joe Biden's previous denials were lies.  Just last year, Joe Biden was telling us he had no idea what his son was doing it for Burisma.
• 
... back in 2018, Joe Biden explained that he got the top prosecutor in Ukraine fired.  That prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, said he was planning to investigate Burisma when he was stripped of his job.  Here's how Joe Biden explained/bragged about how he canned Viktor Shokin.
• 
"I had gotten a commitment from [then-Ukraine President Petro] Poroshenko and from [then-Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatseniuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor, and they didn't ... They were walking out to the press conference and I said ... 'We're not going to give you the billion dollars.' They said, 'You have no authority.  You're not the president, the president said — ' I said, 'Call him.' I said, 'I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars.  I said, 'You're not getting the billion.  I'm going to be leaving here' — I think it was what, six hours?  ... I said, 'I'm leaving in six hours and if the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a bitch, he got fired."
• 
Why is the vice president of the United States firing prosecutors in Ukraine?  Pause for a moment and ask yourself that.  That's bizarre behavior.  It doesn't help the United States in any way.  Why was he doing that at the time?
• 
Then last October, we showed you a photograph of Joe and Hunter Biden golfing with a man called Devon Archer, a board member of Burisma and Hunter Biden's business partner.  The Biden campaign never explained that photograph.  Rather than following up, our media rushed to Joe Biden's defense in the same way they're now rushing to bury the New York Post story. 
• 
In December, a voter in Iowa tried to ask Joe Biden about Burisma and his fitness for office.  Joe Biden lost control of himself.  He called the man "fat" and then challenged him to a push-up contest.
• 
We have some questions, and here's the first one: Did any money from Burisma or any other foreign company or foreign government wind up in Joe Biden's pockets or in the account of any entity he benefits from?
• 
We're not accusing Joe Biden of a crime.  We're saying it has long been a mystery how a man who took a government salary for almost 50 years has lived like a rich man since the 1970s.  (Ever seen Joe Biden's houses?  Look them up.  "Opulent" doesn't begin to describe the way he lives.)
• 
Can you do that?  No, you can't.  So how did Joe Biden do that?
• 
See related About Right... (Michael Ramirez, 08/11/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Democrats treat first day of Amy Coney Barrett hearings like a campaign rally  (Fox 10/12/2020)
• 
... Almost none of the attacks on Barrett — and, of course, there were many of those — had to do with the job she is trying to get.
• 
The Supreme Court exists only to determine whether the laws that our politicians write are consistent with the Constitution of the United States.
• 
Supreme Court justices do not make laws because they're not elected by voters.  We don't let them legislate as a result.  That's how democracy works: Only people who are elected get to make laws.
• 
Democrats would like to change that system.  ... if you're going to remake America, you're going to have to do it from above.  And you're going to have to impose it on people.  And the left would like the Supreme Court as their instrument to do that, a kind of super-Congress with lifetime tenure.  Imagine power like that.  There's nothing you couldn't do.
• 
So once you understand that perspective, which is very much their perspective, Monday's hearing made sense.  Democrats spent hours talking about the 2009 ObamaCare law.  That was baffling at first.
• 
If you're interviewing someone for the Supreme Court, there's only one relevant question about ObamaCare: Is it constitutional?  That's all they consider.  That's all they're supposed to consider.
• 
Not how they feel about the law, not whether it comports with their personal values, not whether their party supports it.  Is it constitutional?
• 
And yet that was one of the few things that Democrats didn't ask because they're not interested in whether or not it's constitutional.  What they care about is power and whether Amy Coney Barrett will diminish or enhance theirs.
• 
They understand the Supreme Court purely in political terms.  So, not surprisingly, they conducted today's hearings like a campaign rally.
• 
... Democrat, pointing to a photo of a middle-aged woman called Laura, who looked very unhappy without ObamaCare.  The senator said Laura will be "unable to afford the treatments necessary for her to survive."
• 
In other words, if Amy Coney Barrett gets this job, it's curtains for Laura.  Democrat after Democrat made that very same point as they so often have recently: Obey us or many will die.
• 
There is no case currently pending anywhere in this country before any court in America that would eliminate ObamaCare.
• 
More importantly, we don't have any idea how Amy Coney Barrett would rule in a case like that were it to materialize, which again, it hasn't.
• 
But most bewildering of all, Democrats themselves have spent most of the past two years publicly conceding that ObamaCare is a disaster.
• 
The goal is to undermine the legitimacy of our system and, in this case, of the Supreme Court so that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can pack the court full of partisan Democrats who will rubber stamp their program.
• 
Again, it's about power.  So that's the key to the riddle when confirmation hearings become partisan political exercises.
• 
Democrats know that for the public to go along with court-packing, they have to delegitimize everything about the court and the confirmation process.
• 
Hugo Chavez packed the Supreme Court of Venezuela in 2004.  Erdogan did the same in Turkey.  How did they do that?  How they get their populations to go along with it?  By claiming their judicial systems were already illegitimate.  Sound familiar?
      Tucker Carlson: America is witnessing a brazen power grab  (Fox 07/31/2020)
• 
None of what you are watching is about civil rights.  Violence and race-baiting are the enemies of civil rights.
• 
What you're watching instead is a power grab.  It's being coordinated by the most ruthless and cynical figures in American politics.  They don't want you to know what they're doing.  They're not honorable enough to state their intentions.
• 
They accuse you of the crimes they themselves are committing.  It makes your head spin.  Arguing with them is pointless, by the way, they're nihilists.
• 
They don't believe in the existence of truth or in the fixed meaning of words.
• 
They care only about power.  It's painful to say this.  It hurts to admit there are people in our country who are like this, but there are, and they have more power than ever.
• 
If you need more evidence of that, Barack Obama showed up at Congressman John Lewis' funeral today.  Obama claimed he was there to eulogize his own friend, but that's not true, and that's not what he did.  Instead, Obama gave a divisive and deeply dishonest campaign speech in church.
• 
BARACK OBAMA: "By ending some of the partisan gerrymandering so that all voters have the power to choose their politicians, not the other way around."
• 
"And if all this takes eliminating the filibuster, another Jim Crow relic, in order to secure the God-given rights of every American, then that's what we should do."
• 
... take three steps back, imagine if some greasy politician showed up at your loved one's funeral and started throwing around stupid partisan talking points about Senate procedure, can you imagine that?
• 
Desecrating a funeral with campaign slogans?  What kind of person would do that?  But Democrats in the audience didn't seem offended.  They didn't blink, they cheered.  It all seemed normal to them, and why wouldn't it?
• 
Political power is their religion.  It's not out of place in a church.  It's what they worship.
• 
People who will politicize a funeral will do anything, and they're trying to.  Democrats are working systematically to dismantle the core institutions of American life, beginning with the family and with faith.
• 
They're subverting the core system in our government, the justice system.
• 
They're nullifying laws, burning police stations, attacking courthouses, working to eliminate the legal equality of American citizens, the foundation of it all.
• 
They've systematically repurposed Federal law enforcement agencies as political weapons.  They have imprisoned their political opponents.
• 
Their leaders have called for making all of these changes permanent by packing the Supreme Court, packing the United States Senate, packing the electorate itself by importing tens of millions of new voters.
• 
They're doing this for one reason: to ensure they have complete control of the United States.
• 
We're watching it happen right now, though almost no one ever admits it and those who do come close to getting shut down.
• 
So how should the rest of us respond to what we're seeing?  ... everyone who fundamentally loves this country, which is still most Americans.  What are people like that do in the face of this?
• 
Well, it's simple.  Defend the system that we have.  That's our job.
• 
The American system is flawed.  No one doubts that, but it works better than any other system in history and tearing it down will not help.  In fact, it will benefit only a few of the ones pushing for it, and it will crush millions.
• 
So if you care about the United States, fight for its institutions.  They have served us well.
• 
This country has survived almost 250 years through a Civil War.  Let's keep going.
• 
A bewildered population, dealing with change from every possible direction cannot fight back.  That's why they're doing it.
• 
So our job is to defend what we already have as a nation and to promote the continuation of it.
• 
Keeping things the same has never been more important than it is right now.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Big Tech censors COVID-19 video featuring doctors  (Fox 07/29/2020)
• 
In an election year, everything significant that happens is about the election.  So all of these developments are in fact related, and here's the core question in every election.  Who is up and who is down?
• 
As of tonight, the president is down double digits in the polls and there's not much question about why that is.
• 
Americans are miserable.  They're stuck at home.  They are fearful.  Millions of them don't have jobs.
• 
The percentage of Americans who believe our country is headed in the right direction has dropped off a cliff since this spring.
• 
Not coincidentally, that's when a strange new virus from China began to spread among our population.
• 
The rise of COVID-19 in the United States tracks almost precisely the decline of Donald Trump's approval numbers and the political lesson from this is clear.
• 
The more damage the Wuhan coronavirus does to America, the harder it is for the President to get reelected.
• 
If the population remains terrified, Democrats will have more power in January.
• 
So the Democratic Party has every incentive to keep Americans afraid and off balance.  For the next 97 days, they plan to do that.
• 
That is their entire campaign strategy.  It's the only thing they're running on.
• 
Yesterday, the news site Breitbart posted a video of a group of physicians giving a press conference about medical advances in the fight against COVID-19.  Some of the news that doctors delivered was hopeful because there is hopeful news to report.
• 
Any scientific advancement that reduces the suffering of Americans in an election year is a threat to Joe Biden's campaign.  So they decided to pull that video off the internet.
• 
While the rest of us were sleeping, or in the case of so many of our senators, taking payoffs from Google, a tiny number of left-wing corporations took virtually complete control of all news and information in this country.
• 
Now, if Democrats want to erase a politically inconvenient news story fewer than a hundred days before an election, they can do that, and they did do it.
• 
They pulled the video of doctors in lab coats talking about coronavirus research, and they hid that video from the public.  It's exactly what the Chinese government so often does, except when Silicon Valley erases your freedoms, they lecture you as they do it.
• 
They've got all the ruthlessness of Chinese authoritarians, but with double the self-righteousness.  It's the American version.
• 
The science on hydroxychloroquine is not settled either way.  Science rarely is settled.  That's why it's science and not, for example, radical feminist theory.
• 
Science is constantly evolving as we test and retest our assumptions against observed reality.  That's the whole point of science.
• 
"The Daily Beast" attacked Dr.  Immanuel for the crime of getting her medical degree in Africa and then suggested she believed in witchcraft because you know, Africans do that, right?
• 
So political correctness is fine with "The Daily Beast" most of the year, but this is election season so Dr.  Immanuel must be destroyed.  "The Daily Beast" was happy to help achieve that.
• 
So by the way, with the think tank libertarians, including some still posing as conservatives, people you read, people who work for places you probably have sent money to.
• 
You saw them on Twitter today, hopefully reminding you that this variety of censorship isn't really censorship because the government isn't doing it.
• 
They didn't explain exactly why that distinction matters to anyone.  In fact, censorship is always bad, whether it's imposed by Congress or whether it's imposed by monopolies that only exist because they receive special carve-outs granted to them by Congress.
• 
Censorship is always wrong.  Censorship does not improve public health.  In fact, it threatens public health.
• 
The authorities responsible for containing this pandemic clearly have failed.  We know that.  Some of them are decent people.  They're trying their best.
• 
But despite their efforts, they've frequently been wrong.  We know that because it's on tape.
• 
So what we desperately need now, as we always do in crisis, and especially in a crisis that can be solved by science is more voices in the conversation, not fewer.
• 
As we learn more, our conclusions change.  Legitimate scientists understand that.  That's called the scientific method.
• 
Big Tech companies don't care one way or the other because their goal is not the truth.  Their goal is to control the outcome of an election.  It's not to protect public health.
• 
This isn't about public health, and it's not about science.  It never was.  It's about power.
• 
And no one in the history of the world has ever had more power than Google and Facebook have right now.
• 
So we should have seen this coming.  People with power abuse that power and people who have absolute power abuse it absolutely, as we learned.
• 
See related What Bias? (Gary Varvel, 06/13/2019) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Chicago needs federal help to stop senseless killings  (Fox 07/23/2020)
• 
For the past two months, as you well know, a small group of power-hungry professional activists has screamed at the rest of us about saving lives.
• 
The rest of us, they tell us just don't care about saving lives.  We are selfish and immoral and we must be punished for that.
• 
The activists yell all of this at high volume.  They've yelled it for so long now, unchallenged, that many otherwise sensible people have begun to believe it and to take them seriously.
• 
Our richest corporations have sent them millions of dollars.  Our media praise them as heroes.  Our political leaders, terrified and confused, do whatever they say.
• 
... turn down the volume a little bit.  Ignore what the slogans are screaming at you.  Ignore the graffiti they're painting in your cities.  Instead, consider the evidence.
• 
Watch what they've done.
• 
... here's the result in Chicago.  In the last month alone, literally hundreds of Americans have been gunned down there.
• 
Just on Tuesday night, for example, at least 15 people were shot in a single incident outside a funeral home in the city.
• 
The killers pulled up in full view and simply started shooting people with impunity.
• 
Bodies fell on the sidewalk, the wounded screamed.  But the gunfire continued.  But this wasn't Baghdad, it was America's third-largest city.
• 
It's hard to believe this is happening here.  But the activists don't care.
• 
The White House is not ignoring it.  The administration has said it will send federal law enforcement agents to Chicago to restore order, to stop these killings.
• 
The city's mayor, a living parody of entitlement and incompetence called Lori Lightfoot has promised to prevent that help from arriving.
• 
"Under no circumstances ... will I allow Donald Trump's troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents."
• 
In Lori Lightfoot's Chicago, law enforcement is banned, only gang members are allowed to terrorize the population, and they do.
• 
Lori Lightfoot is surrounded at all times by armed bodyguards paid for by her suffering subjects.  She demands that.
• 
But for the ordinary people who live in her crumbling city, things look very different.  They don't have taxpayer-funded bodyguards.
• 
... for them, in the face of violence like that, law enforcement isn't primarily a political issue.  Cops aren't "Donald Trump's troops." They're vital to survival, without them people die.
      Tucker Carlson: ‘Social justice’ shields elites from criticism  (Fox 07/11/2020)
• 
It turns out that revolutions cover a multitude of sins.  Once every conversation in your country turns political, only the politicians benefit from it.
• 
In a normal moment, the people in charge would be in deep trouble right now.  The rest of us would be asking hard questions about why things seem to be falling apart — why our streets are filthy, why violent crime is rising, why nothing seems to work.
• 
We pay a lot to keep this society functioning.  Suddenly, we're not getting a lot in return.
• 
It's not a very good deal.  But in the age of Black Lives Matter, our leaders don't have to answer for this.  They just give speeches about social justice and they're insulated from all criticism.
• 
If you persist in bothering them about their incompetence, they'll have you arrested for hate crimes.
• 
So revolution is the best thing that ever happened to our political class.
• 
You see it with perfect clarity in New York City.  Just a few months ago, Mayor Bill de Blasio was a national joke.
• 
Now de Blasio is his generation's Al Sharpton.  He's a protest leader fighting in the streets for civil rights.  He no longer has to pretend to run the city.
• 
Now leaders in New York City don't have to address their failing schools.  Instead of helping kids to learn, the city can just blame racism.
• 
Racism might seem like a strange explanation in New York.  The school population there is fully 84 percent non-White.  There aren't that many White kids to blame.
• 
But that hasn't stopped the school chancellor.  He recently issued a statement pledging his commitment to "anti-racism" and to "work every day to undo these systems of injustice."
• 
The chancellor wasn't more specific than that.  He didn't specify which "systems of injustice" he was talking about.  Maybe that's because the kids with the highest test scores in New York are not White.  They're Asian.
• 
Asian students score far higher than any other ethnic group in New York City — not just higher scores in math, but also higher in English proficiency.
• 
That seems odd.  So many of these students come from poor immigrant families where no one speaks English at home.
• 
At first glance, kids like this don't seem to have much "privilege." So how are they so successful?  Racism, obviously.  There's no other possible explanation for it.
• 
It is a "system of injustice" that allows penniless foreigners from faraway countries to arrive here with no language skills whatsoever and still shoot to the top of the academic rankings.
• 
The mayor's wife is in charge of fixing problems like this.  She is the city's systemic racism czar.  ... What she said — the one thing she was absolutely confident about — is that White people are definitely to blame for it.
• 
At a meeting of the Community Education Council in Manhattan, some of the people who are supposed to help educate the children of New York City spent time attacking each other for being too white, instead of talking about reading or math.
• 
Robin Broshi said: "It hurts people when they see a white man bouncing a brown baby on their lap and they don't know the context.  That is harmful.  That makes people cry... I take that to heart and that hurts me.  I have to learn how to be a better white person."
• 
Thomas Wrocklage said: "I would like to know before this meeting adjourns how having my friend's nephew on my lap was hurtful to people and was racist.  Can you please explain?"
• 
Broshi yelled back: "I've explained it to you.  You can read a book.  Read a book.  Read ... ‘White Fragility.' Read ‘How To Talk To White People.' It's not my job to educate you.  You're an educated White man."
• 
OK.  It's true.  They did talk about reading for a second at the end.  They'd like you to read something called "White Fragility," by Robin DiAngelo.
• 
"White Fragility" isn't really a book.  It's what we used to call a tract — a screed, a diatribe.  It's the kind of wild-eyed hate propaganda you push just before you decide to really start hurting people.  It's preemptive justification for abuse.
• 
Explaining her thesis on NBC ... DiAngelo said: "White people are racist A-Holes." ... There you have the accumulated scholarship of Miss Robin DiAngelo.  This is the same person who is probably the single most popular figure in American education right now.
• 
School districts around the country have made "White Fragility" required reading.  Your children will almost certainly read it, or be taught by people who have read it.
      Tucker Carlson: The left doesn't want Biden to debate Trump  (Fox 07/09/2020)
• 
So what does that say about the people around Joe Biden?
• 
Well, they are ruthless, obviously, and they're not into debate, not just presidential debates, but any debate.
• 
They don't like being disagreed with.  They don't believe that there are two sides to any question.  They believe their own views are the only legitimate views.
• 
When you criticize them, they won't engage with you.  They don't bother to rebut your points.  They simply attack you.
• 
Biden will pick some running mate whose identity makes it impossible for anyone to criticize her, and then they'll describe any criticism of their governance as a hate crime.
• 
We got a taste of that for eight years under Barack Obama, you know this — you know how it works.
• 
And of course, they've been doing it for years on college campuses and in corporate diversity seminars, any place where they have total control.
• 
... close to a thousand companies are boycotting Facebook's advertising platform.
• 
Why are they doing that?  Because they're demanding that Facebook censor the president and his voters, ban conservative news outlets, allow only publications controlled by the left to decide, what is news?
• 
Well, that's most news outlets anyway, because there's only one mass media company left in America that consistently dissents from the left's view of things.  You're watching and reading content from it right now.
• 
What do you think they plan to do to Fox News if they take power?  You can imagine, we're in their way.
• 
So, these people aren't liberals.  We call them that, but they're not.  They don't wring their hands and wonder what to do next like your flaky fifth-grade teacher who wore sandals and worried about the fate of the baby harp seals or with a "Save the whales" sticker on her Volvo.
• 
No, they're nothing like that.  They're not sentimental.  These are totalitarians.
• 
They know exactly what they want.  They don't wring their hands.  They want power and they know how to get power.
• 
Why are so many people being fired right now for absurdly trivial offenses?  Liking the wrong tweet.  Commenting on the wrong post.  Making the wrong hand gesture accidentally?  Why is that happening?
• 
Simple.  To terrify the rest of us into obedience.  We better not say that, we could be hurt, too.
• 
That's the lesson we take as we watch people around us fired and destroyed for doing very small things.
• 
That tells us the people around Joe Biden, they're the ones doing this, rule by fear.  They do not rule by consent as you're supposed to in this country.  They are in fact the true enemies of democracy.  They don't care what you think.
• 
And just in case the rest of us missed the point, they are working hard to make self-defense against their mobs, their militia a crime.  You cannot resist us, or we will prosecute you.
• 
St.  Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner is threatening to arrest Mark and Patricia McCloskey for daring to defend themselves against a mob that was threatening to murder them, a mob of democratic voters, but they're the criminals.
• 
This is why the left wants to abolish the police.  They're not abolishing law enforcement, they are replacing them with a woke militia of armed social workers, psychologists and ethnic studies majors.  Also obedient Democratic voters.
• 
And it's why in places where the police still exist, they want to make certain you're too afraid to call them.
• 
In San Francisco, Supervisor Shamann Walton has introduced the Caution Against Racially Exploitative Non-Emergencies or CAREN Act.  Hilarious if you think about it.
• 
The bill would make it a hate crime for citizens to call law enforcement based on "racial bias."
• 
How exactly do you think that law will be applied?  You don't have to wonder.  Call the police because you're frightened of mostly peaceful protesters threatening to kill you?  You're the criminal now.
• 
And day by day, liberalism evaporates and the left's troops — who call themselves liberals, children of the enlightenment — are falling in line behind what is clearly a power grip.
• 
... the founder of vox.com, Ezra Klein, someone regarded as an intellectual on the left, went on Twitter to explain why free speech is actually very bad.
• 
"A lot of debates that sell themselves as being about free speech are actually about power, and there's a lot of power in being able to claim and hold the mantle of free speech defender."
• 
Actually, Ezra Klein is half right about this.  Free speech definitely is about power.  Power for people who don't have any.
• 
People like Ezra Klein want less free speech for others so they can have more power.
• 
When they can tell you what you can say, what they're really telling you is what you're allowed to believe.
• 
They're not controlling your mouth, they are controlling your mind and there's no deeper control than that.
• 
Any person who is telling you that is someone you should be very afraid of.
• 
See related Democrat Knee (Sean Delonas, 05/31/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Can the left really lead a country it hates?  (Fox 07/07/2020)
• 
... the reason the ruling class despises Donald Trump is because they can't control him.  Trump throws the bit.  He refuses to mouth their lyrics.  He will not obey.
• 
At any moment, Donald Trump is liable to come out with something that you're absolutely not allowed to say.  Borders make countries, for example.
• 
All of it undeniably true, and that's the point and the problem.
• 
Trump's words hang in the air for all to see and to assess.  And they are therefore a massive threat to people whose livelihoods depend upon fraud and lying.
• 
Trump is the most dangerous to his enemies when he tells the truth.
• 
"Make no mistake, this leftwing Cultural Revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution."
• 
"In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress."
• 
"To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol and memory of our national heritage."
• 
"Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country, and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains."
• 
"The radical view of American history is a web of lies.  All perspective is removed.  Every virtue is obscured.  Every motive is twisted.  Every fact is distorted.  And every flaw is magnified until the history is purged and the record is disfigured beyond all recognition."
• 
Every word of that is true.  If you have kids in school, you know, it may even be an understatement.
• 
What is happening in our classrooms right now in 2020 is a crime.  It is long past time that a sitting president said so.
• 
They're the same people who spent the last month telling you that the riots you saw live on television were actually peaceful protests against racism.
• 
That was a lie.  They knew it was a lie when they said it, but they said it anyway in order to undermine a country that they hate.  Yes, hate.
• 
America deserves to be in flames.  That is their view.  And this weekend, they said it essentially out loud.
• 
"President Trump's unyielding push to preserve Confederate symbols and the legacy of White domination, crystallized by his harsh denunciation of the racial justice movement Friday night at Mount Rushmore has unnerved Republicans who have long enabled him."
• 
That was not an opinion piece, by the way, on the op-ed page.  It was a news story written by two Washington Post reporters.  They describe the president's defense of equality under the law as "Trump's push to amplify racism." That's Jeff Bezos's newspaper.
• 
Local politicians joined the chorus.  The Mayor of Nashville canceled the city's Fourth of July fireworks, but allowed BLM protests to continue unimpeded.
• 
In Richmond, city officials ordered a construction site to remove an American flag.  It was too provocative, they said.
• 
Meanwhile, the statue of mass murderer, Vladimir Lenin stands totally unmolested in the City of Seattle tonight.  Officials there see nothing provocative about it.
• 
And yet paradoxically, at the same time, they desperately want to control America more than anything, and that leads to the most basic of all questions.
• 
Can you really lead a country that you hate?
• 
Ask yourself, what kind of parent would you be if you hated your children?
• 
What kind of officer would you make if you didn't care about your troops?
• 
Loving the people you lead, caring deeply about them is the most basic prerequisite of leadership.
• 
The leaders of today's Democratic Party do not, they despise this country.  They have said so, they continue, to.
• 
That is shocking, but it is also disqualifying.  We cannot let them run this nation because they hate it.  Imagine what they would do to it.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Who are the criminals destroying your country?  (Fox 07/03/2020)
• 
MARK MCCLUSKEY: I see all these people outside the gate.  Then the gate bursts open.  People start coming in, and then a flood of people started coming in.  They're angry, they're screaming.  They've got spittle coming out of their mouths.  They're coming towards our house.  Out there with my wife, and I said, oh my God, we're absolutely alone.  There's nobody here to protect us but us.  That was the same night retired police captain David Dooring was murdered.  I was literally afraid that within seconds there would surmount the wall, come into the house, kill us, burn the house down and everything that I'd worked for and struggled for the last 32 years.
• 
Today, they learned of another coordinated attack on them that is planned for this weekend.  They immediately called police.  The dispatcher put them on hold and then finally transfer them to an officer.  The officer didn't seem to be listening to anything the McCluskey's said.  "We'll call you back," police said, and they never did.
• 
Desperate, the McCluskey's then called a number of different private security firms, but not one of them would take the job of protecting them.  The owner of the last company McClosky spoke to advise them to flee immediately.  "The only advice I can give you is abandon the house, run.  Let the mob have its way, let it burn."
• 
But the McCluskey's are not running.  They have spent thirty-two years rebuilding their home and they plan to defend themselves.  They have no choice.  They are completely alone.  No one will come to their aid.
• 
Their governor, Mike Parson, is a Republican.  He's also a former sheriff.  Parson could fix their problem immediately.  Parson could send state troopers to St.  Louis tonight to protect the McCluskey's.  But he hasn't done that.
• 
Parson hasn't even picked up the phone to speak to them.  He doesn't care, obviously, nobody cares.
• 
American citizens trapped in their home by a violent mob, knowing that something awful could happen to them very soon.  Totally undefended.  This is your country.
• 
The mob is winning, if things like this happen.  So who is the mob exactly?  They're not protesters.  They're not civil rights activists.  They are violent criminals.
• 
They are being used as a militia by the Democratic Party to seize power.  That's the truth.
• 
But even that description is too imprecise.  Most of these are Americans.  They have faces.  They have names.  So who are they?
• 
Thanks to delayed but very welcome efforts by federal law enforcement, at least one hundred and twenty-eight people have now been charged for riot-related offenses.  Many of them have been charged at the state level.
• 
Authorities arrested 24-year-old Devin Montgomery on Tuesday on federal arson charges.
• 
33-year-old Lori-Elisabeth Blumenthal is accused of burning a cop car in Philadelphia where she lives.
• 
Stephan Cannon, 24 years old, is charged with the murder of retired St.  Louis police officer David Dorn.
• 
Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman are both attorneys in New York City.  Both went to prestigious law schools.  Mattis graduated from Princeton undergraduate and NYU law.  Rahman went to Fordham Law.  Both are charged with tossing a Molotov cocktail at a marked NYPD squad car.  ... "The only way they hear us is through violence, through the means that they use.  We've got to use the master's tools.  That's what my friend always says."
• 
... Minneapolis, twenty-five-year-old Montez Terrill Lee of Rochester, Minnesota, is accused of burning down a pawnshop there during the riots.
• 
Jessica White is also being charged for arson in the Twin Cities.  She allegedly helped burn down an auto zone in St.  Paul because everything this year is irony, White's Facebook page says she studied, quote, "violence prevention" at Metropolitan State University in St.  Paul.
• 
Brandon Wolfe, 23, has been charged with participating in the destruction of the third police precinct in Minneapolis.
• 
Jesse Taggart of Salt Lake City was participating in a BLM protest in Provo when a white SUV tried to pass through the area.  A crowd swarmed around the car and according to police, without provocation Taggart drew a gun and fired twice into the car, nearly killing the driver.
• 
It appears Taggart went on Facebook afterward to defame the driver as a, quote, "Nazi or white supremacist who ran over protesters." Hours later, he posted, quote, "#America 20-20.  No respect for other human beings blows my mind.  We will overcome this together!"
• 
And then there are the people who have been targeting our public art, our shared history, our heritage, our country itself.
• 
Earlier today, federal agents arrested Jason Charter in Washington, D.C.  They say he is the ringleader in the effort to topple the statue of Andrew Jackson.  Charter apparently is affiliated within Antifa.
• 
Jason Charter's LinkedIn says he studied computer science at George Washington University.  Tuition there, by the way, one of the highest in the country.  More than $55,000.
• 
Another angry, rich kid.  There are so many of them.  Still far more than five people were involved in the attacks on those statues in Washington.
• 
Hundreds more have attacked monuments and destroyed public property around the country.
      Tucker Carlson: What holiday should be canceled next?  (Fox 07/02/2020)
• 
We spent an awful lot of time this spring talking about viruses and how they spread.
• 
One person infects another person, who infects a third, who then has contact with a larger group of people and infects 20 more, each of whom — and you know how it works.  It's exponential.
• 
Pretty soon individuals thousands of miles from the source of the outbreak start getting sick.
• 
What we now know is that craziness spreads very much the same way.  A single lunatic can pass a debilitating case of it to millions of others with just one appearance on MSNBC or a long thread on Twitter.
• 
Hysteria is the most communicable disease known to man and we're now living through a pandemic of it.
• 
On Memorial Day weekend, a man called George Floyd died in police custody in Minnesota.  That's where this outbreak first began.  Minneapolis was our Wuhan.
• 
"It was just before midnight Thursday when protesters began dismantling and toppling the statue honoring Christopher Columbus in Civic Center Park."
• 
"One protester climbing up a statue and began spray painting its face and hands, possibly symbolizing blood, while others spray painted the words "George Floyd," "BLM" for Black Lives Matter and the communist symbol."
• 
"And they have just torn down the statue of Christopher Columbus.  The statue has been here since 1931."
• 
What does Christopher Columbus have to do with George Floyd?  Christopher Columbus was not a Minneapolis police officer, Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator who died more than 500 years ago.  Columbus probably never even heard of George Floyd.  He almost certainly didn't mistreat him personally.
• 
So, why are people attacking Columbus's statues?  Well, who knows?  You're definitely not allowed to ask.  Questions are not permitted during hysteria and epidemics.  Logic of any kind seems to dramatically increase the severity of the symptoms.
• 
A patient may appear to be recovering from hysteria, speaking in nearly complete sentences, bathing independently on occasion, but then a single direct question will send him into a tailspin.
• 
A renewed attack of slogan shouting, anarchist graffiti, hours of hostile tweeting the disease back and forth.  It's safer not to say a word.
• 
Republican senators have decided not to disturb the patients in any way, even as they rampage through America destroying our culture and history.  It's easier to give them what they want, so that's what they're doing.
• 
Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and James Lankford of Oklahoma are both Republican senators.  Wednesday, they introduced legislation to abolish Columbus Day.  They want to delete it from the National Calendar and replace it with Juneteenth.
• 
This is a big change.  Americans have celebrated Columbus Day as long as we have had a country since 1792.  Columbus Day is a celebration of the nation itself.  That's why it's a National Holiday.
• 
Juneteenth is newer.  Three weeks ago, many people had never heard of it.  Even the media seemed oblivious to its existence.
• 
But paradoxically, and this is odd, the people who are pushing Juneteenth on the country do not consider Abraham Lincoln a hero.  They're pulling down the statues along with Columbus's.
• 
Confused?  Well, that's the nature of a hysteria outbreak.  Nothing makes sense.
• 
... all the yelling about Columbus Day and Juneteenth doesn't really have much to do with Emancipation or civil rights, more likely, it's just another way to humiliate and demoralize Americans.
• 
A couple of weeks ago, Senator Mike Braun of Indiana sponsored a bill designed to punish the police.  At the very moment the country was undergoing widespread looting, arson and violence — rioting.
• 
Then Braun endorsed the radical racial separatists, BLM movement.
• 
Just the other day ... The New York Times ran a piece suggesting that we knock down George Washington statues and purge our country's founder from our collective memory.
• 
... the paper announced that we should consider closing Mount Rushmore because, of course, racism.
• 
What else will they do if we don't stop them?
      Tucker Carlson: Voters need to demand change from the GOP  (Fox 07/01/2020)
• 
Braun ran for office two years ago as a conservative, but he has not governed like one.
• 
... he sponsored legislation to make it easier for leftwing activist groups to sue and bankrupt individual police officers.
• 
SEN.  MIKE BRAUN, R-Ind.: I support that movement, because it's addressing an inequity that has not been solved, you know, from a grassroots level.
• 
It's hard to imagine that many of Mike Braun's voters agree with any of that.
• 
Black Lives Matter has said it wants to eliminate police departments, dismantle the nuclear family and install socialism in the United States.
• 
... Mike Braun explained that he was pushing leftwing legislation because he was afraid of being criticized by Chuck Schumer, if he didn't.
• 
The whole thing went like that.  It was remarkable.  Almost beyond belief really.
• 
And by the way, Mike Braun doesn't seem like a bad person.  If you live next door to him, you'd probably like him.  Braun is just weak and he doesn't really believe in anything.
• 
He is definitely not alone in that, an awful lot of Republican officeholders look very much like Mike Braun right now, probably most of them.  That's a problem.
• 
In a moment like this, it is a severe and dangerous problem.
• 
Here's why.  Republicans at all levels could lose this fall.  If they do, there will be profound consequences for you.
• 
There's never been an American political party as radical and as angry as the Democrats are now.  Imagine them with unlimited power, and that's what they plan to get.
• 
In their first year, Democrats will give voting rights to every illegal alien in this country, and then encourage many others to join them from abroad.
• 
At a minimum, that means more than 20 million new Democratic voters overnight.  No Republican will win nationally.  Again, we will have one-party rule.
• 
But Democrats don't plan to stop there.  In Congress, they will abolish the filibuster.  That means they'll be able to do whatever they want to do with just a simple majority, which they will have.
• 
They plan to pack the Senate by making the District of Columbia a state.
• 
Giving statehood to D.C.  is unconstitutional, clearly, but they're not worried about that.  They plan to pack the Supreme Court, too.  They have said so.
• 
So what will Democrats do with all of this untrammeled power?  It's pretty easy to imagine.  ... look around, you've got a pretty good idea of what's coming.
• 
The point is, and it could not be clearer, non-Democrats in America are in peril.  We're going to need someone with power willing to come to our defense.
• 
... to remind the Republican Party that it is our only shield.  Yes, the Republican Party, flawed and infuriating, though it often is.
• 
The fact remains, the G.O.P.  is the only institution still open to the rest of us, to Americans who want to live as they did just 15 years ago.
• 
Quietly, productively, without being harassed and harangued by self-righteous lunatics who mean them harm and they do.
• 
If you want to be left alone to do your job and raise your family in this country, you will need a protector.  That protector must be the Republican Party.  There are no other options, but it must be a very different kind of Republican Party.
• 
Keep in mind, we're getting a new Republican Party no matter what happens.
• 
Even now, vultures wait just off stage to swoop in and claim the G.O.P.  for themselves once Donald Trump is gone.  Former Governor Nikki Haley tops that list, but there are many others on it.
• 
The moment Trump leaves, they will attack him.  They'll tell you that Republicans lost power because they were mean and intolerant just like Donald Trump.  And if you listen carefully, you can hear them say that even now.  It's a lie.
• 
Republicans are failing for a much more obvious reason, a more fundamental reason.  They're failing because they haven't done much that is worth doing.  They haven't tried very hard to improve your life.
• 
When the crisis came, they fled.  They did nothing to defend you.  They did nothing to defend the country.
• 
We're going to have to tell them what to do, and that will work.  No matter what they may believe privately, politicians respond to organized groups of voters.  They want to win, above all, so they head to where the votes are.
• 
Going forward, Republican voters should demand three things from their candidates, and if they don't provide them, don't vote for them.  Here they are.
• 
First is vigorous defense of total equality under the law.  We are equal because we are citizens.  Every American has precisely the same rights as every other American.  Period.  That is the promise of America.  It's why millions of people move here.
• 
For a long time, we knew that; no one questioned it.  It was obvious, but it no longer is obvious and there are many who are working in the opposite direction.
• 
Republicans must counterbalance this.  They must work as hard as they can to make America fair again.  Wealth, appearance, ancestry can play no role whatsoever in the eyes of the law.
• 
It means fighting to make this a colorblind meritocracy.  A colorblind meritocracy.  Say it again.  The alternative to that is disaster.
• 
Any system that punishes people for how they were born is immoral, always.  Republicans must say that loudly.
• 
Second, Republicans must defend our freedom of speech.  We are not a free society without that.  This is not simply a debate about the First Amendment and its limits.  It's bigger than that and more important.
• 
If you can't articulate something, if you're not allowed, you can't think it.  And that's precisely why authoritarians try to control language.  They're trying to control your mind.
• 
Americans have the absolute right to tell the truth.  This is not negotiable, nor by the way is it a theoretical concern, of interest only to intellectuals.  Everything depends on it.
• 
Most of us were taught that this debate was settled conclusively during the Enlightenment hundreds of years ago and reason vanquished dogma.  But it wasn't settled.
• 
The forces of superstition remain.  They are stronger than ever.  In fact, they are growing in strength.  The Republican Party must fight them or it's not a party worth having.
• 
And finally, we must never forget that in the end, the Republican Party exists to serve the interests of normal people, ordinary people.
• 
Middle class families are the core of this country.  They are our hope for the future — our only hope — and yet both parties have shamelessly abandoned them.
• 
Middle-class families have no national spokesman.  They have no lobby in Washington.  Republicans pretend to be their champion, you know by now that they are not.
• 
How did Peter Strzok's text messages become more important than saving American jobs from foreign nationals who are taking them?  It is lunacy.
• 
Because meanwhile, as we're talking about things that don't matter, life for the dwindling American middle class has become steadily worse.
• 
Can republican officeholders change their party?  Yes, they can.  We just have to make them.  These are not by and large, evil people.
• 
Most of them are just empty, sad people, and politics is the way they fill the yawning void inside where a personal life should be — they are pleasers.  They're searching for the approval of strangers.
• 
Our job is to give them clear instructions about what we want.  ... We have to lead and when we do, they will follow.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Ordinary Americans stand up as politicians continue to cower to the rage mob  (Fox 06/30/2020)
• 
For more than a month, mobs of violent crazy people have roamed this country, terrorizing citizens and destroying things.
• 
No one has stopped them from doing that, so they've continued and they've become stronger.
• 
Politicians now cower before the mob.  Corporate America mouths their slogans.  The education cartel, enforced on your children, enforces their demands.
• 
Police officers, emasculated and restrained, watch it all from the sidelines, unable to help.
• 
Small groups of citizens are beginning to come forward to defend their laws, defend their history and their culture.
• 
Antifa does not own these things, neither does Black Lives Matter.  They have no right to destroy them.
• 
The mob is not fearsome, it's pathetic.  These are pampered children play-acting at revolution.
• 
They are cowards.  That's why they move in packs.
• 
They have no skills.  All they can do is destroy.
• 
This is not about racial justice.  It never was about racial justice.  That's obvious to the rest of us now.  The president understands it, too.
• 
Last week, he issued an Executive Order to protect our monuments from the mob.
• 
Oh but the overpaid corporate revolutionaries on cable news were outraged by that, enforcing the law?  Enforcing the law is racist, they lectured us.
• 
The governor could have announced that as long as he runs the state, no citizen will be prosecuted for exercising the most basic of all rights, the right of self-defense against the mob.
• 
But the governor didn't do that.  In fact, he did nothing.  And so, sensing they were completely undefended, the jackals descended on the McCloskeys.
• 
St.  Louis's District Attorney, a woman named Kim Gardner announced that she was considering filing criminal charges against the McCloskeys for resisting the mob.  — A mob that was threatening to murder them.
• 
Gardner vowed to "Use the full power of Missouri law" to hold the McCloskeys accountable for the crime of self-defense, not the full power to defend them against people who were threatening to kill them, but the full power to crush them for resisting.
• 
The media, meanwhile, immediately said about trying to show the McCloskeys were racists.
• 
"President Trump on Monday morning retweeted a video of a white man and woman brandishing a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun at peaceful black protesters."
• 
Almost every word a lie.  In fact, the mob was not "black," whatever that means.  And it definitely wasn't peaceful.  It was murderous.
• 
Nor did anyone explain what the McCloskey's race had to do with anything.
• 
A white man?  A white couple?  OK.  They are.  So what?  Why is that relevant?  Why is it ever relevant in a situation like this?
• 
The message to everyone else was crystal clear: The mob is in charge, their power cannot be curbed.  Don't even consider defending yourself.  Self-defense is racist.
• 
You can see exactly what's coming.  It's obvious what they're planning.  What's fascinating is the people doing this know it, too.
• 
They know the consequences of these plans, and they don't plan to live with those consequences.
• 
... the Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously to abolish their city's police department.
• 
The Minneapolis City Council isn't actually opposed to armed protection.  They're opposed to you having it.  They're opposed to the police protecting your family and your homes but they're not opposed to protecting themselves.
• 
And that's why the three Minneapolis City Councilmen ... requested and received taxpayer-funded security guards.
• 
You pay for them.  They stand outside their homes.
      The mob tearing down America's monuments is an arm of the Democratic establishment  (Fox 06/24/2020)
• 
... officials in New York announced that they are tearing down a bronze statue of Teddy Roosevelt.  That statue has stood on Central Park for 80 years.
• 
Antifa demanded its removal, so Mayor Bill de Blasio complied, and he is taking it down.
• 
Few people ever could have imagined that Teddy Roosevelt would be canceled.  Roosevelt was the most popular president in American history.  He was also a war hero, a historian, a naturalist, a rancher, a chief of police, an author, conservationist, as well as a father of six.
• 
At one point in Roosevelt's extraordinarily busy life, he was also the governor of New York.  This morning, the current governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, weighed in on his removal.
• 
New York Gov.  Andrew Cuomo: People are making a statement about equality, about community, to be against racism, against slavery.
• 
... I think it's a healthy expression of people saying, "Let's get some priorities here, and let's remember the sin and mistake that this nation made, and let's not celebrate it."
• 
Were you listening carefully to that?  In the state of New York, the governor tells us ... Destroying public property is "a healthy expression of people saying, 'Let's get some priorities here.'"
• 
Okay, so that's the standard set forth by a Democratic Party leader.  Let's think it through for a minute.
• 
... like the statues now lying smashed on the ground in parks across the country, the Governor's Mansion in Albany, N.Y.  is suffused with the spirit of white supremacy.  Its very existence as an object is an act of violence against marginalized people.  It cannot stand.
• 
Should the mob burn it down?  Would torching the racist Governor's Mansion amount to a "healthy expression of people saying let's get some priorities here." What do you think?
• 
Andrew Cuomo lives in the Governor's Mansion.  You get within 20 feet of that building, and he'll have one of his goons shoot you to death.
• 
Andrew Cuomo is all for destroying things, just not his own things.  And by the way, hands off New York's a little latest monument, the Mario Cuomo Bridge, formerly the Tappan Zee, which Andrew named after his father.  That's off-limits, too.
• 
Okay, so what exactly is "a healthy expression of moral priorities" in a moment like this?  Keep in mind, this is a big country and not everyone has the same priorities.
• 
... can you spray paint obscenities on Martin Luther King's monuments if you don't like him?  How healthy would that be?  These are theoretical questions.
• 
America has two standards of justice.  When they do it to you, it is social justice.  If you dare to defend yourself, it's a hate crime.
• 
Consider what we've seen recently.  How many stores and parks and statues and public buildings have been destroyed recently by rioters?  How many churches and memorials and monuments to our fallen soldiers have been desecrated by them?  Too many to count.
• 
Now ask yourself, how many people have been held accountable for these crimes?  Some?  A few?  No — hardly any.
• 
Politicians applauded this destruction.  Law enforcement has ignored it.  Why is that exactly?
• 
Rioting is a federal crime; so is arson.  So far, two people have been arrested and charged in the burning of the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis.  Two.
• 
Video footage, which is everywhere — you've seen it — shows clearly that scores of people were involved.  Authorities could identify them and charge all of them.
• 
We might have fewer riots if they did that.  But no, the Justice Department isn't interested in doing that.  What are they interested in?
• 
Well, let's see.  Recently, a NASCAR driver called Bubba Wallace claimed that someone left a noose in his garage in Alabama.  The media reacted as if a war had broken out — wall-to-wall coverage.  They made it precisely clear who the enemy was.
• 
And of course, countless syrupy segments on the dopey morning shows framing the whole thing as a milestone in the march toward civil rights.
• 
"These scenes of unity coming just 24 hours after a noose was found in Wallace's team garage stall, an area restricted to only essential personnel.  NASCAR and the FBI are now investigating."
• 
Unfortunately, no one covering this story ever bothered to ask the obvious questions.  Where, exactly, was this noose — the actual noose Bubba Wallace kept talking about?  No picture of it ever surfaced.
• 
And by the way, haven't we heard this story somewhere before?  Like repeatedly?
• 
Between 2015 and 2018, there were six high profile so-called hate crimes involving nooses, all of them are promoted heavily by the media.  Every one of them turned out to be a hoax, every single one of them.  And that's not even counting Jussie Smollett.
• 
The odds that this news hate crime was real were always very small.  It's just not a very racist country, actually, in the end.  Most of us know that.
• 
But you'd never know it from listening to the authorities.  The U.S.  attorney suggested federal charges would be brought — brought against whom?  That was never clear.
• 
Meanwhile, the FBI swooped in by the vanload.  The Bureau sent at least 15 agents to investigate this provocation against a millionaire racecar driver — 15 agents — at a time when mobs were roaming the country completely unchallenged by law enforcement, burning things, assaulting people.
• 
In the end, as you may have heard, it was needless to say, yet another news hoax.  There was no hate crime in Bubba Wallace's garage.  What does it tell you, that the FBI and federal prosecutors fell for this hoax so completely?  Well, it tells you everything.
• 
At the very moment Bubba Wallace was doing his star turn as America's latest victim of injustice, lecturing his fans about the racism, being backed up completely by the morons who run NASCAR, a mob of violent lunatics was ripping down a statue of American patriot, Francis Scott Key, in San Francisco.
• 
On Key's empty pedestal, they spray painted these words, which effectively are their slogan: "Kill the colonizers.  Kill whitey."
• 
In other words, murder Americans for the color of their skin.
• 
Now, you can argue about whether hate crimes ought to exist as a category in American law, and that's an argument worth having.
• 
But as long as they do exist, that would seem to qualify as one and that the FBI did not swoop in with 15 agents to investigate.
• 
It's not clear if anyone ever investigated because no one in power cared.  If anything, they agreed.
• 
And that's the point.  The mob does not operate independently from the Democratic establishment.  The mob is an arm of the Democratic establishment.
• 
In the city of Philadelphia, both the mayor and Larry Krasner, the district attorney we've told you about repeatedly, cheered as mobs set fire and destroyed public property there.
• 
But when a group of working-class Philadelphians tried to protect the statue of Christopher Columbus from being destroyed, Krasner threatened to prosecute them.
• 
Democratic politicians don't fear the mob.  Notice that?  Why?  Because they don't need to.
• 
They control the mob.  The mob operates with their permission.  These are their foot soldiers.  This is their militia.
• 
Federal law enforcement is entirely on their side.  That's why there have been so few prosecutions of rioting and so much FBI attention to Bubba Wallace's fake hate crime.
• 
Career bureaucrats in the federal agencies support the Democratic Party.  That means they support the mob as well.  It's their militia, too.
• 
Ask yourself, who is being targeted for destruction right now?  Anyone who is not on board with their program.
• 
"We've known for 50 years that much of the poison in our society emanates from the universities.  But we've done nothing whatsoever to fix that.  We've continued to fund them.  No matter what they charge, we keep sending our children there."
• 
"We've known for more than three years that the federal government's intelligence and law enforcement agencies are dangerously corrupt."
• 
"There has been no meaningful reform of the CIA or the FBI or any of the other terrifyingly powerful agencies that operate independently from our democracy and on the side of the Democratic Party."
• 
"We know all this.  We still pretend they're legitimate.  We dutifully send in our taxes every quarter to pay their salaries."
• 
"If there's any good to come out of this moment, and we hope there is, it's that we can no longer lie to ourselves about what is happening.  Our institutions are not serving all of us equally.  Some are actively trying to hurt us.  When this is over, we need to do something about that, this time for real."
• 
Our institutions are not serving all of us equally.  Some are actively trying to hurt us.  When this is over, we need to do something about that — this time for real.
      Tucker Carlson: The real reason mobs across the country are tearing down American monuments  (Fox 06/23/2020)
• 
This is happening all over the country as you know and there's a reason for it.
• 
... city officials announced their plan to remove the statue of Teddy Roosevelt from outside New York's Museum of Natural History.
• 
The bronze statue has stood there in the Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda facing Central Park since before the Second World War.  Soon it will be gone.
• 
Roosevelt's virtues mirrored the values of America.  He was physically brave.  He was profoundly literate, highly self-disciplined and amazingly energetic.  While still a college student, Roosevelt wrote a two-volume history of the War of 1812 that is still in print today.  You can buy it on Amazon.
• 
He was the youngest president in our history.  He saved our economy from corporate monopolies.  And by doing that, he made the American middle class possible.
• 
He created the national parks.  He created the Panama Canal, the Food and Drug Administration, and then he kept going.
• 
The list of Teddy Roosevelt's achievements fills entire shelves of biographies.  Those are in addition to the more than 40 books he wrote himself on topics ranging from Oliver Cromwell to cattle ranching to social justice.
• 
Personally, Roosevelt was a famously decent man.  In 1901, he invited his friend Booker T.  Washington to dinner.  No African-American had ever eaten in the White House.  Democrats roared with rage at the idea.
• 
For the crime of having a meal with a black man, they attacked Teddy Roosevelt and his wife for the rest of their lives.  But Roosevelt never bowed.  He gave the finger to the mob, and he continued cheerfully on.
• 
Teddy Roosevelt was a hero to millions of Americans.  He still is.  That's precisely why they are tearing down his statue.
• 
They know that if they can force you to watch as they topple your heroes, they have won.  There's nothing they can't do next.
• 
They can decide how you raise your children, how you vote, what you're allowed to believe.
• 
Once they've humiliated you, they can control you and that's why across the country, mobs are tearing down America's monuments.
• 
In the cities of Richmond and St.  Paul, Minn., they've torn down statues of Christopher Columbus.  They did the same thing in Boston.  Boston's mayor now says it's time to remove a statue of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed the slaves.  It's racist.
• 
In Dallas, they pulled the Texas Ranger statue out of the airport after more than 50 years.  In Dearborn, Mich., they toppled the statue of the former mayor.  They did the same thing in Philadelphia.
• 
In Oregon, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were torn down.  In San Francisco, the mob demolished statues of Ulysses S.  Grant, Junipero Serra, and Francis Scott Key.
• 
On the pedestal of the Key monument, they spray-painted, "Kill the colonizers" and "Kill whitey," just in case you missed the point.
• 
One thing all of these Americans, now canceled, have in common: Not one of them fought for the Confederacy.
• 
Democrats understand that very well, and they support all of it.  In every place where the mob has destroyed public monuments, Democratic leaders have backed them as they did it.
• 
But at the same time — and you should know this — so have many Republicans.
• 
Last week a mob in downtown Washington, D.C.  decided to tear down a statue of a man called Albert Pike.  Pike was famous as a journalist and a poet and later as a prominent Freemason.
• 
At least one prominent conservative tweeted his approval of this.  Republicans in Congress said nothing at all, and they could have.
• 
Elected Republicans, almost all of them, are in no hurry to stop the disorder.  They appear to believe what we're watching is a version of the Rodney King riots from 1992.  People saw an upsetting video on the internet, they're angry, and that's understandable.  But they'll calm down soon, and we can get back to cutting capital gains taxes and sanctioning Bashar al- Assad.  That's their view of it.
• 
They are wrong.  This is not a momentary civil disturbance.  This is a serious and highly organized political movement.
• 
It is not superficial.  It is deep and profound.  It has vast ambitions.  It is insidious; it will grow.
• 
Its goal is to end liberal democracy and challenge Western civilization itself.
• 
This is an ideological movement.  The ideas that fuel it have incubated for decades on college campuses.  We paid for all of it, by the way.
• 
The rest of us were so thrilled that our kids got into Duke that we decided to ignore what Duke was actually teaching them and are continuing to send big checks.  That was a mistake.  It was one of the greatest mistakes we've ever made.
• 
We didn't appreciate the stakes involved at the time and as a result of that, we became easy marks for their lies.
• 
Even now, so many of us continue to pretend that this is about police brutalities, about the death of a man called George Floyd in Minneapolis.
• 
We still imagine we can fix it by regulating chokeholds or spending more on de-escalation training.  We are too literal.
• 
We're too good-hearted to understand what's really happening.  Our decency is the mob's main weapon against us.  We have no idea who we're up against.
• 
In every society, there are those who seek to destroy.  ... Inflicting pain makes them feel powerful.
• 
We used to call people like that anti-social forces.  They still exist.  We just pretend they don't.  Or worse, we excuse their behavior.  We coddle them.  We fund them.
• 
The rest of us just look on confused.  We don't really know what's happening, but the destroyers know.  They know exactly what's going on.
• 
Never in American history have they been more emboldened than they are now.
• 
... an activist called Shaun King issued the following demand on Twitter: "All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus and his European mother and their white friends should also come down.  They are a gross form of white supremacy created as tools of oppression, racist propaganda.  They should all come down."
• 
Before you dismiss that idea as absurd, the rantings of some crank on social media, keep in mind that Shaun King is the most famous Black Lives Matter leader in this country.  Black Lives Matter is now more popular than either major political party.
• 
So, don't be surprised when they come for your church.  Why wouldn't they?  No one is stopping them.
• 
The forces of destruction have grand ambitions.  It's not just about the Teddy Roosevelt statue.  They plan to rule this country.  What will happen if they do?
• 
Antifa doesn't own the statues in your city's parks; it doesn't own your city.  You do.  You help pay for it.
• 
But what would happen if you tried to defend public property or even if you tried to defend your own property?
• 
You know the answer.  You'd be swarmed by federal agents, you'd be Roger Stoned with the help and complicity of CNN and NPR and so many others.
• 
You'd be the criminal.  There's no question.  You've seen this happen before.
• 
Meanwhile, actual hate crimes — brutal crimes in which Americans are gravely injured — are ignored completely.  They take place on our streets with shocking regularity.  The media don't cover them.  They often go unpunished entirely.
• 
That's the aim of this movement, of these riots — to overthrow the value, the principle of equality under the law.
• 
Can we convince millions of people to believe something that's completely absurd?  Yes, we can.  That's what they learned.  That's the lesson.  They'll do it again.
• 
A few foolish souls will attempt to point out the obvious, what's true.  Of course, there are racists here, as there are everywhere.  But overall, this is the least racist country in the history of the world.  Millions of Africans want to move here.  Many already have.  Our last president was black.  What are you talking about?
• 
Those people will be silenced.  Anyone who defies the narrative will be silenced.  By that point, the category of hate speech will have expanded to include anything they don't want to hear and will be criminalized, a federal offense.  You watch.  If they can tear down a Lincoln statue because it's racist, they can ban the First Amendment.  You don't want to live in a place like that.
• 
Who can save us from that?  Well, as of right now, only Republicans can save us from that.  Not because they are inherently virtuous, not because they want to — they don't — but because they're the opposition party to the extent they still have opposition to anything.  We have no choice but to ask for their help.  The Republican Party is the only power center-left in this country available to people who dissent.
• 
It doesn't matter who you voted for last time.  This is not an endorsement of anyone's policies.  It's an acknowledgment of who holds power and who doesn't.
• 
... asked the president why he hasn't sent federal troops to stop the chaos in cities like Seattle.
• 
Here's what the president answered: "Right now, I think it's great sitting back and watching this catastrophe."
• 
We understand the point he was making.  These are liberal cities, and they're destroying themselves.  Their policies don't work.  This is what you get when you vote for liberals.
• 
But it's still the wrong answer.  A president is responsible for all Americans, no matter where they live — for the country itself.
• 
We need help, and we need it right now.  These are not protests.  This is a totalitarian political movement, and someone needs to save the country from it.
      No one attempted to stop Democratic power grab, Republicans have let down millions  (Fox 06/20/2020)
• 
You can be forgiven if the events of the last month caught you by surprise.  You didn't expect them.  You'd become used to dismissing the American left out of hand as a joke, because they are.
• 
And yet suddenly, out of nowhere, they roared back and took over the country.  They did it in less time than it takes most people to go on spring vacation.  What happened?  How did they do that?
• 
Well, it's simple.  Nobody stopped them.  There was no opposition to their power grab.  The other side surrendered on Day One without a fight.
• 
The rest of us watched all of this with our jaws hanging open in shock.  It was the opposite of what we expected.
• 
Millions of people regularly vote for the Republican Party precisely because they would like someone to protect this country from the crazed ideologues who seek to destroy it.  There are many of them, you're watching them on television now.
• 
There's not really another reason to vote for Republicans unless you happen to be one of those rare people who wants more pointless foreign wars and enjoys sucking up to banks.  Most people don't.
• 
You vote for Republicans to protect you from this.  But when the moment of crisis came, Republicans ran away.
• 
Major American cities were looted and burned on television.  Citizens were beaten and murdered.
• 
Works of public art were destroyed by the score.  America's history – those shared experiences that bind us together as a nation – was plundered and completely rewritten by illiterate vandals.
• 
Everywhere as they watched, Americans were afraid.  Afraid not simply for their safety, but afraid for their jobs, their reputations, afraid for their families.
• 
Many Americans were fired abruptly in the middle of a severe recession – doomed to ruin – for nothing.  For saying the wrong thing, looking the wrong way, liking the wrong tweet.
• 
Some of the accused were so terrified, they denounced their own families – wife, brother, daughter – in the end, they were destroyed anyway.  Because that's what happens in purges.  You're destroyed anyway.
• 
Most Americans assumed they would never live to see a moment like this, but they have, it's still going on.
• 
And the question that hangs in the air is: Where are our protectors?
• 
At the height of the riots, the president of the Heritage Foundation – that's the nation's single largest conservative think tank...  wrote an op-ed accusing America of being irredeemably racist.
• 
Her name is Kay Coles James.  You probably have sent her money.  As America burned, Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, piled on.  And she wasn't alone in that.  So many on the right did exactly the same thing.
• 
Meanwhile, they did nothing, they didn't lift a finger to help the people they had promised – they had pledged – to protect, their voters and their donors.
• 
Instead, they did everything possible to accommodate the demands of the people tormenting them – the rioters and the people who backed the rioters.
• 
Congressional Republicans decided to make reining in law enforcement their top legislative priority.  They blamed the cops, they didn't blame the rioters, they blamed the cops.
• 
Then Republicans bragged about springing more criminals from jail.  The last thing we needed.
• 
Meanwhile, almost everywhere, ordinary Americans came under attack for the color of their skin – acts of actual racism, where people were being hurt for their race, something they can't control, something they were born with – and yet no Republicans rose to defend them.
• 
Republicans refused even to defend the principle of equality under the law, the foundation of this country, the most important thing we have.  Not defended.
• 
Really, in the end, the only people who gained anything in the revolution were the ones waging it.
• 
Our leaders – very much including our Republican leaders – shamefully, were focused on meeting their demands.
• 
The message, unfortunately, could not be clearer: voting is for fools.  You vote, you put these people into office with your votes, and in return they patronize you.
• 
And when it matters, they abandon you.  They have contempt for you.  You know they do, you can smell it.  It's obvious.
• 
Voting doesn't work.  But when your riot, and you burn things and you hurt people, you get a very different response.
• 
When you do those things our leaders snap to attention.  They tiptoe around your feelings, as Republicans are.  They give you what you want, as Republicans are.  Rioting works.  That's the message they're sending.
• 
Think about that.  It's the most dangerous possible message you can send because it guarantees more violence.
• 
We thought Republicans understood that.  That's why we supported them.
• 
But this crisis has revealed the truth.  Now we know who they are.
• 
It could not be clearer and now it's time to find new leaders.
      The Rayshard Brooks case is more than a fatal shooting but about whether mob justice rules  (Fox 06/18/2020)
• 
... charged former Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe with murder in addition to 10 other criminal charges.  If convicted, Rolfe faces execution.
• 
Last Friday, Rayshard Brooks passed out drunk in the drive-thru lane of a Wendy's in Atlanta.  Brooks's car was blocking traffic, so restaurant employees called the police.  They arrived — Rolfe and his partner.
• 
They woke Brooks and they asked him if he had been drinking.  Brooks admitted that he had had been.  Officers then move forward with a textbook DUI arrest.  Nothing unusual.
• 
But when they tried to take Brooks into custody, Brooks started swinging.  He fought the officers to the ground and then snatched a Taser from one of them and tried to use it against Officer Rolfe.
• 
When Brooks raised the Taser to fire, Rolfe shot and killed him.
• 
After the shooting, Officer Rolfe tried to keep Rayshard Brooks alive.  He performed CPR on the man he just shot.  "Mr.  Brooks, keep breathing." Rolfe said.  "Keep breathing for me."
• 
No matter how much you look at these videos of the incident between Rayshard Brooks and the officers, or how closely, it's a tragedy every time.  A father of three girls is dead.
• 
The question is, was it murder?  Ask yourself how do you think you would do, regardless of what color you are.  If you snatched a cop's Taser and tried to shoot him with it, most likely you'd be dead.
• 
No one would march in your memory.  No one would burn a building in your name.  No one would consider your death controversial, much less a racial act.  That's what happens when you attack police officers with their own weapons.  Everyone knows that.
• 
But in this case, things are very different.  Officer Rolfe is facing the death penalty.  He has been charged by a DA who is under enormous political pressure to prosecute.  The mob wants vengeance now.  They've expressed that by burning the Wendy's where Rayshard Brooks died to the ground.
• 
Howard is facing a runoff election soon.  He is also being investigated for sexual harassment and for stealing money from a nonprofit.  So, Paul Howard has every reason to change the subject and to bow immediately to the mob's demands and that's what he is doing.
• 
Just two weeks ago, this very same prosecutor, the one you just saw, Paul Howard, noted at a press conference, "A Taser is considered a deadly weapon under Georgia law."
• 
We know what's coming next.  Guaranteed.  They're going to tell us this was a racially motivated killing And maybe they can prove that it was — we're always open-minded.
• 
In the absence of evidence, Paul Howard should not say things like this at press conferences.  It makes people hate each other.  It tears the country apart, which is the last thing we need right now.
• 
Atlanta's police department is 58 percent black.  That's a higher percentage of black people than the city of Atlanta itself.  So explain how systemic racism is responsible for the shooting — and speak slowly so we can understand.
• 
Who would want to enforce the law in a political environment like this?  You make less than a plumber.  Everybody hates you.  You could very easily get killed.  You try to defend yourself, and they charge you with murder.  No way.  No normal person would want that job.
• 
So, who is going to take the job?  Going forward, we are going to get a lot of very bad people becoming police officers.  And that's one of the many things ironies here.
• 
Pressure from the mob will not stop police brutality.  It will almost certainly increase police brutality as the worst kind of people become police.  Because who else would want it?
• 
Protecting the public from criminals is not some feature of government we hope for.  It's why we have government.  It's the whole point of government.  There is no reason to have government otherwise.  It's the reason we pay taxes.
• 
It's about whether we're going to have a justice system that treats all American citizens equally, regardless of what the mob demands.
• 
It's about whether we can live peacefully in our own homes with our families without fear, confident that we are protected by the government that we pay for.
• 
If the government will not protect us, we should stop paying for it, and that might finally get their attention.
      Tucker Carlson: Don’t destroy America’s history and shared heritage  (Fox 06/13/2020)
• 
On Wednesday, Sen.  Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., added language to the annual defense funding bill.  Warren's amendment would order the Pentagon to rename all military bases currently named for Confederate Civil War generals.
• 
The bases include many of the most famous in America.  Among them: Fort Benning in Georgia, Fort Hood in Texas and Fort Bragg in North Carolina.  Many of the men who fought and won World War II were trained at these bases.
• 
But Warren's amendment goes farther than that.  Warren would require the desecration of war graves.  This country is filled with national cemeteries that honor Americans who fought and died in our wars.  Many of those cemeteries hold Civil War soldiers from both sides and contain monuments to their sacrifice.
• 
Those Civil War soldiers, blue and gray, are buried alongside one another for a reason.  One side was right, one side was wrong.  But when it was over, they were all Americans.  Allowing them to lie in the same cemeteries allowed this country to heal its deepest fissure.
• 
Warren profits from hatred and division, no matter how mindless.  How many dead Confederate soldiers owned slaves or even supported slavery?  Warren doesn't know.  She doesn't care.
• 
The Massachusetts Democrat wants to humiliate these soldiers more than 150 years after they died, and humiliate their descendants now.
• 
In Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, there is a memorial to Confederate troops.  Warren's amendment orders the Army to destroy it.
• 
This is vandalism.  But it's worse than that.  Healthy societies do not destroy own their history.
• 
A country is the sum total of its history, good and bad.  Without it, you have no country, just a collection of banks and retail outlets.
• 
This is obvious, but somehow it's not obvious to Senate Republicans.  They support Warren's amendment.  It easily emerged from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee.  If President Trump doesn't veto it, Warren's desecration order will become law.
• 
Republicans assume that if that happens, it will be enough.  The destroyers will be placated, and the GOP can return to its preferred agenda of carrying water for finance.  They're wrong.
• 
Extremists are never placated.  Each success makes them stronger and more radical.
• 
That's why, around the country, they aren't waiting for a vote.  They watched rioters loot and burn without being punished.  They took the cue.  Now, they're destroying history around the country.
• 
In Richmond, they ripped a statue of Christopher Columbus from its pedestal and threw it in a lake.
• 
In Philadelphia, they vandalized a statue of industrialist Matthias Baldwin.  Why?  It wasn't for civil rights.  Matthias Baldwin was such a zealous abolitionist that, prior to the Civil War, Southern railroads refused to purchase his engines.
• 
Doesn't matter.  The Baldwin statue was old.  So they wrecked it.  Dozens of other monuments have suffered the same fate, often with the encouragement of our professional class.
• 
Erin Thompson is a professor of "art crime" at New York City's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.  Her expertise is "the damage done to humanity's shared heritage through looting, theft, and the deliberate destruction of art."
• 
Yet Thompson is, in fact, an enthusiastic supporter of destroying our shared heritage.  "Use chain instead of rope and it'll go faster," she instructed on Twitter Wednesday night, before sharing even more tips for effectively destroying statues.
• 
Nowhere does anyone in authority seem interested in protecting our history and public spaces from nihilists like this.
• 
What are our leaders telling us by their negligence?  It's a clear message: we don't care about you: your history, your monuments, your rights, your safety.  Meanwhile, forces of hate and repression seek to destroy all of these things.
• 
How many lives will be saved by destroying the Jefferson Memorial?  How many are saved by desecrating war graves?  None, of course.  This is about political power, achieved by the oldest means of all: force.
• 
This is an attempt to delegitimize you and the society you live in.
• 
You think you live in a country with freedom of speech, freedom of religion, equality under the law?  Well, tough luck.
• 
The documents celebrating those rights were written by bigots.  We tore their statues down.  Now we're in charge.
• 
Even now, only 32 percent of Americans want Civil War statuary torn down.  How about desecrating war graves?  There isn't polling on the subject, but it's hard to believe there is a groundswell of support.
• 
All this is happening because a violent mob is forcing its agenda down the throat of the country.  Our leaders – very much including Republican leaders – are too cowardly to resist them.
• 
When asked about the bill to desecrate national cemeteries, one congressional Republican told journalist Ryan Girdusky that "this isn't the hill to die on."
• 
OK.  Where is that hill exactly?  What won't you let them do to the country?  Let us know when you find it.
• 
To be clear: This isn't a matter of defending the Southern Confederacy.  Few Americans would do that.
• 
But that's the point.  The Civil War was the turning point in American history.  It shaped who we are now.
• 
Eliminating the past leaves us unable to say who we are.  And that, of course, is exactly the point.  It's why they're doing it.
• 
See related P.C. (Glenn McCoy, 08/15/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      World welcomes its newest country — The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone once known as Seattle  (Fox 06/12/2020)
• 
Vandals are defacing our country.  They're destroying our cities, our institutions, our civil society.
• 
They have no right to do any of that.  They don't own this country.  They did not build it.  The rest of us should not allow them to wreck it, but we are allowing them and it's infuriating to watch.
• 
The last thing American needs right now is more anger, yet another red face screamer shouting about this or that.
• 
We're also going to work to be calm and amused because, honestly, what's the option right now?
• 
Keep your sense of humor.  That's what they tell you when things get really dark.  And it's good advice.
• 
Humor brings perspective.  All of us could use some perspective right now.
• 
Ladies and gentlemen say hello to the latest addition to the global family of nations: the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone formerly known as downtown Seattle.
• 
You should know that there are no beaches in CHAZ.  This is a tiny nation.  It's smaller than Liechtenstein.
• 
The entire country extends only six city blocks.  It was built on land that was formerly owned in part by the Seattle Police Department.  But the founders of CHAZ wanted that land.  So, they planted a flag and they stole it, just like the Conquistadores.
• 
The first thing they did after they declared nationhood and this was a bit of a surprise given that these modern Conquistadores claim to be progressive ideologues.
• 
But the first thing they did was establish rigid national borders.  They built a wall around the place just like Donald Trump once said he would do.
• 
Their wall is made from wooden barricades.  A sign at the entrance to the country warns, "You are now leaving the USA."
• 
And then there are armed border guards, not technically ICE agents but close enough — who question everyone seeking entry.
• 
Countries have borders and the founders of CHAZ understood that.  They don't want the place flooded with illegals, and by illegals, we mean the citizens of Seattle.
• 
That's pretty smart.  You can't let just anyone into your country, an uncontrolled flood of immigrants would tank the economy and the people of CHAZ know that.
• 
They're not libertarians.  They don't work for the Chamber of Commerce.  They're not giving you some speech about how immigration makes you richer.
• 
They want to make this work for the sake of their people and they don't have much to work with.  What exactly is the economy of CHAZ?  It's tough.
• 
With limited natural resources and a population with virtually no skills of any kind, apart from spray painting the F-word on public buildings, they lead the world in that, the people of CHAZ don't have a lot of options for economic development.
• 
So, they've gone with extortion through violence, again, just like the Conquistadores.  It's a time tested formula and it's lucrative.
• 
It's a country based on an idea rather than particular people.  The founding idea in CHAZ, its Magna Carta, its Constitution, its raison d'etre is that cops are bad.  Very, very bad.  The police are bad and should be abolished.
• 
So not surprisingly, CHAZ has banned police from its territory.  The shining city of Seattle seems OK with that decision.
• 
I mean, does the government of Italy dictate local policies within the Vatican City?  No, of course not.  It's autonomous.  Same thing here.
• 
What's amazing, though, is that the leaders of CHAZ would like to dictate policies in the City of Seattle and so they're demanding that Seattle get rid of its police force and close all jails and prisons.
• 
... as the Seattle Police Chief Carmen Best explained, the country already has recognition from the Seattle City government.
• 
... CHAZ is a nation without leaders.  It's a flat system.  It's anarchy.
• 
How long can that continue?  Probably not very long.  Anarchy isn't built to last.  In the end, the strong always dominate.
• 
In one clip, the monarch's men assault a citizen of CHAZ for spray painting graffiti inside the zone.
• 
Just like the mafia, CHAZ doesn't put up with nonsense like that in their own neighborhood.
• 
So that's what's happening in Seattle on Thursday night.  Not a big deal.  A brand new nation within our own borders.
• 
... the last time that happened it did kick off a Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and lasted three years.
• 
But it's not a huge deal and that may be why Democrats in Congress seemed completely unaware that it's happening.
• 
The president noticed though.  On Wednesday night, he tweeted this: "Take back your city now, if you don't do it, I will.  This is not a game.  These ugly anarchists must be stopped immediately.  Move fast."
• 
The mayor of Seattle replied this way, simply saying, "Make us all safe.  Go back to your bunker." A clever social media wordsmith.
• 
The media haven't paid a lot of attention to CHAZ either.  They are excited by anything that's new, but not this new country.  It's kind of weird because just a month ago, they were very against demonstrators.  The anti- lockdown demonstrators in Michigan for example were dangerous zealots.
• 
If you protest lockdowns in Michigan with guns, but don't commit any violence at all, it is a threat to the nation.
• 
But if you commit beatings and loot and burn down buildings you are, quote, "mostly peaceful." If you create an armed independent nation in downtown Seattle, it's amazing.
• 
"The New York Times" published a piece that described the nation of CHAZ as, quote, "A homeland for racial justice."
• 
By the way, how many of the people writing this stuff would go spend a week in CHAZ with their families?
      Tucker Carlson: We were lied to about coronavirus and the mass lockdowns.  Here's the proof  (Fox 06/11/2020)
• 
Millions of Americans remain subjected to unprecedented restrictions on their personal lives, their daily lives, their family's lives.
• 
As a result of this, tens of millions of people are now unemployed.  A huge number of them have no prospects of working again.  Many thousands of small businesses are closed and will never reopen.
• 
Some Americans will die of cancer because they couldn't get cancer screenings, some unknown number have taken their own lives in despair.
• 
Others have flooded the streets to riot because bottled up rage and frustration take many forms.
• 
The cost of shutting down the United States and denying our citizens desperately needed contact with one another is hard to calculate.  But the cost has been staggering.
• 
We had no choice.  We did the right thing.  That's what they're telling us.  Is it true?
• 
The answer to that question matters, not just because the truth always matters, but because the credibility of our leaders is at stake here.  This is the biggest decision they have made in our lifetimes.  They were able to make it.  They rule because we let them.  Their power comes from us.
• 
So the question, now and always is, are they worthy of that power?  That's not a conversation they want to have.  And right now, they don't have to have that conversation because all of us are distracted and mesmerized by the woke revolution underway outside.
• 
As a matter of public health, we can say conclusively the lockdowns were not necessary.  ... States that never locked down at all — states where people were allowed to live like Americans and not cower indoors alone — in the end turned out no worse than states that had mandatory quarantines.  The state you probably live in.
• 
They're not making arguments, they're issuing decrees.  They think they can.  They no longer believe they need your consent to make big decisions to run the country.  Once the authority stops trying to change your mind, even by deceit, it means they've decided to use force — and they have.
• 
During the lockdowns, people whose loved ones died were not allowed to have funerals for them.  Think about that.  It's hard to think of anything crueler, but it happened to a lot of people.  They claimed it was necessary.
• 
It was not necessary.  And we know that because now that a man has died whose death is politically useful to the Democratic Party, the authorities have given him three funerals and not a word about a health risk.
• 
Nonessential businesses are allowed just 15 percent capacity.  The effect of that is economic disaster.  Most small businesses run on very small margins.  They can't survive for long, and in fact, many have failed.
• 
What should they do?  They should join Antifa, obviously, because in King County, Wash., Antifa can do whatever Antifa wants to do.  They have taken over an entire six-block section of downtown Seattle, and that's fine with health authorities.  There is no social distancing required.  They're essential.
• 
Are you getting the picture?  Is it adding up to a message?  Yes, the message is we were played.  We were all played.
• 
Corrupt politicians scared us into giving up control over the most basic questions in our lives.  At the same time, they gave more power to their obedient followers, like Antifa, while keeping the rest of us trapped at home and censored online.
• 
In other words, they used a public health emergency to subvert democracy and install themselves as monarchs.  How were they able to do this?  The sad truth is, they did it because we let them do it.  We believed them, therefore, we obeyed them.
• 
If there's anything good to come out of this disaster, it's that none of us will ever make that mistake again.
      Tucker Carlson: Defund the police movement distracts from the left's policy failures with the poorest Americans  (Fox 06/10/2020)
• 
As we've been telling you — not that you need to be told because it's so obvious — this is a dark moment in the history of the country.
• 
People will attack you if you dare to tell the truth.  They'll denounce you.  They'll target your family.  They'll try to turn your friends against you and deny you the ability to earn a living.
• 
In the face of that — and we've said this repeatedly because it's true, nothing is truer — you cannot give in.
• 
Even if you do what the mob tells you to do, you will not be spared.  The people on Twitter are predators.  Predators are incited by weakness.  They exploit it.  The only solution in the face of something like this is to tell the truth unapologetically.
• 
... right now, the chief demand of the Black Lives Matter movement is to get rid of the police — defund them or abolish them entirely.  Police, not criminals, they say, are the greatest threat to the well-being of African-Americans — and that is a lie.
• 
The number of unarmed African-Americans shot and killed by police officers in all of 2019 was 10.  The number of African-Americans murdered in all other ways exceeded 7,000.  So, if all police vanished from America's streets, that number will almost certainly get much, much higher.
• 
A Princeton University paper from 2018 estimated that for every 10 police officers added in this country, roughly one murder is prevented.  And that, of course, makes sense.  Why wouldn't that be true?
• 
Robbery and other crimes went down as well, and that's not a small thing.  This isn't because there were more arrests either.  The sheer deterrence of more cops on the street kept people safer without sending more criminals to prison.
• 
On May 31 in Chicago, the police force was completely overwhelmed trying to handle protests, rioting and looting all over the city.  In the city's most vulnerable neighborhoods, the poorest neighborhoods, law enforcement just evaporated.
• 
A local pastor described what he saw: "I heard people saying all over, 'Hey, there's no police anywhere.' Police ain't doing nothing.  I sat and watched a store looted for over an hour.  No police came."
• 
So, for the people of Chicago — not the ones pretending to speak for them on social media or their hapless mayor — but the people who actually live there and don't have power, the police leaving was a disaster, and they were desperate for the police to return.
• 
On Sunday, May 31st of this year, the city of Chicago had 65,000 calls to 911.  That's 50,000 more than the usual total.
• 
With police gone from Chicago's poorest neighborhoods, the city had its deadliest day in at least 60 years.  — maybe the deadliest day ever By midnight that night, 18 people in Chicago had been murdered.
• 
That's five more than the all-time record and eight more than the total of unarmed African-Americans shot dead by police last year — in one day.
• 
Should police officers who break the law be arrested and punished?  Of course.  Find a person in America who disagrees with that.  There aren't any.
• 
The point is bad police — needless to say, there are some — but they are not the primary problem in American cities or in the African-American community.
• 
They are a distraction from the real problems.  And the real problems are the destructive effects that bad policies have had and will have on the poorest Americans.
• 
At this moment, 65 percent of African-American children are growing up in single-parent homes.  That's double the number from 50 years ago.  You don't have to be an Evangelical or any kind of moralizer to think that's a disaster because it is.
• 
... all of it shows that having two married parents in the home does more to improve a child's odds of success than any social program ever invented.  That's just empirically true.
• 
Kids with two parents are almost twice as likely to finish high school, half is likely to go to prison.  We know this.  And yet instead of encouraging healthy, intact families, the left ignores the question or actively abets the destruction of families and instead promotes abortion like that's an answer.
• 
Thanks to coronavirus lockdowns, the black unemployment rate has exploded to almost 17 percent.  Is that a concern?  It should be.  Just when people are allowed to go to work, Democrats allow their neighborhoods to burn down, to placate university-trained extremists and rich liberals in the suburbs who dominate Twitter and The Washington Post.
• 
A factory in Minneapolis has already announced that it plans to move its 50 jobs to a different city.  That's their response to the riot — not empowerment, unemployment.  How many other businesses will do the same?  How many simply won't open again?  A lot.
• 
So what's the left's big idea for saving our cities and turning things around?  Oh, flooding black neighborhoods with drugs.  That's the answer.  Last year, congressional Democrats introduced legislation to support taxpayer-funded economically disadvantaged individuals looking to sell weed in their neighborhoods.  Yes, more drug dealers.
• 
That's what's going on right now in countless cities — failing schools, drugs, debt.  And that's why the mob censors criticism.  That's why the Democratic Party hates free speech.
• 
No political party ever needed to use fear and intimidation to hide their successes.  Of course, they're hiding their failures.
• 
They don't want to debate because they can't win the debate.  Instead, what they want is you to shut up and hand them power.
• 
They want to shift the blame for problems they created onto police — the police being the one urban institution that over the past 30 years has actually achieved something.
• 
And actually, it's the one institution the left doesn't already control.
      Black Lives Matter is now a powerful political party and has nothing to do with black lives  (Fox 06/09/2020)
• 
America went insane over the weekend.  That's barely an overstatement.
• 
This was without precedent in the modern era.  A small group of highly aggressive emotionally charged activists took over our culture.
• 
They forced the entire country to obey their will.  It all happened so fast and with such ferocity that virtually no one resisted it.
• 
People seem bewildered, even stunned by what was happening.  Statements of fact and opinion that were entirely within the bounds of reasonable conversation just last Sunday, suddenly, a week later, were enough to get you fired from your job.  And a number of people were fired.
• 
We're going to begin in Minneapolis, where the Black Lives Matter riots first began almost two weeks ago.
• 
As the violence there raged, some Democratic leaders in Minneapolis came to a conclusion that didn't, on the surface anyway, make intuitive sense.  What their city really needs, they decided, is less law enforcement — in fact, no law enforcement.
• 
... Black Lives Matter is in fact a political party, maybe the strongest political party in the United States.  Its members believe they can reshape this country and so far, they're proving to be right.
• 
You can always tell which political movements are ascendant, which are headed up, by how straightforward their members and sympathizers are about what they believe.
• 
Strong people say what they think out loud.  They have no reason not to.  They're not embarrassed about their beliefs.  They think they're winning.
• 
Again, all of this probably strikes you as wild-eyed craziness, flat Earth stuff.  Eliminate the police?  Really?  But things change fast.  Look how quickly they changed just over the weekend.
• 
Well, as usual, the truth bears no resemblance whatsoever to what they're telling you.
• 
Think about it for just a second.  Democratic politicians control the police departments of virtually every big city in this country.  Now, they're telling you they want to get rid of those police departments.  If they did, that would mean less power for themselves.
• 
So, right away, you know, there's lying going on.  Democrats do not relinquish power voluntarily, ever.  Period.  Republicans frequently do.  Democrats never do.  So, that's the first thing to know.
• 
Democrats have no intention of abolishing the police.  Listen carefully and you will hear them admit that.  Instead, they want to replace the police — take the people who currently have badges, many of whom, by the way, voted for Donald Trump and swap them out for new people, people who hate Donald Trump and hate the people who voted for Donald Trump.  That's what's actually happening here, and it makes sense.
• 
Law enforcement is one of the very few institutions remaining in this country that the left has not yet controlled.  Democrats hate the police because they don't control the police.  Very simple.
• 
Let's be clear: What Democrats are proposing isn't some form of radical libertarianism with the cops leaving citizens to police their own neighborhoods.  No, it's the opposite of that.  What they're proposing is a power grab.
• 
Defund the police is a move toward authoritarian social control, cloaked in the language of identity politics.
• 
Already, in the middle of a total breakdown of law and order as we watch our cities burn, you are seeing new moves to prevent you from defending yourself and your family in the middle of it.
• 
In the future, the left envisions, the only people who will have guns are people on their team, and that's exactly what defund the police really means.  It means a woke militia policing our cities, enforcing Democratic Party orthodoxy.
• 
Imagine if the Diversity Inclusion Department at Brown University had the power to arrest you.  Imagine if the Black Lives Matter rioters had weapons and immunity from prosecution.  That's what they're talking about.
• 
Unfortunately for the rest of us — and it is unfortunate — Jeff Bezos and people like him are the only ones allowed to talk right now.
• 
It's hard to overstate how vicious the crackdown on free speech and free thought has been in the last few days.
• 
Here's the new rule and it defines everything: You are not allowed to question Black Lives Matter in any way.  Full stop.  That rule has been enforced without mercy everywhere and not just in this country.
• 
High school students who refuse to show affirmative support for Black Lives Matter on their Instagram accounts were shunned by their friends.  Journalists who asked too many questions about the group were fired or silenced.
• 
The New York Times ran an op-ed demanding that people disown their own families if their families failed to support Black Lives Matter enthusiastically enough.
• 
"Tell your relatives, tell your friends.  You will not be visiting or answering phone calls until they take significant action in supporting black lives through protest or financial contributions."
• 
Got that?  Sorry, mom.  I know you're old and alone and miss your grandchildren.  But we are shunning you until you send more money to Black Lives Matter.
• 
Bowser has renamed a park near the White House "Black Lives Matter Plaza," and nobody criticized her for it.
• 
... she also had Black Lives Matter painted in enormous yellow letters on 16th Street in downtown D.C.  Kind of a bold move if you think about it, making a street partisan.
• 
It's impressive, in a way, but Black Lives Matter wasn't satisfied by it, not even close.  The D.C.  Chapter of the group released a statement attacking Mayor Bowser for not giving them complete control of the city's police department: "This is to appease white liberals while ignoring our demands.  Black Lives Matter means defund the police."
• 
Suddenly, it feels like all the adults have gone to St.  Barts and turned off their cell phones.  Who is running this country?  Who is in charge?  Anyone?
• 
Bad ideas are like cancer.  When you ignore them, when you pretend they're not there, when you just assume, just ride it out, they spread.
• 
Democrats ... who are completely wrong, and in fact are leading us down a path that won't end well, are not ashamed in the slightest of what they believe.
• 
Day in and day out, they brag about it.  Just on Monday, they kneeled in Washington in submission before Black Lives Matter.
• 
Before you comfort yourself with that thought, keep in mind it wasn't just Nancy Pelosi, not by a longshot.
• 
Members of the National Guard kneeled, too.  So did a group of FBI agents.  So did the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau...
• 
The police chief of Webster, Massachusetts went even further than that.  He lay on the ground before them in complete submission.
• 
And then things began to spin completely out of control, not just in this country but throughout the West.
• 
In London, protesters vandalized the statue of Abraham Lincoln — because what did Abraham Lincoln ever do for black people?
• 
In Boston, a mob defaced a monument to the first all-black volunteer regiment in the Civil War.  Because black people dying to end slavery sounds like white supremacy to us.
• 
Right around the same time, a law professor from the University of Chicago called for an armed coup to overthrow the president of the United States, but that didn't get a lot of press because it didn't seem particularly newsworthy under the circumstances.
• 
Even the outlines are blurry at this point, but we know this: No matter what they tell you, it has very little to do with black lives.  If only it did.
• 
If Democratic leaders cared about saving the lives of black people — and they should — they wouldn't ignore the murder of thousands of young black men in their cities every year.
• 
This may be a lot of things, this moment we're living through, but it is definitely not about black lives, and remember that when they come for you.  And at this rate, they will.
• 
Anyone who has ever been subjected to the rage of the mob knows the feeling.  It's like being swarmed by hornets.  You cannot think clearly.  And the temptation is to panic.
• 
But you can't panic.  You've got to keep your head and tell the truth.  Tell the truth.  If you show weakness of any kind, they will crush you.
• 
At a moment like this, there is no advantage in cowardice, in being Mitt Romney.  You think you're saving yourself?  You're just empowering the worst people — people who hate you.  Before you know it, you're confessing to crimes you didn't commit.  Don't start.
• 
Tell the truth — and the truth is, this is a good country.  Better than any other.  Of course, we are flawed, but we are trying, unlike most places.  And we have nothing to be ashamed of — none of us.
• 
Truth is a defense.  No matter what they're telling you at this moment, this moment will pass.  Remember that.  All moments do.
• 
When it does, we will look back at what we just saw in horror and disbelief.
• 
But if you're honest now, you will keep your dignity, and ultimately you will be very glad about that.  Life is not worth living without it.
      Tucker Carlson: Cultural Revolution has come to America – brainwashing underway  (Fox 06/06/2020)
• 
Every cult has the same goal: the utter submission of its members.  Cult members surrender everything.  They give up their physical freedom – where they can go, who they can see, how they can dress.  But more than that, they give up control of their minds.
• 
Cult leaders determine what their followers are allowed to believe, even in their most private thoughts.  In order to do this, cults separate people from all they have known before.  They force members to renounce their former lives, their countries and their customs.
• 
They allow no loyalty except to the cult.  The first thing they attack – always – is the family.  Families are always the main impediment to brainwashing and extremism.
• 
If you're going to control individuals – if you're going to transform free people into compliant robots – the first thing you must do is separate them from the ones who love them most.
• 
In 1932, Soviet authorities began promoting the story of a 13-year-old peasant boy called Pavlik Morozov.  Morozov, they claimed, had taken the supremely virtuous step of denouncing his own father to the secret police for committing counter-revolutionary acts.
• 
Once exposed as a traitor, the boy's father was executed by firing squad, supposedly for the safety of the state.
• 
Soviet dictator Josef Stalin elevated the boy to the status of a national hero for what he did.  People wept in the streets when they heard his name.  They worshipped him like a saint.
• 
Why are we telling you this?  Because it's happening here.  In the last 10 days, some of our most prominent citizens have sworn allegiance to a cult.  Converts go by the term "allies."
• 
Like all cult members, they demand total conformity.  They ritually condemn their own nation – its history, its institutions and symbols.  It's flag.  They denounce their own parents.
• 
If you've been on social media recently, you've likely seen videos that illustrate this – such as one showing a girl attacking her mother and father for the crime of insufficient loyalty to Black Lives Matter.
• 
In a video of a 15-year-old from Louisville called Isabella – and there are many like her – the girl is shown crying and saying: "I literally hate my family so much."
• 
She goes on to say her parents defended the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.  And then she calls her parents racists, followed by an obscenity.
• 
"I hate my family so much." Just a week ago, it would have been hard to imagine that.  Now, Isabella is a social media star.  Celebrities tweet their approval.  She may have her own cult before long.
• 
But the revolution is young.  Children attacking their parents is just the beginning.
• 
"I think that the important thing for white parents to keep in the front of their mind is that if black children in this country are not allowed innocence and childhood without fear of being killed by police or marginalized in some other way, then our children don't deserve innocence."
• 
Happy childhoods are a sign of racism.  The man saying this – and being affirmed by CNN anchors as he does – is a self-described "anti-racism activist." He has been saying things like this for a long time.
• 
How does Tim Wise make a living?  In part, by lecturing students.  Your kids may have seen him speak.  They've almost certainly heard a lot from people like him.  In America's schools, the revolution has been in progress for quite some time.
• 
Last February, to name one among countless examples, officials at schools in Rochester, N.Y., created a Black Lives Matter-themed lesson plan.
• 
The teaching materials dismiss America's bedrock institutions – indeed, America itself – as inherently racist.
• 
Suggested questions for students include: "How does mass incarceration function as a mechanism of racialized social control?"
• 
One specific racial group was singled out for exclusive blame.  The curriculum promoted a book titled, "White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide."
• 
In other words, children, there's a reason hatred and inequality exist: these people did it!  That's what your kids are learning right now.
• 
In Washington, D.C., an elementary school principal in the affluent northwest section of the city recently wrote a letter announcing: "We need more White parents to talk to their kids about race.  Especially now."
• 
The letter singled out "White Staff and White community members," whom the principal alleged had committed "both macro- and micro-aggressions" against "Staff of Color."
• 
The principal did not specify what those crimes were.  She didn't need to.  Their skin color was their crime.
• 
Countless public schools are now using the 1619 Project from The New York Times as a curriculum.  That project is the work of an out-of-the-closet racial extremist called Nikole Hannah Jones.  Jones recently argued it's not violence to loot and burn stores – its justified.
• 
Her propaganda is now mandatory in public schools in Buffalo, Chicago, Newark and Washington.
• 
Many parents understandably deeply resent this.  It's deranged, its racist.  Others don't.  They're "allies." They've joined in.
• 
One mother in London, where the cult is also spreading, posted a photo on Twitter of her daughter on blended knee, holding a sign declaring her "privilege."
• 
What will the effects of this be?  Years from now, how will that little girl with the sign remember her childhood?  Her mother took Tim Wise's advice.  She no longer has innocence.  Will she be grateful for that?
• 
It's hard to imagine she will be.  She'll more likely feel bitter and used.  Because she has been used.  Many will feel that way.
• 
Is there a single person who believes this moment we're living through will end in racial harmony?  Is that even a goal anymore?  It doesn't seem like it.
• 
It seems clear that many in power are pushing hard for racial division.  For hatred.  For violence.
• 
Let's pray they don't get what they want.  Tribal conflict destroys countries faster than any plague.
• 
But keep in mind as this insanity continues that it's not happening in a vacuum.  Every action provokes a reaction – that's physics.
• 
We don't know where this is going.  We don't want to know.
• 
The cult members should stop now – immediately, before more innocents get hurt – and they will, if they don't.
• 
      The riots are not about George Floyd or racial justice.  They're about Trump and seizing power  (Fox 06/05/2020)
• 
Most of us haven't been able to step back far enough to ask even the obvious questions.  The most obvious, of course, is what is this really about?  What do the mobs want?
• 
Well, thugs looting the Apple Store can't answer that question.  They have no idea.  They just want free iPads.
• 
But what about Apple itself and the rest of corporate America, which is enthusiastically supporting the rioters?  What about members of Congress, the media figures, the celebrities, the tech titans, all of whom are cheering this on.  What do they want out of it?
• 
Well, they haven't said.  That's the central mystery.
• 
Now suddenly, it is obvious.  It should have been obvious on the first day.  This is about Donald Trump.  Of course, it is.  We just couldn't see it.
• 
For normal people, Donald Trump is the president.  You may like him, you may not like him, but either way, there will be another president at some point, and we will move on as we always have.
• 
But for Donald Trump's enemies, there is nothing else.  Everything is about Trump.  Everything.
• 
Donald Trump defines their friendships, their careers, their marriages.  Donald Trump affects how they raise their children.  Trump occupies the very center of their lives.
• 
As long as Donald Trump remains in the White House.  They feel powerless and diminished and panicked.  So they cannot be happy.
• 
In everything they do, their overriding goal is to remove Donald Trump from office.  And that's exactly what they're trying to do now.  That's what these riots are about.
• 
The most privileged in our society are using the most desperate in our society to seize power from everyone else.
• 
Got that?  That's the nub of it.  The most privileged are using the most desperate to seize power from the rest of us.
• 
They are not seeking racial justice.  If they were seeking racial justice, they wouldn't be denouncing their fellow Americans for their race, which they are.  It has nothing to do with it.
• 
What they are seeking is total control of the country.  And it goes without saying that none of this has anything to do with George Floyd.
• 
They know exactly what's going on, and they know what they hope to achieve by it.  With every night of rioting, they grow bolder.  Now, they are openly defending violence on television.
• 
If it all seems like yet another episode of the silly and fleeting hysteria that sometimes grips our culture out of nowhere, usually in lulls in the news cycle, you should know that it's not that.
• 
This is entirely real.  It is being pushed by serious people, and they are deadly serious about it.
• 
Steve Fletcher represents the Third Ward in Minneapolis.  He's on the City Council there.  By this week, his city had been completely scorched by riots.  At least 66 businesses were utterly destroyed by fire, 300 more had been vandalized or looted.
• 
Fletcher didn't even mention that.  Instead, he attacked the city's police department for trying to contain the violence: "Several of us on the Council are working on finding out what it would take to disband the Minneapolis Police Department."
• 
You'd think people in the city would be shocked by that.  But at least on the City Council, everyone else nodded their approval.
• 
In the city of Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti looks out across the worst rioting in the nation's second-largest city in a generation, in almost 30 years.  His conclusion?  We need far fewer police.  It could have been better if they hadn't been there.
• 
In New York, 48 separate Democratic candidates — and they were including in that the Manhattan district attorney — signed a letter demanding a $1 billion cut to the budget of the NYPD.
• 
Why are they doing this?  There are reasons, not the ones they tell you.  They tell you it's about racism.  They tell you that cops are racist and must be reined in.
• 
Most Americans don't agree with that.  That's not the experience they have.  In fact, police departments are one of the most trusted institutions in the country.
• 
According to Gallup polling last year, 53 percent of Americans said they had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the police.  That was far more confidence than they had in almost any other institution...  How many Americans trusted Congress?  Eleven percent.
• 
So, what would happen if we got rid of the police?  Of all law enforcement?  How would Americans feel if they actually defunded the police?
• 
Well, terrified mostly.  That's how we would feel.  Things would fall apart instantly.  It would take hours.
• 
Here's the key.  Eliminating the police does not mean eliminating authority.  There is always authority.  There are no vacuums in nature.
• 
The only question is whether or not the authority is legitimate — whether or not the authority is accountable.  Whether or not you can do anything if the authority abuses its power.
• 
In the absence of law enforcement, the answer is no.  It means thugs are in charge.  The most violent people have the most power.  They can do whatever they want to you.
• 
That's the reality.  Everyone obeys the violent people, or they get hurt.  The mob literally rules.
• 
That probably sounds like a nightmare to you, because it is.
• 
But the people pushing this idea don't see it as scary because they don't fear the mob, because they control the mob.  That's the key.  And they see violence as an instrument of their political power.
• 
With mobs in the streets that they control, they will finally get what they want — Donald Trump out of office and a hammerlock on the country.  That's what's happening.
• 
See related Hates America Like Before (Jake Fuller, 2017)") cartoon from USA picture album
      The 'revolution' being waged in the George Floyd mob violence is against the working class  (Fox 06/03/2020)
• 
First they smashed the windows of police cars, and our elected leaders said nothing.  It's a political protest, they told us.  We stand with the protesters.
• 
Before long it grew.  Mobs of menacing young men formed in the streets.  They were clearly intent on violence, but no one in authority dared criticize them.
• 
We understand their frustration, our leaders told us.  America is a sinful country.  Their grievances are legitimate.
• 
And so the mobs grew larger, and they grew emboldened.  Last Thursday, they came right to the front door of a police precinct in Minneapolis.  The cops inside fled under orders from their mayor.
• 
The mob burned the building.  But before they did, they looted the evidence room, and that ensured that many violent crimes will never be solved.  They did this in the name of justice.
• 
Still, our leaders did nothing.  Most of them never even mentioned it, like it never happened.  Instead, they issued yet more statements in solidarity with the mob.
• 
Politicians, celebrities, corporate leaders, clergy, news anchors, professional athletes — almost every person in this country that we were raised from childhood to look up to, to respect, to listen to — all of them sided with the people burning police stations.
• 
The mob saw this and grew stronger.  On Monday night, they began shooting cops.
• 
For 38 years, David Dorn was a police officer in the City of St.  Louis.  No one ever accused Dorn of racism.  He was black.  He is dead now.
• 
He was murdered Monday night by the mob.  His killing was streamed live on Facebook, and then the violence accelerated from there.
• 
In St.  Louis alone, four other active duty police officers were shot Monday night.  In Las Vegas, an officer took a bullet in the head.  He is still in critical condition.
• 
How many more nights like this can we take?  How many more nights like this before no one in America will serve as a police officer?  It's not worth it.  The people in charge hate you.  The job doesn't pay enough.
• 
At that point, who will enforce the laws?  Who will be in charge?  Well, violent young men with guns will be in charge.
• 
They will make the rules, including the rules in your neighborhood.  They will do what they want.
• 
You will do what they say.  No one will stop them.  You will not want to live here when that happens.
• 
Chaos is the worst thing always, and wise leaders understand that.  It's obvious.
• 
So the question is, how did murdering David Dorn advance the cause of racial justice exactly?  No one explains; Biden didn't.  Meanwhile, Biden's staff continues to send money to the rioters.  Other Democrats followed in perfect sync.
• 
In Massachusetts, the state attorney general, Maura Healey, applauded the riots and did it explicitly.  She described the killing and looting underway as "a once in a lifetime opportunity.  Yes, America is burning, but that's how forests grow."
• 
The press isn't simply covering the riots, meanwhile, but assisting the riots.
• 
BuzzFeed, meanwhile, published a guide for rioters.  It included helpful tips like this: Wear nondescript clothing, cover up tattoos, don't take photographs.
• 
... "Defund the police." That's the position of Black Lives Matter, the most popular group in America among corporate leaders.  Defund the police.  No more cops.  That's what they're fighting for.
• 
So, if we did that, who would keep order?  Well, The New York Times has an answer to that: "Rapid response, social workers would keep the peace."
• 
If you live in a gated community, it might sound like a good idea.  You've got your own police force.  You have no plans to replace them with rapid response social workers.
• 
But what about everyone else?  What's going to happen to them?  Don Lemon and Rashida Tlaib don't care at all.  Your neighborhood is not their problem.
• 
They're in it for the revolution, and make no mistake, it is a revolution from above, aimed downward.
• 
This is the only revolution in history that's being waged not on behalf of the working class, but against them.
      Tucker Carlson: Our leaders have dithered and lied about the riots as the nation goes up in flames  (Fox 06/02/2020)
• 
The nation went up in flames this weekend.  No one in charge stood up to save America.  Our leaders dithered.  They cowered.  They openly sided with the destroyers.  In many cases, they egged them on.
• 
This is how nations collapse.  When no one in authority keeps the order, and when someone in our professional class encourage violence, American citizens are forced to defend themselves.  They have no choice.  No one else is going to defend them — they know that now.
• 
The worst people in our society have taken control.  They did nothing to build this country.  Now, they are tearing it down.  They are rushing us toward mass suicide.
• 
So, how do we respond?  We must protect ourselves and our families.  Once again, we have no choice, but to do that.  But we cannot allow ourselves to become like they are.
• 
We are not animals, we are Americans.  In the face of such indecency, we must resolve to be decent.  We believe this country has a future.  We intend for our children to live and thrive here.  That is what we are defending.
• 
All our leaders do is set us against each other.  They stage a never-ending national cockfight for their profit and amusement.
• 
We should start by being unsparingly honest about what is happening right now.  Truth is our defense, and it's our country's last hope.
• 
The point is, this is a national emergency.  It's a profound national emergency.  But you would never know that from listening to our elected leaders.
• 
Almost all of them pretend this is not really happening or if it is happening, it is just part of America's long tradition of vigorous political discourse.
• 
Politicians on both sides tell us that this is all about the death of a man in police custody in Minneapolis last week.  The people burning down our country are "protesters".  They're engaged in a legitimate "protest."
• 
Okay, what exactly are those protesters' demands?  What are they asking for?  If Congress agreed to enact their program, what would the program be?
• 
Not a single person even hints the answer because there is not an answer.  No one has bothered to pull the guys beating up old ladies on the street or looting Gucci, but you've got to wonder how many of them have ever even heard of George Floyd.
• 
And if they have heard of him, what difference would it make?  Violence and looting are not forms of political expression.
• 
If you were killed tomorrow, how many buildings would you want burned to the ground in your memory?  How many old women smashed in the face on the street in your name?  None, we hope, because you're not a vicious psychopath, like the people you've just watched.
• 
... what we're watching is not a political protest.  ... The rioters you have seen are trying to topple our political system.
• 
That system is how we resolve our differences without using violence.  But these people want a new system, one that is governed by force.  Do what we say or we will hurt you.
• 
Some Democrats have openly embraced what is happening.  Really they don't have much of a choice.  These are their voters cleaning out the Rolex store.  These riots effectively are the largest Joe Biden for President rally on record.
• 
In gratitude for that, more than a dozen Joe Biden for President campaign staffers donated money to the rioters in Minneapolis, and then they bragged about it on Twitter.
• 
No Democratic leader can directly criticize what is happening right now.  And in fact, some have joined in.  ... "Riots are an integral part of this country's march towards progress."
• 
Celebrity after celebrity has weighed in to agree on social media.
• 
Colin Kaepernick openly calls for violence.  Here's a quote: "The cries for peace will rain down and when they do, they will land on deaf ears," he says approvingly.
• 
Imagine shouting fire in a crowded theater, a theater with 325 million people in it called our country.  That's what they've been doing and have been doing for days.
• 
When the violence began, what we needed more than anything was clarity in the middle of this.
• 
... as American cities were being destroyed by mobs, the vice president United States refused to say anything specific about the riots we were watching on television.  Instead, Mike Pence scolded America for its racism.
• 
Carly Fiorina, once a leading Republican presidential candidate tweeted that ... "It's white America that now must see the truth, speak the truth and act on the truth."
• 
Meanwhile, Kay Coles James, who is the president of the Heritage Foundation — that's the largest conservative think tank in the country.  You may have sent them money, hopefully for the last time.
• 
Kay Coles James wrote a long scream denouncing America as an irredeemably racist nation: "How many times will protests have to occur?"
• 
Got that?  "Have to occur." Like the rest of us caused this by our sinfulness.
• 
The message from our leaders on the right, as on the left, was unambiguous: Don't complain.  You deserve what's happening to you.
• 
No one jumped in more forcefully or seemed angrier in America than former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley.
• 
"Tonight I turned on the news and I am heartbroken.  It's important to understand that the death of George Ford was personal and painful for many.  In order to heal, it needs to be personal and painful for everyone."
• 
But wait a second, you may be wondering, how am I "personally responsible" for the behavior of a Minneapolis police officer?
• 
I've never even been to Minneapolis, you may think to yourself.  And why is some politician telling me I'm required to be upset about it?
• 
What Nikki Haley does best is moral blackmail.  During the 2016 campaign, she compared Donald Trump to the racist mass murderer, Dylann Roof.
• 
In this case, Nikki Haley's wish came true.  The riots were indeed "personal and painful" for everyone.  And then the pain kept increasing.
• 
A country already on the brink of recession suddenly faced economic collapse.  An already fearful population locked down for months because of the coronavirus had been thoroughly and completely terrorized.
• 
How did the Trump administration respond to the horrors going on around us?
• 
"The president said that from the start, and we're with the family and as the President said, we're with the peaceful protesters."
• 
Really?  Can you be more specific about that?  Who are you talking about exactly?
• 
Is it the people spitting foam as they scream, "F the police"?  Is it the one standing next to the arsonist doing nothing as they set fire to buildings?
• 
Is it the kids laughing as they film the looting and the beatings on their iPhones?
• 
Maybe it's the famous people in L.A.  who are raising money online to support the rioters?  They're all just peaceful protesters.  Yes, we support that.  It's who we are.
• 
What about the president?  Where is he during all of this?
• 
On Twitter the next morning, the president reassured America that he and his family were just fine.  The federally funded bodyguards had kept them safe.
• 
He did not mention protecting the rest of the nation, much of which was then on fire.  He seemed aware only of himself.
• 
For people who like Donald Trump, who voted for Donald Trump, who support his policies, who have defended him for years and years against the most absurd kinds of slander, this was a distressing moment.
• 
The first requirement of leadership is that you watch over the people in your care.  That's what soldiers want from their officers.  It's what families need from their fathers.  It's what voters demand from their presidents.
• 
People will put up with almost anything if you do that.  You can regularly say embarrassing things on television.  You can hire Omarosa to work at the White House.  All of that will be forgiven if you protect your people.
• 
But if you do not protect them — or worse than that, if you seem like you can't be bothered to protect them — then you're done.  It's over.  People will not forgive weakness.  That's the one thing, by the way, that is not a partisan point.  It is human nature.
• 
Donald Trump's response to these riots, which is ongoing, is the singular test of his presidency.  About an hour ago, the president announced that he's going to marshal all available forces — military and civilian — to stop these riots.
• 
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them."
• 
What Americans want most right now is an end to this chaos.  They want their cities to be saved.  They want this to stop immediately.
• 
If the commander-in-chief cannot stop it, he will lose in November.  The left will blame him for the atrocities they encouraged, and some voters will agree.
• 
Donald Trump is the president.  Presidents save countries.  That's their job.  That's why we hire them.  It's that simple.
• 
In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a law and order candidate because he meant it, and his views remain fundamentally unchanged today.
• 
But the president's famously sharp instincts, the ones that won him the presidency almost four years ago, have been since subverted at every level by Jared Kushner.
• 
As crime in this country continues to rise, Jared Kushner has led a highly aggressive effort to let more criminals out of prison and back on to the streets.  This is reckless.  At this moment in time, it is insane.  It continues to happen.
• 
The first thing to know is that we can no longer accept race-baiting from our leaders.  Never.  That has become so common now that we barely notice it.  But it is dividing and destroying this country.  We should make them stop.
• 
Enforcing the law is not white supremacy.  Insisting that everyone in the country follow the same rules is not racism.  In fact, it's the answer to racism.  It is equality — equality under the law.  It is the one thing we must defend, and if we don't, it's over.  Things fall apart.
• 
Weakness invites aggression.  That is true in nature and it's every bit as true in human society.  Our leaders are weak.  Predators know it.  That's why this is happening.
• 
If you let people spray paint obscenities in City Hall, pretty soon they are overturning cop cars.  If you put up with that, they'll come right to the front door of the police precinct, and they will burn it down.  The next thing you know, they are beating people to death in shopping malls.
• 
And then what?  What happens the next time the mob doesn't like something?  What will the mob demand next?
      Our leaders have sided with the agents of chaos – we're told crimes of the mob are our fault  (Fox 05/30/2020)
• 
Here's a simple question: A police station in a major American city was occupied, looted and burned on Thursday night.  Most of us assumed we'd never live to see something like that happen here.  But it did happen.
• 
So the question is, has anyone been arrested for doing it?  Will anyone ever be arrested?
• 
No one in authority seems especially interested in apprehending the people who did it.  All of it happened on camera, but the perpetrators just walked away.  And it's, maybe likely, that most of them will never be punished for it.
• 
As Minneapolis burns and crowds grow in the streets of Atlanta and many other cities, the rest of us are continuing on as we always do — dutifully following the rules.  There are many of those.
• 
Every year, there seem to be countless new rules to follow.  They multiply like insects.
• 
We do our best to keep up.  We get our permits, apply for our licenses, put on our reading glasses to check the latest regulations on the internet.
• 
We wear our little masks.  We keep our dogs on leashes.  We drive sober.  We don't eat on the subway.  We never litter.  We make orderly lines and patiently wait our turn.
• 
In airports and government buildings, we remove our shoes and submit to body searches from strangers.  We lose our dignity every time we do this, but they tell us we must, so we accept it without complaint.
• 
In public, we hide what we really think.  We bury our natural instincts.  We keep our deepest beliefs to ourselves.  We know the boundaries.
• 
We understand we will be punished for telling the truth.  This is the America the rest of us live in.
• 
For the privilege of citizenship in a country like this, we work as hard as we can.
• 
Now we know that other people have somehow negotiated a far better deal than the one we have.
• 
They get to ignore the rules.  There don't believe in order or fairness.  They reject society itself.
• 
Reason and process and precedent mean nothing to them.  They use violence to get what they want immediately.
• 
They live for themselves.  They do exactly what they feel like doing.  They say exactly what they feel like saying.  They spray paint their opinions on buildings.
• 
On television, hour by hour, we watch these people — criminal mobs — destroy what the rest of us have built.
• 
They have no right to do that.  They don't contribute to the common good.  They never have.  Yet suddenly, they seem to have all the power.
• 
This is hardly the first time this has happened in America.  Spasms of destructive violence are a recurring feature of our history — of every country's history.
• 
The ideologues will tell you that the problem is race relations, or capitalism, or police brutality, or global warming.  But only on the surface.
• 
The real cause is deeper than that and it's far darker.
• 
What you're watching is the ancient battle between those who have a stake in society, and would like to preserve it, and those who don't, and seek to destroy it.
• 
Which side in that war have our leaders taken?  Watch carefully.  It's obvious.
• 
The rioters in Minneapolis and in other places act as if they're allowed to loot and burn.  In fact, they are allowed.  No one stops them.
• 
The authorities don't arrest them.  Instead, they pander to them, flatter them, desperately try to win their love.
• 
Why are masked lunatics setting fire to Wendy's?  Because the rest of us are sinful.
• 
That's what our leaders tell us.  The crimes of the mob are the punishment we deserve.  That's their argument.  Many seem to buy it.
• 
We should have seen this coming.
• 
When you express an opinion our leaders don't like, they call it violence.
• 
When criminals commit acts of actual violence, they call it speech.
• 
In other words, the game is rigged.
• 
So why are the rest of us still playing it?  We have more power than we think we do.  Our system only functions because dutiful normal people — people with self-control and decency, and a sense of responsibility toward others — created our system.
• 
They sustain it.  They pay the bills.  None of the thugs looting Target, or the well-paid nihilists on television who are egging them on, have added a thing.  Nothing.
• 
Yet all of the destroyers expect this arrangement will last forever.  For them, it's been a very good deal.
• 
But what exactly are you getting in return for your contributions to this system?
• 
During election years, sweaty politicians claim to be on your side.  It's a lie.  They're not.
• 
They'll waste your time with hollow posturing.  They'll feed you pointless symbolic victories and expect you to celebrate, like you've actually won something.
• 
But when the mob comes, they're gone.  You're on your own.
• 
That's true.  Those are the facts.  We can't change them.  All we can control is our own behavior.
• 
Should you keep playing along with all of that?  Ponder that the next time they demand you get a permit to put a deck on your own house.
• 
Think about it even harder the next time you write a tax check.
      Tucker Carlson: Inconvenient facts threaten the racism scams our leaders and media are working  (Fox 05/29/2020)
• 
... practically every day, we're told that white cops are a mortal threat to black men and some are, obviously.  It's what started this whole thing.  A black man was killed by the police.  It's awful.
• 
But what are the national numbers on this?  Well, actually, we know the answer.  A study from last year found that white police officers were less likely to shoot and kill nonwhite suspects than nonwhite police officers were.
• 
In any given year, police kill more white suspects, armed and unarmed, than black suspects.  And that's a fact, by the way.  It's not political propaganda.  It's probably true.  Yet no one on television will ever say that because that fact threatens the scams they're working.
• 
Eddie Glaude, Jr.  might be the living embodiment of this phenomenon.  If you've ever wondered whether yelling racist at the people you want things from its an effective business plan, Eddie Glaude is living proof that indeed it is.
• 
By regularly screaming "racist," Glaude has been able to ride a mediocre academic career all the way to an endowed professorship at Princeton.
• 
It's a job with such high pay and so few actual requirements that Glaude can dress like a British lord, and spend much of his day shuttling by limo between cable news hits.
• 
Talk about a sweet gig.  As long as Eddie Glaude continues to denounce people as racist — the right people — he can probably keep that job forever.
• 
So naturally, Eddie Glaude has no interest in explaining how exactly racism makes people loot Target.  It just does, okay?  And if you disagree with that premise, you're a racist yourself.  So shut up.
• 
So, you've got to wonder how would Eddie Glaude, Jr.  respond if something like this happened to him.  If looters descended on his house, would Glaude gently describe them as "protesters" as they made off with his Hermes necktie collection?
• 
If thugs with bandanas on their faces smashed the windshield of his BMW with rocks, would Eddie Glaude call the police?  Or would calling the police be racist?
• 
Just how long, in other words, could Edie Glaude maintain his fraudulent racial justice shtick in the face of the kind of violence that he routinely excuses on television?
• 
The problem with outbreaks of mob violence is you really have no idea where they're going next.  You can't know.  Sometimes they subside; often, they metastasize.  They're unpredictable, and they are mortally dangerous, and that's why you don't encourage them.
• 
In St.  Paul, signs have appeared in store windows announcing, "This is a black-owned business." In other words, we're the right skin color, spare us.
• 
What does that tell you?  Imagine if you saw a sign saying "white-owned business" in windows.
• 
But Minneapolis has decided to just let their riot happen and damn the consequences.
• 
"Our officers are being — have been through several hours here, Molotov cocktails thrown at them, rocks and other projectiles.  And so obviously their safety is paramount, and so I don't want them going into an area where they're at risk of harm themselves."
• 
But in fact, it's not at all obvious.  In fact, it's perfectly backward.  Society's first concern is the safety of citizens, especially the weakest citizens.
• 
That's why we have police in the first place — to protect people who cannot protect themselves, the public.
• 
Imagine if the Secret Service adopted the same attitude.  Sorry, I can't protect the president today, too risky.
• 
How about the military?  We'd love to repel the invasion, but unfortunately, we might get hurt.  Our apologies.
• 
Things would fall apart.  Things are falling apart in Minneapolis.  And as they collapse, our leadership class seems thrilled.  They're doing nothing to calm racial division.  In fact, they're eagerly stoking it.
• 
The New York Times wrote a piece Thursday morning with the title, "How White Women Use Themselves as Instruments of Terror."
• 
The subhead read this way: "There are too many noosed necks, charred bodies and drown souls for them to deny knowing precisely what they are doing."
• 
Wait a second.  "Them"?  What "they" are doing?  Keep in mind, this didn't run in Louis Farrakhan's free weekly.
• 
This was The New York Times, this country's most important newspaper, the high temple of American liberalism.
• 
The New York Times is telling you that every single person of a certain color and sex has a hand in genocide.
• 
They are stained by bloodguilt.  They are murderers, every one of them.  What do you do to murderers?  You know the answer.
• 
It's hard to believe our leaders are actually talking like this.  But they are — a lot and loudly.
• 
And if they keep it up, things will not end well.  Yet, they show no signs of slowing down.
• 
But the problem is much bigger this time than mere hypocrisy.  We're very used to that.  This problem is far more ominous.
• 
Here it is in three sentences.  There are 320 million of us in this country.  A lot of us are very different from one another, yet we all have to live together.  In fact, most of us want to live together.  But suddenly our leaders are making that dangerously difficult.
      Tucker Carlson: Big Tech authoritarians are willing to censor Trump, think nothing of silencing you  (Fox 05/28/2020)
• 
We're going to state the obvious: Donald Trump tweets an awful lot.  Many wish he didn't do it.  He does it anyway.  It's often his preferred mode of communication.
• 
Now, whether or not it's politically wise for him to do this, Donald Trump has an absolute right as an American to express what he actually thinks, even if every other person on Earth disagrees with him.
• 
When they used to tell you this was a free country — and they often said that — that's what they were talking about, the freedom of speech.
• 
Well, sadly, it's become a much less free country recently.  Power has become radically concentrated in far fewer hands than at any time in the past 100 years at least.
• 
And the people who wield that power have no interest whatsoever in your right to say something they disagree with.
• 
In fact, they're delighted to silence you if you try.  They're not embarrassed to admit that they do this.  They don't pretend anymore.
• 
Twitter, for example, now openly purges its users whose political views their executives don't like.
• 
It's bewildering, if you think about it, that they're allowed to do this because, like all the Big Tech companies, Twitter only exists — its CEO is a billionaire — only because Twitter enjoys key exemptions from federal law, exemptions that you don't enjoy, and we don't enjoy here at Fox News.
• 
It has those exemptions because Congress carved them out for the Big Tech companies, and that means Congress has the power to defend your free speech online.
• 
The White House does, too.  And yet they've done absolutely nothing so far to help you.
• 
Until Tuesday, Twitter returned the favor by leaving the commander-in- chief's Twitter feed alone.  And then Trump criticized mail-in voting.
• 
The president tweeted that mail-in ballots could be "substantially fraudulent."As s a factual matter, that is true and we can prove it.
• 
... mail-in ballots have been linked to numerous cases of election fraud.  People have been criminally convicted for it.  So, it's really not up for debate.
• 
On Tuesday Twitter placed a so-called "fact check" on the president's tweet.  "Trump falsely claimed that mail in ballots would lead to a rigged election," Twitter announced.  "Fact checkers say there is no evidence that mail-in ballots are linked to voter fraud."
• 
Now, again, as a factual matter, that is a lie.  There's no other way to interpret it.  But worse than a lie, it is a form of political censorship.
• 
So, who decided to do this, to censor it?  Well, Yoel Roth has the Orwellian title "head of site integrity "at Twitter — an irony-free zone where they don't understand that their titles alone are scary.  That means he is one of the company's censors.
• 
And not surprisingly, Roth is a political activist and not an especially subtle one.
• 
So, these are the people controlling what you're now allowed to think and say in America.  They're authoritarians.
• 
If they're willing to censor the president, they will think of nothing at all of silencing you — and they don't.  They gladly do it, and no one pushes back.
• 
Traditionally, that role, the role of pushing back hard against censorship, was reserved for reporters.
• 
Their job was to safeguard the First Amendment, which is designed to protect the weak, not the strong.
• 
The weak are protected by the freedom of speech, and journalists are supposed to care about the weak, about the public — their readers and viewers.
• 
They weren't supposed to be simply thugs hired to protect the powerful, but that's what they have become.
• 
There's only one reason we have a free press — and that's to fight back against authoritarian power structures that demand we read from approved scripts.
• 
And now CNN is writing those scripts.  It's terrifying.  And all of a sudden, it's everywhere.
      Our leaders 'wasted literally years accusing each other of working for Putin' and China benefited  (Fox 05/20/2020)
• 
"The beauty of the Russia fable was that it allowed ... our ruling class to ignore the huge number of actual problems the United States faced, problems that in many cases they caused, or at the very least failed to solve."
• 
"The drug addiction crisis that has killed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands over time.  The border that is essentially open.  A disappearing middle class, the core of our country.  The rise of China, and then, of course, any number of counterproductive foreign wars that should have ended long ago."
• 
"For three years, nobody in Washington talked about any of this.  In fact, failing to worry about Russia exclusively invited suspicion on you."
• 
"Susan Rice, who seems smart — she went to Stanford — admitted later that she decided Michael Flynn was a Russian spy because he talked too much about China.  'That's what Russian spies do,'"
• 
"Now, Donald Trump was elected, no one thought he would be, precisely because he talked about issues like these, the ones that mattered."
• 
"That was a massive threat.  So they derailed to a large extent, his first term agenda using a hoax concocted by the administration he replaced."
• 
... "while our leaders in Washington wasted literally years accusing each other of working for [Vladimir] Putin, China grew more powerful."
• 
"By the time this version of coronavirus spread west from Wuhan, China was calling many of the shots internationally.  We didn't even know it until the crisis hit."
• 
... "China's tentacles extend almost everywhere in our society," including higher education, Hollywood and sports.
• 
"All of this has changed our lives in profound ways.  But all of it happened with very little public notice.  Why?  Because the people making it possible didn't want to advertise it.  They were getting very rich from it."
      Obama should be known as a disgraced president who used the FBI against his political enemies  (Fox 05/12/2020)
• 
On Inauguration Day, 2017, it is likely that not 1 in 100,000 Americans was thinking about Russia.
• 
It was the last thing most people were thinking about.  The Cold War had ended peacefully more than 25 years before.  Moscow was no longer America's main strategic rival as it had been for 50 years.
• 
Russia had been downgraded instead to the status of a regional power consumed with disputes with obscure places like Ukraine.
• 
It was January 20th, the last day of the Obama administration.  Outgoing National Security Adviser Susan Rice sat down at her desk to write her final memo.  Rice described the presidential transition which had been underway for months.
• 
Then she wrote this, during a meeting two weeks before: "President Obama said he wants to be sure that as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia."
• 
Now, Rice does not explain why Obama's staff felt it might not be possible to give intelligence on Russia to Donald Trump's staff, or for that matter, why the Obama people thought they had the right to withhold national security information from an incoming American president who had just won a national election.
• 
There was only one possible explanation for this: Donald Trump could very well be a Russian agent.  Barack Obama himself said he believed that was possible.
• 
In Rice's words: "The President asked [Jim] Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team.  Comey said he would."
• 
Now, what exactly does that mean?  Here is what it means.  The president of the United States turned to the head of the FBI, the most powerful law enforcement official in America, and said continue to secretly investigate my chief political rival so that I can act against him.
• 
Comey's response?  Yes, sir.  That's what Obama was saying openly.
• 
In any normal period in American history, this exchange would define Barack Obama forever.  Obama would be known as the disgraced former president who used federal law enforcement to hurt his political enemies.  That's what he did.
• 
Already Obama's order that Comey investigate Donald Trump has been relegated to a little known footnote.  Joe Biden happened to be sitting in the room when this happened.  Has Biden ever been asked about that?
• 
Most media outlets have ignored the origins of the Russia conspiracy hoax completely.  And as a result of that, Barack Obama's plan to derail his successor unfolded with very little opposition along the way, including from Republicans.
• 
The entire country, therefore, spent the first three years of the Trump administration hyperventilating about Russian collusion that did not exist.
• 
Here is Rice in July of 2017, a year and a half later, suggesting on network television the president of the United States was indeed working for Vladimir Putin.
• 
Susan Rice, former U.S.  National Security Adviser: He has taken a series of steps that, had Vladimir Putin dictated them, he couldn't have mirrored it more effectively.  What his motivations are, I think is a legitimate question, one that I trust that the special counsel is investigating.  But the policies that this president has pursued globally have served Vladimir Putin's interest in dividing the West, undermining democracy.
• 
Rice: ... I don't know what his motivations are.  I think that's a legitimate question.
• 
In fact, it was never a "legitimate question." It was a reckless slur, the most reckless possible slur — the kind that damages a whole country along with a politician it is aimed at.
• 
Rice knew perfectly well, there was no evidence at all that Donald Trump had ever worked for Russia.
• 
We know that she believed that because she admitted as much under oath in a closed-door hearing in Congress.
• 
As Rice explained to the House Intelligence Committee, the reason she was willing to accuse Trump officials of treason against their own country was that some of them seemed to unduly worried about the rise of China.
• 
"General Flynn's focus was on China as our principal overarching adversary.  He had many questions and concerns about China.  And when I sought to elicit his perspective on Russia, he downplayed his assessment of Russia as a threat to the United States.  He called it overblown.  He said they're a declining power.  They're demographically challenged.  They're not really much of a threat and then re-emphasize the importance of China."
• 
"I had seen enough at that point and heard enough to be a little bit sensitive to the question of the nature of General Flynn's engagements with the Russians."
• 
Did you follow that?  Because Michael Flynn correctly described Russia as a declining power, and then went on to criticize Susan Rice's close friends in the Chinese government, Susan Rice concluded that General Flynn must be a Putin spy.
• 
This is idiotic, and it's crazy.  It's hard to believe that Susan Rice was once a national security adviser of the United States, but she was.
• 
Evelyn Farkas was once Barack Obama's deputy assistant secretary of defense.  Farkas repeatedly went on television to say there was ample evidence the Trump administration was colluding with Russia.
• 
And yet, like Susan Rice, Farkas said something completely different under oath before Congress.  "I didn't know anything," she admitted.
• 
Barack Obama, former president of the United States: That's the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.
• 
"Institutional norms." These people are nothing if not predictable.  What you just heard, as always, was textbook projection.  You see it again and again and again.
• 
What they accuse you of doing, they are eagerly doing themselves.  "The rule of law," yelps Obama.  It's almost amusing.
• 
The press doesn't find it funny in the slightest.  They see no irony at all.  They repeat it verbatim with solemn faces.
• 
... if you're shocked that a news network could be that openly and aggressively dishonest — so buffoonishly dishonest — then you haven't been paying very close attention for the past four years.
• 
They've been doing it since day one with the Russia hoax, and they don't plan to stop now.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Unmasking (Glenn McCoy, 04/04/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Adam Schiff should resign – He will do or say anything to achieve power  (Fox 05/09/2020)
• 
The arrival of the Chinese coronavirus has killed tens of thousands of Americans and put tens of millions more out of work.
• 
But the crisis has also forced to the center serious conversions about issues that matter to the future of the country.
• 
Issues like: the dangerous rise of Chinese global dominance, the porousness of our domestic borders, America's crumbling infrastructure, and government corruption and incompetence.
• 
Over the past two months, you may have asked yourself: Why weren't we talking about these things before?  They're important.  Good question.
• 
There's a simple answer to that.  We didn't have time to consider the fundamental health of America because we were busy talking about Russia.
• 
In Washington, Russia is all we talked about for three years.  All normal business in the capital city came to a halt, as we embarked on a bizarre scavenger hunt in search of Russian President Vladimir Putin's spies.
• 
Even at the time, the whole thing seemed absurd.  Now we know it was worse than absurd.  This wasn't history's longest episode of mass hysteria.
• 
It was instead an elaborate and intentional hoax, staged by the most unscrupulous and power-mad political operatives this country has ever seen.  Sound like an overstatement?  How do we know that?  Because they have admitted it.
• 
Jim Clapper, President Barack Obama's director of national intelligence, said: "I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting or conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election." Compare that to his Twitter feed.
• 
Former Obama administration U.N.  ambassador Samantha Power was asked by the committee if she had any evidence of collusion with the Russians.  She replied this way: "I am not in possession of anything – I am not in possession and didn't read or absorb information that came out of the intelligence community."
• 
Obama administration National Security Adviser Susan Rice said: "I don't recall intelligence that I would consider evidence." Amazing.
• 
And here's former Obama administration Attorney General Loretta Lynch.  Asked if she saw evidence of Russian collusion, Lynch replied: "I do not recall that being briefed up to me."
• 
Notice Lynch's word choice here: "I do not recall." For three years, our entire political system revolved around the hunt for Russian spies.
• 
Of course, Lynch probably thought the transcript of those remarks would never be made public.
• 
"We have very good intelligence on Russia," Farkas claimed.  "We knew what we knew."
• 
But she didn't know anything.  Farkas was lying, as purely as a liar can lie.  Once under oath behind closed doors, Farkas admitted that.  "I didn't know anything," she said.
• 
In 2016, during the campaign, someone stole information from the Democratic National Committee's email server.  It wound up online and embarrassed Hillary Clinton.
• 
Democrats quickly blamed the theft on Russian agents, and therefore Donald Trump, who was supposedly the pawn of the Russians.
• 
The Democratic National Committee ... never allowed federal investigators to inspect their email servers.  That's odd behavior for people who claim to be the victims of foreign espionage.
• 
Instead, the party's servers were inspected by a third-party company called CrowdStrike.  Adam Schiff's committee interviewed the CEO of CrowdStrike, Shawn Henry.
• 
... reply, which we're seeing for the first time is this: "As it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated.  We did not have concrete evidence."
• 
Adam Schiff heard those words directly, he heard them from the one person who would know for certain.  Schiff knew there was nothing substantial at the core of the Russian collusion story.  At the very center, it was hollow, it was a sham.
• 
Here are comments Schiff made on different occasions on several TV programs:
• 
"So there's clear evidence on the issue of collusion and this adds to that body of evidence."
• 
"There's ample evidence of collusion in plain sight and that is true."
• 
"You can see evidence in plain sight on the issue of collusion.  Pretty compelling evidence."
• 
"And there is significant evidence of collusion."
• 
"This is ample evidence and indeed there is of collusion of people in the Trump campaign with the Russians."
• 
"I think there's plenty of evidence of collusion or conspiracy."
• 
"All of this is evidence of collusion."
• 
"There is significant evidence of collusion between the campaign and Russia."
• 
Schiff never produced any of this so-called evidence.  He just asserted its existence.
• 
Adam Schiff is a sociopath.  He will do or say anything to achieve power.  He is unfit to hold office.  He should resign.
• 
And not just Adam Schiff.  The entire apparatus of official Washington has been exposed by these transcripts, as well as by the documents just released in the Michael Flynn case.
• 
This is not only of importance to Donald Trump.  This is important to every American, because things fall apart when high-level officials do things like this for political reasons.
• 
There's a reason nobody trusts the government anymore.
• 
The vast majority of the Russian collusion investigation, including the testimony you just heard, occurred during the first two years of this administration.
• 
At the time, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and every single committee.  They had the power to expose this hoax and to shut it down.  But they did not.
• 
We can only speculate why.  Maybe they were too cowardly to tell the truth.  Or maybe, deep down, a lot of them agreed with the aims of all of this.
      The Michael Flynn case sounds like something out of China — and it could happen to you  (Fox 05/01/2020)
• 
Like so much else that has happened recently in America, the Michael Flynn story lays bare the architecture of control that's been present just beneath the surface of this country for a long time.
• 
For reasons we still don't fully understand, Michael Flynn deeply offended permanent Washington somehow.  So they decided to destroy him.
• 
They pretended to believe he was a secret Russian agent, and then they entrapped him on a completely bogus perjury charge.  When he resisted, they threatened to hurt his son until he signed a confession.
• 
It sounds like something that happens in China.  It happened here in the middle of our capital city, Washington.  We've known that for a long time.
• 
According to newly released documents, on January 4, 2017, FBI agents decided to close their investigation of Michael Flynn and his ties to Russia.  After much searching, they had found "no derogatory information about Flynn." So, it was over.  He was in the clear.
• 
But it wasn't over.  Corrupt FBI official Peter Strzok demanded that the investigation stay open until the Bureau could invent a crime and crush Michael Flynn.  And in the end, that's what happened.
• 
There's nothing worse than this.  It's how the secret police operate in third world dictatorships.
• 
And it's exactly how Peter Strzok operated, and then he lied about it extensively.
• 
He should be in prison, literally.  And in fact, if the FBI treated its own officials the way it treats its political opponents, Peter Strzok would be serving a multiyear sentence...
• 
But that's not what happened.  Instead, the FBI continued to let Peter Strzok meddle in American politics, in our democracy, the one they claim they're protecting.
• 
It was Strzok who decided that Hillary Clinton's secret email server was merely extremely careless instead of gross negligence.  The distinction was between a crime and not a crime; he let her off the hook.
• 
It was Strzok who bragged to his mistress about building an "insurance policy" against Trump's election and promising to "stop him," meaning Trump.
• 
... it was Strzok who kept the bogus Russia investigation going.  "Hey," he wrote to a colleague on January 4t, "don't close RAZOR" — that was the internal name for the Michael Flynn investigation.
• 
That same day, Strzok texted his girlfriend, "RAZOR is still open.  Serendipitously good, I guess.  You want those chips and Oreos?"
• 
"Phew," she replied.  "That's amazing that it is still open.  Good, I guess."
• 
At this point, it was over from Michael Flynn though he didn't know it.  The FBI arranged an interview with Flynn at the White House.  He had no idea what was coming.
• 
According to handwritten notes, FBI officials plotted to "get him to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired."
• 
It worked.  Flynn misstated a fact about a meaningless phone call with the Russian ambassador.  The FBI had spied on that phone call, so they knew.  Flynn's life was over.  His family was destroyed.
• 
Destroying someone's life and destroying his family because they're in the way of the power you seek.  You would have to be a dark cold person to chuckle about something like that, and Jim Comey definitely is the darkest and the coldest.
• 
This isn't about one man.  It's about our country.
• 
You don't want to live in a society where the most powerful agency in government imprisons people it doesn't like.
• 
That is horrifying.  People come to this country to escape it.
• 
But it happened.  And if it can happen to a three-star general serving as the national security adviser, it could definitely without question happen to you.
      Big Tech is using coronavirus to increase its power - and the US is becoming more like China  (Fox 04/29/2020)
• 
That video has had more than 5 million views on YouTube.
• 
In their presentation, the two doctors presented a flurry of data pointing to what we are currently learning about the coronavirus and how it spreads.
• 
They cited pages of government statistics and then interpreted them in light of their own long clinical experience as doctors.
• 
At one point, they noted that the newly adjusted death rate in their state of California, which is much lower than anyone expected it to be, and they asked if government officials there should change their policies based on this new science.
• 
So, whatever your view of the mass quarantines — and maybe you're enthusiastically for them — the questions you just heard are valid questions.  In fact, they're critical questions.
• 
We should all be asking those questions, including and especially our policymakers.
• 
But as Dr.  Erickson pointed out later in the video, dissent of any kind is no longer tolerated in this country.  Fact-based honesty, which is the soul of science, is under attack, even in hospitals.
• 
Dr.  Erickson described physicians being pressured to classify illnesses and deaths as related to coronavirus, whether they believe that to be true or not.
• 
Not everyone was impressed by it.  Some criticized the doctors' policy conclusions, and of course, that's fair.
• 
Decent people have different opinions.  We're not entirely certain what the perfect response to this pandemic is.  Nobody is certain.
• 
There's no objective answer at the moment.  At best, we can plod along with open minds and good faith.  More informed debate is exactly what we need to make wise decisions going forward.
• 
Unfortunately for all of us, informed debate is exactly what the authorities don't want.  They want unquestioned obedience, so they're cracking down on free expression.
• 
Last night, the doctors' video, the one you just saw, was pulled off of YouTube, the largest video hosting site in the world.
• 
It wasn't an accident, YouTube admitted doing it.  The company cited a violation of "community guidelines" and they did not apologize.
• 
Looking back, when all of this is finally over and it will be, it's likely we'll see this moment — what YouTube just did — as a turning point in the way we live in this country, a sharp break with 250 years of law and custom.
• 
The video was not pornographic.  It didn't violate copyright or incite violence or commit libel.  It didn't break any law.
• 
The only justification for taking it down was that the two physicians on-screen had reached different conclusions from the people currently in charge.  It was a form of dissent from orthodoxy.
• 
YouTube and its parent company, Google have now officially banned dissent.  The CEO of YouTube admitted that openly.
• 
"Anything that would go against World Health Organization recommendations would be a violation of our policy.  And so, remove is another really important part of our policy."
• 
Consider that for a minute.  As a matter of just science, it's ludicrous.  Like everyone else involved in global pandemic policy, the WHO has often been wrong in its recommendations.  A lot of people have.
• 
In mid-January, WHO told us that coronavirus could not spread from person-to-person.  In March, they told us that face masks didn't work.  Those were lies, and they were welcome on Google's platforms.
• 
Doctors who are actually treating patients with the virus, meanwhile, have just been banned.
• 
So, no, this is not about science.  Censorship never is about science.  It's about power.
• 
Big Technology companies are using this tragedy to increase their power over the American population.  They're working in concert with politicians in order to do it.
• 
Just on Tuesday, Facebook removed an events page for a political protest in Michigan.
• 
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook: "We do classify that as harmful misinformation, and we take that down."
• 
"Harmful misinformation" — that is a phrase familiar to anyone who has watched totalitarian regimes in any country.  It's now how Mark Zuckerberg describes political opinions he doesn't like.
• 
Our free press exists to push back against obvious abuses of power like this one.  It's the reason we have a First Amendment.  It's the only reason we have a First Amendment.
• 
Our media are no longer challenging power, they are colluding with power.  And that may be why there's been so little critical coverage of the massive expansion of our surveillance state currently in progress.
• 
In the name of fighting the coronavirus, tech companies are now following you through your cell phone.  They're watching you from above with drones.  Those sound like paranoid fantasies; they are not.  It's happening as we speak.
• 
So, what do we have here?  We have Big Tech companies partnering with the government to spy on you without your knowledge.
• 
Does that sound familiar?  It sounds a lot like China.
• 
Of all the many ironies of this moment, so many of them bitter, the hardest to swallow is this one.
• 
As we fight this virus, we are becoming far more like the country that spawned it.  We're becoming more like China.
• 
It's horrifying.  And it tells you everything that our professional class enthusiastically welcomes this.
• 
Over the weekend, The Atlantic magazine published an article by two academics calling for an end to freedom of speech in America.
• 
Their model for an ideal system?  The totalitarian government of China.  "In the debate over freedom versus control of the internet, China was largely correct and the U.S.  was wrong."
• 
"Significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet and governments must play a large role in these practices to ensure that the internet is compatible with society's norms and values."
• 
"Norms and values." Whose norms and values?  Well, our leaders' norms and values, of course, but mostly their interests.
• 
Those in power are the ones our professional class seeks to protect, not the rest of the country.
• 
Freedom of conscience never endangers the public.  It only threatens the powerful.  It endangers their control.
• 
It hinders their ability to dictate election results, to loot the economy, to make policies based on whim for their own gain.
• 
No wonder our leaders have done such a poor job protecting us from China.  They're on the same team.
      Tucker Carlson: Coronavirus crisis — Only science will free us from this pandemic  (Fox 04/25/2020)
• 
Mass quarantines under the best circumstances are really just a stopgap.  ... A single effective treatment would make all the difference right away.
• 
You wouldn't have to cure every sick patient, but if you could cure a significant number of sick patients and lower the death rate, this would be a completely different country.
• 
Hope would return.  Fear would reside.  We could begin to regard this as a manageable illness as we do so many other illnesses.
• 
More than 600,000 Americans, for example, will die this year from cancer.  That's a tragic number.  You doubtless know some of them.
• 
But we accept it, and we live our lives bravely in the face of it, in part because cancer, horrible as it is, isn't very mysterious anymore.
• 
There are treatments for it.  Those treatments, sadly, don't always work, but they work often enough that we can manage to live without panic.
• 
It's been obvious from day one that the main goal here as we fight this pandemic has got to be finding effective treatments for the virus.
• 
One of the first off-label drugs that doctors around the world used to treat the coronavirus was hydroxychloroquine.
• 
Hydroxychloroquine is a cheap, decades-old medicine long recognized as a therapeutic for lupus and rheumatoid arthritis — autoimmune diseases.
• 
Early evidence suggested that hydroxychloroquine might be promising.  Physicians in the hardest-hit countries, Spain and Italy, fox example, reported that it was their preferred treatment for the coronavirus.
• 
One day, from the podium, the president touted the drug as a promising lead.
• 
From that moment on, precisely that moment, in the minds of the partisans in our media establishment, hydroxychloroquine was purely a political issue.
• 
The drug was no longer a medicine or therapy.  It was the medical equivalent of Vladimir Putin.
• 
It was a cudgel they could swing in the air mindlessly to hit their ideological opponents in hopes of political gain.
• 
They ignored evidence that hydroxychloroquine might be effective in some ways.
• 
They waited anxiously for evidence that it might not be, and the other day they got it.  Several recent studies suggested hydroxychloroquine is unlikely to help people who are already severely ill with the coronavirus.
• 
For most Americans, this was disappointing news.  They wanted it to work.
• 
But at CNN, it was cause for celebration.  The network produced a video for its website tallying up every time the president had mentioned hydroxychloroquine.
• 
Over at The Washington Post ... a person called Philip Bump produced a 3,000-word timeline looking at "the rise and fall of Trump's obsession with hydroxychloroquine."
• 
... ended that piece this way with a suggestion of a sinister conspiracy at work, writing, "Why promote that drug and why so energetically?" Hmm.  He left the question hanging in the air.
• 
... as usual, this was pure projection.  What the creeps in big media accuse you of doing, every single time, they are fervently doing themselves.  They're the ones obsessed with hydroxychloroquine.
• 
Most people just want a drug that works.  Those in the media are the ones with a weird, unspoken agenda that's obvious, and yet hidden.
• 
Most people in this country just want a drug that works, and in fact, in some circumstances, this drug may work.  Hydroxychloroquine is still being used to treat coronavirus patients.
• 
Many doctors believe it can help if used early or in mild cases of the disease.
• 
In real life, we are getting mixed results.  We need to know more.
• 
This is how science actually works.  It's why we still haven't cured cancer despite decades of working on it.  But we have prolonged the lives of cancer patients significantly.
• 
These are the kinds of victories you get in this business.  Real science is complicated and difficult and almost always incremental.
      Tucker Carlson: Coronavirus crisis has exposed how vulnerable and dependent the US is on China  (Fox 04/24/2020)
• 
If you're under the age of 100, you have never lived in a world where the United States was not the most powerful nation on Earth.
• 
For a century, America's dominance has shaped the globe.  Many of our most basic assumptions, which we think of as Americans — assumptions about democracy and culture and art and the value of human life — are now much of the world's assumptions, at least officially.
• 
This has been an American century, but it could end.  There's no mandate that we must lead the world forever.  We could be replaced, and it could happen soon.
• 
In countless ways, this coronavirus pandemic has showed us that.  It has revealed how terrifyingly vulnerable we are.
• 
We needed masks — we no longer make masks here.  We needed specific medicines; we don't make those either.
• 
Parts for ventilators and CT scans and an endless list of other critical medical devices — none of them are made here anymore.
• 
All of these things are now made in China.
• 
Just like our phones and our routers and our machine tools and our airplane parts, China makes an awful lot of what we use, and by the way, a lot of what our military uses.
• 
China has grown rich from selling all of this to us.
• 
And that's why when we need to raise money in a crisis — this crisis for example — we sell our debt to China.
• 
If America goes bankrupt after this, bankrupt from the way that our leaders have responded to the pandemic — and that could happen — it will likely be the Chinese who bail us out.  They're the only ones who can afford it.
• 
All of this is real, and it's horrifying, and most of us are just waking up to it now.
• 
So, the question is, how did it happen?  How did the world's richest democracy become dependent upon a hostile foreign dictatorship?*
• 
It's complicated.  But there's one main reason: Our leadership class here in the United States allowed this to happen.  Sometimes they did it in secret.  They got rich from doing it.
• 
... we told you about a consulting firm called McKinsey & Company.  McKinsey is the recruiter of choice for many graduates at our most selective colleges.
• 
McKinsey makes money selling advice to companies and countries.
• 
The country advised Saudi Arabia's crown prince, for example, on how to consolidate power there and silence all dissent in his kingdom.  Many people disappeared after that.
• 
In the 1980s, McKinsey urged banks to expand something called securitization — that's the practice of selling bundled loans.  That practice led directly to the 2008 financial crisis.
• 
And most of all, for decades McKinsey promoted a concept called outsourcing.  Familiar now, not well known then.
• 
U.S.  companies, they argued, could increase short-term profits by sending many of their jobs overseas.  ... Sending jobs overseas would make America richer.  That was their claim.  It didn't happen.  Only China got richer. 
• 
McKinsey was right there to advise the government of China, and it got paid the whole time.
• 
Early on, McKinsey even offered its services to the Communist Party of China at a discount while charging clients in the United States full freight.
• 
So China rose and America declined, but McKinsey still found ways to make money here in the U.S.
• 
In 2013, the company advised Purdue Pharma on how they could "supercharge sales of their addictive opioid painkiller, OxyContin."
• 
McKinsey urged Purdue to use mail orders to bypass pharmacists who are trying to keep addicts from getting narcotics.
• 
McKinsey consultants advised Purdue on how to "counter the emotional messages from mothers with teenagers that overdosed on opioids." Hard to believe they did that, but they did do it.
• 
In fact, consider all the injuries this country has sustained over the past 40 years — the loss of manufacturing here, an unprecedented drug epidemic that has changed our demographics, leaders aligning with foreign dictatorships, a financialized economy in which bankers and private equity barons appear to reap most of the economic gains.
• 
McKinsey & Company is directly implicated in every one of these disasters.  The company's ties to the Chinese government are especially shocking.
      Not a single cent should be spent making rich universities richer during the coronavirus crisis  (Fox 04/23/2020)
• 
When Washington bailed out the finance world more than a decade ago after the most recent financial collapse, the government set limits on CEO compensation.
• 
And they did it for a reason.  Taxpayer bailouts should be used for saving jobs, not making corporate executives richer than they already are.
• 
So, it's striking, by contrast, to see the Department of Education, which began dishing out $14 billion in bailout funds for the coronavirus pandemic for American universities this month, is not setting similar limits on how much university presidents get to pay themselves.
• 
And they pay themselves more than you might think — a lot.
• 
Columbia University, for example, is getting $12.8 million in bailout money, despite having an $11 billion endowment.
• 
The president of that school, a person called Lee Bollinger, makes more than $2 million dollars a year.
• 
In other words, Lee Bollinger is set to collect about one-sixth of the entire federal bailout.
• 
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute — a school you probably haven't heard of and probably for good reason — is getting $4.8 million dollars in bailout money, and amazingly, that's less than University President Shirley Ann Jackson pays herself every year.
• 
The University of Michigan, which is a public school with more than $12 billion in the bank, still got a $25 million bailout.  They plan to spend $8 million on their football coach this year.
• 
They're still going to lose to Ohio State, which got $45 million in bailout money.  That school pays its coaching staff $11 million.
• 
Meanwhile, the University of Pennsylvania, a school for kids on the Harvard waitlist, received $9.9 million.
• 
The president of UPenn, Amy Gutmann, makes nearly $3 million — that's about a third of the entire bailout.
• 
If paying Amy Gutmann is such a priority, maybe the school could find that money in their $14.7 billion endowment.
• 
We could go on and on and on.  We could cite a dozen examples, in fact, a hundred examples.
• 
Young people in this country are the poorest group in this country, but the schools that pretend to educate them are the richest institutions we have.
• 
They are getting a bailout that young people could only dream of.  Why?
• 
Because universities are one of the most powerful political interest groups in the nation and young people are not, and you're not.
• 
And that's why the government is blowing billions giving them cash they don't need at the same time that you're wondering how to pay your mortgage.
• 
But it shouldn't take shame for Harvard to do the right thing.  They should be decent enough to do it.  That's a pipe dream; they're not even close to decent.
• 
But in the absence of their decency, we need better laws.  Not a single cent ever should be spent making rich universities even richer.
• 
They do enough harm to this country.
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson: China is waging coronavirus distraction campaign  (Fox 04/18/2020)
• 
First, many in the intelligence world with experience in China suspected right away that the story the Chinese government was telling about this virus was almost certainly a lie
• 
Initially, Chinese officials claimed the virus had jumped from an obscure, scaly animal called a pangolin, which was sold in the Wuhan wet market.
• 
That explanation didn't make sense.  Wet markets are seafood markets.  Pangolins are mammals.  So are bats, which were also suspected as the source of the coronavirus.
• 
In the face of skepticism, the Chinese then blamed Italian armed forces personnel, who'd been near Wuhan a few months before for the Military World Games, an international sporting event.  The Italians brought the virus, the Chinese said.
• 
When the Italian government complained, the Chinese shifted blame to the United States.  The American military and Western tourists infected Wuhan, they claimed.
• 
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, Chinese officials worked frantically to destroy relevant evidence.
• 
Doctors and journalists in Wuhan who raised questions about the virus disappeared.  Some may have been killed.
• 
At one point in January, scientists in Shanghai succeeded in sequencing DNA from the virus.
• 
The information they gathered would have been crucial to researchers around the world who were trying to understand the virus and develop vaccines against it.
• 
But the Chinese government ordered the viral samples destroyed and the lab notes shredded.
• 
The scientists themselves were disciplined for daring to conduct the research, and their lab was shut down.
• 
The Chinese government then quarantined the city of Wuhan.  Millions fled.
• 
But apparently, relatively few of them were allowed to travel to Beijing, the Chinese capital.  Instead, they flew to cities around the world.
• 
The first reflex of the Chinese government is always to lie, in order to hide failure and avoid embarrassment.
• 
From the early days of the outbreak, Chinese diplomats around the world insisted that there was no chance whatsoever that the virus had come from a lab.  They sometimes insisted this even when no one had asked them, as if they were reading from a script.
• 
It soon became obvious what was going on.  English-language academic journals have raised questions for years about the safety standards in the Wuhan bioresearch lab.  An article in Nature from 2017 noted that "some scientists outside China worry about pathogens escaping" from the facility.
• 
Chinese scientists themselves publicly discussed working with extremely dangerous pathogens in Wuhan.
• 
As of today ... there is "almost unanimous" agreement in American intelligence-gathering agencies that the virus currently destroying much of the world originally emerged from a lab in Wuhan.
• 
At the same time – and this may be directly related – China has been waging an unremitting propaganda war on the subject.
• 
Chinese officials have tried to squelch all conversations about who's responsible for this pandemic by inflaming the political sensitivities and race guilt of American elites.
• 
In one case the spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry attempted to dictate how American press outlets describe the virus.  ... "Certain media say this coronavirus is a ‘China Virus.' This is extremely irresponsible and we firmly oppose that."
• 
Among the many ironies in that demand: even now, the disease is widely referred to in China as, "the Wuhan virus." Our news outlets, meanwhile, almost always call it COVID-19.  That term does not translate to Chinese.
• 
COVID-19 is the name devised by the World Health Organization back in January, under influence from Chinese leaders anxious to deflect responsibility for it.
• 
Once they succeeded in removing any hint of origin from the name of the virus, the Chinese government launched a campaign to tar anyone who mentioned Wuhan as a dangerous racist.
• 
"Racism is not the right tool to cover your own incompetence," lectured Chinese state media when President Trump referred to the Wuhan virus.
• 
American media parroted that line almost precisely, as no doubt the Chinese expected they would.
• 
CNN White House Correspondent Jim Acosta said: "The President referred to the coronavirus as a ‘foreign virus.' And I think it's going to smack – it's going to come across to a lot of Americans as smacking of xenophobia."
• 
On MSNBC, contributor John Heilemann said: "Xenophobic wartime Trump.  Where he thinks the only path now is to basically declare the virus Public Enemy Number 1, paint it in somewhat racist terms."
• 
In addition, MSNBC contributor Karine Jean Pierre said: "The xenophobia and racism in the outbreak is such a common thing.  It is incredibly dangerous.  It is problematic and it is scary.  I just want to call that out."
• 
ABC reporter Cecilia Vega asked the president: "Why do you keep calling this the Chinese virus?  Why do you keep using this?  A lot of people think its racist."
• 
President Trump replied: "It's not racist at all.  No, not at all.  It comes from China, that's why."
• 
Media outlets are relatively easy to corrupt, given the low level of sophistication of the people who work there.
• 
"Beijing has instructed diplomats in their consulate in San Francisco to work with American state and local officials and members of Congress to push back against anyone who gets too far out on blaming China for this."
• 
Apparently, it has worked.  Here's Sen.  Chris Murphy, D-Conn., on CNN earlier this week: "The reason that we're in the crisis that we are today is not because of anything that China did.  It's not because of anything the WHO did.  It's because of what this president [Trump] did."
• 
Barbara Lee, D-Calif., long considered a strongly pro-China voice, tweeted this to President Trump: "Diseases don't have nationalities.  China isn't to blame for you fumbling this crisis."
• 
Rep.  Judy Chu, D-Calif., wrote: "China didn't ‘unleash' anything.  A virus spread, as viruses do.  Blaming China and insisting on calling this the ‘Wuhan' virus, even though every medical expert said not to, is putting people's lives in danger.  Stop politicizing this and put people first!"
• 
The entire story of how the government of China has successfully shaped our understanding of the Wuhan virus, as well as our response to it, may take years to tell.
• 
But it's clear how China sees this pandemic: not simply, or even primarily, as a public health disaster in which thousands are dying, but as part of a larger geopolitical struggle for control of the world.
• 
Most Americans don't perceive that, or understand the profound gravity of the stakes involved.
• 
How could they?  Our leaders have lied to us about it for years.
• 
See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Vitally important coronavirus questions remain unanswered – here are some  (Fox 04/11/2020)
• 
Wuhan, in central China, was the first place in the world to suffer an outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
• 
It's worth saying that out loud from time to time, both because it's true and materially significant, and because a lot of people would like you to forget it.
• 
Because Wuhan is the site of the longest-running coronavirus outbreak, we ought to study what happened there carefully.
• 
It's worth knowing as much as we can about how and why the disease started, and how it moved so quickly to the rest of the world.
• 
Early data from Wuhan led researchers to conclude that each infected person, on average, infected about 2.5 additional people.
• 
Now it looks like that assumption has been a profound understatement.
• 
Based on extensive case analysis, the researchers estimate that the average infected Wuhan resident infected 5.7 other people.  That's enough to double the epidemic in fewer than three days.
• 
Is the estimate accurate?  We don't know if it is.
• 
But for a moment, imagine this new number from Los Alamos is correct, and the size of the outbreak in Wuhan was doubling every three days.
• 
That would mean a huge number of people there were infected with the coronavirus.
• 
Here's the mystery: The Chinese government allowed 5 million residents to flee the city before they locked it down in January.
• 
Most of them presumably went to other places in China.  And yet, according to the Chinese – as well as all available evidence we now have in the West – there were no other major outbreaks in China.
• 
Meanwhile, other cities all over Europe and the United States have been brought to their knees by the virus.  How could this be?  It doesn't seem to make any sense at all.
• 
For some reason, almost no one in the American media has even asked about it.  That's strange.
• 
At this point, we have no real explanation for why the coronavirus spread throughout the West, but not throughout China.
• 
How about the most basic question of all: How deadly is it?  We still don't know.
• 
... is it possible that some groups of people are more vulnerable to the illness than others?  We know that genetics plays a major role in the way many diseases progress.  Is that true here?  We don't know.
• 
Is this virus seasonal?  Will it recede in the summer, before returning in the fall and winter?
• 
If infected people get immunity, how long does that immunity last?
• 
There's mounting evidence that an awful lot of people may have the virus and not know it.  Do they face long-term health consequences from that?
• 
Those are just some of the things we still don't know about this strange new virus from Wuhan, China.  It would have been nice if authorities had learned a lot more before they took such dramatic steps in response to it.
• 
Our leaders had two examples to choose from as this pandemic bore down on America: The Swedish model of targeted restrictions coupled with voluntary distancing; and the Chinese model of total lockdowns, internal travel restrictions, and punishment for those who step out of line.
• 
Our leaders chose the Chinese model.  With every passing day, their response becomes more restrictive: Requests that people stay indoors have become orders.  People are being fined and arrested for driving alone, playing catch in the park and paddle boarding on the ocean.
• 
How are these measures keeping us safe?  The short answer is, we don't know that they are.
• 
As noted, we still don't know much of anything.  We're definitely not encouraged to ask about it.
• 
Dr.  Tony Fauci, who has become the face of coronavirus response, is now suggesting that America could adopt a feature of life familiar to the population of mainland China: Internal passports.
• 
Imagine a country where illegal immigrants can work, drive, get welfare, and vote, all without a single authentic document.
• 
Meanwhile, 300 million legal citizens must produce government papers to prove their right to go outside.
• 
That's where we're headed, and with remarkable speed.
• 
For what has to the first time in our history, Easter services have been banned in many places.
• 
Authorities will allow citizens to go to the supermarket, but not to practice Christianity in public.
• 
The Chinese population would recognize that too.
• 
Where's the science that suggests this works?  There isn't any.  They feel like doing it, so they are.
• 
Politicians understand the only risk for them is in restraint.  Authoritarian overreach is almost never punished.
• 
When the coronavirus has finally passed, our leaders want to be able to say they took it seriously.
• 
But there's nothing serious about reactions like this.  They're mindless and destructive.
• 
Instead of arresting people for going to church, maybe they could pause and answer a few basic questions first.
      Tucker Carlson: What exactly is Joe Biden's position on the coronavirus pandemic?  (Fox 04/09/2020)
• 
Ask yourself, is Joe Biden ready to lead this country?
• 
Could he find his car in a three-tiered parking garage?  Could he navigate a salad bar?
• 
And by the way, what exactly is his position on the coronavirus pandemic?
• 
Those are the mysteries Democrats now face.
• 
It is hard to imagine a man like that making it through a presidential debate or even staying awake through the inaugural proceedings.
• 
It seems likely that at some point, Democratic leaders will try to find a way to replace Biden before the November election.
• 
Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972.  That was the year Richard Nixon opened China to the West.
• 
As the threat from China grew larger and more threatening and much more obvious over the decades, Biden seemed to grow more accommodating to the Chinese government.
• 
In 2000, for example, the U.S.-China Trade Relations Act gave China normal trade status.  What does that mean?
• 
Within three years of the bill passing, America lost its last aspirin factory, its last vitamin C facility, its last penicillin plant.
• 
Our ability to make critically vital antibiotics in this country vanished, and that was a serious blow to our national security.
• 
Eleven years later in 2011, Biden still didn't see the threat.  In fact, he appeared to welcome it.
• 
That year, he said, "A rising China is a positive development not only for China, but for America."
• 
The day that Biden gave that speech, millions of Americans already lost their jobs.  They've been shipped overseas to China.
• 
Chinese students were already flooding America's schools and research labs, crowding out Americans, stealing the data and information.
• 
And in the end that would boost the Chinese economy to where it stands today — larger than ours.
• 
Biden: "...  This is no time for Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia — hysterical xenophobia to — and fear-mongering — to lead the way instead of science."
• 
"Xenophobia." It seems almost antique.  Why?  Because in a moment like this, in a moment of national crisis, irrelevant issues tend to recede.
• 
You've probably heard a lot less recently about how America is racist, how we need reparations for slavery and non-binary signs at every public men's room stall.  It all seems insultingly frivolous now.
• 
What matters in moments like this are the big things, and at the top of that list is who should lead this world going forward?
• 
Should it be the United States or should it be the government of China?
• 
Anyone who has trouble answering that question probably won't be the president.
      NY's leaders more worried at first about being called racist than coronavirus threat  (Fox 03/27/2020)
• 
New York City is the densest metro area in the country.  That's the most obvious answer — probably the biggest problem.  The city also has an awful lot of people traveling to and from other infected countries, and that's significant, too.
• 
But it's not the whole story.  As this deadly virus that emerged from Eastern China and began to spread inexorably across the globe clearly headed here?
• 
Leaders in New York not only failed to shield their citizens from it, they took affirmative and aggressive steps to increase the risk to their population.
• 
Why would they do that?  Well, because they were worried far more about being called racist than protecting human lives.
• 
... this video was from February 2nd of this year.  That was long after the threat from the Chinese coronavirus was obvious to anyone who was paying attention.
• 
... New York City Health Commissioner: "The risk to New Yorkers for coronavirus is low and our preparedness as a city is very high.  There is no reason not to take the subway, not to take the bus, not to go out to your favorite restaurant, and certainly not to miss the parade next Sunday.  I'm going to be there."
• 
How could someone charged with protecting public health so recklessly endanger it?
• 
... State Sen.  John Liu ... suggested that people who might be concerned in any way about contracting a deadly disease or who might be interested in where it came from must be — and you guessed it — bigots.
• 
State Sen.  John Liu, D-N.Y.: "But there's really no need to panic and to avoid activities that we always do as New Yorkers.  We are hardy people.  As an Asian-American, I've been somewhat disturbed, if not outright appalled, at some of the comments or gestures that I have seen.  Diseases originate from anywhere or from particular places in the world."
• 
In other words, as a member of a protected interest group, I'm ordering you to ignore this threat to your family on moral grounds.
• 
It was always the most brutal form of social control, masquerading as sensitivity and caring.
• 
Now, we know it was infecting the public with disease.
• 
But at the time, sentiments like this were universal among big city public officials.
• 
State Sen.  Brian Kavanagh, for example, decided to embark on a crusade against what he called misinformation — a euphemism, as it so often is, for accurate information.
• 
Kavanagh encouraged people to head to Chinatown for a festival.
• 
State Sen.  Brian Kavanagh, D-N.Y.: "It's very important that we recognize that this holiday and this festival is of tremendous significance for many communities in our state.  And it is very important that we ensure that we don't have misinformation, and many in the media have been covering this issue as if it's, you know, a terrible plague that people have to avoid."
• 
"If you don't go to a crowded public place immediately, you're racist." Look at those people telling you that, demanding that you do that.  Hectoring you, badgering you, exerting moral blackmail on you to expose yourself.
• 
By early March, coronavirus was clearly becoming a major problem in the United States.  But for elected officials in New York, the only problem was their constituents' racist worries about staying alive.
• 
On March 2nd — this March 2nd — Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted this: "Since I'm encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives, plus get out on the town, despite coronavirus, I thought it would offer some suggestions.  Here's the first.  Thru Thursday, go see "The Traitor." If "The Wire" was a true story plus set in Italy, it would be this film."
• 
On March 11th, which, keep in mind, was barely two weeks ago, de Blasio was still insisting that "If you're not sick, you should be going about your life."
• 
That very same day, the NBA announced it was suspending its whole season.  Italy was already several days into a national lockdown.
• 
But the mayor of one of the world's most crowded cities was telling everyone to carry on, and so the Chinese coronavirus was just a racist myth.
• 
Soon after that, people in New York inevitably started to get sick, in some cases very sick.  In some cases, they died.
• 
And then suddenly de Blasio was on "Meet the Press" shrieking that Donald Trump had abandoned the city.  It was their fault.
• 
All it did was help mediocrities like Bill de Blasio get elected to office.
• 
But it was disgusting and cruel and divisive, and now we know it can get people killed.
      Tucker warns America will face these three dangers after coronavirus pandemic passes  (Fox 03/25/2020)
• 
Global depression
• 
"The finance moguls will be fine no matter what happens to the economy.  Not much changes for poor people, either.  But the middle class?  The middle class could be wiped out by what we are watching right now."
• 
"The service industry, middle management, small business, the independent contractors, people like those make this country work, and more importantly, they keep it stable.  They are the ones in deepest peril tonight."
• 
... a lasting hit to the middle class would result in an "impoverished country with a thin layer of rich people at the top."
• 
"That's a recipe for suffering and for never-ending political volatility ... and suddenly, for the first time ever, it's a possibility here.  Our first priority has to be preventing that or our grandchildren will regret it deeply."
• 
China's economic dominance
• 
"China ultimately is responsible for this virus.  The threat extends far beyond the current pandemic.  It's entirely possible that the Chinese coronavirus makes China stronger in the end, even as it weakens us in America."
• 
"China already has a deeper manufacturing base than we do and has a far larger population ... soon it will have the biggest economy on earth."
• 
"It's entirely possible that we could wake up a few years from now and find China in charge."
• 
"Now, we've been headed to this place for a while.  The crisis that we're currently going through could be enough to push us."
• 
... called for a plan to prevent China "from taking advantage of the chaos they that have unleashed and [that] we are suffering through."
• 
The threat to freedom of conscience
• 
Individuals' freedom of conscience is under attack from multinational tech monopolies, who have been controlling the stream of information about the coronavirus.
• 
"As we do all we can to fight this pandemic, we should make sure we don't lose the most important part of our birthright as Americans ... the right to think and say what we believe is true."
• 
"Freedom of conscience may be undervalued right now, but it underpins everything we have.  It is the foundation of a free and decent society."
• 
"It's not a small thing.  It's a trend, collusion between big multinationals and authoritarian governments to make you obey.  It's not paranoid to talk.  It's real.  And you should worry about it."
      While Americans worry about dying from coronavirus, Dems focus on identity politics  (Fox 03/24/2020)
• 
It is a fearful time in American life, obviously, Americans are worried they could die from the coronavirus, that someone they love could die, that they might lose their jobs, and that the country that they grew up in could be crippled permanently in the wake of this disaster.
• 
It's a terrifying moment, and in that moment, we need wisdom and steady guidance from our leaders.  We need altruism.
• 
They need to care more about you than they care about themselves.  But in Congress, they don't.
• 
The foremost concern of some members is saving their own investment portfolios or making stupid partisan points or indulging their creepy ideological obsessions.
• 
Wondering why Congress hasn't yet passed a bill to help the country survive this?  That's why.
• 
Details of the Democratic plan became public on Monday.  Huge parts of the proposal have nothing to do with fighting the pandemic we are suffering through.
• 
Worse, the bill is suffused with the cruel bigotry of identity politics.
• 
At a time when America so badly, desperately needs to come together, Democrats remain intent on splitting this country into warring tribes.  It's shocking.
• 
St.  Nancy's coronavirus bill currently is more than 1,400 pages.
• 
It's not that long because it's a finely tuned fix to help the country through this disaster.  No.
• 
It's that long because House Democrats have crammed it with totally unrelated political priorities, identity politics stoking racial division, as usual, global warming, open borders.  You should read it.
• 
The bill would require every corporation that receives coronavirus aid to have officers and a budget dedicated to diversity and inclusion initiatives for a minimum of five years after they get the money because that is going to keep America healthy and prosperous, just like it has.
• 
More bean counters making sure you're the right color before they give you a job.  Okay.
• 
Companies will also have to produce elaborate racial reports for the government, listing the skin color and the sex of their officers and boards of directors.
• 
They have to prove they give enough money to firms owned by women and non-whites, and of course, how much they spent on diversity initiatives.
• 
In all, this bill uses the word "diversity" more than 60 times.
• 
What does that have to do with a pandemic that might kill you?  Not one thing.
• 
It's just more ugly race politics, the kind they specialize in.  Democrats think that's much more important right now.
• 
The bill allocates $300 million for hiring experts to manage coronavirus preparation and response.  Those are critical jobs.
• 
But instead of looking for the most qualified people in a time of national emergency — and that's the only criterion that matters in the least right now, period: Are you qualified?
• 
Instead of that, the bill orders that employees be chosen on the basis of their race and disability status.
• 
This is insanity.  It's dangerous insanity.  Who cares what color your scientists are?
• 
But it goes on.  The Bill would mandate that all 50 states have an early voter period as well as same-day voter registration.  Why?
• 
Because Democrats believe those changes would give them an electoral advantage.
• 
... the law would require that any airline that takes federal money offset their carbon emissions within five years because climate activism is way more important than a disease that could kill your family next week.
• 
... we're staring down the barrel of the most profound employment crisis of our lifetimes — that's not an exaggeration.
• 
And what are Democrats doing?  They're trying to automatically renew visas and work permits for all immigrants here in the U.S.  because their jobs are very important, way more important than yours.
• 
Democrats want to make certain that people who are replacing you are secure and happy.
• 
The Republican version of the bill is not that awful.  Nothing could be that awful.
• 
But we want to be fair and tell you everything that's going on on Capitol Hill.
• 
... some Senate Republicans are trying to kill the requirement that companies that receive bailout funds stop sending American jobs overseas.
• 
Why would they do something like that?  We don't know.  You'd have to ask the business groups like the Chamber of Commerce that are funding them.
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Tucker Carlson rips China, says 'Third World health practices played a central role in this disaster'  (Fox 03/18/2020)
• 
... urged American leaders to reevaluate the country's relationship with China ... calling Beijing an "imminent threat" to the American way of life as the coronavirus pandemic continues to impact the country.
• 
"Pandemics are inevitable.  We should accept that.  But our responses to them are not inevitable.  Nobody forced us to outsource the production of essential medical supplies to China. Our leaders did that and they did it on purpose."
• 
"They don't want to talk about it now at all.  But they did it and it was a crime."
• 
"We need to move essential manufacturing back to the United States.  It's crazy not to."
• 
"More broadly, we need to start treating China like the dangerous Cold War-level adversary it has clearly become."
• 
"China's Third World health practices played a central role in this disaster.  The virus grew to a pandemic because Chinese officials silenced health authorities in that country who tried to warn the public about it."
• 
"Even now, the Chinese government is determined to crush any unsanctioned reporting from the country."
• 
"Amazingly, our ruling class is taking China's side.  And that, again, is the good news about a crisis that clarifies things."
• 
"You can see exactly what side people are on.  Now, some of our leaders do this on purpose because they're getting rich from China.  Maybe the media are just too dumb to know the difference."
• 
... praised President Trump for not backing down from describing the virus as "Chinese" , pointing out that China knows how to manipulate the American system.
• 
"The Chinese government knows that identity politics is the greatest weakness in the American system."
• 
"It always is the greatest weakness in every country it infects.  And that's why they don't allow identity politics in China."
• 
"We need to be honest about what the problem is and we need to work as hard as we can to fix it."
      Tucker Carlson: If you want to help people weather the coronavirus crisis, save their jobs  (Fox 03/17/2020)
• 
We haven't faced a medical crisis like this in living memory.  We know that coronavirus constitutes a major threat to the country — of course, it does.
• 
What we really don't have a clear picture of right now is what's coming next.
• 
Our first obligation, everyone agrees, is to keep our people safe.  If we can prevent Americans from getting the coronavirus, we should do that.
• 
At the same time, though, we need to protect our economy, and that is not just something that Wall Street cares about, to be totally clear.
• 
Economic decline is dangerous for everyone, especially at the bottom of the economy.  It's a legitimate human concern.  It's not just financial, it's about families.
• 
Here's the problem.  We've got two imperatives and they often conflict.
• 
So if you ask an epidemiologist what we ought to do next, the answer is simple: Shut it down.  Close every public space until the virus passes.  Hospitals would get a pass, of course, but restaurants, bars, hotels, movie theaters, airlines — everything.
• 
From a public health standpoint, that makes sense.  But what would be the consequences of doing that?
• 
Millions and millions of people would lose their jobs, some of them for good.  We'd enter a severe recession with mass unemployment, and it could get worse from there.  It's not a joke; that could happen.
• 
You would see an awful lot of people in poverty in Middle America and that poses its own kind of public health risk.  Poor countries are never healthy countries.
• 
If you want great health care, you've got to pay for it, and you have to have money to do so.
• 
So you see the problem.  Responding to this epidemic requires balance.  It does.  It's a complex question.
• 
You'll hear people claim they've got a simple answer that will fix everything.  Ignore those people.  Only fools pretend they can see the future.
• 
Wise people admit uncertainty.  That's the hallmark of wisdom.
• 
As of now, here's what we do know.  First, we're only at the beginning of all of this.  We're pretty certain of that.
• 
... we could use the military's expertise and manpower; it has a lot of both.
• 
We have the most sophisticated armed forces on Earth and the best-funded.  No doubt there are many other ways they can help — use your imagination.
• 
And then there's our second priority, keeping our economy stable.  Now, once again, this is not the same as using monetary policy to prop up the stock market.
• 
The real imperative right now is saving jobs.
• 
For government bureaucrats, university administrators and corporate HR Directors, talk show hosts, actually, a month out of the office constitutes a kind of vacation.
• 
But for the classes below, it could be the beginning of a long spiral, a real one.  ... a massive part of our economy could see their income drop to zero and not come back.
• 
Countries with high unemployment are desperate countries and more ominous, they are unstable countries, always.
• 
Some of the professional class have suggested a guaranteed basic income as a response to this threat.
• 
That's likely a well-meaning idea.  A lot of smart people are behind it.  But it's also decadent and foolish.
• 
Name a place that's become happier and more prosperous under a scheme like that?  Indian reservations?  The inner city?  Rural areas where half the male population gets monthly disability checks?
• 
People need to work.  They want to work.  Work gives them meaning and purpose and dignity.
• 
That's not some hollow slogan.  It's true.  It's true in your life.  It's true in the life of everyone.
• 
... there is a model in progress for how we can save work.  It's underway now in Germany.
• 
Employees are encouraged not to lay off their workers but instead place them on reduced hours.  The government then steps in to compensate some of those missing wages to help the companies with payroll.
• 
... it may cost taxpayers more than Romney's grand a month program, but critically, it keeps people in their jobs.
• 
That's the key as we look forward to turbulent times.
• 
Employment, stability, meaningful work — if you want to help people weather this crisis, the one that's coming, save their jobs.  It's that clear.
      Coronavirus isn’t the last pandemic America will face — here are the lessons we should learn  (Fox 03/13/2020)
• 
Anyone who thinks coronavirus is the last global pandemic America will face lacks sufficient imagination.
• 
There's no question this will happen again.  In a world connected by jet travel that is guaranteed.
• 
So as we suffer through this virus, maybe we should learn something useful for the next time.
• 
Going forward, our leaders ought to be certain we have enough medicine and tests and hospital beds, at the least in case something awful happens unexpectedly - because it will.
• 
There should be a plan to respond quickly in ways that assure the public that the people in charge know what they're doing.
• 
Here are a few other things to think about.  First, borders matter.  It turns out that immigration isn't some boutique political issue that only activists need to care about.
• 
The question of who lives in your country is the most basic issue that any nation faces ever.
• 
Immediately after the coronavirus began to spread globally, sane countries started to secure their borders.
• 
They wanted to know exactly who was coming in and out, and they wanted to control it.  That was the first thing they did.
• 
The Israelis did not want a single person who was even potentially infected to cross into Israel, and good for them.
• 
Unfortunately, nothing like that could ever happen here in the U.S.
• 
Democrats would denounce it instantly as racist and xenophobic.  So maybe Nancy Pelosi will give us a stern lecture about how immoral Israel is.
• 
Next, gun control takes on new significance when things fall apart.  It doesn't take much for law and order to collapse.
• 
Civilization itself can evaporate quickly and over the centuries; it often has.
• 
... at times like this, we're reminded how precarious any society is.  Given that, you've got to wonder about our leaders' demands that we disarm.
• 
Anyone who increases the threat to you and your family, and at the same time tries to prevent you from defending yourself is your enemy — by definition.
• 
It's scary when you think about that in the context of what is happening now.  And apparently a lot of people have thought about it.
• 
Ammunition sales jumped by hundreds of percent this week.  If Americans really believed their leaders would protect them when it came down to it, that wouldn't be happening.
• 
... if you want to know who's actually in control of anything, ask yourself this: Who can make you beg for mercy?
• 
If one of your kids had a bad infection, you would do anything for antibiotics.
• 
But our leaders don't control those drugs.  China does.
• 
The Chinese manufacture our entire supply of antibiotics, not to mention countless other goods your family literally could not live without.
• 
And here's the worst news: The Chinese hate us and have threatened to withhold life-saving medicine from us.
• 
Our most powerful enemy in the world has the power of life and death over our country.
• 
We should not let a single day pass before fixing this.
• 
But we should also recognize that not all of our opponents are foreign.
• 
In the next few months, American hospitals are likely to overflow with the desperately ill.  It's possible that many people who need immediate care will be turned away to suffer and die.
• 
So does this seem like the right time to open our entire health care system to the rest of the world for free?
• 
What would happen to sick people in America if we did that?  It sounds like a form of sabotage.
• 
Yet that's exactly what every Democrat who ran for president proposed in public.
• 
What are they thinking?  Well, they're not thinking.  They're believing — believing fervently in the cult of identity politics.
• 
Joe Biden released his plan for coronavirus on Sunday.  The first bullet point proclaims this: "Acts of racism and xenophobia against the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community must not be tolerated." That's number one on Biden's list.
• 
Is racism against the Pacific Islander community really our country's most urgent problem right now?
• 
No, it is not.  It is not even in the top 500 problems.  You're not going to see angry mobs lynching people in the streets because of coronavirus.
• 
You never will see that; it won't happen here.  This is not that kind of country.  America is a welcoming place filled with unusually kind and open-hearted people.
• 
The merchants of wokeness cannot see that — they refuse to see it.  As a matter of faith, they believe that all bad things emanate from America.  They will always put America last.  It's their creed.
• 
People like this are dangerous.  They're the reason things are falling apart.  Suddenly, they seem to run everything.
• 
But they are not in the majority in this country, and we should remember that.
• 
If there's a threat to your kids, you don't pause to think of an excuse or pretend it's not happening.
• 
You act.  You do whatever is necessary to protect them.  Period.  If you die trying, it is a life well spent.
• 
Instead of protecting the people of this country, our leaders' top priority is condemning fake xenophobia and making certain they can't be called racist on Twitter.
• 
Just so you're very clear about their priorities, they are.
      Racist for saying 'Chinese coronavirus'?  Now's not the time for the dumbest identity politics  (Fox 03/12/2020)
• 
The World Health Organization has revised its assessment of the coronavirus threat.  The virus from Wuhan is now officially a global pandemic.
• 
So as of right now, the official count in this country is 1,100 cases of coronavirus.  That figure is growing quickly.
• 
But before you reach that conclusion, consider this: With the average annual flu, the one that goes around every year, every person who gets the virus spreads it to over 1.3 people.
• 
In the case of this virus, the coronavirus, that number is almost double.  Left unchecked, every infected person affects more than two people on average.
• 
Of those who get the typical flu virus, about 0.1 percent die.  So far in the United States, the coronavirus death rate appears to be over 2.5 percent, though experts say with undetected cases, it could go down.  But that's small comfort.
• 
To be clear, this is a virus that spreads twice as easily as the flu and is likely to be at least 10 times deadlier.
• 
It's not something to take lightly.  The country needs a clear plan to protect its people.
• 
One of the reasons that Americans may have missed the significance of this virus is because unfortunately, it came enmeshed with politics.
• 
On television, talking heads have wasted hours upon valuable hours yammering not about the virus and its potential victims, but how it is racist to tie the coronavirus to China, where it came from.
• 
Please.  Now is not the time to indulge in the lowest and dumbest kind of identity politics.
• 
In times of crisis, euphemisms kill.  You need accuracy and clear language in the way you talk about the threat.  It's essential.
• 
And yet ingrained habits are hard to break, and among our professional class, no habit is more deeply ingrained than seeing the world through the lens of race, which they do.
• 
Ayman Mohyeldin, MSNBC host: Now, I want to ask you about the back and forth between Democratic Congresswoman Grace Meng and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and she is demanding an apology for him referring to the virus in very derogatory offensive terms calling it the Chinese coronavirus.
• 
"Offensive and racist." These people are a joke, and they are more importantly a distraction.
• 
China is watching all of this.  The Chinese government knows that identity politics is America's greatest weakness.
• 
It divides us.  It makes us stupider.  In times of crisis, it may even paralyze the national will at essential moments.  It could do that now.
• 
So Beijing has joined the chorus denouncing the West as racist for noticing where the virus came from.
• 
Chinese embassies are now openly claiming the virus may have come from somewhere else, not China.
• 
And the propaganda is working.  Just a month ago, the American media thought nothing of calling the virus what it actually is.
• 
That's not how they're describing it now.  Why?  Because China told them not to.
• 
And the media were happy to comply, and by the way, to downplay direct threats to this country from China articulated out of the open clearly in print.
• 
Just last week, China's official news service warned ominously that it might cut off drug exports to the United States in order to intensify the epidemic and cause even more deaths here.
• 
Keep in mind that China makes 97 percent of the world's antibiotics.  What would happen if they cut off supply to this country?  Many would die.
• 
*So our country's greatest rival is denying reality about a plague they unleashed on the world and is then openly threatening to kill American citizens in our country.
• 
This is happening right now.
• 
Our news media are ignoring all of it, which tells you which side they're on.
      Sanders is a threat to the Democratic establishment’s power - that's why it’s backing Biden  (Fox 03/03/2020)
• 
After much trial and error and a great deal of anxiety and frustrated harrumphing on cable news panels, the Democratic establishment finally has chosen the candidate to stop Bernie Sanders before he can take their money.
• 
There's much relief in Washington right now.  The Sanders threat is imminent and profound, and they've been sweating it.
• 
It's one thing if your country falls apart - if 10th graders can't read and 9-year-olds are taking puberty-blocking drugs and downtown LA looks like Calcutta and another 10,000 more Americans just died of fentanyl overdose.
• 
Whatever.  Americans are dying - Democrats are fine with that.  They can live with it.  They do.  They don't say a word.
• 
But if there's a rogue candidate out there who might actually be serious about closing the carried interest loophole, and forcing private equity barons to pay the same effective tax rate that you do, well, that cannot stand.
• 
It's totally and completely unacceptable.  In fact, it's morally wrong.
• 
And they have found their warhorse, a hero they imagined will carry them forth to victory against the wild-haired infidel from Vermont.
• 
It is this candidate whom you should know is literally now the youngest man in the Democratic race.
• 
This is the man they believe has the competence, the intensity, the intellect to repel the seething horde of Sandersites.  Ladies and gentlemen, Mr.  Joe Biden.
• 
Yup, that's the man.  ... he's running for the United States Senate in memory of the nearly half the country that's murdered by guns and only in the last few years, guided by the belief that other children are as bright and talented as white kids, not to mention clean and articulate, and in the hope that he can put three-quarters of a billion women back to work, whether they want to go or not.
• 
If that's the kind of transformational candidate you're looking for, Joe Biden is your man.
• 
He is a Renaissance man.  As he himself will tell you, the Renaissance was an awful long time ago, back during the Carter administration, actually.
• 
Running Joe Biden for president is like making your dog wear a dress.  It may make for an amusing Instagram post, but it's wrong.
• 
You can see the confusion in the dog's eyes.  You can see the same thing in Joe Biden's eyes if you look closely.
• 
"Why am I here?  What are we talking about?  Maybe if I make a lot of noise about pushups, no one will notice."
• 
So far the only thing we've learned from Biden's candidacy is that there's no one around him who cares enough to make him stop.  Instead, there are only enablers.
• 
The Biden campaign isn't about ideas, much less ideals.  The Democratic establishment's only concern is institutional control.  That's where all of their power comes from — from holding together and running things.
• 
If the Democratic coalition breaks down, they are, by definition, powerless.  They have nothing.
• 
And the real threat of Bernie Sanders is the threat he poses to the party.  He could split it in half, and break it forever.
• 
That cannot happen.  Joe Biden is their last chance.  That's why they're backing him.
• 
Probably the only group sincerely cheering Biden are the credit card companies.
• 
For decades, Biden was their paid lackey in Washington.  They bribed him with cash.  They gave jobs to his son.
• 
In return, he carried their legislation through Congress dutifully for many, many years.
• 
The average credit card interest rate in this country is 21 percent — 21 percent interest at a time when the Fed is giving banks billions of dollars nearly for free.
• 
That's how low interest rates are for them.  But you're paying 21 percent.  This is a disaster.
• 
How bad is it?  Let's put it in perspective: Ask yourself how many people do you know personally who have been hospitalized for coronavirus, something we're all worried about and justly.  Maybe none?
• 
Now ask yourself, how many people you know personally whose lives have been diminished or destroyed by credit card debt.
• 
Yes, maybe it's happened to you.  It probably has.  It's happened to so many people.
• 
Joe Biden is one of the decision-makers who made that possible.  It is not an overstatement.
• 
But they don't care.  Now, they're telling you that for the good of the country, you've got to vote for Joe Biden.
• 
Keep in mind, they don't even believe it as they say it.  They don't even like Biden.
• 
But at this point, they'll say anything because they have to.
      US is vulnerable to coronavirus because libs care more about identity politics than your life  (Fox 02/28/2020)
• 
Here in the U.S., we have our first coronavirus case of unknown origin; it's not linked to travel.  That's an ominous sign.
• 
The world is panicking over this, and there's a reason for that.
• 
In China, the virus has already killed more than 2,500 people — but that's only if you trust China's numbers, which no sober person does.  The actual number is likely much higher than that.
• 
But that's just the beginning of what we don't know.
• 
We're not really sure how coronavirus spreads.
• 
We don't know what the mortality rate is over large populations, especially as health services become overstretched — and they will.
• 
At this state, we're not even sure where it came from.
• 
But there is something we do know and it's this: A lot of the people who should have been preparing to defend us from this have not been doing that.
• 
The CDC, which is America's main line of defense against infectious diseases seem to be caught off guard by it.
• 
So what was the CDC doing instead?  Well, it was doing a lot of things.
• 
According to information from openthebooks.com, two years ago, CDC gave Georgia State University three-quarters of a million dollars to study social determinants of health in a diverse neighborhood in Georgia.
• 
Another $300,000.00 CDC grant funded to look at how an American Indian tribe in Washington State could improve health outcomes by eating traditional foods.
• 
It's not their fault.  It's our policymakers who cannot resist making everything ideological.  Their main goal is not keeping you safe.
• 
If it was, they wouldn't be letting rapists out of prison and pushing weed on your kids.
• 
No, their real interest is getting richer and more than that, feeling good about themselves.
• 
Protecting America does not make them feel good about themselves, it makes them feel guilty.
• 
When President Trump imposed even mild travel restrictions on China last month, they attacked him as a bigot.
• 
CNN, meanwhile, attacked the administration's Coronavirus Task Force as "another example of Trump administration's lack of diversity." As if the color of the doctors matters...
• 
A month ago, CNN warned that the real threat of coronavirus was racism against Asians.
• 
Again, counting by race.  If there was ever a time to drop that dumb and dangerous tick, it's now as a global epidemic bears down in our country.
• 
But they can't stop doing it, and they won't.  Because in the end, they care more about identity politics than they care about your life.
• 
Whatever weird guilt trip these people are on ought to be left to them and their psychiatrists to sort out — and it will take a while.
• 
But under no circumstances should they be anywhere near power.
• 
People will get hurt if they are because they don't care.
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Russia isn’t attacking our democratic system – our own ruling class is  (Fox 02/22/2020)
• 
The story of American decline is the story of an incompetent ruling class.
• 
You'll hear many self-serving explanations for it.  But the truth is, it's that simple.
• 
The people in charge inherited an industrial superpower with unchallenged military dominance.
• 
In a little more than a generation, they squandered all of it.
• 
In exchange for short-term profits, bigger vacation homes and cheaper household help they wrecked what they did not build.
• 
They outsourced entire sectors of our economy to China.
• 
They imported a serf class to drive down wages, and they crippled the middle class while doing it.
• 
They ran up trillions of dollars in unpayable debt.
• 
They turned the finest universities in the world into a joke.
• 
They watched from their decadent little bubbles of affluence as families, faith and public decency died in this country and they laughed because they didn't care.
• 
... at this point, it's clear the population has grown tired of it.  Donald Trump's election is one clear sign of that.
• 
The ruling class in other words, is losing its grip on power and the ruling class members can feel it.
• 
They stopped trying to convince the public of anything and instead decided to scare them.
• 
Fearful people are easier to control.
• 
"Lawmakers are warning that Russia is meddling to re-elect Trump," read the headline.
• 
Inside the story, there was nothing – no evidence, no detail, not even a coherent set of accusations.
• 
But it was enough to alert the morons on cable news.
• 
On MSNBC, host Chris Matthews said: "It's official.
• 
Russia has endorsed the reelection of President Donald Trump, who is trying desperately right now to keep that matter secret."
• 
On CNN, host Don Lemon said: "So as bad as it is ... the Russians are back at it.  Trying to help Trump get reelected.  It's far worse that the president of the United States is – he is trying to cover it up."
• 
On MSNBC, host Lawrence O'Donnell said: "The president is a Russian operative.  That sounds like the description of a bad Hollywood screenplay, but it is real."
• 
You see what's going on here?  Yes, you do.
• 
Our democratic system is in fact under attack.  That much is true.
• 
But it's not the Russians who are attacking it.  It's not even the Chinese.
• 
It's being attacked by our own ruling class.
• 
They're undermining democracy because they have no choice.
• 
If they left it up to voters to decide where to go next, they'd be out of a job tomorrow, because they've been terrible stewards of this country.  Some of them would be in jail.
• 
So they've got to subvert our system.
• 
Their livelihoods depend on it.
      Democrats’ radical immigration legislation would help foreign criminals move to US  (Fox 02/08/2020)
• 
If it becomes law, the bill would remake our immigration system for the expressed purpose of helping foreign-born criminals live in the United States.
• 
The bill would allow people who have committed serious felonies in other countries to move here legally.
• 
It would make it nearly impossible for federal immigration officials to detain immigrants, no matter how potentially dangerous they are.
• 
And perhaps most infuriatingly and remarkably, the legislation would require taxpayers to transport deported criminals back into the United States.
• 
In other words, you break our laws, you hurt our people, we will send you a plane ticket.
• 
We will pay for you to come back.
• 
It's utter and total insanity, and yet it's very popular in the Democratic Party.  So far, this bill has 44 Democratic co-sponsors.
• 
The bill's primary sponsor, Rep.  Jesus Garcia of Illinois, said after introducing the bill: "This is not a radical project.  We are simply asking for a fair shot at the opportunity for immigrants to stay in the country they call home.  And New Way Forward does just that."
• 
Garcia added that the bill "would end mandatory immigration detention and the automatic pipeline to deportation through the criminal justice system.  It would end deportation for people who have had contact with the criminal legal system.  It would end the practices of local police engaging in immigration enforcement and the increased ... policing of communities of color.  It would decriminalize immigration."
• 
Many of the sponsors of this bill come from the fringes of the Democratic Party, as you would expect, but not all of them do.
• 
It's happening in the dark.  No one is talking about it.
• 
Those who dismiss it say it is unlikely to become law – that it will never happen.
• 
That's a mistake.  Things change fast in modern America.
• 
On issue after issue, from ending the Second Amendment to banning biological gender, to the open and aggressive racism of identity politics, yesterday's extremism has become today's Democratic Party platform.
• 
If Democrats win the 2020 election, some version of the New Way Forward Act will likely become law.
• 
Once again, keep this in mind.  Things move fast in this country.
      Tucker Carlson: Republicans think a Trump victory in November is assured.  Here's why that's a mistake  (Fox 01/21/2020)
• 
A year from now, we will be hosting this show from the National Mall as the next president of the United States takes the oath of office.  Will that president be Donald Trump?
• 
Well, as of now, Republicans in Washington feel confident that it will be.  The official economic numbers are strong.
• 
The Democratic primaries are a freak show.  Elderly socialists accusing each other of thought crimes.
• 
Republicans are starting to think that victory is assured — and that's a mistake.
• 
America remains as divided as it was three years ago.  So no matter what happens, nobody is going to win this election in a national landslide.
• 
In 2016, Donald Trump defeated more than a dozen Republicans and then Hillary Clinton by running as an insurgent, a man from outside the system flipping the bird to the elites within.  Virtually everything Trump said reinforced that message.
• 
The people who run this country are clueless.  They have no idea what they're doing.  They don't care about you.
• 
They've hollowed out our economy, crushed the middle class.  They've screwed up our foreign policy.  They left the door open on our southern border.
• 
They are children playing leadership and they've gotten rich doing it.  The result is a national catastrophe.
• 
Now, Trump's campaign summed up that message in a single phrase, "Make America great again." In other words, let's not lie to ourselves — this is a disaster.  The good news is, we can fix it.
• 
Now, the people in charge hated to hear that, of course, because it implicated them.  But voters responded; they knew it was true.
• 
By the way, it's still true today.  Things are a lot better, in a lot of ways, but they're not fixed.
• 
For a lot of middle class people, wages are not keeping pace with expenses.  Child care, housing, education, health care — they're all getting more expensive by the year.
• 
The student loan bubble is still inflating.  It's burdening young people with debts so large, they can't start families.
• 
Now, these are economic problems, but they require a political solution.  ... Improve people's lives, and they will vote for you.  Period.
• 
Republicans ought to write that on our hands.  Otherwise, the temptation will be to focus entirely on the lunacy on display on the left right now.
• 
Democrats have gone crazy, and it's definitely worth pointing that out repeatedly.  ... But it's not enough to win. 
• 
Winning candidates come with their own program.  They convince voters they will make things better.
• 
... normal people know the social fabric is coming apart.  A winning candidate will say that out loud, defend traditional values.
• 
Don't be embarrassed about it.  There's nothing embarrassing about it.
• 
Democrats are waging the most aggressive possible campaign against everything normal people think is virtuous.
• 
They are promising to undo our justice system, emptying our prisons, even as they undermine the police and strip you of your right to defend yourself.  They're openly inviting chaos.
• 
They want to give the vote to convicted felons, even murderers.  They've said that.
• 
They think so little of this country that they're pledging to open our borders to the world.  Every impoverished nation on Earth welcomed here for free health care paid for by you.
• 
They're opposed to free speech.  They're stridently for subsidized abortion up to the moment of birth.
• 
They want Americans sorted into creepy little categories by their DNA, judged, rewarded, punished on the basis of their sex and skin color.
• 
They don't simply deny the existence of biological sex.  They're trying to force you to deny it, too.  You'll be fired if you disagree or have your kids taken from you.
• 
Democrats aren't promising change.  They are promising revolution.
• 
Centuries of American history and custom, abolished.  A nation starting over from scratch, year zero.
• 
That's effectively what they're calling for, and most people are not for that.  They may be frustrated with the state of the country — many are.  They may be anxious about the future.
• 
But they don't hate America.  They don't want to topple George Washington and implement Maoism.
• 
They are conservative in the most basic sense.  They love their families, above all.
• 
They distrust radical theories of anything because they know — and they're right — that when the world turns upside down, ordinary people get hurt.
• 
They don't want to burn it down, they just want things to get better.
• 
The candidate who promises to make them better, incrementally, but tangibly, will be inaugurated president a year from now.
      Topics We Aren't Allowed to Talk About  (JWR 12/27/2019)
• 
Throughout the impeachment drama, the press repeatedly told you that the president was a liar.
• 
They said his lies are why he had to be impeached.
• 
Donald Trump is a salesman; he is a talker, a booster, a compulsive self-promoter.
• 
If Trump hadn't gotten rich in real estate, then he could've made a fortune selling cars.
• 
So is lying really the reason the left despises Trump?
• 
Or could the problem be, as is so often the case, the exact opposite of what they claim?
• 
What drives them completely crazy are those moments when Trump dares to tell the truth.
• 
What infuriates them is when Trump tells the truth.  Truth is the real threat to their power.
• 
There is an unspoken agreement among the people in charge of our country not to talk about what has happened to it.
• 
They are personally implicated in its decline.  Often they are profiting from it.
• 
The last thing they want is a national conversation about what went wrong.
• 
Everything is fine, they shout.  Voices rising in hysteria.  Shut up or we will hurt you.
• 
Trump won't shut up.  That is his crime; that is why they hate him.
• 
It started with his very first speech as a presidential candidate: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best.  ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us.  They're bringing drugs.  They're bringing crime.  They're rapists.  And some, I assume, are good people."
• 
Trump could have worded his statement more clearly, but he never claimed that everyone coming over the border is a criminal.
• 
... Washington, for decades, has let millions of foreigners with no screening come across the border to use our services, often lower wages and in some cases, commit crimes.
• 
That is all true, which by definition made it unacceptable to say. 
• 
Our system is rotten and corrupt, and the news media are a major reason for why that is.
• 
That is what Trump pointed out, and, not surprisingly, they despised him for doing it.
• 
For example, after the killing of Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump said that while he disapproved of the murder, Saudi Arabia remained a U.S.  ally.
• 
If we broke our alliance with them, he said, the U.S.  economy would suffer and China and Russia would benefit instead.
• 
Now, whatever you think of the Saudis, what he said is true.
• 
This is the arrangement we have had with the Saudi kingdom for generations.  Everyone in Washington knows that because a lot of them are on the Saudi payroll.
• 
Trump's crime was saying it out loud.
• 
The same is true with his comments on Baltimore.  Baltimore may be the most depressing big city on the eastern seaboard.
• 
This summer, the president told the rest of the world what it's like.  Baltimore, he said, is "rodent infested, not to mention a corrupt mess."
• 
Baltimore remained dangerous, the kind of place where a kid gets shot riding his bike.
• 
That is what life is like for the poor people stuck in Baltimore, a place where MSNBC contributors don't dare to tread.
• 
They also don't want any debate about the war in Afghanistan, immigration or declining middle-class life expectancy.
• 
Whatever we do, we can't bring that up because it is embarrassing.
• 
So instead, let's just agree that Trump is a racist liar and move on.
• 
My gosh, what a bad person he is.  Unlike us.
      Democrats' Trump impeachment focus sends voters clear message: We don't care what you think  (Fox 12/11/2019)
• 
At 11:59 a.m.  on January 20th, 2017, Donald Trump took the oath of office and became the president of the United States.
• 
By 12:05 that same day, Democrats were calling for his impeachment.
• 
Literally, for years, the left has been howling that Trump must be removed immediately from office, without the consent of voters.  — Every day!
• 
Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: "The first article is for abuse of power.  It is an impeachable offense for the president to exercise the powers of his public office to obtain an improper personal benefit."
• 
"That is exactly what President Trump did when he solicited and pressured Ukraine to interfere in our 2020 presidential election.  This gives rise to this second article of impeachment for obstruction of Congress."
• 
"We must be clear: No one, not even the president, is above the law.  "
• 
You got that?  "No one is above the law," explain the very same people who spent all day making excuses for illegitimate government spying on American citizens.
• 
But never mind.  Literally, no one is above the law.  Democrats say that over and over and over again.
• 
Nobody is above the law.  Nobody — except for the more than 20 million illegal aliens whom the left tell us have every right to be here, ignoring our laws.  And shut up, racist, if you disagree.
• 
Also, the so-called homeless shooting up and defecating and living full-time on our sidewalks.
• 
The law does not apply to them or to subway jumpers in New York or to Hunter Biden.
• 
But other than that, absolutely nobody is above the law, meaning Trump.  And that's why they're impeaching him.
• 
But they're not celebrating that fact.  No, they're not.  You might think they're excited, but they're not.  Democrats want to be completely clear on this question.
• 
Reps.  Nancy Pelosi and Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff and a number of other people who've never had a single authentic impulse in their entire lives would like you to know that they feel extremely — what's the word for this — "solemn" about what's happening.  Seriously solemn. 
• 
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House: "Good morning, everyone, on this solemn day, I recall that the first order of business for members of Congress is this solemn act to take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
• 
Nadler: "That is why we must take this solemn step today."
• 
Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif., House Intelligence Committee chairman: "The president's oath of office appears to mean very little to him.  But the articles put forward today will give us a chance to show that we will defend the Constitution and that our oath means something to us."
• 
Yeah.  And if that wasn't entertaining enough — and it was — there was still more because this is Washington.  There's always more.
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Senate Minority Leader: "The president conjures fictions, buys into baseless conspiracy theories told by known liars on Fox News or somewhere else.
• 
"Here in the Senate, certain members of the Grand Old Party are forming their own conspiracy caucus.  Any crazy conspiracy whether the launched by Putin or some wild, wild-eyed, crazy conspiracy theorist who manages, of course, all the time to get on Fox News and have his story or her story repeated..."
• 
But here it is distilled to its essence.  Write this down, put it on your fridge.
• 
It is the best guide to politics — ever: What the left accuses you of doing is precisely what they're doing themselves.
• 
They accuse you of fostering racism, pushing conspiracy theories, lying to the American people — I can't finish the sentence.
• 
Of course, those are the three main things they're doing, and impeachment proves the point once more.
• 
So, just so you understand — House Democrats are arguing here that there was no meddling in American politics when a Ukrainian energy company hired the otherwise unemployable son — of a sitting vice president — at an exorbitant rate for no work.
• 
At the very moment, his father was policing " anti-corruption" efforts in their country.
• 
There's nothing political about that.  And if you think otherwise, you believe in a conspiracy theory — a debunked conspiracy theory.
• 
A theory so debunked, in fact, that the president committed a literally impeachable offense simply by asking about it.  That's right.
• 
Democrats, at least their troops on Twitter, still haven't accepted the defeat of 2016.  They think impeachment would nullify that shocking loss — like it never happened — and allow them to ignore every lesson that came with that election.
• 
... the other reason is looking to the future.  Some Democrats — and they're not all dumb, that's for sure — sincerely believe that impeachment will help their case in the 2020 elections.
• 
So, every day the Democrats continue to focus all of their energy — and all of our attention here in the media — on impeachment, they're also sending a signal to voters that's pretty clear.
• 
It's we don't care what you think.
      And that's not a winning message over  ()
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tucker Carlson: Trump's opponents despise him the most when he tells the truth  (Fox 11/28/2019)
• 
"At times, he's [Trump's] a full-blown B.S.  artist.  If Trump hadn't gotten rich in real estate, he could've made a fortune selling cars.  Most people know this.  It's obvious, transparent, really."
• 
"So he's lying.  Really?  The reason the left despises Donald Trump?  Or could the problem be, as is so often the case, the exact opposite of what they claim it is?"
• 
"What infuriates official Washington is not when Trump lies.  It's when he tells the truth.  Truth is the real threat to their power."
• 
"There's an unspoken agreement among the people in charge of our country not to talk about what has happened to it.  They are personally implicated in its decline."
• 
"But Trump won't shut up.  He keeps talking.  That's his crime.  That's why they hate him."
• 
"If the people in charge actually cared about us, they would protect our borders."
• 
"The gatekeepers in our national media, the people who should have been sounding the alarm about all of this, but instead made common cause with the ruling class they were supposed to be covering and keeping honest."
• 
... government officials and the media don't want you thinking about important issues to avoid their role in the problem, while others deflect the issue by calling Trump "racist."
• 
"Any of that might point up their own egregious failures and selfishness, which are profound.  And whatever we do, we can't bring that up because it's embarrassing."
• 
"So instead, let's just agree that Donald Trump is a racist liar and move on."
      The end of free speech – What kind of place will US be when today's campus liberals take over?  (Fox 11/13/2019)
• 
It's hard to think of an ideal more American than the freedom of speech.
• 
When people say our soldiers fight and die for our values, what they mean is our freedom to say what we think is true.  That's our birthright.
• 
It's the most important thing we have, that we have ever had.
• 
And so for generations, there was a bipartisan consensus about this.
• 
In fact, liberals were among the most stalwart defenders of the First Amendment and good for them.
• 
But then the left took control of this country's institutions.
• 
Liberals became the establishment they had one opposed, and suddenly free speech seemed like a challenge to the highly profitable existing order, the one they were getting so rich from.
• 
So our schools began to teach our children that freedom of speech is a threat.  In fact, it's immoral.
• 
And over time the kids started to believe it.  Why wouldn't they?
• 
At this point, nearly 60 percent of young people believe we should change the First Amendment to ban speech they don't like.
• 
Now changing amendments is hard.  Two-thirds of Congress would have to approve a change like that.
• 
But on campuses, many students aren't waiting for Congress to act.
• 
They've decided to impose censorship right now.
• 
Recently, kids at the purportedly impressive Northwestern University try to ban Jeff Sessions from speaking out loud.
• 
Meanwhile, over at Harvard, the student government association on campus ... passed a statement condemning the student newspaper on campus because — listen to this — it had dared to ask the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to comment on a story.
• 
They didn't endorse ICE.  Someone just called up and said, "Hey ICE, can we get a comment?"
• 
Now, ICE didn't respond and didn't provide a comment, but it didn't matter.
• 
More than 650 students at Harvard — Harvard — signed a petition condemning the paper for contacting ICE.
• 
The young Democrats at Harvard's campus issued a statement claiming the paper had "deliberately chosen to put our students in jeopardy."
• 
One campus activist group is now urging a boycott of the newspaper because calling ICE was just that scary.
• 
... it's really kind of ominous because our meritocracy is essentially fraudulent, and our system is completely rigged for the benefit of a few.
• 
A lot of these shallow neurotic narcissists we're making fun of will, in the end, wind up running this country.
• 
Those people writhing on the floor about how they're so "threatened" — they're going to be in charge.
• 
They shouldn't be.  But because the system is rigged, they will be.
• 
They'll be making the decisions that affect your life and the lives of your children and grandchildren.
• 
And these are the people who literally couldn't care less about the First Amendment or any amendment, or in fact, any document that might limit their power in any way.
• 
They consider themselves gods, and they'd like you to shut up and obey.
• 
And they'll use force if they have to.
• 
So what kind of place will America be when those people take over?
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Left incapable of celebrating Trump for any reason – Call it al-Baghdadi derangement syndrome  (Fox 10/29/2019)
• 
It was a moment that should have united this fractious country — we could use it.
• 
Instead, it became more fodder for those who profit from our division.
• 
President Trump: "He died after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way."
• 
"He was a sick and depraved man."
• 
"And he died in a vicious and violent way, as a coward running and crying."
• 
"He died like a dog.  He died like a coward.  The world is now a much safer place."
• 
"Sick and depraved," it turns out, is not an overstatement.
• 
As the head of the ISIS caliphate, Baghdadi ran one of the most gruesome death cults in human history.
• 
In Syria and Iraq, his followers murdered untold thousands, beheaded them, and drowned them, and set them on fire, often on camera.
• 
In the U.S.  and in Europe, terrorists pledging alliance to Baghdadi killed hundreds in mass shootings, bombings and vehicle attacks.
• 
So Baghdadi's death is really nothing less than a victory for civilization itself.
• 
And yet, here in Washington, many complain that Trump had dared to kill him.
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi whined that she hadn't been given appropriate notice of the operation — as if it were all about her.
• 
Former Obama National Intelligence Director James Clapper, meanwhile, told television viewers that, somehow, the killing of the ISIS leader would make ISIS stronger.
• 
And then on CNN, some compared the president to ISIS.  ... "Some of which sort of echoed, frankly, the crudeness you would often expect to hear maybe from ISIS about the whimpering, screaming Baghdadi pinned down in a sealed tunnel."
• 
Philip Mudd, CNN counterterrorism analyst: "You do not celebrate death.  I don't care if it's a terrorist.  I don't care if it's someone you hate.  A human being has died.  We don't celebrate that.  I would not use that and I find it — it's embarrassing."
• 
"I would not use that language," says the guy who is making a career out of screaming and foaming on television.
• 
... one of the reporters compiled a listicle called "The 41 Most Shocking Lines from Donald Trump's Baghdadi Announcement." — CNN really reaching new lows every day.
• 
Boot complained that Trump wasn't respectful enough of Baghdadi: "Trump could not have heard whimpering and crying because there was no audio.  The assertion that Baghdadi died as a coward was contradicted by the fact that rather than be captured, he blew himself up."
• 
In other words, says Max Boot, Baghdadi was a hero of sorts and shame on Trump for calling him a coward!
• 
... MSNBC devoted significant coverage to the question of whether Baghdadi actually "whimpered" before he died.
• 
... award goes to the Washington Post.  Here's how that paper chose to announce Baghdadi's death: "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, austere religious scholar at the helm of Islamic State, dies at 48."
• 
That's one for the scrapbook.  You can find it with other memorable headlines from history.
• 
"Goal-oriented German leader with distinctive mustache found dead in bunker."
• 
"Joseph Stalin, former seminarian and movie buff, dies peacefully at 74."
• 
"Usama bin Laden, husband to five, killed in home invasion."
• 
So what is this about?  Well, ultimately, you're watching the flailing of a leadership class that despises the country it governs.
• 
They loathe the elected president so much, they're incapable of acknowledging any accomplishment, no matter what it is.
• 
Trump is bad.  Trump killed Baghdadi.  Therefore killing Baghdadi was bad.  That's how these purported geniuses actually think.
• 
They are purely reactive about everything, not just the death of terrorists.
• 
These are the very people who sat by idly as our entire middle class died.
• 
And then China rose to take America's place as leader of the world, and virtually alone among political figures, Trump noted these things.
• 
"Hey, what's going on?" he said.  He ran on those issues and he won.
• 
And in response to that, rather than learn something, our leadership class took the opposite side.
• 
They took the side of the fentanyl smugglers from Mexico.
• 
They took the side of our mortal enemies and the fascist government of China.
• 
Those are not positions you would take if you cared about your people.
• 
But at this point, it is pretty obvious, they hate Trump far more than they love America.
      Trump-Ukraine lesson - Intel agencies want to be government and make elections meaningless  (Fox 09/27/2019)
• 
When President Harry Truman founded the agency right after the Second World War, he envisioned it as a kind of daily newspaper with a readership of one, the president.
• 
And the idea was really simple: the CIA would collect intelligence from a variety of sources, and then they would collate that intelligence and give it to the president.
• 
He would use it to make wise and informed foreign policy decisions.
• 
It was a good idea.  There are a lot of good ideas.  Many of them in D.C.  meet the same fate.
• 
The bureaucracy quickly metastasizes and overwhelms good intentions.  That certainly happened with the CIA.
• 
Within a few years, Harry Truman himself regretted creating it.  In an op-ed he wrote in 1963, Truman complained that "the CIA has diverted from its original assignment.  It has become an operational and at times a policymaking arm of the government."
• 
Today, the agency and other intel agencies like it aren't simply policymaking arms of government.  At times, they clearly want to be the government itself.  They want to run everything, and they do, for moments.
• 
We learned today that the official who filed the so-called whistleblower complaint against the president was a career CIA officer detailed to the White House.
• 
The official did not agree with the president's foreign policy views, so he felt entitled to veto those views and bring the U.S.  government to a standstill, which he did.
• 
We know this because the complaint was released Thursday to the public. You can read it if you want.
• 
It tells us nothing we didn't already know from the transcript of the phone call that's been released.
• 
Trump talked about a variety of issues with the president of Ukraine, including possible corruption involving Joe Biden and his son.
• 
Trump never mentioned military aid or any kind of quid pro quo.
• 
They may not like what Trump said, but it's hard to see how it's a crime.
• 
Certainly, it's hard to see it as an impeachable offense.
• 
And then all of a sudden, everybody in D.C.  nodding sagely in unison thinks it is.
• 
You know, part of this is our fault in the media.
• 
We set up these just terrible incentives where you don't get on television unless you say extreme and mindless things.
• 
Schiff: "This is the essence of what the president communicates: We've been very good to your country.  Very good.  No other country has done as much as we have.  But you know what?  I don't see much reciprocity here.  I hear what you want.  I have a favor I want from you, though.  And I'm going to say this only seven times, so you better listen good.  I want you to make up dirt on my political opponent, understand?  Lots of it."
• 
Keep in mind, that isn't some guy babbling in the men's room at Starbucks.  That's the man who chairs the mighty House Intelligence Committee.  We trust him with our most sensitive information.
• 
His position is that the president should be impeached for asking why Joe Biden's son was paid $600,000.00 a year by a foreign company, and why the prosecutor who investigated that foreign company was fired after a threat from Joe Biden.
• 
Asking about that gets you impeached.
• 
"We are talking about the president using the full power of the United States government in order to pursue and manufacture a politically-motivated investigation against a political opponent," AOC said...
• 
Rep.  Omar, D-Minn., told supporters: "The fact is that this president is corrupt — a corrupt president who violates his oath in office must and will be impeached."
• 
You may be wondering whatever happened to the Democratic Party?  The party you remember, the party of working people?  The fabled Big Tent Party?  That's gone.
• 
Increasingly, the Democratic Party looks like an alliance between the Women's Studies Department in Oberlin and a group of unscrupulous retired intel officials.
• 
The party is both flaky and authoritarian.  That's a rotten combination.
• 
For 230 years, this has been a republic with an elected president — elected.  Over time, it's worked pretty well.
• 
But now, without a single vote being held, no referendum on this at all, bureaucrats in Washington have decided to change the system.
• 
Imagine how you have to run the country when you can't even speak confidentially with your counterparts in other countries?
• 
How does that help America?  It doesn't help America.  You may hate Trump, but you should still be against that. 
• 
Well, that's an administrative coup d'etat.  I mean, it's not an overstatement to say that's what it is.  A lot is at stake here.
• 
If these people whose names you don't know, who were never elected to anything, succeed in taking over the government and running things in real life, we're done.  Our democracy won't recover.
• 
President Trump and future presidents will be mere figureheads.
• 
They will be beholden to a Praetorian Guard of Intelligence officials in Washington.
• 
So Washington clearly wants to pretend that the 2016 election never happened.  Okay, that's amnesia.
• 
But now they want to make sure that no future election will matter.  And that's terrifying.
      Instead of winning an election, Dems would rather explain why impeaching Trump is justified  (Fox 09/25/2019)
• 
"I can say with authority, the Trump administration's actions undermine both our national security and our intelligence,' Pelosi said.
• 
"The actions of the Trump presidency revealed the dishonorable fact of the president's betrayal of his oath of office, betrayal of our national security, and betrayal of the integrity of our elections."
• 
"Therefore, today, I'm announcing the House of Representatives moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry.  I'm directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.  The president must be held accountable.  No one is above the law."
• 
The people who sold out your country to China are concerned that President Trump betrayed America somehow.
• 
As of this moment, Pelosi's party seems to agree; they are behind her mostly.
• 
As Congressman John Lewis of Georgia explained, working to remove an elected president just a year before a Democratic election is in fact, somehow, a defense of democracy, or something like that.
• 
"I believe - I truly believe - the time to begin impeachment proceedings against this president has come."
• 
"To delay or to do otherwise will betray the foundation of our democracy.
• 
Impeachment?  For years, they told you that Trump was going to be impeached for colluding with Russia, spying for Putin.
• 
Then it turned out he didn't do that.  The story evaporated into dust and seemed to blow away.
• 
Then just a few days ago, they were grumbling about impeachment again, and they dragged in Corey Lewandowski.
• 
Remember him?  They brought him to Capitol Hill to make their case.  That didn't go well at all.
• 
You'd think at some point, Democrats might just decide to run a real presidential campaign in 2020 and beat Donald Trump that way, just like in a democracy.
• 
It would have to be more effective than what they're doing now, and the numbers show it.
• 
As of this morning, Donald Trump's approval rating was the highest it has been since the inauguration.
• 
But no, Democrat don't want to wait until the next election.  They don't want to wait until November.
• 
Politics takes too long, and it leaves too much to chance.
• 
The risk of democracy is voters might not agree with you.
• 
Better to remove your opponents by force, if you can.
• 
Which brings us to the latest question of impeachment: What exactly is this about?
• 
Sorry to laugh in the middle of this — we've spent all day trying to figure out what is the impeachment story.
• 
Within a sentence, here is what they're saying.
• 
They're saying that in a phone call with the president of Ukraine, President Trump threatened to delay a $400 million military aid package to Ukraine, unless the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate possible criminal activity involving Joe Biden's son.
• 
Why Joe Biden's son?
• 
Well for five years, Joe Biden's son, Hunter, it turns out, was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per year to serve on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.
• 
Why would Joe Biden's son be on the board of a Ukrainian gas company?
• 
He had no experience in the energy business.
• 
He didn't speak the relevant language.
• 
He apparently had no experience whatsoever in the region.
• 
It turns out at that very moment, Joe Biden was President Obama's point man for Ukraine.
• 
... at a certain point during this saga, the gas company in question was investigated.
• 
And then in 2016, the Ukrainian prosecutor overseeing that investigation was fired.
• 
Apparently, he was fired under pressure from then-Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
Now to the layman, that looks a lot like corruption.
• 
What does it have to do with the president being impeached?
• 
Well, the accusation is that President Trump suggested that that squelched investigation deserved a second look.
• 
And Democrats say that suggestion was an impeachable offense.
• 
Nobody has bothered to explain why sending $400 million in military aid to Ukraine is in the interest of the United States.
• 
They haven't even thought to explain that.
• 
They're too busy yelling about impeachment.  And they're doing it with all the hysterical intensity that has become the hallmark of the modern left.
• 
They have a lot of energy.  Too bad, none of it is focused on the country's real problems, and there are a lot of them.
• 
In many ways, our country is on the wrong track, and people know it.  Everybody knows it, Democrats and Republicans.
• 
But instead of trying to fix any of that, Democrats want to spend the next year explaining — and they plan to — why it was perfectly fair for Joe Biden's ne'er-do-well son to get 600 grand a year from Ukrainian oligarchs.
• 
That's totally fine.
• 
But it's somehow criminal for Donald Trump to ask about that.
• 
That's the message.  Good luck with that.
• 
Hard to imagine many voters will be impressed by it.
• 
      Tucker Carlson: What the revival of the left's smear campaign against Kavanaugh is really about  (Fox 09/17/2019)
• 
... not a single allegation against him turned out to be true — not one.
• 
And so the only lasting effect was to traumatize Brett Kavanaugh's wife and children.
• 
And yet the left never to this day apologized for their dishonesty or their profound cruelty.
• 
Nor did they ever accept defeat.  They never do accept defeat.
• 
Why?  Because when politics is your religion, acknowledging reality looks like sin, and so it continues.
• 
Several Democrats said exactly as they did a year ago.  Remember this?
• 
Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.: There's no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.
• 
Sen.  Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct.: We have a constitutional duty to get to the bottom of these allegations.  Judge Brett Kavanaugh has a responsibility to come forward with evidence to rebut them.
• 
Sen.  Chris Coons, D-Del.: Kavanaugh who is seeking a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, and who I think now bears the burden of disproving these allegations, rather than Dr.  Ford and Miss Ramirez.
• 
Sen.  Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.: To those who I hear, say over and over, "This isn't fair to Judge Kavanaugh.  He is entitled due process.  What about the presumption of innocence until proven guilty?" He is not entitled to those because we're not actually seeking to convict him.
• 
We're not trying to convict him.  We're just trying to destroy him and his family — so no due process, no presumption of innocence.  Fairness is irrelevant.
• 
Whatever they tell you, don't let them tell you that justice has any role in this.
• 
Of course, this is a pure power grab.
• 
The left feels entitled to run the country — truly entitled to and they feel entitled to control the Supreme Court.  If they don't, it drives them crazy.
• 
Kavanaugh frustrates their political hopes.
• 
So any smear against him is acceptable, no matter what it is.
• 
But don't kid yourself.  It's not just about destroying Brett Kavanaugh; he is ancillary.
• 
It's about destroying the entire legitimacy of our third branch of government, the judiciary.
• 
Plenty on the left are using the Kavanaugh saga to justify packing the court — adding more justices to make it reliably left-wing or to change the rules so they can remove any judge the left doesn't approve of.
• 
This is the opposite of what the third branch was meant to do or be.
• 
The judiciary was meant to change slowly.
• 
The courts change over decades, rather than in response to a single election cycle.
• 
That's the way it was designed and for a reason.  And for more than 200 years, it's worked.
• 
But to the modern left, that's totally intolerable.
• 
They're committed to remaking this country completely right now.
• 
America needs a new system, they tell us, one with open borders and far fewer pesky individual rights.
• 
Rights like the freedom to speak clearly out loud.
• 
The freedom of expression, the right to bear arms, the freedom of religion — no.
• 
To create this new utopia of obedient, happy serfs, they're going to have to destroy all of that — two centuries of precedent and tradition.
• 
Maybe even destroy the country itself, whatever.  They're happy to do that.
• 
As Robespierre noted, when you make omelets, you break eggs.
      Tucker Carlson: San Francisco bans words to hide its crime problem — and to control your mind  (Fox 08/23/2019)
• 
For the past couple of years, we've reported in some horrifying detail on how the professional left has totally transformed the city of San Francisco from this country's most beautiful city, our Cape Town, into a cesspool of filth, homelessness and drug addiction.
• 
That is not an exaggeration.  There are now more junkies in San Francisco than there are high school students.
• 
And so you won't be surprised to learn that the city has also become threatening and dangerous.
• 
But don't worry, the city's leaders have a plan to respond to this.
• 
And of course, it's not more cops or better enforcement of the law.  That would be bigoted.
• 
Instead, the city of San Francisco has decided to ban words that suggest San Francisco has a crime problem.
• 
If people aren't allowed to talk about crime, maybe they won't notice crime exists.  That's the thinking.
• 
So last month, the city's Board of Supervisors decreed that there'll be no more "convicted felons" in San Francisco.  Going forward, ex-cons are to be called, "justice-involved individuals." Well, as it happens, the people they committed crimes against are also "justice-involved individuals."
• 
So, in other words, victim and criminal are now morally indistinguishable.
• 
That's on purpose.  This is woke equality.
• 
... back in the city of San Francisco, there are no longer any "juvenile delinquents."
• 
The whole category has disappeared.  Criminals under 18 are now referred to as "young people impacted by the juvenile justice system" — as if the system, and not the kid, committed the crime, which is what the left in fact believes.
• 
It's your fault, not theirs.  Check your privilege, Middle America.
• 
Drug addicts, meanwhile, in San Francisco are now called "people with the history of substance use." "Use," not "abuse."
• 
Now, you could laugh this off.  San Francisco, after all, is where all the crazy things happen.
• 
But language makes thought possible.  When the words disappear, so does our ability to think about the ideas the words represent.
• 
When they prevent you from saying the obvious, over time, it becomes impossible to see the obvious.
• 
And that's exactly of course, why they do it.  Those who control your words, control your mind.
• 
See related New San Francisco Terminilogies (Gary Varvel, 08/26/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      WARNING: America, Revealed 08/16/2019  (JWR 0
• 
One thing about tragedies: They reveal people for who they really are.
• 
In the past two weeks, we've learned a lot about our media and political class.
• 
Our country endured two separate and horrifying mass shootings, one in El Paso, Texas, and the other in Dayton, Ohio.
• 
Between them, at least 31 people were murdered.  Two massacres, back to back.
• 
It's tempting to look for themes that connect them, but if there are any, they're not political.
• 
One gunman appeared to be a Trump voter.  The other supported Sen.  Elizabeth Warren.
• 
There's no obvious ideological lesson here.
• 
But that hasn't stopped the usual power-hungry politicians from trying to leverage human pain for political advantage.
• 
Thirty-one dead, and the only thing these politicians can think about is how to terrify Americans into voting for them.
• 
These are our political leaders.  Their comments are disgusting.
• 
Nobody really believes this is about Trump or about assault weapons.
• 
If only it were that simple.  Our problems go far deeper.
• 
What's the real diagnosis?
• 
Author James Howard Kunstler, one of our wisest cultural observers, summed it up this way: "This is exactly what you get in a culture where anything goes and nothing matters.  Extract all the meaning and purpose from being here on earth, and erase as many boundaries as you can from custom and behavior, and watch what happens, especially among young men trained on video slaughter games."
• 
He's right.  Young men are the problem.
• 
Many of our boys are living in what Kunstler describes as an "abyss of missing social relations" with "no communities, no fathers, no mentors, no initiations into personal responsibility, no daily organizing principles, no instruction in useful trades, no productive activities, no opportunities for love and affection, and no way out."
• 
Our leaders are too cowardly to say so, but the signs are everywhere.  Mass shootings are just the final manifestation.
• 
Suicide rates for young Americans are the highest ever measured.  So are drug-related deaths.
• 
Fifteen percent of millennials still live with their parents.
• 
Fifty years ago, more than 80% of American adults ages 25 to 34 were already married and living with a spouse.
• 
Today, less than half of adults in that age range are married.
• 
A huge portion of American young people aren't in any kind of relationship at all.
• 
It's no wonder millions of young people feel helpless, miserable and alone.
• 
They lack friends or parents or religious organizations to give their lives purpose and moral coherence.
• 
Most people think our democracy is fake.  The policies they live under, the jobs they hold and even their personal opinions are controlled by tech monopolists, media scolds and Washington bureaucrats.
• 
America is supposed to be a free country, but millions of young people look around and feel like they're trapped in a stagnant dystopia.
• 
In such an environment, a few people will lash out in violence.
• 
Millions of others will simply fade away, from suicide or overdose or diabetes.
• 
This is the real crisis, the one that produced those horrifying scenes on TV over the weekend.
• 
Washington is happy to pretend it isn't happening.
• 
But it is.  You can't ignore it forever.
      The left demands conformity, will use threats to keep people in line until the next election  (Fox 08/07/2019)
• 
"Gun control saves lives." That's what they're telling you day and night...
• 
Anyone who opposes gun control, they'll tell you by implication of - not directly - is a bad person, a callous, cruel, probably violent, person.
• 
Somebody who doesn't care about the safety of others.
• 
"Stab him in the heart.  Break his neck." That was one of the messages for Mitch McConnell.
• 
They're totally opposed to violence, and that's why they want to kill Mitch McConnell.
• 
Almost everything the left says these days is projection.
• 
In almost every single case, they accuse you of exactly what they're doing...
• 
In the wake of two horrifying mass shootings, they've been telling us President Trump is a hater.
• 
"He is using race to divide us!" they scream.  "It's wrong."
• 
Well, they are right about the second part.  It's definitely wrong.
• 
They are using race to divide us.  That's a core tenet of the left.
• 
Identity politics is the process of dividing people on the basis of immutable characteristics, factors they can't control.
• 
They promise some Americans reparations.
• 
They denounce others for their skin color.  They call it "privilege."
• 
The entire country, they'll tell you, is fundamentally racist and therefore, evil.
• 
So they're buffoons.  Yes, they are.
• 
They're dumb.  Of course.
• 
Do they have no idea what they're really saying?  Probably not.
• 
But that doesn't make the cumulative effect any less sinister or damaging.
• 
What you're watching every day is a systematic effort by the left to undermine the institutions that hold this country together.
• 
Chief among those institutions in this and all societies throughout time, is law enforcement, our justice system.
• 
But now, on the basis of no evidence whatsoever, the left is telling us police are racist monsters.
• 
It's disgusting.  Dividing us?  Oh, yes, they're dividing us.
• 
Or how about our thousands of ICE agents working to enforce laws that the Congress passed?
• 
Now Democrats are calling those people Nazis.
• 
Good people doing a thankless job that we need to have done only to have some pampered moron like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez savage them for political reasons.
• 
None of this is new by the way.  Three years ago, you'll remember Hillary Clinton ran an entire presidential campaign on this premise, attacking the country itself and its people as immoral bigots.
• 
"You could put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.  Racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, — you name it."
• 
That's a message of unity?  No.  It's a message of disunity.  It's a message of hate, actually. 
• 
... Texas Democratic Congressman Joaquin Castro ... tweeted out the names of 44 residents of San Antonio who've donated to the Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
• 
Illegal activity, but he tweeted them out.  And then he tweeted out the names of their employers, too.
• 
Why do you think he did that?  You know the answer.
• 
It wasn't that long ago that the Boston Globe ran an op-ed suggesting that restaurant workers poison the food of Trump supporters.
• 
And of course, Democrats like Cory Booker and Maxine Waters have been calling on people to harass and scream at people tied to the Trump administration.
• 
For years they've been saying that.
• 
Our democratic system only works when citizens are free to disagree, free to say to their neighbors, "We're on separate pages.  We vote for separate people," and not be afraid to say that.
• 
But the left is making us afraid to say that.
• 
The left demands total conformity.  They don't believe in diversity in any sense.
• 
They'll use censorship and threats to keep people in line.
• 
And in the short term that may work...  But over time, it's a big mistake.
• 
It's exactly how things fall apart.
      Al Sharpton is a moral leader for modern Dems - and that's a recipe for an electoral wipeout  (Fox 07/31/2019)
• 
The modern Democratic Party is so distorted by race guilt that Al Sharpton seems like a moral leader.
• 
Whatever his many faults, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel does understand that.  This week, Emanuel published a memo aimed at the party's presidential candidates.  He begged them to return to reality immediately.
• 
"Before our party promises health care coverage to undocumented immigrants — a position not even Ted Kennedy took — let's help the more than 30 million Americans who are a single illness away from financial ruin.  Before we start worrying about whether the Boston Marathon bomber can vote, let's stop states that are actively trying to curtail voting rights of citizens.  And before we promise a guaranteed minimum income to healthy adults who prefer to stay home and play video games, let's increase the minimum wage and the earned income tax credit to the benefit of the millions of people who still work hard and live near poverty."
• 
"American taxpayers have spent the last 20 years both in blood and treasure building roads, schools and hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan, all the while American wages continued to stagnate.  People are tired of being treated as chumps.  It's time to invest in America again."
• 
Most Americans actually aren't obsessed with race.  They don't want to memorize 60 new genders; there aren't 60 new genders.  There are two genders, and everyone knows it.
• 
They don't think it's their duty to give American citizenship to everyone on the planet, along with health care.
• 
Instead, they have a more basic hope, and it's the hope of people everywhere.
• 
They want to feel that the country they were born in is their home.
• 
They want leaders who put their interests first, leaders who actually care about their well-being.
• 
And yet weirdly, for decades, Washington has refused to supply leaders like that.
• 
That's why Donald Trump won in 2016.  It's why he could very easily win again in 2020.
• 
Because in the end, Americans will always pick a flawed leader over a leader who openly hates them — every single time.
      Tucker Carlson: US rescued Ilhan Omar  (Fox 07/10/2019)
• 
Like many of you, we've been watching with amazement and alarm as the leaders of the Democratic Party, day after day, attack the country they say they want to govern.
• 
It's remarkable, and a very new development. 
• 
Now, it's routine to hear Democratic presidential candidates question the basic legitimacy of the United States.
• 
That should worry you.  No country can survive being ruled by people who hate it.
• 
We deserve better.  For all of our country's flaws, this is still the best place in the world.
• 
Most immigrants know that and that is why they come here.  It's also why we've always been glad to have them here.
• 
But now, there are signs that some people who move here from abroad don't like this country at all.  ... one of those people now serves in our Congress.
• 
Think about that for a minute.  Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single poorest place on Earth.
• 
We didn't do it for the money, we did it because we are kind people.
• 
How did she respond to the remarkable gift we gave her?
• 
She scolded us, called us names, showered us with contempt.
• 
It's infuriating.  More than that, it is also ominous.
• 
The United States admits more immigrants more than any other country on Earth, more than a million every year.
• 
OK, Americans like immigrants, but immigrants have got to like us back.
• 
Ayaan Hirsi Ali would, by the standard of identity politics, seem to have everything in common with Ilhan Omar.
• 
She was born in Somalia, moved to Kenya and eventually came to this country.
• 
Unlike Omar, she loves and cares about the United States.
• 
She believes this country is superior to the country she came from.
• 
It's not about race.  But, of course, Omar and her friends already know that.
• 
Nothing they say on the subject of race is sincere.  It's all the hustle designed to get them what they want.
• 
Omar has made a career of denouncing anyone and anything in her way as racist.
• 
That would include virtually all of her political and personal opponents.
• 
It includes even inanimate objects like the border wall, that's racist.
• 
So was the Congress, so is the entire state of North Dakota, she once tweeted.
• 
Omar may be from another country but she learned young that crying racism pays.
• 
The bigger question is, who taught her that?
• 
She didn't arrive from a Kenyan refugee camp announcing people as bigots for a political campaign.
• 
She wasn't always a professional victim.  That is learned behavior.
• 
Importantly, she learned it here.
• 
In some ways, the real villain in the Ilhan Omar story isn't Omar, it is a group of our fellow Americans.
• 
Our cultural gatekeepers who stoke the resentment of new arrivals and turn them into grievance mongers like Ilhan Omar.
• 
The left did that to her, and to us.
• 
Blame them first.
      Tucker Carlson: The Democratic Party is now a religious cult - and Biden and Pelosi don't...  (Fox 07/09/2019)
• 
After almost 200 years, the Democrats were a political party with conventional political goals.  That's no longer true.
• 
The Democratic Party is now a religious cult, with all that implies.
• 
Dissent has been banned.  Anyone who questions the party's leftward fringe is denounced as a racist heretic.
• 
The party has descended into a purity spiral, and nobody is safe, not even the party's own leaders.
• 
Take Nancy Pelosi, for example.  She is the most left-wing Speaker of the House in the history of the United States.
• 
She has been a fire-breathing liberal for longer than, I don't know, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been alive.
• 
But none of that has been enough to save her.  Ocasio-Cortez and a tiny group of House freshmen demand explicit socialism in this country right now.
• 
They want to open the borders, empty the prisons and take over the entire U.S.  economy in the name of fighting climate change.
• 
Now, Pelosi may agree with these goals, but she has contempt for their total ignorance of how laws are made.
• 
They're against the democratic system itself, and Pelosi has expressed that contempt repeatedly in public.
• 
"Give us power because of our skin color." That's the argument Tlaib is making.
• 
Many make that argument; Ocasio-Cortez made the very same case during her Democratic primary campaign last year.
• 
By definition, it is a racist pitch.  It's every bit as repugnant as a white candidate making the same appeal.
• 
And many Democrats did make that appeal — that racial appeal — under Jim Crow.
• 
"Vote for me because of my race." It's disgusting.
• 
But it's everywhere now, and Democrats applaud it.
• 
People like Joe Biden are the past in the Democratic Party.  And like so many others he is being denounced as — wait for it — a racist.
• 
To the Democratic Party, remorse is a sign of weakness, and the weak are eaten.
• 
The Democratic Party demands absolute perfect fidelity at all times.  Anyone who fails to measure up is finished forever.
• 
Now, that attitude is an effective way to terrify weak people and keep public figures in line.
• 
But the question electorally is, will it work on the country?
• 
Normal Americans know they're not racist.  They don't think their neighbors and friends are racist, either.
• 
They don't care about that.  They care about their jobs, their safety, their families, their country.
• 
For years, they've watched in despair as both major parties drifted away from those concerns.
• 
They took a chance electing Donald Trump because he seemed willing to put the basics first.
• 
Will they re-elect him is the question.
• 
If Democrats continue to act like this, absolutely, they will.
      Debate shows Democratic Party has broken from reality, no longer cares about what's true  (Fox 06/28/2019)
• 
The Democratic Party went completely insane on Wednesday.
• 
That's been happening for a while, of course — insanity is a process.
• 
But Wednesday night at the first Democratic primary debate of the 2020 season, they made it official.
• 
Elite Democrats have permanently broken with reality.
• 
They no longer care about what's true, what's possible, even what's real.
• 
They live in a kind of dream-state, a place of fantasy punctuated by howls of self-righteousness.
• 
Julian Castro was an actual cabinet secretary in the Obama administration.  It was only a couple of years ago.
• 
He explained at the debate that men who get pregnant have the moral right to taxpayer-funded abortions.  I'm not joking.
• 
"I don't believe only in reproductive freedom, I believe in reproductive justice ... And you know, what that means is that just because a woman or let's also not forget someone in the trans-community.  A trans-female is poor.  It doesn't mean they shouldn't have the right to exercise that right to choose."
• 
And so they cheered.  Behold, late empire liberalism in full flower.  Who exactly is the constituency for Castro's idea?
• 
There never have been any people like that.  There never will be any people like that.
• 
Why?  Because it's impossible.  Biological men cannot get pregnant.
• 
Pretending otherwise is lunacy.  It's the very definition of lunacy.
• 
But Julian Castro doesn't care.  Taxpayer-funded transgender abortion sounds like something that all good progressives should support.
• 
So Castro fervently does.
• 
And critically, he knows that nobody in the room will defend science or pause to ask him what the hell are you talking about?
• 
They can't say a word.  They're too intimidated.  They know HR is watching.
• 
So they nod like monkeys, as if everything he is saying is completely sane.
• 
"Oh, good point, Mr.  Secretary.  Trans-females shouldn't have to pay for their own abortions.  That's racist."
• 
The whole thing was like a cartoon or an "Evil One" novel.  It went on like this all night.
• 
"When somebody comes across the border, we should not criminalize desperation, to treat that as a civil violation."
• 
And you thought this was your country just because, like your ancestors, you were born here.
• 
Just because you pay half your income to the government to keep the whole thing going, you thought it was your country?
• 
Think again, racist.
• 
America belongs to the rest of the world.  Your job is to shut up and pay for it.
• 
Complain and we will punish you.
• 
... de Blasio is the single worst mayor in the 400-year history of New York City.
• 
... once he had the mic, de Blasio promised to seize your money and give it to his supporters, who he explained deserve it much more than you do.
• 
"Yes, we're supposed to be for 70 percent tax rate on the wealthy."
• 
"You hear folks say there's not enough money.  What I say to them every single time is there's plenty of money in this world.  There's plenty of money in this country.  It's just in the wrong hands."
• 
Got it?  We've got the power; soon we'll have all the guns and we're coming for your stuff. 
• 
Some of the least impressive people in America are making the rules.
• 
Hope you're excited for it.  At least men will be able to get free abortions.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Corporations, not voters, are in charge now and want to boss you around for the activist left  (Fox 05/31/2019)
• 
A few weeks ago, Georgia lawmakers passed what they called a "heartbeat bill."
• 
It bans abortion after the first few weeks of pregnancy when a fetal heartbeat can be detected.
• 
Now you may agree with the law or you may not agree with the law, but you can't call it illegitimate.
• 
Voters in Georgia elected lawmakers who represent their values, and that's exactly how democratic systems are designed to work.  That's the point.
• 
You'd think the people who claim to be defending our democracy from the Russians would understand that.
• 
But of course, they don't understand it.  They don't care to understand it.
• 
They believe democracy is when a tiny group of rich people imposes its values on everyone else by force.
• 
Bob Iger is the CEO of Disney.  He doesn't live anywhere near the State of Georgia.  He made nearly $66 million last year.
• 
Therefore, he believes he can control what happens in the State of Georgia.
• 
"Well, I think if it becomes law, it'll be very difficult to produce there.  I rather doubt we will.  I think many people who work for us will not want to work there and we'll have to heed their wishes in that regard."
• 
Got that?  The company that brought you Minnie Mouse and Goofy and the "Pirates of the Caribbean" now demands that you approve of abortion, or they'll punish you.
• 
This is all a remarkable change in American life in a very short period of time.
• 
It wasn't that long ago that it was citizens who boycotted companies they disagreed with.
• 
Now, it's corporations who boycott citizens.
• 
What happened?  It's not hard to figure out what happened.
• 
For generations, consumers and voters held the real power in this country, but not anymore.
• 
Now corporations are in charge, and they're happy to boss you around on behalf of the activist left.
• 
They'll lie about it, of course, and tell you it's all a matter of conscience.
• 
Right.  As if they had consciences.
• 
Family shrinks or disappears entirely.
• 
Women are free to devote their lives to the company — reliable little worker bees.
• 
Corporations get to expand their labor pool, lower wages and increase profits, all while delivering pious lectures about how they're giving women opportunities.
• 
Somewhere in the late 1990s, corporate America realized this.  They learned that if they did the bidding of the left on social issues, they would get a pass on everything else.
• 
They could freeze wages.  They could destroy the environment.  They could strangle free speech.  They can eliminate privacy.
• 
All the while, they could get richer than any class of people in human history, and nobody would say anything.
• 
So that's exactly what they did, and they're still doing it.
• 
Last year, Citigroup announced it would not allow stores that sell semi-automatic weapons to use their credit card services.  That's where we are today.
• 
But it's not hard to match what it might be like tomorrow.
• 
What if, for example, America — corporate America — decided to punish gun owners in addition to gun sellers?
• 
You've got a firearm at home, so you could no longer buy car insurance.  Okay, you can't use Facebook.  You can't open a checking account.  You can't have a credit card.  You can't stay in hotels.
• 
Well, libertarians will tell you that's just fine - just the free market at work.  If you don't like it, open your own credit card company.
• 
But you'd have to be a moron to believe them.
• 
In fact, that would be the end of the Second Amendment.
• 
The words would remain in the Bill of Rights, but they would be entirely symbolic.
• 
Big companies would have rendered them meaningless.
• 
It's not a right if you can't exercise it.
• 
And that's where we're heading.  It's not far off.
• 
Conservatives have been trained to see government as the only real threat to human freedom.
• 
And for much of the last hundred years that may have been true.  It's not true anymore.
• 
The tyranny of "woke" capital is real, and it is terrifying.
• 
Just because they're selling you products, doesn't mean it's not a dictatorship.
      The left doesn't think MS-13 is a problem because Trump thinks they're 'animals'  (Fox 05/24/2019)
• 
Our leadership class has decided to downplay the threat of MS-13.  Why?  Because Trump attacked MS-13.
• 
Therefore, in the demented zero-sum calculation of permanent Washington, MS-13 must be virtuous.
• 
The enemy of Donald Trump must be my friend.  That's how they think.
• 
It all started almost exactly a year ago when the president said, "So when the MS-13 comes in, when the other gang members come into our country, I referred to them as animals.  And guess what?  I always will."
• 
Keep in mind, MS-13's motto is "kill, rape, control." They routinely torture and murder high school students.
• 
They bring drugs across the border and into our neighborhoods.  They're the deadliest criminal gang in America.
• 
And yet, once Trump attacked them, the left decided that worrying about MS-13 was a greater threat to our values than the gang itself.  Anyone who criticized MS-13 was denounced as racist, if not a tool of Putin. 
• 
Today, criticizing MS-13 would mean asking questions about the party's orthodoxy on immigration.
• 
It would expose Nancy Pelosi's absurd lie that every single immigrant is impressive and must be allowed to stay in the country, no questions asked.
• 
Nobody in the left wants to talk about any of this.  So instead, they just defend MS-13.
• 
"I do think there's a serious problem with the president dehumanizing any group of people in the United States, even if they are hardened criminals."
• 
Got that?  Saying rude things about MS-13 is a "serious problem," unlike, say, abortion up to the moment of birth, which is liberation and not a problem at all.
• 
But criticize a Central American gang member with a face tattoo, and she will give you a long lecture about God.
• 
"We're all God's children.  There is a spark of divinity in every person on Earth.  And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, 'These aren't people, these are animals,' you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity, the dignity and worth of every person?  Every day that you think you've seen it all, along comes another manifestation of why their policies are so inhumane."
• 
That's today's lecture on Christianity from Nancy Pelosi.  The media, of course, dutifully amplified Pelosi's message.
• 
Vox.com produced an entire video designed to explain that, actually, MS-13 members are just like your kids.
• 
That kind of propaganda, where powerful people are lying right to your face again and again and again, it happens a lot.
• 
And it would be pretty funny, actually, if the stakes were lower.
• 
The left defends MS-13 because they can't acknowledge a downside to the open borders they've given us.
• 
Once we start talking about all of this, who knows where it might end?
      So instead, they lecture us about dignity while high school kids get  ()
      And for them, that's a small price to  ()
      Roger Stone raid shows that CNN is no longer covering Robert Mueller.  They're working with him  (Fox 01/29/2019)
• 
LongtimeTrump adviser Roger Stone was arrested on Friday by federal agents and charged with seven felonies, none of which had anything to do with Russian collusion or election meddling.
• 
But you'd never know that from the penalties he faces.
• 
If convicted, Stone could die in prison.  Nobody in Washington seems to find that punishment excessive.  Many have cheered it.
• 
Officially, Stone was charged with lying, something most of our political elite engage in every day.
• 
But his real crime was flamboyance.  Stone has spent the last 40 years giving the finger to the people in charge.  In the end, they got him – they always do.
• 
... it is worth taking just a moment to consider a few basic questions about it, if only because nobody else is going to.
• 
First, why did the Justice Department stage what was, in effect, a military assault on Roger Stone's house?
• 
Stone himself asked that question on ABC over the weekend, but anchor George Stephanopoulos dismissed the DOJ tactic as "pretty standard."
• 
But is it "pretty standard" to send dozens of federal agents with rifles to arrest an unarmed 66-year-old man who has been charged with a nonviolent crime?
• 
No.  It is not standard.  It is shocking.  And any honest person who pays attention could tell you that.
• 
... there were 29 agents on the scene, along with 17 vehicles, two of them armored, and a helicopter overhead.
• 
If that's an accurate accounting, it means the feds sent more armed men to Roger Stone's house in Fort Lauderdale than they did to Usama bin Laden's compound in Pakistan — just for some perspective on this.
• 
So, what was the justification for doing that?
• 
Prosecutors knew perfectly well that Stone wasn't a flight risk.  He's broke.  He doesn't even have a valid passport.
• 
They could have simply called his lawyer and told him to surrender.  That's the actual "standard" in cases like this.
• 
But they didn't do that.  Instead, they went in with guns drawn.
• 
Who decided to do that?  How much did it cost taxpayers?
• 
Mueller can send armed men to your home to roust you from bed at gunpoint just because he feels like it, and there's nothing you, or anyone else, can do about it.
• 
Mueller has an unlimited budget and no timetable.  He doesn't have to answer questions.
• 
He can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants.  He cannot be fired.
• 
Mueller is the single most powerful person in America, and yet nobody voted for him.
• 
He is a living rebuke to the principles of our democratic system.
• 
At the same time, our leaders tell us that we need Robert Mueller — an all-powerful, unelected prosecutor, accountable to no one — to protect us from threats to – brace yourselves here – democracy.
• 
Nobody in Washington catches the irony in any of this.
• 
Mueller himself is the threat to our democracy.  The most powerful man elected by nobody.
• 
Our media don't ask questions about any of this, or even acknowledge that it is a question. 
• 
So, to recap: "We journalists" says CNN, need to fight back against the "fringes of the right" who want to "move the story away from what it should really be."
• 
CNN decides what it should really be.  And if you don't agree, you're on the "fringes of the right."
• 
In other words, shut up, you guys.  Stop asking questions we don't feel like answering.
• 
CNN acted as the public relations arm of the Mueller investigation, as they have before.
• 
And then they lied about it in the most self-righteous possible way...
• 
The network is no longer covering Robert Mueller; they're working with Robert Mueller. 
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Covington story was not about race but about people in power attacking people they've failed  (Fox 01/22/2019)
• 
It's hard to remember the last time the great American meme machine produced a clearer contrast between good and evil — it was essentially an entire morality play shrunk down to four minutes for Facebook.
• 
On one side, a noble tribal elder, weather-beaten, calm and wise.  He looks like a living icon.
• 
You could imagine a single tear sliding slowly down his cheek at the senselessness of it all.
• 
On the other side, you had a pack of heedless, sneering young men from the south, drunk on racism and white privilege.
• 
The irony is overwhelming: The indigenous man's land had been stolen by the very ancestors of these boys in MAGA hats.
• 
Yet they dare to lecture him about walls designed to keep people who look very much like him out what they were calling "their" country.
• 
It was infuriating to a lot of people.
• 
At the same time, it was also strangely comforting to the people who watched it from Brooklyn and L.A.
• 
The people who run this country have long suspected that middle America is a hive of nativist bigotry.
      And now they had proof of that.  It was cause for a celebration of  ()
• 
There's nothing quite as satisfying as having your own biases confirmed.
• 
But did the video really describe what happened?
• 
That should have been the first question journalists asked.  Checking facts and adding context is what journalists are paid to do.
• 
It's in the first line of the job description.  Yet, amazingly, almost nobody in the American media did that.
• 
The four minutes that made Twitter don't tell the story, but instead distorted the story.
• 
A longer look shows that the boys from Covington Catholic in Kentucky weren't a roving mob looking for a fight.
• 
They were, in fact — and it shows it on the tape — standing in place waiting to be picked up by a bus.
• 
As they waited there, members of a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites, a black supremacist organization, began taunting them with racial epithets.
• 
Nathan Phillips, the now-famous American Indian activist, also approached them, pounding his drum.
• 
The footage seems to suggest the boys were unsure whether Phillips was hostile or taking their side against the Black Hebrew Israelites.
• 
But in any case, there is no evidence at all that anyone said, "build a wall."
• 
What we know for certain at this point is that our cultural leaders are, in fact, bigots.
• 
They understand reality on the basis of stereotypes. 
• 
When the facts don't conform to what they think they know, they ignore the facts.
• 
They see America not as a group of people or of citizens, but as a collection of groups.
• 
Some of these groups, they are convinced, are morally inferior to other groups.
• 
They know that's true.  They say it out loud.
• 
That belief shapes almost all of their perceptions of the world.
• 
... in case you think the response was entirely from the left, you should know that the abuse was bipartisan.
• 
This wasn't just left versus right.  It was the people in power attacking those below them as a group.
• 
Plenty of Republicans in Washington were happy to savage the Covington kids, probably to inoculate themselves from charges of improper thought.
• 
The National Review, meanwhile, ran a story entitled, "The Covington Students Might As Well Have Just Spit on the Cross."
• 
That story has since been pulled too, but not before the author admitted he never even bothered to watch all the videos.
• 
He knew what he knew.  That was enough.
• 
What's so fascinating about all these attacks is how inverted they are.
• 
These are high school kids from Kentucky.  ... They're far less privileged than virtually everyone who called for them to be destroyed, based on the fact that they have too much privilege.
• 
Consider Kara Swisher, for example, an opinion columnist at the New York Times.
• 
Swisher went to Princeton Day School and then Georgetown, then got a graduate degree at Columbia.  She's become rich and famous, in the meantime, by toadying for billionaire tech CEOs.  She's their handmaiden.
• 
Is she more privileged than the boys of Covington Catholic in Kentucky?  Of course she is.
• 
Maybe that's why she feels the need to call them Nazis, which she did, repeatedly.
• 
So what's actually going on here?
• 
Well, it's not really about race.  In fact, most of the stories about race really aren't about race.
• 
And this is no different.  This story is about the people in power protecting their power, and justifying their power, by destroying and mocking those weaker than they are.
• 
Why?  It's simple.  Our leaders haven't improved the lives of most people in America.
• 
They can't admit that because it would discredit them.  So, instead they attack the very people they've failed.
• 
The problem, they'll tell us, with Kentucky, isn't that bad policies have hurt the people who live there.
• 
It's that the people who live there are immoral because they're bigots.
• 
They deserve their poverty and opioid addiction.  They deserve to die young.
• 
That's what our leaders tell themselves.  And now, that's what they're telling us.
• 
Just remember: they're lying.
• 
See related Love Trumps Hate (Sean Delonas, 11/10/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      A mob of angry children doesn't want you to know why the American Dream is dying  (Fox 01/04/2019)
• 
... take a minute to talk about the biggest issue facing this country going forward.
• 
No, it's not higher GDP growth, despite what some think tank people will tell you.
• 
It's not some obscure Middle Eastern hellhole our leaders claim we should be policing forever.
• 
It's not even illegal immigration, as big of a problem as that is and as much time as we spend talking about it.
• 
The real problem is families.  America used to be the best country in the world for families.
• 
Americans could get married and afford to raise their own children.
• 
If your kids worked hard, you could expect that maybe they'd be a little more successful than you were.
• 
That was what we called the "American Dream."
• 
For a small group of affluent people, it still exists.  They're still living like it's 1965.  Good for them.
• 
But for everyone else, that dream is dying.  America's middle class is in decline because middle class American families are declining.
• 
So the question is why is that happening?  There are lots of reasons, but a major driver of family collapse, the one nobody ever talks about for some reason, is simple economics.
• 
"Study after study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don't want to marry them.  Now maybe they should want to marry them but they don't.  Over big populations, this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out-of-wedlock births and all the familiar disasters that inevitably follow.  More drug and alcohol abuse, higher incarceration rates, fewer families formed to the next generation."
• 
... a study by the decidedly-non-conservative Brookings Institution found that falling male wages caused about a quarter of the decline in marriage rates over the last 35 years.
• 
... MIT researchers found that when factories close, marriage rates go down and single parenthood becomes more common.
• 
This causes a higher proportion of children to wind up on drugs or in prison, so it's not a small thing.
• 
If you're wondering how we wound up in the dark age we're currently living through right now, this is how.  This is why important science is no longer being done.  It's why art isn't being made.  This is why comedy is dying.
• 
It's why people aren't thinking for themselves anymore, which means the end of creativity.
• 
It's why the rest of us stand by like cowards as the innocent are punished for crimes they didn't commit.
• 
Because we're all terrified.
• 
We're terrified of being denounced by some mindless ideologue on TV or shamed and ostracized on social media for stepping out of line.
• 
Or silenced completely by a big tech firm.
• 
A mob of angry children is suddenly in charge of the country.
• 
These aren't people seeking a revolution.  They're fighting for the status quo to protect their own status.
• 
They're drunk on power and looking for new people to hurt.
• 
Someday, we're going to look back on this moment with shame and horror.
• 
But we should remember that terror only works if we play along with it.
• 
So, what if we decided not to.  What if all of us decided to tell the truth about something, every day, in public?
• 
What would happen then?  What could they do about it?
• 
They can't punish everybody.  We're the majority.
• 
Let's try that.
      Tucker Carlson: Our ruling class has clamped down on freedom of speech as never before  (Fox 12/06/2018)
• 
Freedom of speech.  A lot of people voted for Donald Trump in the hope they'd have more of it.  But two years into his presidency, the opposite has happened.
• 
Our ruling class has clamped down as never before on personal expression.  Gone is the free exchange of ideas we were promised as Americans.
• 
In its place: Mandatory, soul-deadening conformity.  An entire population forced to repeat the same mindless platitudes, or else.
• 
An axis of left-wing corporate power, academia, media, and lawmakers have all aligned to curb your right to speak freely - your right to think for yourself.
• 
When they control your words, they control your mind.
• 
The left used to deny that this was their goal.  However, they're not even pretending anymore.
• 
They're baring their teeth and snarling.  Get in line or we'll hurt you.
• 
... Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged that his company, one of the biggest and most powerful in the world, will do whatever it takes to silence dissenting opinions.
• 
"Hate tries to make its headquarters in the digital world.  At Apple, we believe that technology needs to have a clear point of view on this challenge."
• 
"There is no time to get tied up in knots.  That's why we only have one message for those who seek to push hate, division, and violence: You have no place on our platforms."
• 
Hate.  It's a real thing and there's a lot of it out there right now.
• 
But hate is also the word they use for views they don't like, or questions they can't answer.
• 
Cook's real message is simple: We are holy; you are fallen.  Shut up and obey.
• 
CEOs didn't used to talk this way.  They were in the business of selling products, not preaching sermons.
• 
Then, over time, conventional religion receded from public life, and people like Tim Cook and his fellow CEOs stepped forward to fill that void.
• 
It wasn't an upgrade.
• 
Apple has a lot more power than the Episcopal Church ever had, and much less humility and restraint.
• 
Leaders 100 years ago could tolerate dissent.  They thought God would sort it out in the end — they didn't have to.
• 
Members of our modern ruling class consider themselves gods.  They render their own judgment.
• 
They view disagreement as equivalent to apostasy, an attack on the one true faith.
• 
"If we make this law and you have to allow the state government to look at your social media posts, you could decide on whether you want a pistol license or not.  You don't have to have a pistol license."
• 
True.  You don't have to vote, either, or go to the church of your choice, or be tried by a jury of your peers.
• 
What other constitutional rights will soon be contingent on saying the right things?
      Is Ford's Kavanaugh story rooted in a 'recovered' memory?  It's not the only fair question to be asked  (Fox 10/04/2018)
• 
If the goal is to get to the truth, they would have been of course.  Why has Ford apparently told different stories about whether she showed her therapy notes to The Washington Post or simply described their contents to the paper?
• 
That's significant because it bears directly on her credibility.  And Ford's credibility is literally the only reason to believe that her story is true.  So that matters.
• 
Ford says the assault defined her entire life.  Apparently, she thought about it every day.
• 
It affected her academic performance and all of her personal relationships, yet she says she told not a single other human being about it for fully 30 years.
• 
How can that be?  Well, here's an idea.  In a Washington Post profile, Ford says that she "came to understand her assault and the significance during a psychotherapy session."
• 
What does that mean exactly?  Is Ford's story at least in part a recovered memory?
• 
This is a critical question, because most psychiatrists consider recovered memories, however sincere, as roughly as reliable as dreams.
• 
It's worth getting a clear answer, but so far nobody has, because nobody has asked that question.  Why is that?
• 
When an adult makes a serious allegation, asking real questions is the only correct response.
• 
It's not an attack to ask for follow-ups or probe inconsistencies, it's not victim shaming.  In fact, it's patronizing not to.
• 
Instead of gathering facts about this story, they are busy moralizing and lecturing the rest of us about how Kavanaugh's very existence proves that an entire class of people is evil.
• 
The real evil is the way that our elites stoke race and gender hatred in order to divide this country.
• 
And that is another thing that people of good faith ought to be questioning.
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      Reflecting on Dr.  King's vision – how are we faring in pursuit of the just society?  (Fox 01/16/2022)
• 
Dr.  King's admirable efforts to ensure that we become and remain a nation where an individual is judged based on the content of his character, not the color of his skin, is well known by most Americans.
• 
Indeed, this message comes from the King of the Universe himself, who tells us in his Love Letter to us, that He "hath made of one blood all nations of men." (Acts 17:26).
• 
This beautiful admonition puts to rest once and for all the idea that some races are inherently superiority to others, and even the very idea that we should be divided based on race at all.
• 
So let us reflect on how we're faring in achieving a society based on such principles so well-articulated by Dr.  King.
• 
First, there's no question that progress has been made in our journey as a nation toward a just and fair society.
• 
When I was a boy growing up in Detroit, the idea of a Black Cabinet secretary, neurosurgeon or rocket scientist, would have been totally unimaginable.
• 
But due to the guidance of our Creator and the fair mindedness of the American people in our commitment to constantly improving ourselves, such things are not only imaginable, but have actually happened.
• 
Yet, we're starting to see troubling signs that our nation's dedication to the principles of Dr.  King, or at least the dedication of the elites and those who control our institutions, is beginning to wane.
• 
Many of those in leadership positions no longer ascribe to the noble aspiration that all of us should be judged based on the content of our character.
• 
Instead, they're increasingly embracing the notion that a person's worth and future potential are determined by their race.
• 
If you're White, that means you're automatically guilty of racism and discrimination, totally independent of how you actually treat other human beings and love others.
• 
If you're Black, that means you're automatically doomed to a life bound in poverty and unable to achieve the American dream, due to alleged White privilege and systematic racism, independent of your actual work ethic, dedication and tenacity.
• 
This ideology is manifest in diabolical schemes such as critical race theory, which seeks to redefine educational curriculums based on racial grievance ideology, including the false idea that all racial disparities are due to racism, rather than due to family structure, educational choices, and other factors that the evidence clearly shows impact outcomes.  The 1619 Project is one of the biggest such examples.
• 
This divisive worldview is also apparent in the new concept of equity being employed by its adherents.
• 
Unlike the traditional notion of equality, which envisions that all persons should have a chance at success no matter where they came from – also known as "equality of opportunity" – the new idea of equity instead demands forced "equality of outcomes," expecting that people should be forced to arrive at the same result regardless of individual choices, effort and dedication – a clear absurdity.
• 
Such ideologies threaten to deliver us into a dystopian future where once again, race is the determining factor in a person's worth, instead of character.
 Castro  (03/17/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/16/2022) | Next sect (04/30/2021) | List bot 
      We haven't humiliated Russia enough  (INN 03/17/2022)
• 
A theory that is gaining currency is that NATO expansion eastward to the borders of Russia was an unnecessary affront to Russian pride.
• 
In this context, semantics play an unfortunate role.  NATO did not expand like, say, the British Empire or Nazi Germany expanded eastward in the past.  NATO simply accepted the voluntary and democratic adhesion of Eastern European nations to NATO.
• 
These nations did not adhere to NATO in order to provoke Russia, but because the past and the present demonstrate that membership in an international security alliance is the only way to shield themselves from wanton military aggression.
• 
For most Russians, the adhesion of former vassal states to an Atlantic alliance was and remains an affront.
• 
However, it was and is an affront mainly because most Russians are stuck in a nationalistic and imperialistic worldview in which Russia is entitled to world power status by divine fiat.
• 
This outlook of most Russians today is no different to that of most Germans prior to denazification.  In both Germany and Russia this outlook inflicted and is inflicting incalculable human suffering.
• 
Surveys indicate that almost 70% of Russians support Putin's "special operation" against Ukraine.  I honestly doubt that even Hitler enjoyed so much support among ordinary Germans in September 1939 when he waged war on Poland.
• 
The lesson this teaches us is that the country that needs denazification is not Ukraine, but Russia.  The unholy alliance between the Orthodox Church, nationalism and autocracy is so deeply rooted in contemporary Russian political culture that it is Moscow and not Kiev that today deserves the fate of Berlin in 1945.
• 
Since the human race cannot afford this solution, the second best option for the West is to isolate Russia economically and diplomatically, until the Russians masses realize that the choice they face is not between democracy and national greatness, but between democracy and servitude to China.
• 
The best way for Russians to be healed of their antagonism to the West is for Russians to miss the good old days when they could afford to resent a West that welcomed them.
• 
And for Russians to realize that the Chinese Communists are infinitely harsher paymasters than the IMF and the World Bank.
• 
Once Russians understand that Putin's imperial ambitions have turned their nation into a vassal state of China, they will sober up.
• 
Until then, the West has no business pandering to the slighted pride of a people whose political culture prizes power and ruthlessness above peace, life and freedom.
      Difference is the genesis of bigotry  (INN 12/26/2021)
• 
Countless studies are devoted to studying and advancing remedies to racism, homophobia, antisemitism and anti-Muslim bigotry.  Most studies dig out complex historical, sociological and religious reasons for them.
• 
Yet the bottom line is that hostility toward those who are different from us is hardwired into human nature.
• 
Although we can be drilled into stating that diversity is a positive value, our default reflex is to seek the company and support of people who are similar to us.
• 
The best way to reduce bigotry toward a different group has historically been the presence of a third group whose otherness is even stronger.
• 
In fact, the reason antisemitism has not been as strong in the Americas as in Europe may not be the US Constitution or the Puritans' love for the Old Testament, but the more prosaic fact that in a continent with millions of blacks and Native Americans, the relative otherness of Jews was attenuated.
• 
The proof that relative difference trumps ideology is also delivered by South Africa.  During the Apartheid years many politicians were former Nazi sympathizers, yet this did not prevent Apartheid South Africa from blessing Jews with peace and prosperity.
• 
As pro-Nazi as Afrikaner politicians in Pretoria may have been, it was clear to them that Jews were far less other than Africans or Coloreds.
• 
The theory of relative otherness also holds in Europe.  It was in the Southern Balkans where Christians mingled with Muslims and Jews that antisemitism in Europe has historically been mildest.
• 
Antisemitism on the other hand was strongest in regions where Jews where the sole or most visible outsiders.
• 
Yet the principle does not apply just to Jews, but to any group of outsiders.  The more homogeneous a society is, the less likely its citizens are to welcome foreigners.
• 
Many assume that prejudice can be overcome by proving one's worth to society.  The success of this approach was dispelled by the tragic fate of German Jews, the most successful Jewish minority in history.
• 
Bigotry cannot be eradicated, but only controlled.  Any deviation of one community from the average physical, socioeconomic or cultural makeup of the surrounding environment reflexively rouses unease and suspicion.
• 
This thesis can be also reconciled with the escalation of contemporary antisemitism in cosmopolitan urban centers in the USA and Europe.
• 
There, Jews are increasingly targeted as proxies for Israel, which in turn is loathed for deviating from the average values that leftists consider allies of the West should embody.
• 
Thus Israel is attacked in the West for not being Western enough while in the Middle East Israel is attacked for being too Western.
• 
The long-term therapy for all these forms of bigotry involves all cultures and religions teaching that being a good human being is THE cardinal virtue.
      Critical Race Theory and its discontents  (INN 08/01/2021)
• 
A politically-correct social media community I am a member of summarized the goals of Critical Race Theory as follows:
• 
1) History needs to be taught as completely as possible, including the ugly elements.
• 
2) Recognition that it is impossible to surgically separate today's society from the past.
• 
3) Examine the issue of today's people's personal responsibility for the status quo.
• 
Couched in these terms, Critical Race Theory is a most noble and edifying educational and intellectual endeavor.
• 
But let us not be deceived by appearances.  Let us dig deeper point by point:
• 
1) History needs to be taught as completely as possible, including the ugly elements.
• 
Does this mean that only black and Native American slave ownership in the antebellum South will be taught?
• 
Or will children also learn that slavery was endemic to Africa prior to the arrival of Europeans and that it was abolished by Europeans - although it still exists in some parts of Africa and the Muslim world?
• 
Probably not, since such "ugly elements" would hurt the sensitivities of minority students.
• 
So what does this point in practice mean?  It means that all ugly elements of white Christian culture will be highlighted to make sure that only white Americans feel ashamed of their history.
• 
2) Recognition that it is impossible to surgically separate today's society from the past.
• 
I thought that history as a discipline has taught this since the days of Herodotus.  So why does this point need to be spelled out?
• 
Because what it actually says is that schools should teach that contemporary problems are rooted in the past.
• 
In other words, if black gangster rappers are killed in drive-by shootings today, the cause is no longer that they freely choose to lead lives of violence and crime, but because their great-great-great-great grandfathers were mistreated as slaves.
• 
Of course, there are valid reasons to argue that certain patterns formed in the past still subsist in the present.
• 
However, the goal of Critical Race Theory is not to discuss the role of the past in the present, but to convince our children that all problems affecting non-whites are rooted in past (and present) oppression while all advantages of whites are rooted in past (and present) supremacy.
• 
That the past is not a perpetual curse is proven by the fact that the descendants of Asian coolies and millions of other non-whites have successfully overcome their initial social, legal and economic handicaps in America.
• 
However, Critical Race Theory will ignore their achievements, since they undermine the woke narrative that Critical Race Theory is designed to undergird.
• 
3) Examine the issue of today's people's personal responsibility for the status quo.
• 
Does this mean children will be taught to be studious, conscientious and to take responsibility for their lives and their future?!
• 
Critical Race theorists argue that doing so constitutes subordination to dominant white values (sic)...  So what does this beautiful sentence actually mean?
• 
It means that white children will be taught to see themselves as oppressors due to the real (and alleged) crimes of their ancestors and minority children will be taught that whites have an inextinguishable debt in their regard.
• 
Regardless of affirmative action, quotas, reparations and so forth no amount of contemporary white penance will atone for the crimes whites have committed against minorities.
• 
The fact that most whites in America have ancestors who arrived after the Civil War is irrelevant.  Just like in tribal systems, guilt and responsibility no longer attach to individuals or even to interrelated communities, but to races in their entirety.
• 
I tremble at the thought that this garbage will be taught to American children.
• 
I tremble not because I think it will empower blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans, but because the opposite is true.
• 
The backlash against this race-driven folly will be so strong and so violent as to undo the progress in race relations since the Civil Rights movement.
• 
In other words, Critical Race Theory is a movement that foments racism and vows to tear America apart.
• 
See related Garbage in... (Bob Gorrell, 05/16/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
 Chaffetz  (04/30/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/17/2022) | Next sect (01/03/2022) | List bot 
      Jason Chaffetz: Biden's first 100 days – now we know just how much president was hiding the truth  (Fox 04/30/2021)
• 
... the promise of Joe Biden and the reality are two different things.  There is nothing bipartisan or moderate about the way the Biden-Harris administration has governed in the first 100 days.
• 
... we've seen Biden go it alone with an unprecedented number of executive orders this early in a presidency.  We've seen massive deceptively marketed spending sprees passed on a party-line vote.  We've seen many of Biden's long-held "moderate" positions abandoned.  What we haven't seen is bipartisanship.
• 
Bipartisanship is no longer even a pretense.  Biden still has not met with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., with whom he brags of having influenced in previous legislative battles.
• 
Nor has he had a single conversation with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., whose requests to meet have been ignored.
• 
The policies of Biden and Harris must also come as a surprise to those who voted for the ticket hoping for some kind of reasonable middle ground.
• 
Instead, Biden has dispensed with his own long-held positions on abortion, court packing and the filibuster.  And he has taken extreme positions on the Green New Deal, border security and the Second Amendment.
• 
Biden's alleged moderate agenda was marketed to appeal to Reagan Democrats, centrist independents and Trump-weary Republicans.  But that agenda has been supplanted by one socialists and anarchists now applaud.
• 
Biden has come to reflect the extreme wing of his party, with self-proclaimed socialist Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., saying Biden has "exceeded expectations that progressives had."
• 
The would-be president "for all Americans" supported legislation punitive to Americans who didn't vote for him – and to Americans who did.
• 
In killing the Keystone Pipeline on his first day, he killed thousands of good jobs.  His COVID relief package was formulated to concentrate aid (what little there is of it after the bill was loaded up with pork) to large Democrat-voting urban centers.
• 
His failure to stem the tide of illegal (and sometimes COVID-positive) border crossers has placed significant burdens on border state taxpayers and complicated their efforts to contain the pandemic spread.
• 
Just 100 days in, the Republican narrative of Biden was right.  He is a weak leader, possibly in mental decline, through whom extremists in the Democratic Party can push their most unpopular ideas.
• 
Massive spending, rising crime rates, proposed economy-killing tax increases, destruction of jobs and energy independence – thus far these are the prize fruits of the Biden-Harris administration.
• 
Set aside the immovable positions of partisans at either extreme and just consider the people in the middle.  For them, Biden has been an abject failure.
• 
See related The Little Dictator (Mike Shelton, 02/02/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related The Shadow President (Gary Varvel, 02/01/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Biden\\\'s Brain Trust (Gary Varvel, 07/20/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Jason Chaffetz: Biden and the media – here's how lack of transparency hurts Americans  (Fox 02/04/2021)
• 
The lovefest that greeted new White House press secretary Jen Psaki from a fawning press corps has been feted as a return to more "normal" times.
• 
Psaki marks a return to the way it used to be – when White House messaging was carefully scripted with staff-driven press releases and poll-tested talking points.
• 
An adoring White House press corps is firmly back in the driver's seat, filtering the narratives that reach the American people.
• 
If Psaki accidentally takes a tough question, she can defer to the president, noting she hasn't talked to him about it.
• 
We've lost the more insightful information that comes from a president who answered questions unscripted in real time from everyone who wished to ask them.  He was open, transparent and candid to a fault.
• 
Despite his aggressive New York style, at least we knew what the leader of the free world was really thinking.  No president was ever as accessible as Trump.
• 
Gone is the skepticism that greeted every utterance from President Trump, replaced with an obsequious glee accompanying endless stories about Joe Biden's dogs, his bagel runs and his Peleton bike.  We know more about the president's dog than we do about the president's son.
• 
... Biden returns us to a time where everything is scripted, and the media loves it because Biden is their guy.
• 
... Psaki's evasive word salad responses are reported faithfully by a credulous media.  Asked about the recent GameStop controversy, Psaki punted, replying, "I know it's a big story, but our focus and our big story is getting the American people back to work."
• 
This on the heels of a slew of job-killing executive orders designed to shut down entire sectors of the economy and send the business to our foreign enemies.
• 
Psaki, when asked about Yellen's receipt of over $800,000 in speaking fees from Citadel hedge fund, reminded viewers that Yellen is a woman.  And she "deserves that money."
• 
While Trump was made to answer for the actions of every angry supporter, no such standard applies to the new administration.
• 
Ongoing rioting, looting and destruction in the Pacific Northwest, when it does come up in press briefings, is casually dismissed by an unprepared Psaki, who simply defers to another agency for comment.  Other critical questions are quickly brushed off with promises to "circle back."
• 
Psaki has promised Biden will provide "the most ethically vigorous administration in history," even as we still await answers to questions about Hunter Biden's business dealings and Ukraine's investigation of Joe Biden.
• 
Just in the administration's first week, we saw a D.C.  law firm running advertisements bragging about their association with the president's brother, Frank Biden.
• 
Imagine if the Trump children had been the subject of advertisements touting their access to the leader of the free world?
• 
Americans must not accept focus-grouped slogans and one-sided reporting.  We should all hope and pray for the success of the United States of America, no matter who the president may be.
• 
But we should also be selective about where we get our news and information.  Only outlets that are willing to ask tough questions and cover inconvenient narratives are deserving of our clicks and subscriptions.
• 
See related Biden\\\'s Glory (Mike Shelton, 01/22/2021) cartoon from Media picture album
 Chang  (01/03/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/30/2021) | Next sect (03/14/2020) | List bot 
      What America must do about China in 2022  (Fox 01/03/2022)
• 
China's regime attacks America every day, and every day America's political leaders, and especially its president, refuse to react.
• 
Why?  "The Biden administration believes climate change, not Communist China, poses the greatest threat to U.S.  national security."
• 
In May 2019, for instance, People's Daily, the most authoritative publication in China, carried a piece that declared a "people's war" on America.
• 
Why must Americans be concerned by propaganda?  The Party, with constant promotion of strident anti-Americanism, is establishing a justification to strike America.
• 
"The most powerful weapon America has to reverse Xi Jinping's march to global domination is economic."
• 
The Communist Party can threaten America only with Washington's acquiescence.  The way to end the Chinese threat, therefore, is to stop the westward flow of money to China.
• 
That means, for instance, prohibiting investment in China's markets and its industrial capacity, something Biden can do by invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977.
• 
Moreover, he can encourage low-cost manufacturing to move to Central America by liberalizing the provisions of the Central America Free Trade Agreement...
• 
Three times, American presidents saved the Communist Party: Nixon in 1972 during the Cultural Revolution, Bush in 1989 after the horrific Tiananmen Square massacre, and Clinton in 1999 during a downturn in the economy.
• 
Washington must make sure there will be no more rescues.  Instead, the Biden administration should follow Reagan's playbook targeting the Soviet economy, which led to the USSR's failure 20 years ago.
• 
"Why should Americans fund the next Chinese aircraft carrier, underwrite the Uyghur genocide, or invest in the next pandemic?"
      Gordon G.  Chang: Trump is right to ditch 5 decades of failed US-China engagement policy  (Fox 05/30/2020)
• 
It's about time.  China has been challenging the United States across the board, and Trump – with his comprehensive comments Friday – signaled the United States would defend itself across the board.
• 
Terminating America's relationship with the World Health Organization. Trump said the WHO is biased in favor of China and has failed to approve reforms arising out of its dealing with the coronavirus pandemic that originated in China.
• 
Suspending entry into the U.S. of Chinese nationals posing a security risk.
• 
Revoking almost all special exemptions and rules for Hong Kong and imposing sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials.
• 
Studying the "differing practices" of Chinese companies listed in the U.S.
• 
The president signed a proclamation stating that he will block entry into the United States of Chinese students and researchers tied to U.S.  military efforts.
• 
... Trump also commented on other matters, especially the spreading of the coronavirus.  "The world is now suffering as a result of the malfeasance of the Chinese government."
• 
On the issue of Hong Kong, Chinese leaders were undoubtedly waiting to see if Trump would withdraw America's special treatment of the beleaguered territory on trade and other issues.
• 
Some thought Trump would not do this, making this issue a test of his resolve.  In meeting the test, the president showed political will rarely seen in American leaders.
• 
Moreover, the tone of the president's words – he was not only adversarial but also angry – broke with decades of precedent.  Chinese leaders have not heard an American leader talk to them this way in public.
• 
The range of announced actions should concern Chinese leaders.  The actions suggest Trump is now leading a whole-of-government charge on China.
• 
... the markets were relieved that Trump did not impose new tariffs or freeze assets of Chinese nationals.  The markets should not break out the champagne just yet, however.
• 
The Trump administration will be announcing more actions in the weeks to come, probably including "full expensing" for costs to relocate factories from China and Hong Kong to the United States.
• 
Moreover, Trump's mentioning of the behavior of listed Chinese companies is a warning that investment is the next big area on the chopping block.
• 
China for months has been saying the "decoupling" of the United States from China was not possible.  However, on Friday Trump was making the process look inevitable.
• 
Trump said he wanted "an open and constructive relationship with China" – but ultimately the state of relations is not up to him.
• 
Beijing, showing off its "wolf warrior diplomacy" has taken a series of aggressive actions since February including: invading India; engaging in boat-bumping and other incidents against six of its neighbors in the South China and East China Seas; threatening to invade Taiwan; breaking promises over Hong Kong; and increasing the tempo of dangerous intercepts of the U.S.  Navy in China's peripheral waters and airspace.
• 
It's not entirely clear why China is lashing out at this moment.  Some say it's a sign of strength.  Others says it is a sign of weakness.
• 
But it is evident that America's engagement policy has failed.
• 
Engagers, adopting a long view, often ignored or condoned unacceptable Chinese behavior.  That feckless policy approach – conducted by U.S.  presidents of both parties and by liberals and conservatives alike – only emboldened the worst elements in Beijing by showing everybody else that aggression worked.
• 
The upshot is that there is now a perception that Chinese communism cannot be reformed – meaning the only thing the Trump administration can do to protect America is to reduce exposure to China.
• 
... administration is cutting ties with Chinese communism.  That is the correct approach.
• 
The People's Republic of China is more than just an adversary.  A year ago the Communist Party declared a "people's war" on America.
• 
That hostility means that apart from surrendering to Beijing, there is not much Trump can do to patch up relations with China.
• 
This is not a Trump issue; it is a China one.
• 
There will be costs in unwinding decades of misguided U.S.  policies toward China – how could there not be?  But Beijing is leaving Trump with little choice.
• 
It's time an American leader did what is necessary: go after China on all fronts.  And that's what the world heard Friday from President Trump.
 Chesler  (03/14/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/03/2022) | Next sect (12/18/2020) | List bot 
      The virus that has nothing novel about it  (INN 03/14/2020)
• 
I am talking about another virulent virus, that of Jew hatred, a deadly plague that has managed to mutate over time and geography so that it is always at-the-ready, both in good times and bad, definitely in times of war, famine, plague, and natural disaster but also when hope is high and the going is good.
• 
As has happened many times before, the Jews and Jewish Israel are being blamed for the Wuhan Virus by the mad mullahs of Iran.
• 
They say that "Zionists" are behind the Wuhan (Corona) Virus and that "Zionist elements developed a deadlier strain of Wuhan (Corona) virus just against Iran."
• 
China, ground zero for the pandemic, is now blaming America for having brought it into China in the first place.
• 
Let's visit Wuhan, Hubei Province, China for a moment.
• 
My friend and colleague, Marion Dreyfus, has written about her time in Wuhan in the early part of the 21st century.
• 
The city had absolutely no potable water and little hygiene; there was open sewage in open marketplace "eateries," where wild dogs roamed and where bats and all other manner of fish, fowl, and bird were slaughtered, sold, and eaten.
• 
For lunch, Dreyfus and her Chinese friends went to "the dirty alley" where they purchased "unidentified frying objects in woks," which were as "delicious" as they were unknown.
• 
Wuhan's live market was like a "free zoo," where rats, bats, snakes, and scorpions were sold to be eaten and the "floors were awash underfoot with spill from the livestock."
• 
As she so delicately phrases it: "The smell was...  not Chanel #5."
• 
We are surrounded, not only in terms of national borders, but on all fronts, ideologically, economically, legally, politically, socially and psychologically, 24/7, and in every language on earth; attacked constantly with Lies, insulted by grotesque European carnivals sporting Nazi-era stereotypical Jews, and by the normalization of anti-Zionism.anti-Semitism on campuses world-wide.
• 
We are, perhaps, in the midst of a slow motion Holocaust, slow moving or rolling pogroms — or trapped in a real-life horror movie.
• 
The most sickening Blood libels are back — and, since 2000, back with a vengeance.
• 
Propaganda around the clock claims that Israeli soldiers purposely kill Palestinian children ... and are engaged in the "genocidal ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians, are worse than the Nazis, and that Israel is a "settler," colonial, apartheid state.
• 
Europe continues the European Holocaust by supporting a terrorist "Palestine," not Jewish Israel, and by appeasing its violent Muslim population by allowing them to verbally and physically attack Jewish sites and to beat, harass, stab, and murder Jews on the streets, and in their homes, schools, and kosher markets.
• 
According to a recent ADL Report, based on surveys in one hundred countries, Muslims are two to four and half times more likely to hold anti-Semitic views than non-Muslims do.
• 
The combined effect of such attitudes are a clear incitement to attack at will; perhaps an even clearer incitement to genocide.
• 
We never thought "it" could happen here, in the United States.  And yet, in our time, American Jews are being shot down while praying on Shabbos; visibly Orthodox Jews are being slapped, sucker-punched, and kicked in "beatdowns," or shot or stabbed in a kosher marketplace...
• 
Today, we are up against dangerous Jew-hating demagogues whom we have allowed to flourish on campus and in the media.
• 
Already, Jewish students have had to be rescued by the campus police from Gaza-like mob attacks and riots.
• 
What next?  Broken bones, a concussion, God forbid, a murder?  Sadly, it is inevitable.
 Cohen  (12/18/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/14/2020) | Next sect (04/25/2022) | List bot 
      Techno-fascism strikes again — Congress must fight Big Tech’s suppression of free speech  (Fox 12/18/2020)
• 
Whoever controls the information we see or don't see controls the universe — and must be reined in without delay.
• 
We're talking about Big Tech's ever-expanding ability to shape and control public opinion on any topic it desires — including U.S.  elections — by censoring conservatives' tweets and posts while amplifying liberal voices and news stories favorable to Democratic candidates.
• 
We're living in an era of techno-fascism, where ultra-powerful liberal elites at Facebook, Twitter, Google, YouTube and other digital platforms are acting as modern-day book burners, using algorithms, content monitors and other opaque methods to control what millions of Americans read and view online.
• 
Like state-run media used by totalitarian regimes to control the masses — and rig elections — Big Tech is deciding what news articles we're allowed to see or not see.  Same with videos, GIFs, images and other online content.
• 
This includes the suppression of President Trump's tweets, conservative lawmakers and other heads of government agencies.  This is a threat to national security.
• 
What if America were under an attack like 9/11?  Or if a foreign enemy were to launch an intercontinental ballistic missile toward our shores?
• 
Would you want to give unelected central planners in Silicon Valley the almighty power to decide whether our commander in chief would be permitted to alert the American people on their networks?
• 
The ongoing failure of Congress to contain Big Tech censorship not only violates our rights to free speech and a free press; it also puts the American people in harm's way.
• 
How is this allowed in the Land of the Free, the strongest nation on Earth?
• 
As a matter of national security, Congress must pass a law that forbids any American company from censoring the president, any elected official or any head of a government agency.
• 
Until then, it's high time Congress took meaningful action to address Silicon Valley's out-of-control suppression of speech, which is getting worse by the day.
• 
Recently YouTube — owned by Google — announced it is removing from its platform all content involving allegations of voter fraud in this year's presidential election.  ... YouTube claims its new policy is an effort to blunt the spread of disinformation.
• 
That's hypocritical and downright disingenuous, given that this platform and others have given Democrats and their media allies a blank check to peddle the Russia-collusion hoax against President Trump and his administration for the past four years.
• 
"Big Tech companies have stretched their liability shield past its limits, and the national discourse now suffers because of it." Sen.  Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told...
• 
"Today's internet is a different online product from what was available in 1996; the polished mega-platforms we associate with online research and debate exert unprecedented influence over how Americans discover new information, and what information is available for discovery."
• 
"Moreover, the contentious nature of current conversations provides perverse incentive for these companies to manipulate the online experience in favor of the loudest voices in the room.  There exists no meaningful alternative to these powerful platforms, which means there will be no accountability for the devastating effects of this ingrained ideological bias until Congress steps in and brings liability protections into the modern era."
• 
That can't come a moment too soon.
      Adriana Cohen: Democrats and Republicans know that empty words won't unify this nation  (Fox 11/13/2020)
• 
President-elect Joe Biden says he wants unity and promises to be a president who represents all Americans not just Democrats.  t's give each other a chance," he told the nation in his acceptance speech...
• 
"It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric.  To lower the temperature.  To see each other again.  To listen to each other again.  To make progress we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy," he said.  "We are not enemies.  We are Americans."
• 
A well-scripted sentiment that's out of touch with our deeply divided nation as the Democratic Party and its media allies have spent the past four years calling Donald Trump's supporters racist — and every other repugnant smear you can think of.
• 
That's not exactly a way to win over half the country and heal the nation.
• 
Worse, Democrats' extremely divisive smear campaign against conservatives, a tool the left uses to obtain power and win elections, has no basis in reality.
• 
... those aren't the only baseless smears Biden's backers have been peddling.  Just last week, an opinion columnist from The Boston Globe compared Trump supporters with ISIS in a despicable tweet that went viral.
• 
Did the Biden camp denounce the sick comparison and defend conservatives?  Fat chance.  Biden and Harris both ignored it.  As did the Boston Globe...
• 
... there's more.  In a tweet three days after the election, Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., asked: "Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?  I foresee decent probability of many deleted Tweets, writings, photos in the future."
• 
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, a rabid "Never Trumper" was more explicit.  On Nov.  6, she tweeted: "Any R now promoting rejection of an election or calling to not follow the will of voters or making baseless allegations of fraud should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position or be accepted into 'polite' society.  We have a list."
• 
Again, has Biden or Harris denounced these extremist threats and hateful rhetoric directed at the 72 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump?  No.  Their silence is deafening.
• 
Bottom line: If Biden is sincere in his desire to unite the nation, then he must condemn these fascist tactics from his supporters or spare us the vacuous platitudes.
      Censorship of conservatives proves Twitter & Facebook are enemies of free speech, free press  (Fox 10/25/2020)
• 
Big Tech titans Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg better lawyer up.
• 
These enemies of free speech and a free press will be hauled in to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to explain their brazen censorship of conservatives.
• 
The ever-growing list of those censored includes the president of the United States, his White House press secretary and the New York Post, whose account was locked for posting a credible story about Joe Biden and his son during an election.
• 
In light of Twitter's unprecedented and willful censorship, Jack Dorsey could also be facing charges for lying to Congress in 2018.
• 
... Dorsey told lawmakers: "Let me be clear about one important and foundational fact: Twitter does not use political ideology to make any decisions, whether related to ranking content on our service or how we enforce our rules."
• 
That's an outright lie, given the overwhelming and well-documented evidence of the social network's extreme bias and disproportionate censorship against conservatives over the years.
• 
... a study earlier this month that showed Twitter and Facebook have censored President Trump and his campaign 65 times.  His political opponent, Joe Biden, hasn't been censored once.  Hardly impartial, wouldn't you say? 
• 
Yet, that's not what Dorsey told Congress.  He said: "We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially.  We do not shadow ban anyone based on political ideology.  In fact, from a simple business perspective and to serve the public conversation, Twitter is incentivized to keep all voices on the platform." Is that a joke?
• 
Twitter locked the New York Post's account for doing its job — reporting on a presidential candidate's sketchy foreign business dealings and an alleged influence-peddling scheme.
• 
Amid other instances of censorship, Twitter also blocked the House Judiciary GOP from posting a link to the Post's story to a government website.
• 
There's nothing impartial about this un-American suppression of information, especially if one considers that Twitter and Facebook gave Democratic Rep.  Adam Schiff of California, legacy media outlets and scores of blue-check "journos" the green light to peddle stories about the fake dossier and Russia collusion hoax against President Trump and his administration the past four years.
• 
This five-alarm conspiracy theory has since been debunked by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation and various congressional probes.
• 
Twitter permitted China's mouthpiece, the World Health Organization, to tweet last January that the coronavirus wasn't transmittable between humans — false information that put millions of lives at risk worldwide.
• 
And yet it routinely silences right-leaning accounts such as Dr.  Scott Atlas, a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, for what it considers to be misleading information about the virus.
• 
Atlas, the former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and a fellow at the Hoover Institution, was censored by the oligarchs at Twitter this month for simply questioning the efficacy of masks when data shows that infection rates soared in Japan, the Philippines, Hawaii, Miami and Los Angeles and elsewhere despite mask mandates.
• 
The frightening reality is the social media speech police won't even allow health care medical experts, like Atlas, to question anything that strays from their narrow point of view.
• 
The rest of us must regurgitate the approved left-wing talking points or risk being silenced or deplatformed from these almighty digital monopolies.
• 
Congress must stop these rampant abuses once and for all.
• 
See related Jack (Gary Varvel, 10/19/2020) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Adriana Cohen: Facebook, Twitter's thuggish censorship and election interference mean...  (Fox 10/16/2020)
• 
Big Tech is the biggest threat to democracy — and must be reined in by Congress — before our rights enshrined in the Constitution protecting free speech and freedom of the press are placed in the dustbins of history.
• 
On Wednesday, Twitter and Facebook acted no different than Communist state-run media organizations that corruptly block the distribution of information and news stories they don't like.
• 
These social media networks run by high-tech oligarchs in Silicon Valley — in the tank for the Democratic Party — barred a sourced New York Post story exposing alleged emails between Joe Biden's son Hunter and a powerful Ukrainian executive while Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukraine natural gas company — getting paid as much as $50,000 per month despite no industry expertise — while Vice President Biden was the point man on Ukraine during the Obama administration.
• 
Not only did Facebook and Twitter block users from posting the bombshell report calling Joe Biden's statements denying knowledge of his son's business dealings into question, amongst other valid concerns, but also Twitter locked the New York Post's account and that of White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany.
• 
"It's not a temporary blockage," McEnany told...  "When I log on to my Twitter account, it says I'm permanently banned.  They essentially have me at gunpoint and said unless you delete this story, a news story by the New York Post, I cannot regain access to my account."
• 
If this type of thuggish censorship and election interference doesn't send a chill up your spine, what will?
• 
The reality is that if the arrogant overlords in Silicon Valley can censor the president's tweets, which they do regularly, as well as a top White House official and major newspaper for reporting on a presidential candidate during an election, then no American citizen or media outlet is safe from similar censorship.
• 
On Thursday, the power-trippers at Twitter continued their out of control censorship by silencing high-ranking members of Congress and links they post to government websites.
• 
"Twitter is now blocking an official government website to protect Joe Biden.  WATCH what happens when you click the link to @JudiciaryGOP's website.  Twitter censors the United States House of Representatives but not propaganda from Communist China and Iran.  Let that sink in."
• 
Twitter Safety said in a tweet this week that it limited distribution of the New York Post's story because of its 2018 policy that "prohibits the use of our service to distribute content obtained without authorization."
• 
A bogus standard they seem to apply only when it comes to protecting Democratic candidates like Joe Biden from damaging stories — not the president, his family or administration.
• 
An obvious double standard that illustrates how these social media networks are not the neutral gatekeepers they pretend to be.
• 
This shouldn't surprise anyone given the far-left political leanings of those who work in Big Tech including the head of site integrity at Twitter, Yoel Roth.
• 
In January 2017, Roth compared the Trump administration to Nazis by tweeting: "Today on Meet the Press, we're speaking with Joseph Goebbels about the first 100 days...  — What I hear whenever Kellyanne (Conway) is on a news show."
• 
Will Senate Republicans and attendant members of Congress permit these almighty monopolistic platforms to continue its wide-ranging abuses?
• 
Or will they finally protect the most sacred pillars of a Democracy — free speech and free elections?
      Adriana Cohen: Coronavirus pandemic wrong time for hypocritical finger-pointing  (Fox 09/12/2020)
• 
With the release of liberal journalist Bob Woodward's taped private conversations with the president — suspiciously released just weeks before the upcoming election — Democrats are now attacking Donald Trump for downplaying the pandemic publicly while conveniently ignoring their role in diminishing the public health threat.
• 
Last fall through early 2020, when the coronavirus was spreading its deadly tentacles in China, Italy and around the globe, taking thousands of lives, conspiracy theorist Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party were not focused on protecting Americans from it.
• 
They were impeaching Donald Trump in a failed political stunt.
• 
Had the Democratic establishment truly cared about protecting the American people from the coronavirus, they would've spent those precious months working shoulder to shoulder with our commander in chief getting critical personal protective equipment to hospitals and health care workers as well as implementing other measures to curtail the spread of the virus — and save lives.
• 
Instead, they were trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election.
• 
It shows us where their priorities were during a critical time in stopping the spread.
• 
But that's just the tip of the iceberg.  In January, the World Health Organization — a global health organization fully supported by former Vice President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party — downplayed the severity of the virus.
• 
"Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China," the health organization tweeted Jan.  14.
• 
How many lives were lost worldwide due to this reckless misinformation?
• 
That said, when the president took bold and decisive action closing the border to China early on in late January, Biden lambasted the decision and called him "xenophobic" for blocking travel to the United States despite China being a known hotspot for the deadly virus.
• 
In March, Biden was still unwilling to admit the president made the right call in closing the border.  He tweeted: "Stop the xenophobic fear-mongering.  Be honest.  Take responsibility.  Do your job."
• 
In February, Pelosi also downplayed the virus by going shopping in San Francisco's Chinatown area — without a mask — urging fellow Americans on television to do the same.
• 
When will the media ask Pelosi how many citizens may have contracted the disease and/or died from it as a result of her incautious advice?
• 
In the Big Apple, Mayor Bill de Blasio went on TV earlier this year downplaying the threat of the virus.
• 
"Transmission is not that easy," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program.  "I think there's been a misconception that coronavirus hangs in the air waiting to catch you.  No.  It takes direct person-to-person contact."
• 
... "there's very little threat here," de Blasio added.  "Even if you were to get it, it very much acts like a common cold or the flu."
• 
And as late as March 11, the liberal mayor appeared ... joking about elbow bumps and urging New Yorkers to go about their lives with little changes to their lifestyles.
• 
If you watched any of the five televised Democratic primary debates between mid-January and March 15, you'll notice the pandemic was barely mentioned.
• 
... Democrats in attendance had nearly a dozen hours to sound the alarm about the threat of the virus — potentially reaching millions of American homes throughout the debates — but instead warned us about the threat of climate change.
• 
But now, in the final sprint to the presidential election, the liberal mob is blaming President Trump for not doing enough or saying all the right things to mitigate the crisis.
      Adriana Cohen: Congress should break up Big Tech — companies are far too powerful  (Fox 07/31/2020)
• 
Monopolistic companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple and others have become far too powerful.
• 
They thwart competition and abuse their power, whether it's by failing to protect users' privacy and data or by controlling one of our most basic freedom — free speech — in hopes of influencing, if not, swaying elections.
• 
These actions warrant congressional intervention, especially given Silicon Valley's well-known political bias against conservatives — including the president of the United States of America.
• 
President Trump's tweets are routinely "fact-checked" and censored, for example, while his political opponents are not.
• 
This rigged system has far-reaching consequences that, among other things, shape public opinion and culture and taint America's standing in the world, while diminishing our collective rights.
• 
Take Apple.  If you ask Siri what "demon" means, she says "an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell." The second definition Siri offers is "a cruel, evil, or destructive person or thing." Now, brace yourself for Siri's third definition: a police officer.
• 
"Big Tech Bias in America is real — and it's disgusting.  Apple's Siri defines 'demon' as 'a police officer.' Go ahead and try it.  Apple needs to answer for why they're instigating this kind of hate in America."
• 
Indeed.  Especially when you consider that as of April 2017 there were 728 million iPhones in use worldwide, according to Statista, including at least 100 million users in the U.S.
• 
The far-left radicals at Apple Inc.  are indoctrinating users to believe law enforcement officers are demons.
• 
This not only maligns police officers' character, including black cops and other minorities in uniform, but also puts cops lives at risk given today's extremely volatile political climate.
• 
Then there's Twitter silencing conservatives en masse.  This week, the social network censored tweets by the president and his son Donald Trump Jr.  for sharing a viral video of doctors speaking about the purported benefits of hydroxychloroquine, a controversial medicine that some experts claim helps COVID-19 patients.
• 
"A Henry Ford Health System study shows the controversial anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine helps lower the death rate of COVID-19 patients, the Detroit-based health system said Thursday."
• 
"Officials with the Michigan health system said the study found the drug 'significantly' decreased the death rate of patients involved in the analysis."
• 
Nonetheless, the overlords at Twitter still censored the tweets.
• 
But that's not all.  Google, Facebook and Twitter have also been censoring the right-leaning news site Breitbart.
• 
... Breitbart's Google search traffic is down over 99 percent since May.  "If you want to search for Joe Biden or Biden, the chances of you getting a Breitbart article are virtually zero."
• 
See how election meddling works?
• 
Conservative voices are being silenced across the spectrum leading up to the November election, while those on the left continue to get full access to voters.
• 
This corrupt system cannot stand in a democracy.  Congress must act.
      Adriana Cohen: Twitter not only politically biased, it's crossed over into election meddling, too  (Fox 05/30/2020)
• 
It's ironic that Democrats and their mouthpieces in media have been pounding the table the past few years about Russia, Russia, Russia and the importance of preserving the integrity of our elections while overlooking the fox in the henhouse of Silicon Valley.
• 
A powerful tech sector, run by ultra-liberal political activists at Twitter and other social media networks, routinely censor conservatives and any voices that stray from its left-wing ideology.
• 
Of course, Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, denies any foul play while the rest of us see pervasive evidence of alarming political bias — and de facto election meddling.
• 
This week, Twitter singularly targeted the president — in the midst of a presidential election cycle — effectively labeling his tweets as "fake news" despite ample evidence that mail-in voter fraud exists.
• 
Had Twitter administrators bothered to do a simple internet search, they would've found that federal prosecutors charged Thomas Cooper, a 47-year-old postal carrier, on Tuesday for fraudulently altering mail-in ballots from one political party to another.
• 
Or, heck, Twitter could've watched a 2004 video available on YouTube by Rep.  Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., who warned: "Paper ballots are EXTREMELY susceptible to fraud...  I can show you experience which would make your head spin."
• 
This is precisely what the president was warning us about in his tweets, but alas, Twitter's "fact-checkers" either didn't bother to do basic research or, worse, deliberately chose not to.
• 
If you suspect it's the latter, then you are correct given the politically charged, anti-Trump tweets recently uncovered and outlined...
• 
Yoel Roth, Twitter's Head of Site Integrity has tweeted his disdain for our commander in chief and the millions of patriotic, law-abiding Americans who support him.
• 
In November 2016, Roth tweeted "I'm just saying, we fly over those states that voted for a racist tangerine for a reason."
• 
Roth has also compared the Trump administration to "ACTUAL NAZIS." This is who Twitter wants us to trust as a "neutral" fact-checker.
• 
... Twitter hasn't fact-checked any Democratic lawmakers, media outlets or blue check-marked "journalists" who've spent the past four years spreading malicious lies and misinformation about the Russia collusion conspiracy theory and propaganda campaign that was waged against President Trump and his 2016 campaign since debunked by a special counsel probe.
• 
Twitter is "fact-checking" the president — while turning a blind eye to his past and present political opponents who've spread malicious misinformation on its platform in an attempt to stop Trump from getting elected in 2016 and to block him from getting re-elected this November.
• 
Twitter has not only demonstrated rampant political bias for far too long — it's also crossed the line into election meddling — as studies have shown most voters get their news online.
• 
It's high time to right the ship.
      Adriana Cohen: Apparent seditious anti-Trump conspiracy by Obama officials must be investigated  (Fox 05/15/2020)
• 
Our democracy is under fire, thanks to corrupt officials at the highest echelons of our government – including members of the Obama administration – who we're now learning conspired with former FBI Director James Comey and other "deep state" operatives to try to stop Donald Trump from getting elected.
• 
And when that election meddling failed, members of Comey's cabal, with far-reaching tentacles across intelligence agencies and the Department of Justice, abused their power, spied on innocent American citizens and unmasked them.
• 
That's just the tip of the iceberg.
• 
These nefarious actors illegally leaked information to the media to smear President Trump and delegitimize and derail his administration.
• 
These scurrilous actions triggered illegitimate investigations – including a 22-month special counsel probe into possible collusion with Russia – to effect a coup d'etat.
• 
Make no mistake.  What's transpired went far beyond a political hit job.
• 
It's a toppling of a core pillar of a democracy, one that requires the peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.  A government system that respects the will of the voters in free elections.
• 
When those time-honored principles and traditions break down, so does our electoral system and foundation of our democracy, because what separates the United States from a banana republic or a Communist regime is the peaceful transition of power.
• 
Here's the alarming reality now coming to light: Newly declassified documents reveal that Obama administration officials, including then-Vice President Joe Biden, violated the peaceful transition of power by working alongside Comey's FBI and other operatives who engaged in illegitimate surveillance and unmasking of high-ranking members of the Trump administration, including former National Security Adviser Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn.
• 
"A stunning 39 separate officials snooped on Mr.  Flynn's conversations with foreign actors, lodging nearly 50 unmasking demands between Nov.  30, 2016, and Jan.  12, 2017."
• 
For the past several years, Democrats – led by documented liar Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif.  – and a complicit left-wing media have peddled the false narrative that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton.
• 
This massive, damaging lie, and subsequent disinformation campaign, has since been debunked by the costly Robert Mueller investigation.
• 
Yet, nevertheless, it's still spun as factual in the mainstream media to take down Trump and his administration.
• 
The list of abuses coming to light are downright chilling:
• 
The brazen misuse of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to spy on Trump campaign associates using discredited opposition research paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee as a pretext.
• 
An FBI lawyer who doctored evidence.
• 
The reported withholding of exculpatory evidence by John Brennan, the former head of the CIA, to perpetuate the Russian collusion hoax and other troubling malfeasance.
• 
All said, it's time for Attorney General William Barr to appoint a special counsel to get to the bottom of what appears to be a seditious conspiracy against a sitting president.
• 
A failure to uncover the truth and hold bad actors to account will continue to sow damaging distrust in our justice system.
• 
It'll also threaten to silence the will of voters now and in future elections – an unraveling of our democracy.
• 
Mr.  Barr, we can't allow that to happen.
        ()
      Sen.  Tom Cotton: As president, Biden would pander to China – just look at his lifelong record  (Fox 08/25/2020)
• 
Now that the presidential election is heating up, Joe Biden is suddenly talking tougher on China.  But his recent half-hearted statements can't cover up a lifelong, consistent and catastrophic record of support for the Chinese Communist Party.
• 
Just last year, not long before the deadly China virus hit our shores, Biden was still on his old message, telling a campaign audience that the Chinese communists "are not competition for us" and "not bad folks."
• 
I'm guessing the millions of Americans whose jobs have been lost to China's dishonest trade practices, not to mention the million ethnic minority Uighurs in Chinese concentration camps, would not agree.
• 
... Chinese haven't done much to hide their preference – in trade negotiations with the Trump administration, they suddenly took a much harder line when Biden announced his candidacy last year, figuring that they might soon have a friend in the White House.
• 
When, for a time, it looked like Biden wouldn't get the Democratic nomination, the Chinese were suddenly more willing to strike a deal, which they closed in January when Biden was near his weakest point in the polls.
• 
Shortly after this "Phase I" trade deal was struck, President Trump banned travel from China due to the rapid spread of the virus, a move that Biden swiftly condemned as "xenophobia."
• 
... it doesn't take expert knowledge to see what's right in front of our eyes.  Biden has been around for a long time, and for 50 years his record on China has sounded the same note over and over again: assisting the Chinese Communist Party's rise, no matter the cost.
• 
By the late 1990s, as China angled for membership in the World Trade Organization and for most favored nation trade status with our country, Joe Biden was already the powerful senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
• 
... anything the Senate considered to slow down China's march to greater trade privileges – for example, conditioning the new status on increased support for human rights or on better labor practices – Biden voted against and used his significant influence to shoot down.
• 
The devastating legacy of this conduct can be seen across our country today, in shuttered factories and manufacturing towns ravaged by economic hardship.
• 
When Biden served as Barack Obama's vice president, he continued running interference for the Chinese Communist Party.
• 
Of the rapacious tactics that were robbing American workers of their livelihoods while locking down China's strategic advantage in critical fields like pharmaceuticals, rare earths and telecoms, Biden said only that Americans "welcome this competition ... It pushes our companies to develop better products and services and our government to craft better policies."
• 
The very next year Biden was in China along with his son Hunter, whose presence was noted and thought strange by reporters on the trip.
• 
China was accelerating its island-building campaign in the South China Sea, but the trip didn't do anything to push back against that development.
• 
What did it accomplish?  Not long after the trip, Hunter joined the board of a Shanghai-based private equity firm.  A few years later, just after Joe left office, Hunter invested a large chunk of money in the company.
• 
We can safely say that things are going better financially for the Bidens and China than they are for most other American families.
• 
When Joe Biden first came to the Senate, American troops were still on the ground in Vietnam, and China was so poor and undeveloped that it barely registered compared to the threats from the Soviet Union.
• 
Today, it is immensely wealthy and our leading adversary.  It is seizing territory from its neighbors by force, threatening our security and stealing our jobs.
• 
We cannot afford to hand over the White House to Joe Biden, whose life's work led to the rise of China.
      Bari Weiss' NY Times exit shows stifling political correctness left wants.  Don't let them win  (Fox 07/16/2020)
• 
Just as radicals in many cities have seized control of the streets and are demolishing statues to American heroes like George Washington, a band of more polished radicals have seized control of venerable institutions and are using their newfound power to bully an unwilling country.
• 
Suffice it to say the New York Times isn't a newspaper anymore, in the traditional sense of the word.
• 
It's a propaganda bullhorn — a super PAC for the Democratic Party, the 1619 Project, and other revolutionary causes.
• 
The media is just the latest prize in the left's long march through elite cultural institutions.
• 
This march began on college campuses, where radical faculty — many of whom had participated in the mayhem and bloodshed of the 1960s and ‘70s — indoctrinated students with far-left ideology and sent them off to tear down supposedly oppressive institutions like the family and the police, and harangue those who disagree.
• 
It has become commonplace for conservative students, faculty, and speakers to be shouted down and even assaulted on campus by far-left student radicals, while administrators look the other way — or worse, join in their persecution.
• 
Those student radicals graduated and got degrees, but they didn't grow up or go away.
• 
They entered the real world armed with protest tactics and elite credentials — and they're using both to upend American society, from sports leagues to social-media feeds.
• 
Their primary objective is to impose a stifling political correctness on the American public.  They must not be allowed to succeed.
• 
These radicals are now in charge of social-media companies like Twitter, which routinely censors conservatives, up to and including the president.
• 
And they're in charge of big corporations like the NBA, which just announced a list of pre-approved protest slogans players can wear on their jerseys.
• 
Curiously, the list didn't include any slogans that would offend the Chinese Communist Party, which controls the league's access to the vast Chinese market; woke radicals seem not to care nearly so much about actual oppression committed by Communists overseas.  Or at least, they can be paid not to care.
• 
Far-left absurdities about race, sex, and other topics seemed harmless enough when they were parroted by impressionable freshmen in social-justice seminars.
• 
Now it's clear these radicals aren't just a group of special snowflakes on a college campus.
• 
And they aren't content protesting outside the dean's office and publishing in obscure journals.
• 
They've gotten ahold of real power and seek to use that power to remodel the country so their absurd beliefs are the only acceptable beliefs that can be voiced in public.
• 
The elites have nearly finished purging their ranks of dissenters like Weiss and Bennet, who believe in such quaint principles as pluralism and free speech.
• 
Now they can turn their full attention to silencing, disenfranchising, and defunding the overwhelming majority of Americans who vote or think the "wrong" way — who believe, for example, that there are only two sexes, or that abortion is wrong, or that the police make us safe, or that our country is fundamentally good and noble.
• 
That's why increasingly we hear calls for such radical proposals as eliminating the Senate filibuster, packing the Supreme Court, and abolishing the Electoral College.
• 
Having consolidated control over the media, higher education, and big corporations, the left is enraged that it cannot permanently capture our political institutions.  So they want to rig the rules to take care of that, too.
• 
Americans of all races, religions, and walks of life who believe in the principles of this country — natural equality, toleration, the rule of law — must realize that these principles are under threat, and band together to protect them against the powerful elites revolting against them, and ultimately against us.
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
 Crosby  (04/25/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/18/2020) | Next sect (09/06/2020) | List bot 
      Overwhelmed  (JWR 04/25/2022)
• 
This thing in Florida with the Disney Company taking a hard stand in favor of teaching young grammar school children all about homosexuality, lesbianism, and transgenderism whether parents want it or not is just the latest absurdity taking place in our culture today.
• 
Remember we're talking about indoctrination of children as young as five years old.  That this killing of the innocence of children is being led by the one company that parents once trusted to be protective of kids, affirming traditional family values and upholding standards of normalcy makes it all the worse.
• 
Disney movies and theme parks were once thought to be safe havens from the ugliness and harsh realities of life, certainly never driven by leftist agendas and ideologies.
• 
I'm old enough to remember what normal used to be.  When marriage meant the wedding of a man and a woman.  When there was no distinction between sex and gender - a man was a man, a woman was a woman, boys were boys and girls were girls.
• 
Yes, there were always aberrations, exceptions to the rule.  Human beings are complicated creatures after all.
• 
Sexuality can be deviant in some people to one degree or another.  But an exception to a rule doesn't void the rule, if anything it strengthens it.
• 
Attempting to bend 300 million people in our society to accept (and more than accept, embrace) the abnormal sexual proclivities of a tiny fraction of the population is nuts.
• 
At most only about 3% of the population is homosexual or lesbian.  Less than 1% is transgender.  Some people don't know or are unable to figure out which sex they belong to, these are confused and sick individuals.
• 
Teaching young impressionable children that there are many genders beyond male and female to choose from, that it's all a matter of one's personal "preference" is more than factually wrongheaded, it amounts to child abuse.
• 
We as a society have always been sympathetic to those that are not completely normal, be it physical or mental or emotional.
• 
Decent people should treat everyone in a decent way, no matter how divergent they may be from the rest of us.
• 
No one with any decency wants to see those who are crippled, handicapped, retarded, or homosexual abused or mistreated in any way.
• 
We have always had our percentage of broken humans; the disabled, alcoholics, drug addicts, mental cases, and others who for one reason of another can't function normally in society.
• 
We make allowances for them, we try to help them, and in dire cases we should certainly support them monetarily until they can support themselves.
• 
And for the extreme cases, society will care for them all the rest of their lives.  That's fine.
• 
But we must never attempt to alter all of society to accommodate the few.  It doesn't make sense and it is unfair.
• 
Just because some are incapable of passing a test you don't get rid of the test.  Because some cannot emotionally cope with opinions that they themselves don't agree with, you don't prohibit the opinions of others.
• 
And because some refuse to accept that there are only two biological sexes in the world, you don't begin to teach children that there are really dozens of gender identities to choose from.  That would be a lie.
• 
It's also abnormal.
      Can We Bring Back Honesty in Voting?  (JWR 11/05/2021)
• 
Interesting, isn't it, that when boxes containing hundreds or more uncounted votes are discovered they're always Democrat votes.
• 
Why is it that extended vote counting always ends with a Democrat victory?  How does that happen unless there is cheating involved?  Answer: it doesn't.
• 
Leftists don't play by the same rules that conservatives play by.  Most conservatives, by and large, have a closer relationship with honesty and fair play then do those on the left.  Cheating, lying, and stealing is a part of who the left is.
• 
It is for this reason that it is imperative for this country to reestablish the time honored "voting day" tradition.  One day to vote and one polling place to vote at.  Period.  Yes, some reasonable absentee voting can be counted, but no more open-ended stuff.  And voter I.D.  must be the law of the land.  Why the hell it isn't is beyond comprehension.
• 
WE MUST change our voting laws back to pre-2020 rules if we ever want to see honesty in our voting process.
• 
• 
See related Election Fraud (Mike Shelton, 11/24/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Americans Left Behind  (JWR 09/03/2021)
• 
Monday the administration was very proud to announce that all the troops had left Afghanistan.  Biden was nowhere to be seen that day.
• 
On the next day, Tuesday, he stepped in front of a camera and TelePrompTer and read the same b.s.  he and his spokesholes have been feeding the nation for weeks.  "Completion of our mission." "The end of the longest war in U.S.  history." "An extraordinary success." "The biggest airlift since World War II."
• 
What Biden didn't say, his general said the day before, "I'm here to announce the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans."
• 
Did you get that?  The completion of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals, and vulnerable Afghans?
• 
How can they claim that the mission was completed when hundreds of Americans have been left behind?  That wasn't the mission at all.
• 
The real mission was to comply with the Taliban's demand that all of our forces be out of the country by the end of the month.
• 
That mission was completed.  We kept our promise to the terrorists.  But the promise to the hundreds of American citizens to get them out was not kept.
• 
Joe Biden, who is definitely the worse president we've ever had, may also go down in history as the most narcissistic.  He has no ounce of decency, no sense of propriety or honor, no understanding of the right thing to do.
• 
Last Sunday the bodies of the murdered troops arrived at Dover Air force Base.  Biden met with the families of the fallen and in many cases it didn't go well.
• 
Mark Schmitz, the father of deceased Lance Corporal Jared Schmitz, toldEThe Washington Post that a sister of one of the fallen troops yelled at the president after receiving the remains on Sunday:E "I hope you burn in hell!  That was my brother!" Schmitz said, 'The checking of his watch, that didn't happen just once.  That happened on every single one that came out of that airplane...I found it to be the most disrespectful thing I've ever seen"...
• 
Shana Chappell, a mother of a slain marine posted this after the meeting with Biden at Dover.
• 
"Joe Biden this msg is for you!  I know my face is etched into your brain!  I was able to look you straight in the eyes yesterday and have words with you.  After I lay my son to rest you will be seeing me again!"
• 
"Remember I am the one who stood 5 inches from your face and was letting you know I would never get to hug my son again, hear his laugh and then you tried to interrupt me and give me your own sob story and I had to tell you 'that this isn't about you so don't make it about you!!!'"
• 
"You then said you just wanted me to know that you know how I feel and I let you know that you don't know how I feel!  U then rolled your ** eyes in your head like you were annoyed with me and I let you know that the only reason I was talking to you was out of respect for my son and that was the only reason why, I then proceeded to tell you again how you took my son away from me and how I will never get to hug him, kiss him, laugh with him again etc turned to walk away and I let you know my son's blood was on your hands and you threw your hand up behind you as you walked away from me like you were saying, 'Okay, whatever!!' You are not president of the United States of America Biden!!!"
• 
"Cheating isn't winning!!!  You are no leader of any kind!  You are a weak human being and a traitor!!!  You turned your back on my son, on all of our heros!!!  You are leaving the White House one way or another because you do not belong there!  MY SONS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!!  All 13 of them, their blood is on your hands!!!  If my president Trump was in his rightful seat then my son and other Heros would still be alive!!!  You will be seeing me again very soon!!!  BTW as my son and rest of our fallen heroes were being taken off the plane yesterday I watched you disrespect us all 5 different times by checking your watch!!!  What the * was so important that you had to keep looking at your watch???  You are nobody special Biden!!!  America hates you!!!"
• 
If it is true that some of Biden's military heads tried to dissuade him from taking the action he ultimately took, then why the hell aren't they resigning?  Not to do so infers compliance.
• 
What has happened to honor in our military commanders?  The grunts have honor.  The rank and file have honor.  What the hell has happened to the men at the top?
• 
Realize that most of the same idiots who were in the Obama administration are part of Biden's regime as well.
• 
These are the very same foreign policy geniuses who gave us Benghazi and the Iranian "deal." They're called the national security brain trust.
• 
All of them share blood on their hands with Biden.  Will anyone in this disgusting, cowardly administration be held accountable for the Afghan travesty?  What do you think?
      Disgusting!  (JWR 08/23/2021)
• 
... Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama should thank Biden for overshadowing them as, without doubt, the most incompetent president in U.S.  history.
• 
As Afghanistan fell into the terrorist hands of the Taliban thanks to Biden's complete surrender and botched withdrawal, the Idiot in Chief doubled down on his stupid decision which will undoubtedly cause the deaths of thousands and make the world a more dangerous place in the weeks, months, and years to come...
• 
"He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule."
• 
After nearly 3,000 American lives lost, $1 trillion spent, and the effort of so many over the course of 20 years who wanted to do the right thing, we have left that country in worst shape than before we invaded it.  The terrorists won.
• 
"The world has seen a President portraying surrender as an act of political courage, and retreat as strategic wisdom."
• 
After seven months in office the man has done more damage domestically and internationally than I ever thought possible in that short a period.
• 
The idiot has more than three years left (if he can still be propped up and able to read a teleprompter).
• 
The leftists who are pulling his strings can still do a lot of damage to this country.
      Repressive Progressives  (JWR 06/11/2021)
• 
Everything these people do actually demonstrates the opposite of what they profess to believe in.
• 
Their rhetoric is of hope, yet they traffic in hate and despair.  They speak of elevating people, but their actions divide people, pitting group against group.
• 
They talk of freedom, yet everything they push for involves stripping people of their basic human rights.
• 
Controlling the masses through division, fear, and social stigma is really what the left is all about.
• 
They call themselves progressive, but they are quite the opposite, in fact.  Repressive would be closer to the truth.
• 
There's no question that the left is a joyless, angry vindictive lot with no regard for human life, never mind human liberties.
      America: Land of the Apathetic and Easily Led  (JWR 05/28/2021)
• 
The longer I live the more I realize that human beings are for the most part cowards, lazy, and easily led.
• 
What else would cause millions of my fellow Americans to think and vote the way so many of them do?
• 
Naturally I am putting aside the obvious left-wing America haters, the media, and the Democratic Party for the moment, we all know where they come from and they will always be what they are.
• 
But I'm convinced that most Americans are not ideologues or partisan hacks.  So why do so many of them espouse the rhetoric and talking points of the left and blindly vote for the Nancy Pelosis, Chuck Schumers and Joe Bidens of the world and their liberal policies?
• 
For anyone who has been paying attention, those liberal policies have done nothing but harm to our country over the course of the last six decades.
• 
Literally every single liberal social policy which has been implemented into our society has failed miserably...
• 
The Democratic party has embraced Marxism and it is clear that with each new policy and program, they are intent on destroying what has always been the American ideal.
• 
Why can I see this and so many millions of my countrymen cannot?  I'm no political genius, I just pay attention to what" s going on.  I wish more people would do the same.
      Odds and Ends  (JWR 04/30/2021)
• 
When the movie industry stopped producing pictures for the majority, the majority stopped watching.  Simple as that.
• 
Movies have become just another propaganda tool for the far-left progressive agenda, reenforcing the same messages and platforms that are now regularly taught at colleges, universities, and yes, even grade schools, throughout our country.
• 
Whether it's animation, superhero flicks, or any other film, the uber-liberal social messages are always apparent.  Pure entertainment and personal drama don't get made anymore.
• 
And speaking of leftists, that brings us to May Day: May 1st, otherwise known as May Day is just a happy carefree time to celebrate Springtime by dancing around the May pole, right?
• 
What most people don't realize is that modern May Day was procured and promoted by the Communists to further the Marxist ideology around the world.
• 
In 1889, May 1st was chosen as the date for "International Workers' Day" by the ... Socialists and "Communists" of the "Second International" to commemorate the Haymarket affair in ... Chicago.
• 
"What was the Haymarket Affair?  It was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago."
• 
The whole thing began as a "peaceful rally" in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, but it escalated into violence (sound familiar?).
• 
Police were called which led to someone getting killed and others being injured.  An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
• 
The event became internationally publicized and the legal proceedings that followed resulted in eight anarchists getting convicted of conspiracy.  So HAPPY MAY DAY EVERYONE!
      Two more 'white racists' join an illustrious cohort  (JWR 03/05/2021)
• 
After the Coca Cola Company issued a memo to its white employees not to behave in a "white way," you probably thought cancel culture couldn't get more idiotic.  Well, you were wrong.
• 
Dr.  Seuss Enterprises, the company that publishes Dr.  Seuss' children's books, said it will stop selling six of his titles because they contain racist and insensitive images.  The firm said it scrapped the books because they "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong."
• 
Our beloved Dr.  Seuss has at long last been outed as being a white supremist.  Just another colonial racist making millions off the backs of poor, disenfranchised minorities.  Making this slap in the face to Dr.  Seuss even a bit nastier, the company issued the statement last Tuesday, on the author's birthday.
• 
Dr.  Seuss Enterprises said it decided last year to stop publishing and licensing the titles — which include "If I Ran the Zoo," "And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street," "McElligot's Pool," "On Beyond Zebra!," "Scrambled Eggs Super!" and "The Cat's Quizzer" — after consulting with a panel of so-called educators and other morons in academia.
• 
In one example, the book "Mulberry Street," was the first children's book Seuss published in 1937.  The "experts" and "educators" claim the book contains a controversial illustration of an Asian man dressed in Chinese clothing holding chopsticks and a bowl of rice whom the text called a "Chinaman who eats with sticks."
• 
Well, excuse me, but Chinese people in 1937 actually did dress in Chinese clothing and ate rice with chopsticks.  Also, in 1937 the term Chinaman was not considered any more derogatory than calling a Brit an Englishman, or a man from Ireland and Irishman.
• 
Even our Idiot-in-Chief, President Biden avoided mentioning Dr.  Seuss in his presidential proclamation for Read Across America Day, and a Virginia school district ordered its teachers to avoid linking the day with the late writer because research has shown "strong racial undertones" in many of his books.
• 
"Cancel Culture" is going on all over the place, and it doesn't look like it will stop any time soon.
• 
"Cancel Culture" is nothing more than a modern term for censorship; the banning of books, movies, art, and freedom of speech when it doesn't comport with leftist, elite doctrine.
• 
Fascist, communist, and other totalitarian dictatorial governments have engaged in this for decades, but as we now see it doesn't always emanate from oppressive laws and edicts mandated by a structured governmental regime.
• 
Today in our country censorship is coming out of a leftist politically correct mindset, just as insidious and just as evil as any totalitarian government.
• 
When censorship and bans are imposed by private businesses, organizations, the press, social media, and other entities the result is the same as governmental oppression.
• 
Suppression of thought, silencing freedom of expression, speech restriction, book banning, and rewriting history becomes the normative way of life.
• 
Dr.  Seuss and Walt Disney.  Just a couple more white racists who have joined George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as the latest to be cancelled in 2021 America.
      The Only Way to Save America  (JWR 02/19/2021)
• 
How could so many people go along with leftist polices?  Polices that are the antithesis of what America has always stood for and represented.
• 
The answer isn't a hard one to figure out if you step back and consider what has been going on in the United States for over 50 years.
• 
Like the Chinese water torture, the drip, drip, drip of leftist thinking has slowly but surely taken its toll with vast majorities of our citizens over the course of time.
• 
... lots of Republicans have outright embraced many of the ideas and social changes brought on by liberal and leftist elites who were intent on "fundamentally changing" America.
• 
... once the university professors became mostly liberal, things really started changing fast.  It wasn't long before the anti-west teachings at the college level crept into general society and into all grades of public school.
• 
Eventually it seeped into every single business and organization.  Publications, entertainment, religion, and of course news.
• 
Once people become indoctrinated from grade school all the way up through university, the ideology they've been taught follows them into whatever business or vocation they go into.
• 
... multiculturalism, critical race theory, feminism, and other liberal thought is now part and parcel of the military code.
• 
Thanks to President Trump, most of us are now quite aware of how pervasive leftist thinking has become in the news we hear every day.
• 
Our news media, once an important watchdog on politicians, big business, and American life in general, has been perverted as nothing more than a propaganda platform for the left.
• 
Almost without exception, news outlets and social media internet sites report only stories that support the liberal views and either twist, lie about, or simply ignore the views on the conservative right.
• 
They in fact paint patriots and conservatives as radicals and domestic terrorists.  Things will only get worse as time goes on.
• 
All the talk about how to rebuild the fractured Republican party by cooperating with the other side and finding "common ground" is a lot of hogwash that will only strengthen the left and allow them to continue to implement their destructive programs across the nation.
• 
The left will NEVER concede to any conservative or traditional value.  The left's entire reason for existence is incumbent on DESTROYING American traditions and liberties which include the nuclear family, the individual work ethic, religious freedom, and the freedom of independent speech and thought.
• 
There's only one way to turn around the ever-increasing leftist march in our country.  Conservatives must concentrate all their efforts (and I mean ALL) on changing the dogma being taught in the public school system and colleges and universities.
• 
There's no other way to halt the anti-Western, anti-family, anti-religious, anti-white male Marxist mindset that has taken root through several generations of students since the 1960's.
• 
It can't happen overnight.  Our schools are lousy with revisionist, America hating textbooks.  These have to be supplanted with truthful American history, not a whitewashing of our country's mistakes, but an honest telling of the American story.
• 
And our American forefathers and heroes must be brought forth once again as the good and courageous men that they were.  Citizenship and patriotism must be taught once again.
• 
More conservative professors and teachers need to be cultivated and added into our school systems.  An equal balance of political and social ideas is a must if we are to have real education and freedom of thought.
• 
I am not nearly smart enough to offer all the answers on how to turn things around.  But I know one thing, it must start with the schools.
• 
We must reverse the indoctrination of our young people if we ever expect to keep our country free.
      The Freedom To Think ...  Like Us  (JWR 02/15/2021)
• 
What happens when the "last best hope on earth" is gone?
• 
Where do people go after the United States of America becomes just another totalitarian government with limited personal freedoms?
• 
Freedom of speech, once the cornerstone of our nation, is on its way out thanks to politically correct policies and radical leftist agendas which have shut down true free speech and independent thought.
• 
The emergence of internet social media sites as the primary means of communication has sped up the process.  It's called "cancel culture." Go contrary to popular leftist dogma and you will be shunned, shamed, and possibly lose your job.
• 
Did you vote for President Trump?  If so, you are labeled racist, crazy, and a danger to society.
• 
You do not deserve to be employed, your views shouldn't be heard, and you must be shut off from participating in normal society.  Actually, you should be imprisoned.
• 
Since the presidential election President Trump has completely disappeared from the American scene.  He has been vanquished from social media sites, for all intents and purposes he has lost his ability to freely communicate publicly.
• 
He has been banned from Twitter, once his best way of communication to the public.  Television networks and other news media only cover him to ridicule him, they will not allow him to speak his mind.  Businesses who once worked so well with him have cut him off.  The left will not rest until they have completely and forevermore destroyed the man.
• 
But this isn't only about President Trump, it's about everyone who supported him and his policies.  President Trump is only the poster boy for all Americans who value individualism, freedom, and the traditional American ideal that anyone can make it in this country.
• 
The American dream that with proper education, hard work, and perseverance every person has a shot at success.  This way of thinking has been completely dismissed in today's educational system and elite circles.
• 
It is no longer a good value to believe in rugged self-reliance, now it is all about group identity.  Tribalism has replaced individualism.
• 
The well-known phrase attributed to English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," has been used for decades as a way of illustrating the principle of freedom of speech.
• 
The thinking now is, "If you say something that I disapprove of, you are engaging in hate speech and therefore you must be silenced."
      It Never Stops  (JWR 01/15/2021)
• 
All the Democrats and way too many Republicans, along with television pundits, and just about every news outlet are demanding one of the following things; either 1) President Trump must resign, or 2) Vice President Pence must invoke the 25th Amendment (removing the president) or 3) impeachment.  Why?
• 
Well, of course it is because President Trump held a rally on January 6th and told his followers to turn to violence and storm the Capitol.  But President Trump never said that, or implied that, or wanted that.
• 
For anyone who didn't watch the rally all one has to do is go back and listen to President Trump's exact speech that day.
• 
He never said anything that condoned violence.  As a matter of fact he told his audience to demonstrate peacefully.  But once again the progressive left turns the entire thing on its head and blames President Trump.
• 
If President Trump's words incited the crowd to riot, then why haven't the mainstream media been replaying the speech...
• 
The media hasn't replayed the speech because there was nothing Trump said that supports their lie that he instigated a mob riot.  Not even close.
• 
He told his followers not to give up.  He said Republicans need to fight much harder.  He suggested that the crowd walk to the Capitol to cheer on the brave Republicans who were showing support for the president.  He asked for a peaceful and patriotic march to the Capitol.
• 
Nevertheless, we have all the usual suspects out there in front of any microphone they can find condemning the president, demanding he leave office immediately, even though it's only a matter of days before the Democrats take over the presidency.
• 
President Trump never knew just how right he was years ago when he called the accusations he was being charged with "a witch hunt."
• 
Actually, the Democrats and never-Trumpers are worse than the Salem witch hunters.  Those naive people of Salem actually believed the ones they were condemning were evil, in league with the devil.
• 
The Trump witch hunters know damn well that the president did nothing to deserve the torture they've put him through.  Today's witch hunters are the evil ones in league with the devil.
• 
As it stands now, President Trump will not resign.  Why should he?  He did nothing wrong but demand justice and accountability in the presidential election.  He is legally entitled to do that.
• 
And the vice president will not invoke the 25th Amendment.  He would be crazy to do that.
• 
So that only leaves our old, old friend, nasty Nancy Pelosi to once again do her worst and start impeachment hearings for a second time.
• 
In the next few days we will see hate like never before coming out of media and the Democrats.  You see, no matter what they tell you, the real instigators of hatred are those on the left.  They incite hate, violence and upheaval.
• 
The left, the instigators of progressive change, the haters of America will never stop until they have totally transformed our country into something that our forefathers never intended.
• 
These people hate America and everything it represents.  It's a shame that too many of our fellow Americans just don't get it.
      Where Are We Going?  (JWR 12/11/2020)
• 
In the midst of this disgusting time in which we live, do you ever stop and wonder how all this will finally shake out in the end?
• 
What will become of our country?  Of our civilization?  Of our world?  Of us?
• 
2020 has seen lockdowns, fraud in our elections, a leftist media camouflaging their lying propaganda as "news." burning and looting in the streets, tearing down statues and monuments which represent our national honor and history, and a Democratic Party that has become brazenly communistic, exercising authoritative control over citizens like never before.  And there seems to be no end in sight.
• 
For over four years I've watched the machinations of Democrats and their useful idiots in the press, entertainment, pro sports, academia, and big tech doing and saying anything and everything to get President Trump out of office, thwart the will of the American people and regain their own power over our society.
• 
It is undeniable that these people will stop at nothing to achieve their ultimate goal.
• 
There's no question in my mind that the hard left wants to destroy Western Civilization and replace it with a communistic global society controlled by the multi-billionaire elite.  That is the end game.
• 
And who are these globalist people?  You know the names.  George Soros, Bill Gates, Obama, Biden, and the Chinese Communist Party just to name a few.
• 
Many of the richest of the rich in Big Politics, Big Business, and Big Media are on board.  Including of course the wizards of Silicon Valley, who control all information to the masses.
• 
But why would all these oh so smart, oh so wealthy people want to destroy America?  Good question, but relatively easy to answer.
• 
They believe in something much bigger than a mere country or its Constitution; they believe in world domination.
• 
Democrat governors, mayors, and other wannabe tyrants get their jollies by pulling the chains of their citizenry with their royal edicts on where a person is allowed to go, who he is allowed to see, where he is allowed to eat, where (if any place) he is allowed to pray, and what he must wear when doing these things.
• 
In all likelihood the virus was formulated in a laboratory in Wuhan, China.  And purposely released to damage the West.
• 
Were the globalists in on it?  Who knows?  But even if they weren't, they certainly have made the most of it.
• 
"You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.  It provides the opportunity to do things that were not possible to do before."
• 
If this makes me sound like one of those crazy conspiracy theorists, fine.  Put me down on that list.  The last four years, accentuated by the past ten months has proven to me that what I've lived through is no theory.
• 
The biggest question is, how long will it take before the masses revolt against the tyranny?  At some point it has to happen.  History has shown that people won't tolerate being shoved around forever.
• 
There has to be a breaking point.  And when that breaking point finally happens, what then?  Certainly anarchy on a scale like we've never imagined.  And then what?
• 
Where do we go from there?
      Keep America  (JWR 11/03/2020)
• 
American politics should be about policy, it should be about what is best for our country, doing what is right to keep our country safe and strong, both economically and militarily.
• 
When we decide whether to reelect a president (or congressman, or senator) we should be examining their record, what did that person do to strengthen America and all Americans?
• 
How did that person preserve our individual rights and honor the US Constitution?
• 
Did he make things better?  Did he attempt to honor his promises?  Did he keep us safe; keep us out of foreign wars and entanglements?
• 
Most voters don't examine the details of an elected official, for too many people it becomes strictly a popularity contest.
• 
President Trump has always been himself, love him or hate him, but for those who actually took the time and made the effort to honestly evaluate what he has done since taking office, his work has been extraordinary.
• 
Unlike many other recent presidents, everything he did or attempted to do was always done with the intention of keeping our nation strong, our people employed, and our manufacturing open.
• 
His judicial appointments have been exemplary.  His trade deals and foreign policy decisions were smart and good for America and the world as a whole.
• 
I am thoroughly convinced that President Trump is the only thing that stands between the America of individualism, fairness, freedom, and our G od-given rights as laid down by our founding fathers, and a Marxist, totalitarian big brother government controlled by leftist elites for their own benefit.
• 
If the latter wins, our country as we have always known it will be gone.
• 
I hope and pray that enough people get out and vote for America.  Because that's what this election is really all about.
• 
Not just Keeping America Great, but keeping America, period.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Think It's Almost Over?  Think Again  (JWR 10/24/2020)
• 
If the president wins, whether by a squeak or by a landslide, the left will take to the streets.
• 
We're at a time in this country where violent protesting and destruction has become a common occurrence from leftist radicals, cheered on by the Democrats.
• 
If Biden wins there won't be any cars set on fire, there won't be any looting, no bottles being thrown at police, nor statues torn down by Trump supporters.
• 
The fact is, those of us on the right just don't engage in rioting.  The left tears down, the right builds.  That's the way it works.
• 
We've come to a tipping point for our country.  This election will determine what kind of a country we will be living in.  The consequences of this election will last for decades, maybe forever.  Will we remain a constitutional republic or will we begin the march toward Communism?  Will we become the next Venezuela?
• 
A couple of thoughts as we enter what may very well be the most chaotic and troubling period within one of the most chaotic and troubling years in our national history.
• 
First thought, the American press: In my lifetime I've never seen a more corrupt body of people who appear to be happily engaged in a concerted effort of deceit when it comes to news reporting.
• 
We used to point to the Nazi and communist governments as examples of fascist regimes who controlled the news by spreading false propaganda and outright lies to its people.
• 
But what we have here in our country is actually much worse and more deeply troubling.  The difference is, the fascist regimes were dictating what the media was to report.
• 
In America's case the government isn't forcing reporters to lie or falsify the truth, the reporters are willfully doing it on their own.
• 
We can thank the last 50 years of leftist indoctrination taught in our public schools and universities for the leftist mindset of today's journalists.
• 
They learned in schools that free speech is not a good thing since it may produce "hate speech." And hate speech must be muzzled.  What is hate speech exactly?  Hate speech is anything that anyone might feel offended and/or threatened by.
• 
For two or three generations our schools have taught that there is no such thing as truth, per se.  Everyone has their own "truth." You have your truth, I have my truth. 
• 
Schools taught that those people who do not share the "progressive" mantra on social issues and liberal causes do not deserve to be heard or even taken seriously.
• 
In fact, people who have different views than the left are undoubtedly evil racists who want to do harm to women, the LGBT community, and blacks.
• 
The schools taught several generations of prospective journalists that America was founded by evil white racists with the intent of colonizing other countries, stealing their wealth and enslaving their people.  American history has been either ignored or drastically altered to reflect a leftist progressive view of the world.
• 
... the far left doctrines which include anti-America, anti-white men, anti-religious, and anti-nuclear family have been part of our educational system for 50 years.
• 
You can call it ultra-liberal, progressive, socialistic, or Marxist, but it's communism, pure and simple.
• 
It's all about the destruction of individualism, Western culture and capitalism and the elevation of an all controlling vast centralized state.
• 
People who attended school back when school engaged in honest history, patriotism, good manners, right and wrong, and the value of traditional families and religion are not part of our working media anymore.  They are retired or dead.
• 
... millions of voters under the age of 65 have gone through this very same "progressive" educational system, so it should not come as any surprise if they vote with a liberal mindset.
• 
And then again, we still have millions of heartland Americans who treasure their families, who take pride in their work, who love their country and who value their God given rights as enumerated in the Constitution.  Maybe we still have enough of these good people in the U.S.A.  who will keep our country alive.
      No Coincidence  (JWR 10/09/2020)
• 
There is no doubt in my mind at this point that the Democrat Party is evil in every respect.
• 
They have attempted everything in their power to overthrow the 2016 election, destroy Donald Trump and with him the entire foundation of our country.
• 
The Democrats along with the majority of the press are intent on turning our republic into a totalitarian communist country, and they will stop at nothing to do so.
• 
For four years they have been lying about President Trump "colluding" with Russia when the fact is, and newly released official documents have proven, that Hillary Clinton's campaign and the DNC were the ones who set the whole thing up.  This by the way, with the full knowledge of President Obama.
• 
The game plan is always the same with the left.  They accuse their opponents of doing what they themselves are doing.  It's the old bait and switch trick.
• 
Read Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, and you'll get the entire picture.  That has been the playbook, the bible of the left for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, AOC and so many other "progressives" for decades.
• 
The Russia hoax, the phony impeachment trial and anything else they could think of were designed by the corrupt officials within the deep state to take down a duly elected sitting president.  This is the closest America has ever come to a real political coup.
• 
And these people are still at it.  I am thoroughly convinced that they mean to completely alter America, and most Americans don't even see it.
• 
It isn't a stretch to see the link between the Chinese government and the Democrats.  The Democrats have been at the forefront of keeping Americans scared and locked away for all these months.
• 
And it isn't farfetched to assume the Dems are in bed with antifa and Black Lives Matter.  Ask yourself this, how many of those young people burning buildings, throwing bricks at the police, and looting stores do you think are Trump voters?
      American Hero Wayne Morris  (JWR 09/25/2020)
• 
As violent rioting continues across the nation, Democrats threaten that if they don't get what they want they will blow up the system.
• 
Meanwhile motion picture genius, aka Meathead, Rob Reiner has accused the president of killing thousands and says, "In forty-two days we will arrest the killer."
• 
I would call Reiner an imbecile, but that would be an insult to imbeciles the world over.
• 
Today's entertainers think it's brave to tweet out vulgarities, threaten our president, and vilify anyone they don't agree with.  But showing the world you're a moron isn't exactly profiles in courage.
• 
I much prefer the actors of the past who really were courageous, not in words, but in deeds.  And had much more class to boot.
• 
That's why I think this might be the right time to honor a true American hero from the greatest generation who also happened to be a movie actor.  That would be Wayne Morris.
• 
... Morris was "credited with 57 aerial sorties, shooting down seven Japanese Zeros, sinking an escort vessel and a flak gunboat and helping sink a submarine and damage a heavy cruiser and a mine layer."
• 
One of these days, when you're looking for something different to watch, try an old Wayne Morris picture.
• 
Beneath his big lug character you'll find a warmth and kindness that comes through, a gentle, honest guy who knows right from wrong and does his job to the best of his ability.
• 
In short, an American hero.  Unlike the cowards who make movies today.
      Barkin' Her Head Off  (JWR 09/11/2020)
• 
Most of us with a normal brain know that for wisdom, intelligence, and common sense the last person you'd want to listen to would be an actor, a musician, or an athlete.
• 
Reason, insight and intellectual honesty are not necessarily in an entertainer's toolbox.
• 
Of course there are some in the arts who do possess a semblance of clear thinking, profundity, and logic, but by and large the celebrities of today who take to spouting off on social media are generally as sharp as marbles.
• 
Not surprisingly, high morals, grace, and decency are not part of their attributes either, any more than truth and honesty are.
• 
Sadly for them they don't even realize that as soon as they open their stupid mouths or begin their nasty tweets they have exposed themselves for the shallow feebleminded dimwits that they are.
• 
The latest celebrity jackass is actress Ellen Barkin who felt a need to share her brilliant thoughts, beautifully articulated over Twitter this past Tuesday, calling President Trump a "murderous motherf***er" (spelling the vulgarity out completely, of course) as he was addressing the press on the progress being made to combat the coronavirus
• 
Then last June as President Trump crossed the street to visit the historic St.  John's Episcopal Church after it was set on fire by rioters, the actress tweeted, "if Jesus was our savior trump would have gone down in flames before he crossed the street"
• 
The depth of hate and classlessness of this person is without measure.
• 
I've never seen so many elite celebrities completely losing their minds over a president.
• 
You might say that one of Trump's unsung accomplishments is that he has the ability to bring out the nincompoops, ignoramuses, and dingbats who dwell among us.
• 
It's like shinning a bright light and suddenly all the cockroaches go scurrying.  It's great because it's always helpful to know who the idiots are.  President Trump makes these people crazy with hate.
• 
It makes you wonder why so many rich famous people are so unhappy.  They have made a fortune of money doing what they enjoy; acting, playing ball, singing, whatever it is.
• 
Most of the rest of us who work for a living don't have it half as good as the celebrities.  If we do our jobs, pay our bills, and provide for our families we feel that we're doing fine.
• 
What does the multi-millionaire actor or athlete have to complain about?  Why are they so angry and seemingly unfulfilled?  Not enough homes?  Not enough cars?  Not enough fame?
• 
What is it with these people?  I have to believe that there is something seriously wrong with them.  A mental disorder of some kind.
• 
I have no doubt that Ellen Barkin will continue her ranting and raving against President Trump.  She has no incentive to stop because too many of her fellow "artists" agree with her.
• 
The cancel culture doesn't work both ways; it's a double standard.  As long as you're a politically correct leftist celebrity you will never be canceled for hating on conservatives who value America and American traditions.
• 
And if you call our president the most vulgar names imaginable you can be sure to be invited to all the best cocktail parties in the ultra-elite circlesA‰as long as the president's name is Trump, that is.  I wouldn't try it with Obama.
• 
See related Watch This... (Jake Fuller, 2019)") cartoon from USA picture album
      White Lib Repentance  (JWR 08/21/2020)
• 
The virtual Democrat Convention is the greatest show on earth.  The greatest show of anti-American hateful liars, that is.
• 
Divisive doesn't even come close to describing the spectacle.  The first night featured speakers repeating over and over just how racist and evil America is.
• 
White people are bad.  And since Donald Trump is the whitest person on the face of the earth, he is undoubtedly the worst of all.
• 
And by extension, all white people who support him are bad, evil villains.  White people by virtue of their very color are systemically evil, the left says.
• 
It must be horrible for white liberals to live their lives hating themselves so much.  Imagine getting up every day feeling a gnawing sense of guilt down deep in the pit of your stomach over the fact that you were born a Caucasian.
• 
But groveling at the feet of minorities, crying, and begging forgiveness isn't enough after all, is it?  In the end their skin is still just as white as it was on the day they were born.
• 
Actually these wretched souls need to do much more to repent for their sin than simply acknowledging that their skin tone is evil.
• 
... the liberals want all white America to collectively genuflect to all minority groups who they believe have been shut out of their rightful position in society over the last two or three hundred years due to "white privilege."
• 
Toward that end they would enact reparations and engage in wholesale income redistribution.
• 
But the inconvenient truth of the matter is, my family never enslaved anyone.
• 
Furthermore, there are no slaves alive today who deserve reparations, nor are there slave holders alive to punish.
• 
So why should I be punished for something that some long dead people did to other long dead people hundreds of years ago?
• 
So, if the liberal guilt-ridden Caucasian really wants to repent he must do so as an individual.
• 
To start with, the repenters need to give up their jobs to more deserving people of color.  This is step one.  It doesn't even matter if the aggrieved minority individual is qualified or possesses the proper skill set for the job, no, the important thing is that the white guy leaves the position and the person with a more acceptable skin tone takes his place.  (By the way, universities and other organizations are already engaged in this "enlightened" selection process.)
• 
Next, the white leftist needs to redistribute his or her own personal wealth to a person of color.  If it's a person of color who has less money than the white liberal, that's great, but it isn't really necessary, it could just as well be a person of color who happens to have more money.  It doesn't matter.  The important thing is that a person of color gets the white dude's dough.
• 
Next comes personal property.  I call this "individual redistribution of goods." To ensure proper repentance the liberal must divest himself entirely of his worldly possessions.  That means your car (or carS) your home (or homeS) and any other valuables that might be construed as obtained by "white privilege."
• 
After all this has been accomplished to the satisfaction of leftist social media, only then can the white guilt-ridden liberal at last say with a degree of certainty that he has shown his desire to make amends for the sins of his race.
• 
Of course if he really wants to rectify the situation once and for all, he should finally just disappear and clear the way for the more deserving races of the world to live their lives in peace.
      Culture War Lost  (JWR 07/31/2020)
• 
So much of our lives have been drastically altered this year, and maybe for years to come.
• 
Disease, economic ruination, street riots, and divisiveness are everywhere.
• 
What happened to civilized society?  What changed the United States of America so drastically so quickly?
• 
How is it that we have been so willing to allow ourselves to lockdown our lives by liberal mayors and governors?
• 
Why is the younger generation in particular so afraid to stand up and speak out against the tyranny of progressive policies that are eroding the very essence of free speech, freedom of worship, and our other rights as enumerated in the Constitution?
• 
Any honest clear-thinking adult knows damn well that this country does not practice nor endorse bigotry, racism or animus toward any minority group, least of all the blacks.
• 
A black man was elected president twice by mostly white voters; blacks have more opportunity in the United States than in any other country on earth.
• 
Any yet to see the level of rioting, looting, maiming, and killing in our cities one would think that this country is rounding up and gassing blacks in concentration camps.
• 
Where are the common sense Americans that should know better?
• 
Why are the major corporations, sports leagues, and other institutions jumping on the bandwagon with the anarchists and troublemakers?
• 
Why do so many of our fellow citizens have no love of our country?  What happened to the nuclear family?
• 
Where is the America we all once knew?  What exactly happened?
• 
The answer to all this is not a mystery, really.  This has been in the works for decades, moving at a slow pace, but incrementally changing our culture bit by bit with each succeeding generation.
• 
Only now it's been ramped up, going on hyper warped speed.  Many people have just awakened to a place they never knew they were living in.
• 
It's shameful that our so-called conservative leaders have either willingly or stupidly relinquished the reins of culture to the people on the left.
• 
Literally everything from school curriculum, to personal relationships, to family structure, to entertainment, to music, to art, to even the very words we use in the public square have been hijacked by the progressives.
• 
And the people we elect to represent us have allowed this to happen over the years right under our noses.
• 
Year after year, generation after generation no one has challenged the progressive ideology that has seeped into our society.
• 
When colleges and universities instituted "safe spaces" on campus, which is nothing more than a way of limiting freedom of speech and thought, no one made a peep.
• 
When the left frames every issue using twisted, Orwellian language to confuse and obfuscate the truth, no one from the other side jumps up and says "No, that's a lie!  That's not true!"
• 
And where were the elected conservatives when the progressive groups and the teachers unions rewrote the textbooks that went into out public schools and into our children's brains?
• 
Why wasn't anyone aware that American history was being altered, and in many cases eliminated, to fit an agenda of anti-American multicultural victimhood?
• 
Where was our PTA when citizenship, patriotism, good behavior, virtuousness, and God were thrown out of the classrooms?
• 
Why didn't anyone on the conservative side do something when the performing arts (movies, television, music) turned so disgusting and vile?
• 
Why didn't anyone question why most of our popular media hammers our young people with far-left anti-traditional, anti-religious ideology?
• 
Why didn't someone see a problem with young men being pushed out of mainstream society by feminist organizations who clearly hate males more than they love females?
• 
When labeling only two sexes (male and female) were dismissed by the "woke" leftists as discriminatory and non-inclusive, where were the adults in the room to say "That's nonsense!  Like it or not, there are only two sexes!"
• 
The left began with changing words, now they aim to change the natural human condition.
• 
Grade school youngsters are taught that marrying a member of your own sex is just as wonderful, just as normal as marrying a member of the opposite sex.
• 
What we are seeing play out in the streets of America, in the sports stadiums, in the board rooms and newsrooms, and in just about every aspect of our daily lives in 2020 is a direct result of not paying attention to how our culture was being manipulated and changed over the course of the last 50 years.
• 
President Reagan once warned that we are but one generation away from losing our country if we don't fight for it and teach its values to our children.
• 
Mainstream America left it up to the traditional conservative leaders to fight the good fight, but they abandoned the American culture to the left.
• 
Several generations have grown up since.  The United States of America will undoubtedly go on, but it will never be the same unless conservatives can reclaim the culture.
      The Fall of Western Civilization  (JWR 06/28/2020)
• 
Wiping out history.  This is what the Soviet Union did under the communist regime.  This is what the Islamist terrorists do.
• 
This is what all fascist authoritarians do with history that they don't happen to like or is "problematic" or inconvenient to their ideology.
• 
They tear down the monuments and statues and rewrite the history books.  We in America used to shake our collective heads over this and say, "Thank G od we live in the United States where that doesn't happen."
• 
But now it's happening here.  The desecration of monuments and the pulling down of the statues of our historic heroes and founding fathers, from Christopher Columbus, to Robert E.  Lee, George Washington and even Abraham Lincoln is underway.
• 
Calls for the removal of the Jefferson Memorial and Mount Rushmore are being taken seriously.
• 
... a statue of George Washington was torn down by a group of people in Portland, Oregon.  A U.S.  flag was seen burning at the head of the statue before it was toppled using a rope.
• 
Another U.S.  flag was seen burning over the statue after it was toppled on the ground, according to video footage and images shared on social media.
• 
The statue was spray-painted with the words "genocidal colonist," and "F** the cops." Police were reported to be at the scene.
• 
This thing is going on all over our country, from sea to shining sea.  Shocking enough that this is happening in the United States of America.
• 
More shocking still that authorities appear to be allowing it to happen, and in many cases even supporting it.
• 
Revisionist history has been going on in public schools for decades, either playing down the achievements of our founding fathers or eliminating them all together.
• 
Ignoring context, the books are written in a way that judges their intentions and actions not within their time in history, but within our politically correct, multiculturalistic modern era.
• 
Students have been and continue to be taught that white men are inherently evil and work to suppress all other people in the world.
• 
Students are taught that white men have unfair "privilege" simply by virtue of being white.
• 
Rewriting our history includes the erasure of cultural icons and symbols.
• 
... any product that does not adhere to liberal politically correct guidelines will in all likelihood be pulled from the shelves.  Lego has already announced it will no longer be promoting or marketing toy sets depicting police and fire fighters or it's White House set.
• 
... the 1939 classic "Gone With the Wind" was set to be pulled from the HBO Max lineup, but due to some resistance from film fans it will remain, but with all sorts of disclaimers attached.
• 
That famous quote from George Orwell's novel "1984" is not only prophetic, given what is happening today it is chilling and sad.  It reads:
• 
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.  And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.  History has stopped.  Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."
      Not to save himself, to save the United States of America  (JWR 05/08/2020)
• 
Anyone holding the office of chief executive who has to navigate his country through a massive shutdown of just about all services, all businesses, all recreational and sporting events, all public parks and beaches, all family get-togethers, and in effect, all things which represents normal, healthy life would be in the same position.
• 
But in Donald Trump's case it's actually much worse than it would be for someone else.
• 
Begin with the fact that most mainstream media hates his guts.  They root for him to fail, they look for ways to bring him down even if it means killing fellow Americans.
• 
The goal for the press is not how to work with the president to eradicate this pandemic; it is how can they use this tragic event to destroy Donald Trump.
• 
Our country is in the throes of what could easily become the worse disaster in our history.
• 
President Trump is fighting a war being waged from four fronts; (1) a devastating highly contagious viral pandemic; (2) the self-imposed American economic crash which could be worse than the Great Depression and actually destroy our country for decades; (3) a citizenry that has been panicked and scared, millions of people thrown into poverty, emotional anxiety, depression, and suicide; and on top of that (4) he's also fighting the news media and his Democrat foes.
• 
He knows that given divergent paths, whichever path he chooses will be reported by the press to be the wrong one.  He knows he can't win with them, there's no use in trying.  All he can do is call them out right away when they start lying and making things up.
• 
So Trump turns his attention to the other three fronts of this war, the war to save America.  It's a delicate balancing act.
• 
He cannot allow the Wuhan Virus to get out of hand, to flare up.
• 
At the same time he cannot allow the country to continue in lockdown for months on end, keeping people away from loved ones, keeping workers from jobs, and keeping millions in fear of losing everything they have including their homes, their businesses, their marriages, their minds, and yes their lives.
• 
Desperation can kill every bit as much as a disease can.
• 
If anyone can get the country through this it's President Trump.  Can you imagine a Hillary at the helm?  Or Heaven forbid, Joe Biden?  I believe Donald Trump is the right man for this job at the right time.
• 
Trump's enemies want the economy to continue to sink right through the fall elections.
• 
They're betting that if that happens the voters will be fed up with Trump and vote for the Democrat candidate (whomever that will be).
• 
In the meantime, they want to keep businesses closed and people in lockdown as long as possible.
• 
They need a disheartened and desperate populace to get as many people dependent on government support (food cards, stimulus money, welfare, housing, etc.) as they possibly can.
• 
All that will set the stage for implementation of their New Green Deal and taking the country straight into socialism.
• 
It's a perfect storm.  They get rid of Trump and they destroy capitalism.  Two birds with one stone.
• 
This is why it is so important for President Trump to get it right.  Not to save himself, to save the United States of America.
• 
I'm waiting to hear the "all clear" siren.  I'm waiting to hear that businesses are opening up all over the country.
• 
I'm waiting to hear that people can go to the beach without fear of being fined or arrested.
• 
I'm waiting to hear that kids can go to school and play in the park with their friends again.
• 
I'm waiting to hear that toilet paper is back on the shelves.
• 
See related Coronavirus (Sean Delonas, 03/012/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Media and Corona (Gary McCoy, 03/12/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
      The Real Enemy  (JWR 04/17/2020)
• 
By now it should be crystal clear to all that the so-called news media is rooting not only for the demise of our country, but for the demise of western civilization itself.
• 
Trump Derangement Syndrome has been obvious for a long while now, wherein anything President Trump says must be wrong simply because he said it.
• 
But since the China Wuhan virus has hit, these leftist hacks who purport to be "journalists" have done everything in their power to make sure that they don't let a good pandemic go to waste.
• 
Far from doing the right thing, like rallying behind our president in his fight to save American lives and the American economy, they have been engaged in lies and negative reporting in their ongoing attempt to bring down Donald Trump, even if it means bringing down the United States of America or the whole world along with him.
• 
Who would have ever guessed that the media would be this evil, this willing to see millions of lives destroyed, families broken apart, and businesses go under just to tear down a president they happen not to like?
• 
Day after day they look for ways to "get" Trump, show him up, catch him misspeaking about some detail, dragging up uncorroborated news sources to make him look bad.  And if all else fails, they make it up.
• 
Over the past weeks the reportage of the virus and its effect on American society has been shaped and spun to put the blame on Donald Trump.
• 
They either play down or in some cases even support the lies coming out of China concerning how the virus got started as opposed to the facts coming from our own government.
• 
The hack-press, gleefully it seems, reports daily infection numbers and death tolls without mentioning the numbers of people who were infected by it and got over it to become completely well.
• 
Here's how it works with the fake news; when Trump acted quickly In January to take action, such as stopping travel coming in from China, he was portrayed as xenophobic, racist, and just plain wrong.
• 
Now he is portrayed as not doing enough soon enough.
• 
Why didn't he act in November, they ask.
• 
Never mind that the entire world didn't know anything about this virus until the first of the year, Trump should have known they say.
• 
When Trump and his team recommended a nationwide shut down, they said he was going too far, he was acting like an authoritarian fascist.
• 
But when Trump says we need to explore ways of getting America back to work and back to normal again, they say he is ignoring the advice of the health experts and putting American lives at risk.
• 
Any way Trump goes, anything he says they go against.
• 
As bad and as wrong as I believe the Democrat party to be, I nevertheless can understand their deceit and underhanded tricks.
• 
They are the opposition party, they want to gain control and implement their socialist policies to push America leftward.
• 
I get it.  We all know that's what the Democrats do for a living.
• 
On the other hand the American press is supposed to be evenhanded truth seekers, not in one camp or the other.
• 
That they pretend to be impartial, journalistic fact-finders when it has become so obvious that they are not, puts these disgusting liars in a class all their own.
• 
President Trump has called the Coronavirus "the invisible enemy" in his war to save our country.
• 
But the real enemy in this war is not invisible at all; in fact it is in clear view, on display daily to all of us.
• 
The real enemy of the American people is the dishonest news media.
• 
See related Media and Corona (Gary McCoy, 03/12/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Dem or Republican, What's the Difference?  (JWR 02/28/2020)
• 
The idea of a man like Bernie Sanders becoming president would have been absurd a decade ago.  It would have been laughable.
• 
It's not so funny anymore, because things have drastically changed in American society over the past two or three generations.
• 
Through our public schools and universities American children have been slowly and surely indoctrinated into a liberal mindset that includes not only social progressive programs, but also political correctness and America bashing.
• 
Two of Sanders biggest supporters have been Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Illan Omar, who are America haters and identity politics practitioners
• 
This is not your grandfather's working-class union man socialism.
• 
Today's "new and improved" socialism is attracting new recruits by drawing on the resentments of race, gender and sexual orientation.
• 
America's typical socialist is very likely a Black Lives Matter activist, a transgender militant or a prophet of environmental apocalypse.
• 
... there are many young people who jump on the socialist bandwagon by the promise of free college, forgiving student debt, legalized drugs, and free healthcare.
• 
The other Democrat candidates in the race may not be as forthright as Sanders when it comes to their socialism plans and programs, but don't be fooled.  They are still far to the left of traditional mainstream American values.
• 
I can remember years ago when people were asked, "Who are you voting for, Republican or Democrat?" they would often say, "Oh, what's the difference?  They're all alike."
• 
Not any more.  There's never been a greater difference between the two parties then we have right now in his election.
• 
The Democrat party wants to remake America into something else.
• 
In the words of President Obama, "fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
• 
Sanders and the others are totally in with that.
• 
The Republican Party is the party of American traditional values.
• 
It's the party of individual freedoms and thought, not "group think."
• 
The party of keeping our Constitution alive by honoring it's original intent and meaning and not, as the progressives would have it, "a living Constitution" that is subject to change and revisionism with current trends of the moment.
• 
I want to believe that America will never go socialistic, as President Trump has promised.
• 
But in our volatile, ever-surprising modern times I just can't rest easy with that notion.
• 
One thing is for sure, this election will determine what kind of America we will have going forward.
• 
The choice has never been more apparent and clear cut than it is this time.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Don't confuse demeanor and demeaning  (JWR 01/27/2020)
• 
Any fair-minded person who has been paying attention and actually looks at the domestic and foreign policy, economic actions, and executive decisions that President Trump has taken these past 3 years should see that he has done absolutely nothing wrong.
• 
He has violated no rules, nor has he done anything illegal.
• 
He has not gone beyond the bounds of what other past presidents have done throughout history.
• 
Those of us who have a conservative bent are very satisfied with President Trump's administration.
• 
But even those who may not agree with his policies or politics should, if they are being honest, understand that as president the man has acted within the legal power of his office.
• 
So why do so many hate this man and want to see him not simply out of office but completely crushed?  Why the rage?
• 
It's not really about the actions he's taken or his politics or his leadership.  It's really all about his personal style.
• 
Never mind great judicial appointments or a roaring economy or low unemployment or getting people off food stamps.
• 
None of that matters because, well, he calls people names.
• 
He pokes fun at his opponents, he laughs at the democrats, and he brags on himself.
• 
He exaggerates, he makes faces, he pushes back hard at those who take shots at him.
• 
Donald Trump doesn't act "presidential" they say.
• 
How ironic that the left complains about President Trump being uncouth and not acting "presidential" when those same people have been at the forefront of our disgusting, crude culture.
• 
It wasn't Donald Trump that brought foulmouthed movies into the theaters.
• 
It isn't Donald Trump who writes and records the disgusting, hate-filled songs in today's popular music.
• 
It isn't Donald Trump who produces the vulgarity so prevalent on television these days.
• 
Compared to all the rest of modern day society President Trump's demeanor is actually pretty tame.
• 
Donald Trump is a product of New York, no doubt about it.
• 
Yes, he's a braggart.  His style is big, brash, over the top.
• 
Everything about him is large and loud.  But that's New York.
• 
Now consider the things that President Trump is NOT.
• 
He's not a politician, that's for sure.  He's not a quitter.  He's not a liar.  He's not a crook.
• 
He's not a say-anything, go along-to-get-along type.  He's not politically correct.
• 
And, no matter what the media tells you, he's not a hater.  He likes people.
• 
He doesn't need the presidency.  He doesn't need the approval of the media.  He knows who he is and he's quite comfortable being himself.
• 
For all those reasons, the left hates him.  The Democrats and "never Trumpers" really don't know how to deal with a person like this.
• 
They can't understand a man who doesn't change his principles based on poll numbers.
• 
They are completely flummoxed by a man who speaks (or texts) his mind out loud to anyone who is in earshot.
• 
Not only doesn't he behave like all the rest of them, he calls them out and he makes fun of them.  This drives them nuts.
• 
In short, Donald J.  Trump is not like them.  He is not keeping the old status quo going.
• 
And worse than that, he is succeeding in everything he does.  Doing it "his way" and succeeding at it.
• 
This is why they must destroy him.
• 
Their only hope is to try to turn public opinion against him.
• 
A booming economy, a soaring stock market, lowest unemployment in decades, high consumer confidence, a country at peace, and a president who keeps his campaign promises.
• 
And they think they can turn the country against him?
• 
Just how stupid do they think the American people are?
• 
Better question is, just how stupid are they?
• 
See related Hates America Like Before (Jake Fuller, 2017)") cartoon from USA picture album
      The State of our Union ...  is eff-ed up  (JWR 11/22/2019)
• 
In all of American history has there ever been more extreme changes in daily society than the ones over the past six decades?  I doubt it.
• 
When true science is discarded in favor of liberal nonsense such as there are more than just two sexes of human beings you know things have changed pretty drastically.
• 
It wasn't so long ago that most people would laugh at the notion of legal marriage between two men or two women.  Now it is accepted as absolutely normal.
• 
Today's children grow up believing that unless severe liberal "green new deal" programs are instituted immediately, the world will come to an end in ten years or so.
• 
Too many now believe that Western civilization, the American experiment, and especially capitalism are bad things; things created by evil white men to keep down "people of color."
• 
Time to shift the balance, time to redistribute the wealth, time to give big government more power over all of our lives.
• 
Yes, realizing that this is the direction our world is heading (and actually has been headed for some time now) can be quite depressing for many of us who grew up in the other world; the world of logic, freedom, self-reliance, fairness, truth, family strength, and a belief in our founding fathers and a strong faith in G od.
• 
The scariest thing of all is in the knowledge that there are millions and millions of people living amongst us who are NOT depressed by the social changes in our culture, but actually are joyous over them.
• 
These are the people that label any speech they don't agree with as "hate speech."
• 
These are the people who institute sanctuary cities, which do not protect the citizens, they protect the criminals.  These are the people who want open borders, decriminalization of drugs, a lessening of law enforcement while at the same time giving government more control over all aspects of life.
      Betsy Ross' Hong Kong  (JWR 08/16/2019)
• 
It seems like years ago now but it was only a few weeks ago, last July 4th, when Nike decided to cancel a sneaker that featured the Betsy Ross version of the American flag on it because it offended Colin "Take a Knee" Kaepernick who claimed the flag represents slavery and white privilege.
• 
Nike listened to this jerk because they pay him millions of dollars a year as their spokesman.
• 
As you remember Kaepernick, at best a so-so football player, gained widespread attention in 2016 by refusing to stand for the national anthem in protest to supposed police brutality against blacks.
• 
Since then other America-hating athletes, including members of the US women's soccer team have followed suit.
• 
(I wonder why it is that so many Americans who have had great success in America hate America?  But that's a question for another time.)
• 
Contrast that with what has been going on recently on the other side of the world with protesters in Hong Kong.
• 
The citizens want freedom and democracy.
• 
Chinese media has warned of potential terrorism rising in the country and even accused the US of supporting the riots.
• 
Why?  Because the pro-democracy supporters in the streets have been seen waving the American flag, the ultimate symbol of freedom.
• 
There is one video in particular that shows Hong Kong protesters holding a line of American flags as one of them begins to sing the "Star Spangled Banner," the American national anthem — that very same national anthem that Colin Kaepernick and his fellow America-haters refuse to sing or stand for.
• 
Hong Kong isn't the first place in the world where people yearning to be free have waved our flag as a symbol for liberty, democracy and freedom.
• 
The Stars and Stripes has represented freedom for over two centuries.
• 
No other country on earth has given people more liberty and more opportunity for a happy, successful life than the United States of America.
• 
The "American Dream" is very much alive in the hearts of those men and women who live under communism, tyranny, and dictatorships.
• 
Ask anyone who has lived under the boot of communism what they think of when they see the American Flag.
• 
It isn't white supremacy I guarantee you.
• 
While I feel extremely lucky to be living in a country that inspires so many on earth with the desire to be free, I'm saddened to think that so many of my fellow Americans who do have that opportunity are foolish, self-absorbed ingrates.
• 
See related That Flag Offends Me (Michael Ramirez, 07/04/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Not Standing for the Anthem (Sean Delonas, 09/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Dem Desperation: Are they out to prove Goebbels correct?  (JWR 08/02/2019)
• 
... started after congressman Elijah Cummings hysterically attacked Kevin McAleenan, acting head of Homeland Security.  He accused him of having no feelings for the poor illegals on our southern border, particularly the children.
• 
Cummings insinuated that McAleenan had no regard for the welfare of young children, allowing them to "sit in their own feces."
• 
This attack on McAleenan prompted the president to tweet out "Rep.  Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men and women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous.  His district is considered the Worst in the USA"
• 
"As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient and well run, just very crowded.  Cumming's District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.  If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous and filthy place."
• 
And with that, the Democrats jumped out of their skin, ran to their twitter accounts and to any microphone they could lay their hands on, and called the president RACIST!
• 
The Democrats in our country have gotten to the point that any time a white person criticizes a black or Hispanic person for anything they are instantly labeled a racist.
• 
You'll notice that Cummings wasn't called out for being a racist when he screamed at Kevin McAleenan, who is white.
• 
Why?  Well, because it doesn't work both ways.  In the mind of the left, only whites can be racists.
• 
This is all part and parcel of the unrelenting drumbeat from the left of how America has always been and continues to be a horrible racist country.
• 
It's a lie, of course, but the very dangerous thing about a lie is, as Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels once said, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
• 
The United States has offered more opportunities to more people than any other country on earth. 
• 
How about the little fact that the United States of America, with a predominantly white population, elected a black man president for two terms?
• 
Is that a sign of a racist country?
• 
Question: How much longer will the left keep telling us how racist Americans are?
• 
Answer: As long as it takes to completely destroy all of America's traditions, culture and ties to western civilization.
• 
Like I said, this lie is getting old and tiring.  But if enough of us shine the light of truth on it every time it rears up, we might just have a chance of wiping it out once and for all.
      Transforming America  (JWR 07/19/2019)
• 
After hearing the comments at a press conference by the four "progressive young women of color" (Congresswomen Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Tlaib) three things were crystal clear:
• 
1.) These people hate traditional America;
• 
2) they blanket themselves with victimhood and race in an attempt to win favor;
• 
and 3) they are a product of several generations of progressive anti-American teaching in our schools and culture.
• 
There are not YET enough voters who want to, in the words of Barak Obama, fundamentally transform the United States of America.
• 
But this can very well change, and faster than you think.
• 
... the Left has over the course of more than four decades successfully taken control of our schools, our publications, our news media, our culture through the arts and entertainment, and yes even our houses of worship.
• 
So it isn't surprising why so many today, particularly the younger generations, have leaned left.
• 
What IS surprising is that the U.S.  hasn't gone totally socialist by now.
• 
In order to succeed, the Left must not only push their socialistic policies, they must tear down the basic tenets on which America was built and they have been working on it for more than 40 years.
• 
They teach the youth to hate America and hate the men who founded it.
• 
If history is taught at all, it is a revisionist history, an anti-patriotic view of our history.
• 
All these elements (school, the press, entertainment, clergy) work in tandem to fully indoctrinate people.
• 
Many have seen this coming for a long time, most notably President Reagan.
• 
It is especially timely, I believe, to recall what Reagan said more than 30 years ago.
• 
In a speech given on July 6, 1987:
• 
"It is time that we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers and if we will pass on to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth, because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  It has to be fought for and defended by each generation."
• 
And in his farewell address to the nation on Jan.  11, 1989 President Reagan said this in his summation:
• 
"Finally, there is a great tradition of warnings in Presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time.  But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past 8 years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism.  This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge."
• 
"An informed patriotism is what we want.  And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?  Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.  We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.  And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions.  If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio.  Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.  And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.  The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.  TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties."
• 
"But now, we're about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed.  Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.  And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.  Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it.  We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise.  And freedom is special and rare.  It's fragile; it needs protection."
• 
"So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important — why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.  You know, 4 years ago on the 40th anniversary of D - day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach.  Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, 'We will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.' Well, let's help her keep her word.  If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are.  I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.  Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."
• 
Reagan's words have never been more apropos and disturbingly prophetic than are today.
      The Great American Pastime — Social Engineering  (JWR 05/24/2019)
• 
So here's the deal, we have a split country right now.  Half left, half right.
• 
Generally speaking, the right half upholds traditional American values, morals and ideals, while the left half wants the country to become more socialist and socially progressive.
• 
The two sides of American society can't be even-handed when the left half has a corner on academia, the mainstream press, movies, television, social media, and publications.
• 
And the left uses all these platforms to continually propagandize their messages.
• 
Much of what the left believes in is social engineering; the idea that any part of what has been traditional (and in many cases biological) norms throughout human history can be altered to suit the leftist agenda.
• 
A case in point is that many colleges and universities today teach that being male and female is not biological; it's simply a life choice.
• 
No American can fully escape the progressive messaging within our culture, the constant bang of the left-wing drum in our schools, in our entertainment and in our news reporting.
• 
The one place without political messaging used to be sports but no more.
• 
First it was football's "take a knee" against the national anthem, but in the past few years social progressivism has even crept into baseball.
• 
"The Los Angeles Dodgers will play host to their seventh annual LGBT Night at Dodger Stadium..."
• 
The irritating thing about this is that the left has convinced themselves that most of society is totally accepting to all forms of sexual deviation.
• 
Just as the case is closed regarding Global Warming (either you accept it or you're a crazy denier), progressives assume that everyone in the country has embraced the idea that homosexual, lesbian, transgender, and what-have-you are just as normal and desirable as male and female.
• 
They have no qualms, no hesitation in having an "LGBT Night" at the ballpark.
• 
It would never occur to them that some people might not celebrate the whole LGBT thing; that some people might actually be offended by it.
• 
It would never occur to them that there actually might be some of us that still believe in the traditional teachings of the bible; that some of us may actually still believe in the true biological science of male and female sex.
• 
It's a smug arrogance, a sanctimonious attitude that the left displays when it pushes their agenda into the faces of everyone else.
• 
I can have understanding, empathy, and friendship toward those who, for whatever reason, are different from most of us.
• 
But don't tell me that it's normal and don't force me to celebrate it.
• 
Would the Dodgers organize a Christian Heritage Night or a Jewish Heritage Night as readily as they have LGBT Night?
• 
How about a Pride in American History Night?  Or a night to honor our Founding Fathers?
• 
Don't wait for any of those.
• 
You're more likely to see an Undocumented Aliens Night first.
 D'Souza-D  (09/06/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/25/2022) | Next sect (04/28/2020) | List bot 
      Dinesh D'Souza says recent riots and political unrest could lead to 'rise of citizen militias...'  (Fox 09/06/2020)
• 
"The problem is that you respond [to rioting] through the lawful authorities, which is through the police; if things escalate beyond a certain point then you call in federal assistance.  If things escalate beyond that point you call in the military."
• 
"Local governments and state governors are calling down the cops and licensing their own private gangs.  If the cops won't protect us, then you're going to see the rise of citizen militias around the country."
• 
"I'm not advocating this.  I'm predicting it.  It is a natural and inevitable response to the militarization of one side."
• 
... claimed the escalation of division by the Democratic party has set off a chain reaction, which has caused cities to break down and inspired hardworking taxpayers to start new lives in more rural areas of the country.
• 
"There's a great line from the movie Breaker Morant, 'When one side violates the rules of engagement you would expect the same type of conduct from the other,'"
• 
"This has to be stopped, otherwise you're going to see things just deteriorate.  Cities will become uninhabitable.  The cities are the center of western civilization.  You have commerce and you have culture.  The Democrats are making it such that it's difficult to have either one.  That means technology, commerce, and culture will decamp and move out of the city, which means they'll become like ghost towns."
• 
"It's not that you have some Catholic churches that are pro-life and other Catholic churches that are pro-choice.  The Catholic Church institutionally is pro-life and it's pro-life based on the basic principle that life is a gift from God..  The pro-life comes out of a core doctrine of the faith which is that God made us and God cares about us and that our rights that come from God are inalienable.  We couldn't give them up even if we wanted to."
• 
"The left is looking to create a coalition of minority victims that equals 51 percent so they can loot and oppress the other 49 percent.  Our model is, one way or the other stop them from doing that...  We will be essentially undoing 200 years of development of Western civilization.  And commerce and culture will have to go elsewhere."
• 
"If the Democrats want to try the approach that's called 'license the criminal gangs and start setting fires to businesses' that's their model."
• 
"Our model is peace and prosperity and commerce and civility — then let people choose if they want to live in burned-out Milwaukee or burned out Portland, or if they'd much rather live in a nice Republican suburb where it's really nice and there's good stuff to be found in stores."
• 
"This is why the Democrat party relies on force.  Ultimately, they can only win if they can force us to live their way.  Now, I don't think we're going to.  We are no more going to submit to them and change our ways then perhaps they are going to submit to us.  This raises the deeper question of how do we find a way going forward...  We don't want the America they want and they don't want the America we want.  The real question is, how do we coexist with each other.  That's the real question of the future."
• 
"I think that the Democratic plan is [to swap out] Biden after the election.  They don't want Biden to keel over before the election.  The reason they picked him is they think they needed a white male to camouflage the racial radicalness of their party.  It's not like some chaotic process produced these horrible candidates.  They chose him."
• 
"Biden's not a natural Antifa type, but he is desperately trying to accommodate these people of whom he has no understanding whatsoever.  They're aliens to him."
 D'Souza-J  (04/28/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (09/06/2020) | Next sect (05/28/2019) | List bot 
      Joseph D’Souza: Coronavirus shows how China's disregard for human rights threatens the world  (Fox 04/28/2020)
• 
Nearly 50 years ago, President Richard Nixon made history when he became the first American president to visit the People's Republic of China.
• 
His visit in February of 1972 would be known as "the week that changed the world" because it allowed the emergence of China into the world's economy after being a social pariah for a quarter of a century.
• 
"The question is whether we, with different philosophies, but both with feet on the ground, and having come from the people, can make a breakthrough that will serve not just China and America, but the whole world in the years ahead," Nixon said to Chairman Mao Zedong at his Peking residence during their first-ever meeting.
• 
The idea was that as China opened to the United States, both nations not only would prosper economically, but China's totalitarian ideology and structures would be reformed as it came in contact with Western democracy.
• 
Of course, we know what happened with the economic aspect.  In a few decades, China became the world's second-largest economy and a major military power.
• 
Now, China is using that freedom to validate the worst of its historic instincts.
• 
The prosperity that made China an economic superpower in some ways had the opposite effect on individual rights and democratic reform as it helped its leaders tighten their grip on the Chinese people.
• 
The world's willingness to turn a blind eye to China's human rights abuses in order to profit from Chinese businesses and investments only made matters worse.
• 
The PRC has brutalized its citizens and minorities and clamped down on civil rights, such as freedom of speech and religious liberty, making it one of the few nations that can nearly cut off its entire population from the rest of the world at a time when we have never been more connected.
• 
Now the world is paying a hefty price for giving China a free pass on its human rights offenses.
• 
It's precisely because of China's disregard for freedom of speech that hundreds of millions of people will suffer for decades because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 
The coronavirus may have originated in one of China's wet markets — or even a test lab in Wuhan as some reports suggest — but it became a global pandemic because of the CCP's interference.
• 
Freedom of speech is more than simply the right of expression or conscience.  It includes the right to dissent and to publicize information that is critical for citizens to know.
• 
A totalitarian regime that guards information or disseminates disinformation can cause untold harm to millions.
• 
If China cherished a free press and freedom of information, this is what could have happened: At the first notice of the outbreak of the virus — which may have been as early as November 2019 — China would have raised a global alert based on the early reports of the medical personnel in Wuhan instead of trying to cover the emergence of the virus.
• 
Moreover, China would have welcomed the help of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the U.S.  Centers for Disease Control to investigate the virus' mechanism of action, setting in motion the process to find a vaccine so citizens around the world could be protected before it eventually reached their nations' shores.
• 
Instead, there's ample evidence that China engaged in a campaign of misinformation and coverups — misleading governments, slandering whistleblowers and waiting to act until it was too late.
• 
"What brings us together is a recognition ... on our part that what is important is not a nation's internal political philosophy.  What is important is its policy toward the rest of the world and toward us," Nixon said to Mao toward the end of their meeting.
• 
Seeing what is happening today in the world because of China's illiberal political philosophy, I cannot help but disagree with Nixon.
• 
Enough is enough.  The United States and its democratic allies should reverse Nixon's great experiment, and either demand China change or allow her to succumb to her own devices.
• 
Going forward, no major global economy should be allowed to be integrated with the rest of the world while it continues to violate the fundamental rights of its citizens.
• 
The alternative isn't just death to Western democracies, but the lives of millions of everyday people, across the world.
 Deace  (05/28/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/28/2020) | Next sect (08/16/2021) | List bot 
      Republicans behave like they’re dealing with the same old Democratic Party – They are so wrong  (Fox 05/28/2019)
• 
Do you get the sense nowadays there are two Americas?
• 
That there's the America the left wants, and then what's left of actual America?
• 
A major evolution has taken place within the American left in our time.
• 
Yesterday's liberals are all but gone now.  They have been replaced by today's leftists.
• 
Here's the real difference between yesterday's liberals and today's leftists.
• 
Yesterday's liberals wanted government to permit you to do stupid or immoral things.
• 
Today's leftists want government to command you to do them and then punish you if you won't.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in multi-cultural diversity.  Today's leftists believe in statist conformity.
• 
Yesterday's liberals were suspicious of authoritarianism.  Today's leftists seek to ruthlessly wield it.
• 
For your own good, of course.
• 
Yesterday's liberals believed in freedom of speech so much they fought to protect even obscenity.
• 
Today's leftists find it obscene you challenge their views, and want you no longer protected to do so.
• 
Yesterday's liberals wanted all the kids to read books like "Catcher in the Rye" that encouraged or inspired contrarian thinking and behavior.
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Today's leftists don't want you reading that, because that may encourage or inspire you to have views contrary to theirs.
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Yesterday's liberals believed in softening societal norms.  Today's leftists believe in replacing them altogether.
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Yesterday's liberals viewed themselves as champions of dissent.  Today's leftists vow you will be made to care if you dare to dissent.
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This is the whole point of political correctness, to shutdown dissenters by immediately labeling them as beneath contempt.
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And racists, misogynists, xenophobes, and homophobes don't deserve rights, don't you know.
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Leftists believe in the mantra you can't lose an argument if you never allow it to happen in the first place.
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Yesterday's liberals believed in global cooling.
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Today's leftists believe in global warming, and that if you don't celebrate Earth Day — a holiday started by a dude who murdered and composted his girlfriend — you're a "science-denier."
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Yesterday's liberals rallied to political dissidents in totalitarian countries.
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Today's leftists create dissidents by throwing the likes of Kim Davis in jail, bankrupting families like the Kleins, and taking the chaste nuns at the Little Sisters of the Poor all the way to the Supreme Court demanding they violate their vows.
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What was once a pro-immigration party is now an open borders one.
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What was once a pro-middle-class party now takes jobs away from the middle class because of what the temperature might be 10,000 years from now.
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What was once a "government should do for people what they can't do for themselves" party is now a government should tell you what you can and cannot do party.
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What was once a religiously pluralistic party is now an irreligious one.
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What was once a left-of-center political party is now a neo-Marxist one.
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... Democrats can't come together to make any deals in Washington, no matter how much Republicans bend over backward to make it so.
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The only deal Democrats in Washington will make with Republicans is to politically slit their throat, or for Republicans to do it themselves.
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... Republicans are behaving as if they're still dealing with the Democrats of yesteryear.
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That's why they always end up negotiating with themselves.  However, that era is gone. 
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The Democratic Party has become a vehicle of iconoclasm, where the goal is to tear down Western civilization altogether.  Literally, nothing is sacred.
      Its radical mouthpieces, once relegated to liberal cable news networks, academia and Hollywood, are now embodied by Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Rep.  Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and  ()
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The party has gone so far left that even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., of all people, often finds herself attempting to babysit her own would-be Che Gueveras.
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When Pelosi is your party's voice of moderation, you've lost the meaning of the word.
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See related Try Living with It... (Michael Ramirez, 04/20/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Hall of Extinction (Glenn McCoy, 04/05/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
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      Miranda Devine: Biden's Afghanistan disaster is tragic and predictable.  It will echo for eternity  (Fox 08/16/2021)
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The humiliating scenes of Americans evacuating from Kabul's airport were avoidable, as is the specter of American helicopters, planes, Humvees, weapons and ammunition in the hands of our enemies.
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Then he had the gall on Saturday to blame President Donald Trump: "When I came to office, I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor."
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Since Secretary of State Antony Blinken doubled down over the weekend on this dishonest spin, it's time for some home truths.
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I asked Trump Sunday about the plan his administration had to get out of Afghanistan — which ultimately was obstructed by the same US generals who gave Biden a green light.
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"We were going to not let people get slaughtered," Trump said flatly.  "I wanted to get out.  But you have to get out safely and you have to get out with respect..."
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"I was going to close this ridiculous embassy they spent a billion dollars on and move everybody out..."
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"I was going to blow up every military base [before we left].  I was going to take out every single piece of equipment.  I said, ‘I don't want anything left [apart from] leave each soldier a gun'..."
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"Plus, I had a relationship with the Taliban where they knew they weren't allowed to do this.  They understood they were going to get hit very hard ... What I had was conversations with the [Taliban] leadership where I said, ‘If you do anything,' we were going to hit them like they haven't been hit before."
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Trump said the Taliban "no longer has fear or respect for America..." "It's a terrible, terrible black eye for this country.  We're a laughingstock.  The whole world can't believe it.  And there was no reason for it."
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Pompeo was in the room when Trump warned the Taliban's senior negotiator, Mullah Baradar, that if a single American was hurt or threatened, the entire wrath of American power would rain down on them.
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"We never trusted the Taliban.  We made abundantly clear ... we weren't going to allow them to just walk away from any deal that they had struck.  We were going to go crush them, we were going to impose real costs on them.  We weren't going to let them take these provincial capitals.  They understood that American power was going to come to their village, to their community, to their friends and family."
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You can bet the Taliban believed Trump would make good on his threat.
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Meanwhile, where was Biden while Kabul fell?  Silent.  Having another holiday at Camp David.  The White House tweeted out a still photo of him taking notes while watching a video conference of his national security team.  Very reassuring.
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The American people wanted out of the 20-year war in Afghanistan, but they had a right to expect the exit would be managed competently.
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How inane Biden's conceit looks now, when he was wandering around the G-7 in June telling anyone who would listen that "America is back" and that he had single-handedly restored America's global leadership and credibility after Trump had ruined it.
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He has just been busy making us less safe.  He is wokifying the military, injecting the poison of critical race theory and transgender ideology to divide the troops, while launching a witch hunt to identify some mythical "enemy within."
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It seems like only yesterday that Gen.  Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was barking at a Republican member of Congress about "white rage."
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This lawless, feckless administration has wreaked untold damage at warp speed in seven months.  These aren't mistakes that you can bounce back from.  They will have ramifications well into the future.
      Miranda Devine: Why Nancy Pelosi's days as speaker of the House are numbered  (Fox 07/27/2021)
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Nancy Pelosi used to point her angry finger at Donald Trump, but she leaves him in the dust when it comes to busting norms, dividing Congress and causing mayhem.
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If anyone is to blame for the hyper-partisanship in Washington these days, it's the spiteful House speaker.
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She behaves more like a Mafia don waging a gang war than a dignified, fair and honest presiding officer, which is what the speaker's role requires.
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Pelosi abuses her power in ways that once were unthinkable.  Her speakership has been the antithesis of Lincoln's entreaty to "the better angels of our nature."
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Everyone in Congress — and, by extension, the nation — has been sullied by the spite and vitriol she has injected into the political sphere.
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There is no grace or Christian charity, just the barren wasteland of the zero-sum game, power for power's sake.
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It's made all the worse by her increasingly frantic claims to be a "devout Catholic."
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The fact that all this venom is packaged in the shape of a small, elderly, expensively shod woman has bestowed upon her an element of deference her actions do not deserve.
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Pelosi is scared of Jordan and Banks, even though she has the majority.  That's the real reason.  She is afraid they will bring to the committee, on behalf of the American people it is supposed to represent, the very reasonable question about her own culpability in the events of Jan.  6.  Most obviously, what was her reason for leaving the Capitol Police outnumbered and unprotected?
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Another question for the committee would be whether the shooting of Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol officer was justified.
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It also could examine the very real and documented inhumane treatment of Jan.  6 suspects who are not charged with violent offenses but who remain in jail without trial just down the hill from Congress, many in solitary confinement now for their seventh month.
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... everyone knows Pelosi just wants to turn the commission into a third Trump impeachment stunt and make sure it stretches on into next year in the vain hope that it will distract midterm voters from the car crash that is the Biden presidency.
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It's all she's got.  Pelosi's nasty antics almost cost the Democrats the House in November and she only retained the speakership by a thread, so, for her, it's time for lifeboats overboard.
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Her "tenure is destroying the House of Representatives and our ability to faithfully represent the people we are here to serve," the Republicans wrote in a letter to McCarthy.
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"As a devout Catholic and mother of five in six years, I feel that God blessed my husband and me with our beautiful family," Pelosi said last week in the same breath as asserting that taxpayer-funded abortions are a "priority"...
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"It's an issue of fairness and justice for poorer women in our country ... the right thing to do." It's enough to make you throw up.
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... San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone saw right through the sophistry.  "To use the smokescreen of abortion as an issue of health and fairness to poor women is the epitome of hypocrisy: What about the health of the baby being killed?" he told...  "What about giving poor women real choice, so they are supported in choosing life?"
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The real "devout Catholics" are the "people of faith who run pro-life crisis pregnancy clinics; they are the only ones who provide poor women life-giving alternatives to having their babies killed in their wombs."
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Catholics everywhere squirm at the ostentatious piety of Pelosi and her fellow apostate Joe Biden.  If they must sin, can they at least keep religion out of it?
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See related St. Joe the Devout (Mike Shelton, 01/26/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      Miranda Devine: Dishonest Nancy Pelosi doesn't care transparency or accountability or even the truth  (Fox 05/25/2021)
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is not interested in transparency and accountability, or she would come clean about her role in leaving the Capitol Police without the backup they requested on that terrible day.
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She is not interested in the truth, or we would know the name of the officer who fatally shot Donald Trump supporter Ashli Babbitt and Pelosi wouldn't have spent almost five months lying about Officer Brian Sicknick, who died the next day of a stroke, not at the hands of Trump supporters.
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... the only thing Pelosi is interested in is branding Republicans "white supremacists" and "domestic terrorists," because demonizing their opponents is all the Democrats have for the 2022 midterm elections.
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They know that after another 18 months of the tender mercies of a Biden administration, voters will be waiting to kick them out.
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White House press secretary Jen Psaki was at it on Friday, declaring that "a number of officers" died during the riot.  Is she really so ignorant?
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The reason Democrats keep throwing extra corpses into the mix is because they want to dilute the impact of the one person who really was killed in the Capitol riot.
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That was Babbitt, an unarmed woman who appeared to pose no threat to the Capitol officer who shot her in the neck as she climbed through a window that day draped in the American flag.
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The 35-year-old Iraq war veteran was petite, 5 foot 2 inches tall and weighing 110 pounds.  In her backpack was just a sweater and a scarf.  Her car was plastered with "Back the Blue" stickers.  She was a patriot who signed up for the Air Force straight out of high school in the wake of 9/11.
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She had been honored with 12 service awards in her 14 years in the military and did four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan...
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She came home to a country she felt had lost sight of who the enemy was and instead had turned on itself.
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A struggling small-business owner, she admired Trump's efforts to "Make America Great Again."
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She answered his call to fly across the country from California Jan.  6 to attend what would be his last rally as president.
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She made the mistake of entering the Capitol with the mob that day.  But she did not deserve to die for that mistake.
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She was not a villain, and that is what scares Democrats.  It is why Pelosi is bending over backwards to suppress the circumstances of her death from the public...
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... the speed and secrecy of the investigation is at odds with the treatment we have seen of police officers involved in other fatal shootings this past year.
• 
One Capitol Police insider said yesterday there are concerns about the safety of the officer and his family if his identity were revealed — which is reasonable.
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Perhaps it's a good thing to suppress the names of police officers involved in fatal shootings until public emotion cools.
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But the problem is that this special treatment has been afforded only to the police force which protects the politicians in Washington, not to the officers who protect the rest of us.
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No, the truth is the last thing Pelosi wants to come out.
      China's students are tops academically while US schools focus on warping the minds of our kids  (Fox 04/26/2021)
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While 15-year-olds in China blitz their peers in the West in math, reading and science, we are warping the minds of our children by indoctrinating them in an ideology that is Marxist in nature and teaches them that America is an oppressive regime of "whiteness" and anyone born with white skin needs to be punished, humiliated and marginalized.
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Whether you call it "critical race theory" or just plain woke insanity, it is a recipe for social upheaval and mental illness, not success.
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We are teaching white children to hate themselves.  We are teaching nonwhite children that it's OK to bully and torment white children because of the color of their skin.
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Even if you are Black, Hispanic, Asian or part of some other minority, if you believe in a meritocracy, you also are guilty of "whiteness" and branded "white adjacent" in this insane ideology.
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This is the forced institutionalization of racism, which is evil no matter who is the victim.  It is a cult that has captured the Biden administration and almost every corporate and elite institution in the country.
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Now that the president has decided that the nation is infected with "systemic racism," he wants to turbo-charge neo-Marxist brainwashing in schools in the name of racial "equity."
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The administration's plan to institute lavish federal grants for schools that institute critical race theory in the guise of "History and Civics Education" will destroy America's competitiveness at a time we are most under threat.
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American students ranked eighth in reading, 11th in science and 30th in math in the latest scores from the Program for International Student Assessment, which tests 15-year-olds every three years.  #Mainland China came out on top of 79 OECD countries in all three subjects.
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Those results are from 2018, before woke indoctrination takes hold and dumbs down our schools even further.
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When the state of Virginia seeks to eradicate advanced mathematics in schools in the name of "equity," you know we are embarking on a national suicide mission.
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Like "anti-racism," the term "equity" is a linguistic trick that sounds benign enough when Biden issues executive orders to inject it into every arm of government.
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"Equity" is only two letters away from "equality" after all, and who would object to that?  But in those two letters is a world of difference.
• 
"Equity" is intrinsically unjust because it demands equality of outcome and not equality of opportunity.  The bloody history of the 20th century tells us that equality of outcome can only be achieved through totalitarian brutality.
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As civil rights veteran Bob Woodson has said: "This discussion of equity reminds me of a car that has four flat tires and we're worrying about the race or sexual orientation of the driver .  .  .  It doesn't matter because the system is broken."
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"Critical race theory" is not "anti-racism," and objecting to it does not make you a racist.  It means the opposite.
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In true Orwellian fashion, in which words mean the opposite of what they say, "anti-racism" is, in fact, sanctioned racism.
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It means "demonizing white people for being born," as George Davison, the principal of the elite Grace Church School in Manhattan, admitted last month.
• 
One parent from the Grace Church School has reported that students spend one week per month being indoctrinated in the destructive ideology in lieu of learning something useful.
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You can bet that Chinese President Xi Jinping won't make the same mistake.
      Miranda Devine: Please hold Dr.  Fauci responsible for COVID-19 mistakes  (Fox 01/25/2021)
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In his inauguration speech, President Biden pledged to "defend the truth and to defeat the lies."
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So let's start by being brutally honest about Dr.  Anthony Fauci, who has been the source of some of the most damaging misinformation about COVID-19.
• 
At the very least, the nation's top infectious diseases expert and chief medical adviser to Biden is loose with the facts and is prone to changing his mind.
• 
This is the man who dictated coronavirus policy in the Trump administration.  If mistakes were made, as the Biden administration claims, they are Fauci's.
• 
Yet, astonishingly, Fauci told CNN Friday that a "lack of candor" from the Trump administration had cost American lives. 
• 
If people's lives really were at stake last year, why did he wait until now to tell us?
• 
Chalk it up to another convenient fib from a habitual fibber, who has deceived us on everything from masks to herd immunity.
• 
Even if you decide these are not lies but lapses of judgment by Fauci, they had potentially lethal consequences.
• 
Take, for instance, Fauci's serenity back on Jan.  21 last year, when he assured us that the virus convulsing China at the time "is not something the citizens of the United States should be worried about."
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To be fair, the pandemic caught a lot of people unaware, but the thing about Fauci is that he always is so sure of himself. 
• 
The following week, he was at it again, vehemently opposing President Donald Trump's proposed flight ban from China, which Biden at the time decried as "xenophobia."
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It was Jan.  28, and Trump had asked his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, into the Situation Room to convince Fauci and other officials that the China travel ban would save lives.
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"The guy I fought the most that day was Fauci," Navarro told ... "He was adamantly opposed to the travel ban.  All he kept saying was travel restrictions don't work."
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"‘If you stop 20,000 Chinese nationals coming in every day and some are infected, you're telling me that's not going to spread the virus?' It was like talking to a brick wall."
• 
The next day, Navarro wrote a memo outlining three options: If you do nothing and there's no danger, that's OK; if you do the travel ban and there's no danger, you lose a few million dollars; but if you do nothing and there is danger, the risk is a million American lives and more than $2 trillion in damages.
• 
"I papered everybody in the task force with the memo and ... it flipped everyone to supporting the president."
• 
Trump imposed the travel ban on Jan.  31 and Fauci later credited the action with saving lives.
• 
But, says Navarro, "If Biden had been president and Fauci had been the top adviser, we would probably have a million more Americans dead."
• 
Then there was Fauci's advice on masks.  Back in March, when the coronavirus was decimating New York, he told us masks were useless.  "Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks."
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Three months later, he did a backflip: "Masks work ... to prevent you from infecting someone else ... but also, it can protect you to a certain degree."
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Posing by his pool in sunglasses and novelty socks last June, Fauci told ... he had no regrets about lying: "We were told ... we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for health providers [and decided] we really need to save the masks for the people who need them most."
• 
It was a noble lie, so he didn't feel the need to apologize or even be slightly ashamed.  But nothing was more corrosive of public trust in medical experts at the height of the pandemic.  If Fauci lied about masks, what else would he lie about?
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Turns out he lied about herd immunity, too.  ... Fauci admitted ... that he had "slowly but deliberately been moving the goalposts" on the percentage of the population that needed to be vaccinated before "herd immunity" against ­COVID-19 was reached.
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"When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent.  Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,' so I went to 80, 85."
• 
Fauci is not precise with numbers, which is odd for a scientist who professes to care about facts.
• 
Fauci last week gushed about how "liberating" it was to work for Biden now.  "One of the new things in this administration is: If you don't know the answer, don't guess.  Just say you don't know the answer."
• 
That would suit Fauci because, for an expert, he never seems to know the answer to anything.
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See related Now Giddyup! (Chip Bok, 01/01/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Miranda Devine: Why Democrats demonize good Republicans, too  (Fox 01/18/2021)
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There's a reason why blameless Republicans and Trump voters are being tarred with the same brush as the Capitol rioters.
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It's not enough just to arrest and prosecute actual lawbreakers who smashed their way into the Capitol.
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No, anyone who supported the president, voted for him or worked for his administration now has to be hunted down and purged.
• 
They're losing their jobs, having their insurance canceled, their book contracts and recording deals torn up.  They are being banned from flying or banking or speaking on social media.
• 
A petition at Harvard University even demands Trump staffers have their degrees revoked.
• 
But it is not just an emotional overreaction to the frightening events of Jan.  6.
• 
It is a deliberate tactic designed to intimidate conservatives and silence their protests when the Biden administration radically remakes the country, as it has promised to do from Day One.
• 
Democrats and their allies in corporate America are preemptively taking out the opposition because they know that their prescriptions don't work and are opposed by the majority of Americans.
• 
They will now have control of both houses of Congress and the White House and are working fast to establish one-party rule — including stacking the Supreme Court to remove the remaining check on their power, stacking the Senate by creating two new states, and stacking the nation's demography with unchecked immigration.
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The only levers we have left to oppose this authoritarian power grab are protest and free speech. 
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Hence the crackdown on free speech by a partisan Big Tech oligopoly that wields the ever-present threat of arbitrary censorship over conservatives in the public square.
• 
Just as the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis was the pretext to reanimate racial division in an election year, so too is the Capitol riot a golden opportunity for the left to criminalize dissent.
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"There are millions of Americans, almost all white, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed," Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson told...
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In other words, all Trump voters are guilty by association.  They are seditionists, insurrectionists and white supremacists.  They deserve excommunication, deplatforming, and reputational and financial ruin.
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... the aim is to dehumanize conservatives so that any cruelty can be inflicted on them and they are powerless to resist.
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"Unity Joe" Biden himself likened his political opponents, Sens.  Hawley and Ted Cruz, to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels last week.
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See related Speech on Unity (Mike Lester, 11/13/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      Democrats' flexible morality and selective outrage is so dishonest, it makes your head spin  (Fox 01/14/2021)
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What a difference a week makes.  On Wednesday, we discovered that House Democrats actually support police.  They are against mob violence.  They believe in law and order.  They believe in harsh punishment for rule-breakers.  They believe in accountability.
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They care deeply about civility.  They believe words matter.  They abhor intemperate rhetoric.  They are against coarse language.  Fancy that.
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They believe in a peaceful transition of power, at least this time, as opposed to 2016.  They believe in the Electoral College.  They believe in the legitimacy of the people's vote.
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They believe in walls, at least when it comes to protecting their own place of work.  They even believe in bringing in the National Guard to quell civil unrest, at least when it comes to preserving their own peace.
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They believe in guns, at least when their own safety is at risk.  They revere American history and institutional norms.  They honor the Founding Fathers.  Hah!
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This is what we learned while watching the Democrats in the House impeach President Trump for the second pointless time in 13 months.
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Where have they been the past four years with these noble ideas that conservatives have been begging them to defend?
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Perhaps if Democrats had not normalized and encouraged violence when organized BLM-Antifa mobs began rampaging through our cities, the tragic events of Jan.  6 at the Capitol would not have occurred.
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"Last summer the Antifa and BLM riots swept across our country.  Businesses were destroyed, cities burned.  It was not like the horrible hours we had on January 6.  But rather, they went on for weeks and in some cases months."
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Perhaps if Democrats had not weaponized the intelligence agencies to spy on Trump's campaign, perhaps if they had not used the Steele dossier to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency and accuse him of colluding with Russia to rig the 2016 election, perhaps if they had not hobbled his administration with the three-year Mueller investigation, perhaps more Trump voters would have been willing to accept the legitimacy of a Biden presidency.
• 
Perhaps if Dems had not already launched a spiteful partisan impeachment last year, their efforts to highlight the president's shortcomings would have fallen on fewer deaf ears this time.
• 
As Republican Rep.  Jim Jordan of Ohio said, it took just 19 minutes into Trump's presidency for the Washington Post to trumpet: "Campaign to impeach President Trump has begun."
• 
"And now with just one week left," Jordan said Wednesday, "they're still trying."
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Perhaps if Dems had reflected on their own culpability in the attempted assassination of Republican Rep.  Steve Scalise of Louisiana by a Bernie Sanders supporter, their sanctimonious lectures Wednesday would be more credible.
• 
Perhaps if Joe Biden had not spent two years muscling up to Trump, with threats like "I'd smack him in the mouth" and "I'd take him behind the gym and beat the hell out of him," Biden's pitch for civility might be more palatable.
• 
Perhaps if Democrats had not spent the last four years calling Trump a dictator, authoritarian, Nazi, Hitler, white supremacist, anti-Semite, bigot, racist, hater, dangerous, demented and insane, then the hyperbole they used against him Wednesday might have been more effective.
• 
Hence the absurdity of Wednesday's rhetoric in the House, as Democrats overreached yet again, traducing the president as a "white supremacist" — or "racist in chief," as Rep.  Rashida Tlaib of Michigan called him.
• 
His refrain since November about having won in a "landslide" was reckless and deluded but it had nothing to do with racism, and his speech at the Ellipse in DC on Jan.  6 explicitly called for the crowd to "peacefully" protest.
• 
How was he to know that the Capitol would not be adequately guarded, and the mob would so easily smash their way inside?
• 
Capitol Police had been left like lambs to the slaughter in part because the cop-hating mayor of DC, Muriel Bowser, wrote to the Department of Justice the day before the protests specifically to reject federal reinforcements.
• 
The flexible morality and selective outrage of the Democrats and their media boosters is so dishonest, it makes your head spin.
      Miranda Devine: From Pence to the Senate, Trump destroys the party on the way out the door  (Fox 01/07/2021)
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The storming of the U.S.  Capitol Wednesday by a group of fired-up Trump supporters was a tragedy for the Republican party, for conservatives and populist nationalists, and for Donald Trump and his legacy.
• 
It has bestowed the great gift of the moral high ground on the most undeserving people in the world: Joe Biden and the left.
• 
They now have a free pass to persecute their ideological enemies while enacting their pet cultural Marxist projects and changing this country irrevocably for the worst.
• 
They will be unimpeded by a Senate now in Democratic control, thanks to Tuesday's Georgia runoff debacle.
• 
Trump's sabotage of the Georgia runoffs and his rabble-rousing "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington yesterday were a catastrophe for his followers.  They have justified the outlandish criticism of his enemies for the past four years.
• 
His good works will be undone, and no one will be there to protect them.  He will be gone, and his people will reap the whirlwind.
• 
The footage of Wednesday's Capitol break-in will be played on eternal loop by Trump-hating media as evidence that the populist nationalist movement which propelled Trump to power was a dangerous aberration that must never be allowed to rise again.
• 
Of course, it was wrong for pro-Trump protesters to break into the U.S.  Capitol and wander around with their flags.  They shouldn't have trespassed and fought police and broken windows.  Those selfies they took on the House floor ... were dumb and self-incriminating.
• 
... they won't receive the kid-glove treatment that BLM-Antifa received with last year's "mostly peaceful protests."
• 
They didn't throw bricks at police or burn police buildings to the ground or beat innocent passersby senseless.
• 
But they will have the book thrown at them, because it's not the crime you commit that matters anymore, it's who you are.
• 
So, as bad as the Capitol Hill anarchy Wednesday looked, we shouldn't be surprised after the way leftist violence was condoned most of last year.  You let the genie out of the bottle, there's no telling where it goes.
• 
Joe Biden's attempt at being a teleprompter statesman condemning the protests was laughable.  Does he think we forgot he sat by benignly as his supporters torched American cities for months leading up to the election?  Portland is still burning, not that you hear that on CNN.
• 
Suddenly the same politicians and media squawkers who turned a blind eye to actual violence, arson and murder are big advocates of "law and order." Give me a break.
• 
Frustration among his supporters has been building to boiling point for four years, as every power base conspired to subvert his 2016 election win and hobble his presidency.  He was stymied until the end, and this is the result.
• 
But becoming what you hate isn't the answer.
• 
... Pence quite properly refused the demand he block Congress' confirmation of Biden as president yesterday.
• 
Almost half of all voters, including 69 percent of Republicans, don't believe Biden won the November election fairly...  That's a shocking vote of no confidence.
• 
But, having failed to prove your case in court after trying for two months, you can't load the entire weight of unrealistic expectations onto Pence at the last minute.
• 
He has two weeks left to persuade his supporters to put the 2020 election behind them and focus on the real fight ahead, winning back the House in 2022, and the White House in 2024.  Everything else is a distraction.
      Miranda Devine: If there's fraud in the 2020 election, then we must find it  (Fox 11/09/2020)
• 
There's more evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election than there ever was of Russia collusion, so America is owed a legal examination of the election irregularities alleged by the Trump campaign.
• 
It's not crazy to say this, despite the gaslighting from much of the media.
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Basically, the election is down to roughly 120,000 votes of almost 150 million votes cast.
• 
That's 0.08 percent, a tiny margin by anyone's reckoning.
• 
Recounts have been ordered.  President Trump's campaign is challenging hundreds of thousands of votes in the courts.
• 
Five swing states are within 1 percent, all with Joe Biden in the lead.
• 
In Georgia, Biden was ahead on Sunday night by just 10,352 votes.
• 
In Arizona, he was ahead by 19,438 votes.
• 
In Wisconsin, he was ahead by 20,540.
• 
In Pennsylvania, he was ahead by 43,251.
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In Nevada, he was ahead by 31,464.
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It is not outlandish or unprecedented to accept the possibility that at least some of those margins may be erroneous, whether through human error or, indeed, fraud.
• 
Electoral fraud is not unknown in America.  Probably the most famous example was in 1960, when Chicago Mayor Richard Daley allegedly rigged the ballot for John F.  Kennedy, dead people were found to have "voted" and 677 election officials were indicted.
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Due to the pandemic, around 40 percent of votes in Tuesday's election were cast by mail, double the percentage in 2016.
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Even the New York Times once reported the truth that mail-in voting is the most vulnerable to fraud.  This is why most developed countries ban the practice.
• 
So, as you can see, it is perfectly reasonable in such a close election to take seriously allegations of irregularities and suspicious activity.
• 
An honest media would investigate rather than dismissing the allegations out of hand as "baseless," "false" and "conspiracy theories."
• 
The Trump campaign's legal team, led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, claims that, in Pennsylvania alone, 600,000 ballots are in question because they were counted without any poll-watchers observing to ensure they were legitimate, as state law requires.
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In Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, Giuliani says that "50 to 60 poll-watchers ... will all testify that they were uniformly deprived of their right to inspect any single part of the mail-in ballots ... Not a single one was inspected as the law required.  Even when a court order was obtained to allow the Republican inspectors to get six feet closer, they moved the people counting the ballots six further feet away.
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"It's really simple.  If you have nothing to hide with these mail-in ballots, you allow inspection."
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Giuliani has promised one lawsuit will be filed today and four more by the end of this week.
• 
Another Trump team lawyer, Sidney Powell, claimed yesterday that 450,000 ballots had been found with only votes for Biden and no down-ballot selections, which she regarded as suspicious.
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... two pieces of software called Hammer and Scorecard were used to flip votes from Trump to Biden in some pre-election voting ballots.
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Sen.  Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement that he will be investigating "all credible allegations of voting irregularities and misconduct" after receiving a sworn affidavit from Pennsylvania postal worker Richard Hopkins alleging that Erie Postmaster Robert Weisenbach had told workers he was "back-dating the postmarks on the ballots to make it appear as though the ballots had been collected on November 3, 2020 despite them in fact being collected on November 4 and possibly later."
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... in Pennsylvania, the Trump team has found "over 100 people they think were dead but 15 people that we verified that have been dead who voted ... Six people registered after they died and voted."
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All of this may not amount to a hill of beans.  But it deserves to be examined, or otherwise 71 million people who voted for Trump may end up believing the election was stolen.
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"This is no longer about any single election," Trump said in a statement...  This is about the integrity of our entire election process." Quite right.
• 
Whatever comes of the allegations, in reality, nothing is more important than two Georgia US Senate runoffs, on which control of the Senate may depend.
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Since neither of the Republicans, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, has reached the 50 percent threshold in votes required under Georgia law to win outright, there has to be a redo on Jan.  5.
• 
If they both were to lose, the US Senate would be deadlocked 50-50, with the vice president, Kamala Harris, having the deciding vote.
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In other words, the Democrats would be in control and nothing would impede their radical agenda, including the Green New Deal, packing the Supreme Court and adding two new states.
• 
... why the unseemly rush now for Biden to declare victory, as he did in one of his weird car park appearances Saturday night?  His son Hunter Biden, currently under FBI investigation, was on stage, fully clothed and minus the crack pipe, which was nice.
• 
Of course, Trump's team will have to provide concrete evidence of systemic fraud enough to flip the election result in enough states to make a difference to the outcome.
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It's a very high bar, so I wouldn't be holding my breath.  But it's 2020.  Stranger things have happened.
      Biden may steal 2020 election for the elitists, but Democrats will live to regret it  (Fox 11/05/2020)
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The provinces, for whom President Trump is an instrument, not an end in himself, were never going to have an easy time winning the 2020 election against the amassed might of the Democratic Party, the "Fake News" media and allied pollsters, Big Tech, woke billionaires and the celebrity class, who united to stamp out the barbarian orange emperor.
• 
The "chumps" and "ugly folk," as Joe Biden calls them, came out in their glorious millions from the American heartland on Election Day and now we will see if people power prevails, if the nationalist populist movement enabled by Donald Trump, but not defined by him, lives to fight another day against the corrupt globalists represented by the sad husk of Biden.
• 
It boils down to Trump's belief that the Democrats perpetrated widespread voter fraud in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere to steal the election.
• 
While even those in his own party are urging him to lose gracefully, the president has every right to ensure electoral laws are enforced to prevent fraud.
• 
In fact, he owes it to the 68 million deplorables who voted for him.
• 
... in such a close election, Trump's concerns are not frivolous.  Fraud is corrosive, but so is claiming fraud where there is none.  We will see where the lawsuits land.
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The result has crushed Democratic expectations of a clean sweep.  It wasn't a landslide win against an unpopular president, as we had been told so confidently for months.
• 
And all the hundreds of millions spent on retaking the Senate came to nothing, with the Republicans looking to hold onto their lead.
• 
The fatal miscalculations of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in cynically refusing to negotiate on the latest stimulus bill have cost the Democrats dearly in the House, where they have gone backward by at least six seats.  They did not manage to get rid of a single Republican.
• 
The Democrats won't be able to pack the Supreme Court, abolish the Electoral College or make DC and Puerto Rico states.  They will struggle to impose the Green New Deal.
• 
Unfortunately, nothing can be done to stop a President Biden-Harris repeat of the geopolitical errors of the Obama presidency, such as appeasing China and Iran's mullahs and signing onto the Paris climate accord.
• 
But a President Biden in cognitive decline will sooner or later be replaced by his unpopular, untested vice president, Kamala Harris.
• 
Saddled with a recession and policies that will only exacerbate economic decline, the next four years will hobble Democrats.
• 
Their flaws and hypocrisy will be on full display, with a good chance of the 2024 presidential race being won by one of the new generation of Republican heirs to Trumpism.
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Whoever wins this election, the result is a humiliation for the Trump-deranged media and the tame pollsters who provide them with the justification for their dishonest political narrative.
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Whoever wins, this election has exposed the frauds and liars who pose as our elites, and half of America won't forget it.
• 
... contrary to Pennsylvania law, Republican election observers were denied the right to oversee the counting of 120,000 ballots by being forced to stand 20 to 30 feet away from where they were being counted.
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"They were never able to see the ballot itself, never able to see if it was properly postmarked, properly addressed, properly signed on the outside ... this went on for 20 hours.  While all of you thought there was some kind of legitimate count going on here in Philadelphia, it was totally illegitimate."
• 
... also launched a lawsuit in Wisconsin, where ... after election observers had gone home, "at 3 or 4 in the morning about 120,000 ballots appeared ... and they all got counted."
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... Republican observers were denied "meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law."
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There are other allegations of fraud or irregularities, late-counted votes and suspected vote harvesting being reported around the country.
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      Roger Stone was victim of political prosecution — Trump right to commute his prison term  (Fox 07/11/2020)
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This is a prosecution that should have never happened, and one that was motivated entirely by ego, politics and hatred of President Trump.
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The saga began with a predawn SWAT team raid on Stone's Florida home, televised by a gleeful CNN crew that — by an amazing "coincidence" – happened to be on the scene.
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It looked like a bad made-for-TV movie about the takedown of an armed and dangerous terrorist leader of the caliber of Usama bin Laden — when, in fact, Stone was unarmed and posed no danger to anyone.
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Thankfully, President Trump has now acted in the interests of justice so that the 67-year-old Stone — who is not in the prime of good health — has been able to avoid a potential death sentence due to his vulnerability COVID-19 if he were imprisoned.
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Ironically, our prisons are being emptied of dangerous criminals at the very same time that the harmless Stone was about to be committed to life-threatening confinement.
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I say the Stone's ordeal is only nearly over — and not finished — because the next chapter will inevitably be a chorus of Trump-hating partisan Democrats fulminating impotently about the president's "abuse of power" and demanding "answers" and an investigation.
• 
The melodramatic and false Democratic claims are by now familiar because we've heard them so many times.  "Russian collusion!  Treason!  Betrayal!  Obstruction!"
• 
Prosecutors working for anti-Trump Special Counsel Robert Mueller were under intense pressure to deliver on the hyped Russia collusion narrative in what is tantamount to an attempted coup against the president.
• 
The prosecutors seized on Stone's contradictory statements about contacts with Assange as a thread they could unravel to lead them back to the prize of proving that the Trump campaign somehow colluded with Russia to defeat Hillary Clinton
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In truth, the Mueller investigation came up empty, other than persecuting Roger Stone, former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort, a couple of clueless low-level campaign volunteers, and a passel of conveniently absent and unreachable alleged Russian spies.
• 
... the prosecution of Trump supporters was meant to send a message to conservatives: if you dare support Trump, you will be targeted with a no-holds-barred and merciless political prosecution.
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And indeed, many got the message.  To this day the abhorrent treatment of Stone, Manafort and others incidentally caught up in a rigged witch hunt starring Special Counsel Robert Mueller has caused many talented Republicans to sit on the sidelines rather than play any role in the Trump administration or reelection campaign.
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Who wants to risk prison, the blackening of their good name, or bankruptcy caused by enormous legal defense costs for supporting your favored candidate for president?
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Piling onto the unjustified prosecution and abuse of government resources was a federal judge, Amy Berman Jackson, whose sentencing hearing condemning Stone to three years and four months in prison was replete with personal attacks against Stone and the president.
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Most laughable was the stentorious pronouncement that Stone should have received more punishment for "witness tampering" — angry texts by Stone to a longtime friend, Randy Credico about Credico being a "rat" for talking to prosecutors and about the disputed substance of his testimony.
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These texts are not a modicum of propriety.  But jail time?
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In a justice system where former FBI officials Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Comey and other perverters of justice walk free?
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From a judge who refused to properly resolve patent juror bias issues by no less than the jury foreman who clearly lied during jury selection?
• 
Even "victim" Credico himself asked the court not to send Stone away for the trash-tweet texts.  No victim, no harm – no problem!  The court threw the book at him anyway, pitilessly.
• 
In the end, the Stone prosecution had nothing to do with justice.  It was about politics, public shaming, and a peculiar inside-the-Beltway set of self-referential rules: watch your back and watch who you support, because WE, the establishment, are watching YOU.
• 
We all know why Stone was persecuted for the same type of behavior Obama administration officials and Hillary Clinton campaign operatives have skated free for.  It was because Stone supported Trump, plain and simple.
• 
This is the type of prosecution we see in newly-minted "democracies" or in tin-pot dictatorships.  That's not America — at least, it shouldn't be.
• 
President Trump's act of mercy won't give Stone and his family their last two years back, or their millions of dollars in legal fees and lost income, or their good name or peace of mind.  But it will give them back some dignity, and some respite from the baying hounds.
• 
I can hear the shrieking from the mainstream media and the left ringing in my ears.  But let's put President Trump's commutation into context, shall we?
• 
President Barack Obama pardoned over 200 convicts and granted clemency to nearly 2,000 — the most of any president since Harry Truman.
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Obama's clemency grants extended to major drug dealers, traffickers, embezzlers, money launderers, fraudsters, killers and more.
• 
President Trump has been far more selective about exercising his clemency power.  Rather than releasing dangerous violent criminals, he has acted against unjust political prosecutions that targeted his supporters.
• 
Trump's act of mercy for Stone – a former campaign supporter who stepped up and was loyal when many others have not been — strikes a note of grace and decency and serves the interests of justice.
 Edwards  (03/05/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (07/11/2020) | Next sect (11/19/2020) | List bot 
      The truth about socialism: It doesn't care about the middle class.  It's about keeping the ruling class' power  (Fox 03/05/2019)
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Q: What did socialists use before candles?
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A: Electricity.
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It's an old joke, sure.  But it's no laughing matter.  Just ask the people of Venezuela.
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The socialist regime there nationalized the electricity sector a dozen years ago.
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Today, blackouts in the once-prosperous Latin American nation have become routine.
• 
Electricity isn't all that's in short supply.  Gasoline is scarce in the oil-rich nation, as are food and medicine.
• 
Meanwhile, the regime concentrates on violently repressing protests and burning humanitarian aid as it approaches its borders.
• 
After 20 years of socialism, Venezuela is a failed state.
• 
And that should surprise no one.  Socialism is a rigid ideology that always ends in tyranny.
• 
The prime example is the Soviet Union.  Lenin and Stalin's iron rule brought death to 20-25 million victims.
• 
"Enemies of the state" were executed by firing squads, sent to forced labor camps in the Gulag, perished in country-wide forced famines, experimented on in "psychiatric" hospitals, and summarily deported from their homes to the distant steppes of Russia.
• 
No less totalitarian in their practices were the Castro brothers, who promised freedom and democracy when they came to power in Cuba.
• 
Six decades later, the Cuban people are still waiting for the first free election.
• 
Socialism always promises progress, but it inevitably delivers scarcity, corruption and decay.
• 
Socialism has little regard for the middle class.  It's all about securing and maintaining power for the ruling class.
• 
All of these horrors are inevitable because socialism is built on a fatal conceit.
• 
Modern socialists believe that the world has become so complicated, so complex, so globalized, that regular citizens just can't manage things.
• 
We, and only we (say the socialists) are equipped to run things
• 
Rather than empower the common man, socialists believe in empowering bureaucracy.
• 
It's an elitist, intellectually arrogant belief, and it's dangerous.
• 
As Ronald Reagan noted ... "Either we accept the responsibility for our own destiny, or we abandon the American Revolution and confess that an intellectual [elite] in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves."
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"America will never be a socialist country!" So President Trump declared last month in his rousing State of the Union speech.
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That should be the fervent prayer of all Americans who prize liberty and wish to live our lives our way.
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See related Socialism (Antonio Branco, 07/10/2018) cartoon from General picture album
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See related Socialist Economy (12/18/2018), ) cartoon from USA picture album
 Elder  (11/19/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/05/2019) | Next sect (02/15/2020) | List bot 
      Biden to 'Racist' Trump Voters: 'Let's Heal'  (JWR 11/19/2020)
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After four years of attacking President Donald Trump as "illegitimate," "fascist," "Nazi," "tyrant," "dictator," "racist," "anti-Semitic," "Russian stooge," "traitor," "grifter," "xenophobe," "sexist," "homophobe," "ignorant," "fat" and "lazy," former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive president-elect, now says, "Let's heal."
• 
In his "victory speech," Biden said: "And to those who voted for President Trump, I understand your disappointment tonight."
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"I've lost a couple of elections myself.  But now, let's give each other a chance."
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"It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric.  To lower the temperature.  To see each other again.  To listen to each other again."
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"To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy.  We are not enemies.  We are Americans."
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"The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow.  And a time to heal."
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"This is the time to heal in America."
• 
Well, that's lovely.  But please forgive Trump supporters for not being in a mood to "heal."
• 
How bogus was the Trump-Russia collusion investigation that consumed most of the Trump presidency?  Neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris bothered to mention it during the campaign.
• 
Whatever Russia, China or Iran did to meddle with our elections pales in comparison to the impact of our biased, bigoted, Republican-hating, class-warfare waging, secular, "health care is a right," "there's no such thing as illegal people, only 'undocumented,'" Donald Trump-hating media.
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"For the past several years, I have researched this question, trying to solve the following thought experiment: What if media bias were suddenly to disappear?  In such a world, how would America look and act politically?  The answer is, approximately like Texas."
• 
Dean Baquet, executive editor of The New York Times, once admitted, "The left, as a rule, does not want to hear thoughtful disagreement."
• 
Given this mentality, liberals, Democrats and the media find Trump absolutely, positively insufferable.
• 
This raises a question: Mr.  Biden, which side needs to heal?
      Trump Contracts COVID-19; What Happened to Compassion?  (JWR 10/08/2020)
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Trump-hating America when he quipped, "President Trump is in the hospital from COVID and I just wanna say my heart goes out to COVID." The audience then erupted in laughter.
• 
"I was in the White House in 2009 and 2010.  I was working for Vice President Biden.  I wasn't involved directly in the H1N1 response, but I lived through it as a White House staffer, and what I would say about it is: A bunch of really talented, really great people were working on it, and we did every possible thing wrong.  And 60 million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it's just purely a fortuity that this isn't one of the great mass casualty events in American history.  It had nothing to do with us doing anything right.  It just had to do with luck."
• 
Trump's enemies are accusing him of purposefully mismanaging the coronavirus pandemic.  But this is par for the course in the Trump era.
• 
After all, about 29% of the Democratic congressional delegation boycotted Trump's inauguration; several never attended any of the president's State of the Union speeches; Democrats attempted to invoke the 25th Amendment by arguing that the new president was mentally unfit for the job; Rep.
• 
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., accused him of violating the emoluments clause; there was a 2 1/2-year Russia-Trump collusion investigation; Trump was impeached; and somehow, The New York Times acquired several years of his income tax returns, apparently revealing that Trump paid little or nothing in federal income taxes for many years.
• 
And Trump has routinely been compared to Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, a dictator, a tyrant, a grifter and other things unsuitable for family consumption.
• 
As to Trump's handling of the coronavirus, Democrats, like Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden, literally accuse Trump of all but personally murdering more than 200,000 people.
• 
Trump, to the consternation of medical experts and Democratic politicians, frequently appeared maskless and continued to hold rallies and gatherings where social distancing and mask-wearing were not observed.
• 
Former Washington Post reporter Carl Bernstein calls Trump's coronavirus response "homicidal negligence."
• 
Goodness, does this make Dr.  Anthony Fauci a co-conspirator?  In a "60 Minutes" episode that aired on March 8, Fauci expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of wearing masks: "There's no reason to be walking around with a mask.  When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.  And, often, there are unintended consequences: People keep fiddling with the mask, and they keep touching their face."
• 
Is Biden a co-conspirator in this mass homicide for criticizing Trump, who, at the end of January, announced travel restrictions on aliens who had been in China in the preceding 14 days, preventing their entry into the U.S.?
• 
The next day Biden tweeted: "We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus.  We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fear-mongering.  He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency."
• 
Let us not forget that China lied to the world about when it first learned of the coronavirus and lied when it denied that there was human-to-human transmission of the deadly virus.
• 
As a result of those lies, the rest of the world played catch-up from the very beginning.
 Ellis  (02/15/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (11/19/2020) | Next sect (01/09/2022) | List bot 
      Dems demand harsh punishment for Roger Stone – Not violent criminals and illegal immigrants  (Fox 02/15/2020)
• 
The latest manufactured outrage from Democrats and the left-wing media emerges yet again from the Justice Department, an agency that lately seems more adept at producing scandal than justice.
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This is the bureaucracy that cooked up an investigation of the 2016 Trump presidential election campaign on false pretenses, lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to spy on an innocent American and crucified former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
• 
The Justice Department also withheld evidence and brought us feckless Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who spent millions of taxpayer dollars tormenting President Trump.
• 
Now, four career Justice Department prosecutors are screaming bloody murder because higher-ups rejected their recommendation to throw the book at Roger Stone, a political gadfly and one-time Trump adviser caught in the Mueller dragnet.
• 
These attorneys, two of whom were involved in the Mueller fiasco, asked for a seven- to nine-year sentence for this first-time offender convicted of nonviolent crimes — obstruction of justice, witness tampering and making false statements to Congress.
• 
Remember, the "Russia collusion" caper that prosecutors were charged with investigating never happened.
• 
But they needed to show something for the millions of dollars and man-hours they wasted, so they rolled Stone.
• 
Of course, most Americans outside the Beltway have no idea lying to Congress is a crime.  They know Congress lies to them all the time and figure turnabout is fair play.
• 
Inside the Beltway, lying to Congress is business as usual.
• 
Law firms, lobby shops and public affairs consultants coach clients on the best way to mislead, misdirect and conceal the truth from Congress and its designated hitters in the bureaucracy in order to extract maximum money from the government and taxpayers.
• 
But it's the added elements of hypocrisy and irony that distinguish the Stone sentencing from previous episodes in the ongoing saga of selective enforcement of rarely prosecuted crimes.
• 
While President Trump champions criminal justice reform by updating sentencing guidelines to end harsh prison terms for nonviolent offenders, Democrats are now demanding blood from a Stone.
• 
This is the party that refuses to deport criminal illegal immigrants and proposes using tax dollars to bring those who have already been deported back to the United States.
• 
Democrats pass laws to ensure those arrested for crimes including stalking, assault and manslaughter are released without bail.
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., says Attorney General William Barr should be investigated for rejecting prosecutors' harsh sentencing recommendation for Stone.
• 
But in San Francisco, the city she represents in Congress, Democratic politicians refuse to prosecute a host of crimes, including assault on police officers.
• 
Selective enforcement of the law has become a familiar fixture in the Democratic firmament, as has selective outrage.
• 
But now they're taking it to a new level.
• 
The Democratic version of criminal justice – bloodlust for anyone associated with President Trump, coddling violent criminals and illegal immigrants – is short on justice and nothing short of downright criminal.
 Engelhard  (01/09/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/15/2020) | Next sect (04/26/2019) | List bot 
      Jan.  6 is Purim for Dems.  Trump is their Haman  (INN 01/09/2022)
• 
Biden, Kamala and all the media you can't trust tried to commemorate Trump's folly of Jan.  6, 2021 as a sad, mournful occasion...terrible...terrible for the country.
• 
Don't believe the long faces.  Forget the funereal oratory.  They love Jan.  6, and always will...a date that will live in gladness for all time thanks to the crazies who stormed the Capitol in Trump's name.
• 
Even the Covid face-coverings could not hide the smirks.  In Trump they found their Haman and in Jan.  6 they found their Purim.
• 
Hang him they will each time that date comes around and each day in between because hissing, booing, jeering, hating Trump is all they've got.
• 
In fact, they should thank him.  What a favor he did them when after four successful years in office, he unleashed that mob.
• 
Due to an inexplicable, self-destructive, impulse, Jan.  6 is his legacy...and not the wonders Trump did for America through secure borders and energy independence.
• 
He blessed Israel and made the entire world safer by introducing, through the Abraham Accords, a huge step towards peace in the Middle East.
• 
Instead of gratitude, he's got Jan.  6 and Biden ripping him apart... Biden suddenly sounding like Churchill not in taking on China, but in taking on Trump.
• 
The network boys and girls swooned.  They pronounced it the best speech Biden ever gave... for being so furious, hard-hitting, spiteful and mean-spirited, as only he can deliver.
• 
No doubt his speechwriters asked him which speech he wanted for that day...the Biden who unites or the Biden who divides the nation.
• 
The speech that unites was missing from the files; it had been used only during the campaign, when bets were taken as to whether you can really fool all the people all the time.
• 
Yes, you can.  So, it was music to them to hear him say that Trump is a menace to Democracy, and it is poetry when Biden and Kamala accuse all Republicans of being insurrectionists.
• 
Most festive of all, about Jan.  6, is that it gave cover to the Dems and their own crazies and assorted scoundrels, who far outnumber the loons found in any GOP dugout.
• 
Who remembers the Dem sanctioned riots of 2020 when city after city went up in flames, robbery, murder, arson, dubbed "mostly peaceful?"
• 
Except for the New York Post, and Fox News, who knew or cared that Joe's travelling companion, son Hunter, was allegedly on the take, Joe denying apparent complicity?
• 
The Jan.  6 rioters... those found guilty... deserve what they get.  There is no excuse for the lawlessness that they did.
• 
But that was one day.
• 
Yet every day people like AOC, Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar sit in Congress as LAWMAKERS.
      Four years of frustration led to storming the Capitol  (INN 01/07/2021)
• 
Of the protestors who breached the Capitol, this much we can say... they learned from the best... Antifa coupled with BLM.
• 
This outpouring of frustration was four years in the making, and no Trump supporter can be happy that it turned ugly.  Not in our name.
• 
But lesson learned.  If they can do it, so can we, goes the message, and now watch us do to Biden what you did to Trump over the past four years.
• 
Trump's supporters haven't forgotten, in no particular order —
• 
Rep.  Maxine Waters urging Democrats to declare war on Trump and his supporters, as follows: "If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
• 
From The New York Times came the word that Trump was to be Resisted and belittled by all reporters and columnists.  Trump was to be given no shade.  He was to be hounded.
• 
Comedian Kathy Griffin took the hint and showed up with a plaster mock-up, which depicted President Trump's head dripping in blood.
• 
On all the Late Shows, Trump was a nightly object of derision.
• 
Robert De Niro drew wild applause when he said, of the President, "I want to punch him in the face."
• 
Every Awards show, New York to Hollywood, began and ended with poison-tipped yuks against Trump.
• 
The House of Representatives spent Trump's entire four years with that single objective, to punch him in the face, through Russia, Ukraine, and impeachment.
• 
Shady lawyers were given starring roles on CNN when they offered themselves as proof-positive witnesses to Trump's alleged wrongdoings, until they were caught lying.
• 
Women of questionable repute were brought forth to allege indiscretions.  None was substantiated.
• 
Rep.  Schiff was everywhere, claiming to have absolute proof that Trump was a Russian agent.  The goods never materialized.
• 
But the show must go on, and it did when Speaker Pelosi theatrically ripped up Trump's State of the Union address.
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller was handed the task to dig up any dirt he could on Trump.  After a probe that lasted two years.  and cost millions, zero.  No bang for the buck.
• 
When it appeared that Trump's campaign for a second term might succeed, the Democrats sent in the goons.
• 
Throughput the country, they defaced statues, harassed pedestrians and motorists, burned down shops and destroyed entire neighborhoods.
• 
The media saw nothing, heard nothing.  Peaceful protests, they said.
• 
We will see how peaceful it feels now that payback is coming and the shoe is on the other foot.
      Can't happen here?  It's happening  (INN 06/30/2020)
• 
For Leftists, any crisis will do so long as it gives them a cause; a sense of moral superiority, a touch of righteous indignation that sets the rest of us up for scolding.
• 
The guilt trip imposed upon the rest of us, lasts so long as it is politically and culturally convenient, and then it is on to another crisis.
• 
Realize this, that without a crisis, there are no Liberals.  They have nothing else.  They feed off the hysteria, which they create, enlarge, and promote.
• 
Who could have imagined that in America, among the majority of decent citizens, there exists a population of brutes and savages, now let loose and on full display upon our streets.
• 
The media are part of the problem, as instigators or as fools.  Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, writes that some (Confederate} statues deserve to be taken down.  Azoy.  These, he says, should be "re-evaluated," and even Conservatives should support this.
• 
Okay, Rich.  Next, I suppose, you will let us know which books and movies need to be "re-evaluated" and torched.  Yes, Lowry is a Conservative.
• 
Of course, among Liberals, Israel is the most reliable crisis of all, since the Jewish nation is always doing SOMETHING to get them shrieking OMG.
• 
Imagine this.  These Israelis play for keeps.  They won't budge.  They intend to stay.  They refuse to hand over their G-d-given Land, paid for in blood, to The New York Times.
• 
Later we will try to figure this out, how overnight we got to be white supremacists.  We will try to understand how our "white privilege" spared none of us from the gas chambers.
• 
So once again the country has lost its mind, over a tempest produced and directed by Liberals, featuring a cast of thousands who now trample the land like locusts.
• 
They can do it because there is no one to stop them.  This too shall pass.  So we think.  So they thought in Germany when the Brown Shirts started Breaking Glass.
• 
Can't happen here?  It's happening.
      Is America burning?  (INN 06/03/2020)
• 
... from our Wisdom of the Fathers, there is this: "Pray for the welfare of the government; if not for the fear thereof men would swallow each other alive."
• 
A generation has arisen that has no respect for the government, nor for laws, nor for religion, nor for neighbors, nor for elders, nor for decency, nor for property.
• 
From city to city, men are being stomped.  Out in the open, women are being clubbed with baseball bats.  Democrats call it Spring Break.
• 
In case you think I've switched the topic to Venezuela, no, still talking about America.
• 
For it is now obvious that the grieving for George Floyd through justified protest was soon overtaken by amateur and professional agitators...white and black alike.
• 
They swarmed out of the woodwork like termites.  They were always there, biding their time, knowing that sooner or later the pretext will come, and it came by way of a brutish police officer...the one bad cop among the million good cops who make no headlines.
• 
The thugs taking over our streets...where do they come from?  Do they have families, homes, jobs?  Were they educated?  Educated... yes.
• 
This is the generation that learned to despise America, if not through the schools, then through the news media.
• 
First lesson: Patriotism is bad.  Anarchy is good.
• 
Second – the ABC's of the Left: "Always Be Complaining." Never be satisfied with the gifts and opportunities America has to offer.
• 
Third – always be resentful.  Never blame yourself for your failures.  Blame people who succeed.  Blame the country.
• 
Think of this: Until the termites and locusts devoured our earth, and picked it clean, America was the envy of the world, the beacon on the hill.
• 
Today, for the first time in 244 years, we cannot say that with honesty.  The mighty have surrendered to the mobs.  Our leaders are complicit or fearful, and there is no respect for authority.
• 
A college student, speaking for her generation, asks, with derision, "Who is this Mozart?"
• 
So do not wonder why she knows nothing.  In place of the classics, Bible, Homer, Shakespeare, the Canon, the foundation of Western Thought... she was fattened with Gender Studies.
• 
She would be a follower of AOC, the blathering moron.  Her hero would be Michele Obama, whose own college papers show her to be barely literate.
• 
Here's what the elites, those who educate our young, think of us: MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber, architect of Obamacare, was caught saying that the measure passed only through the "stupidity of the American voter." How did we get so stupid?
• 
Ben Rhodes was part of Obama's inner circle, and he quipped: "The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old... They literally know nothing."
• 
They know nothing, and then they multiply.
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Rashida Tlaib’s “grandmother” trick – nice try  (INN 08/20/2019)
• 
Some of us remember it as the excuse we gave for playing hooky for class or for work, "I had to go visit my sick grandmother."
• 
It's always been the classic routine to gain sympathy, and no one does it better than BDS-flavored Palestinian Arabs, or more cynically than Rashida Tlaib, who was elected to represent Michigan's 13th congressional district, largely Detroit.
• 
Imagine the surprise, among voters, to listen to her say, "When I won, it gave the Palestinian people hope..."
• 
Wasn't she elected to give the "Michigan people hope?"
• 
You would expect those to be her constituents — those who make the cars, rather than those who use the cars for ramming into Jewish civilians waiting at an Israeli bus stop.
• 
This happened days ago to two Israeli teens dear to me, with unbearable consequences.
• 
So now is not the time to cry me a river.
• 
Then what about grandma?  She seems awfully spry at 90 for someone living under "oppression."
• 
It is a statistical fact, by the way, that Arabs living under Israeli "oppression" live longer, healthier, happier lives than anywhere in the Arab world.
• 
But you will hear none of that from the sob sisters, whose anti-Semitism is well-documented and now comes in a double dose...
• 
Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are taking their show on the road to poison the air with regard to the Special Relationship that exists between the United States and Israel.
• 
The special friendship was codified by President John F.  Kennedy, when Democrats were the good guys...and in God we trusted, not Allah.
• 
Enter the Four Ingrates – now especially Tlaib and Omar – and in a blink the Party stinks from the odor of anti-Semitism and the Special Relationship has turned wobbly.
• 
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi – hello?  Anybody home to discredit the two blood libel artists?
• 
In their silence, they support the two scoffers.
• 
The two grievance sisters were at it today at a "press conference" to air their bad vibes and if you thought you had channeled Berlin, 1933 by mistake no, this is America, 2019.
• 
They spent more than an hour spreading it thick, one blood libel after another, though without Wagner's Die Walkure.
• 
Tlaib wept talking about checkpoints in Israel.
• 
Only failing to mention the rise of checkpoints all around the world before, during and after 9/11, due to the manifold acts of terrorism committed by her "people."
• 
At the moment Israel is facing threats of annihilation from Iran, and so it is every moment of every day.
• 
No other country but Israel endures anything like this.
• 
Also at this moment Hezbollah, Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad are firing at Israel and arming themselves to the teeth for the dream of destroying the Jewish State. 
• 
On top of all that, plus BDS, the Israelis are expected to roll out the red carpet to be bullied even further...on their own turf.
• 
A particular Jewish/Israeli grandmother that I love and admire is suffering, at this time, for her grandchildren...so please...
• 
Please spare me Omar and Tlaib's sob stories.
• 
This is not the time to weep for Tlaib's grandmother, who appears to be doing just dandy.
      Ilhan Omar: So young… So anti-Semitic  (INN 02/13/2019)
• 
... each day brings forth another late-breaking display of ignorance from Ilhan Omar, or is it Rashida Tlaib, or do I mean Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
• 
Sisters in dental hygiene and anti-Semitism, these newly minted Congresswomen.
• 
Anti-Semitism appears to be the path these days for anyone wishing to make it to Congress as a Democrat.  – where one half of them, say statistics, support the Palestinian Arab terrorists.
• 
So young...so anti-Semitic.  Who expected this? 
• 
From Omar, her roots are in Somalia.  Why wonder where that bigotry came from!
• 
FROM THE SWAMPS OF MOGADISHU, THIS ONE COMES TO LECTURE AMERICA AND JUDGE ISRAEL.
• 
Attention Liberated Ladies – you may want to rethink the Somali Values she intends to impose upon America and the Somali gifts Omar has in store.
• 
... "female genital mutilation" as performed in Somalia.
• 
So, if you think Islamic anti-Semitism is all she's got, no, she's got more... more where that came from.
• 
From Tlaib, we also know the score.  ... She swore allegiance to "the Palestinian cause."
• 
Ocasio-Cortez – who knows?  Last year or so she was a cocktail server and this year she is saving the world.
• 
So... this is the generation that is going to "repair the world and make it a better place." Spare me.
• 
My generation, it is true, did not stay up nights worrying about Climate Change – except to know what clothes to wear outside.
• 
We did not think of it as a world-shattering phenomenon.
• 
Nor did we lose much sleep wondering who is a boy and who is a girl.
• 
We knew right away, and never imagined TRANSGENDER – or that there exists a menu of 140 different genders to choose from, and that if we find that ridiculous, immediately we are scolded for being racists and bigots.
• 
That appears the thing for this new generation — no tolerance for any dissenting point of view.
• 
First comes their anti-Semitism, always that, next a slew of rules to "make the world a better place" through Soviet-style enforcement.
• 
But first, anti-Semitism.  So naturally, BDS.
• 
So, don't forget, people – remember to boycott Salk's Polio Vaccine, and no matter the emergency, do not use the Heimlich Maneuver.
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Fahy  (04/26/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/09/2022) | Next sect (10/16/2020) | List bot 
      Mueller's report and Kavanaugh's confirmation battle – The one dangerous thing they share  (Fox 04/26/2019)
• 
... for the average American, the most important aspect of the Mueller investigation is one dangerous attribute shared with the Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation battle last fall – the upending of the burden of proof and the practice of making the accused prove his innocence before any proof of wrongdoing is offered.
• 
For centuries in British/American legal practice, the party prosecuting a case, whether it be the district attorney or a civil plaintiff, has borne the burden of proving what the accused did wrong, and must produce evidence meeting varying levels of proof, depending on the charge.
• 
Until the specific evidentiary burden is met, the accused is innocent and bears no burden to prove otherwise.
• 
What's so concerning about the Kavanaugh and collusion episodes is, despite their not being strictly legal proceedings, the alarming extent to which, and speed with which, some politicians and their media allies abandoned these important standards in service of short-term political goals.
• 
... no accuser produced any evidence supporting the accusations, but still put the burden on Kavanaugh to disprove them.
• 
To many, Kavanaugh was guilty or disqualified simply because he was accused.
• 
Kavanaugh produced his handwritten high school calendar, testimonials from high school friends, and other evidence.
• 
It was enough to win confirmation, but it sent the wrong message about how we treat those accused of wrongdoing.
• 
Similarly, the Russian "collusion" investigation was plagued by the same flaw.
• 
Before Mueller was appointed, then-FBI director James Comey refused, despite President Trump's pleading, to state publicly what was known within the FBI and Justice Department – that President Trump was not under investigation.
• 
Instead, Comey wrongly disclosed the existence of the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election, a dangerous announcement that fueled by false media narratives and the bogus Steele dossier (paid for by the Democrats), suggested the FBI was investigating the president or his campaign.
• 
Next, after Comey was fired and Mueller appointed as special counsel, Rod Rosenstein, the Deputy Attorney General overseeing Mueller, never, as he was required by the special counsel regulations, provided any evidence of any crimes by Trump that justified the special counsel's appointment in the first place.
• 
This further added to the perception that Trump had to prove his innocence before evidence of any wrongdoing was produced.
• 
And finally, when Mueller's report was released, it concluded there was insufficient evidence of an obstruction offense, but also that the investigation did not "exonerate" the president.
• 
If there was insufficient evidence of obstruction, Mueller should've stopped there.
• 
It isn't a prosecutor's job to "exonerate" anyone: If there's insufficient evidence to charge a crime, no charges are brought.
• 
Knowing the attorney general (Bill Barr) would likely, though not required to, publicly release his report, Mueller gave House Democrats enough material to keep the obstruction issue alive for the foreseeable future, which shifted the burden to the president to prove he did not obstruct justice, despite Mueller's conclusion there was insufficient evidence to prove the same.
• 
Why does this matter?  First, this burden flipping threatens our social fabric and institutions.
• 
This is not how we want to do relationships; people should be given the benefit of the doubt and should not be forced to defend themselves from unproven charges.
• 
Also, it undermines our system of justice because it trains people to internalize the wrong procedure.
• 
And, it makes society and politics more accusatory if all that is needed to undermine an idea or a person is a baseless accusation.
• 
Moreover, it dissuades political participation.
• 
Our institutions and practices are more important than any one president or political goal, and no short-term political win (e.g., possibly impeaching a president) is worth throwing out one of our most cherished procedural safeguards.
• 
There is simply too much at stake.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Failla  (10/16/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/26/2019) | Next sect (10/29/2021) | List bot 
      Jimmy Failla: Trump, Biden town halls offer America stark choice: 'Victor-hood' or victim-hood  (Fox 10/16/2020)
• 
Guthrie's constant interruptions stood in stark contrast to the spa treatment Joe Biden received from ABC moderator George Stephanopolous, who couldn't have made the Biden family feel more comfortable if he gave him a hot towel and spoke Ukrainian.
• 
(I hope you enjoyed that line because I'll probably get banned from Twitter for it.)
• 
Let the record show that on a night when President Trump was asked about QAnon, an internet conspiracy many people have heard of but few can explain, his rival didn't face a single question about his son's business dealings in Ukraine, which happens to be one of the biggest stories in the country despite the efforts of the big tech oligarchs to suppress it.
• 
Much can be said about the contrasting style of the moderators on Thursday night but what really jumped out at me was the contrasting leadership styles of the candidates and their dueling visions for our country.
• 
Trump comes off as a street fighter, whose nose for conflict has been hardened by four years of incessant attacks from a media hellbent on stopping his presidency at all costs.
• 
Biden has the auto-pilot charm of a lifelong politician.  He campaigns like he's not interested in fighting for anything other than the TV remote when he's home on the plastic-covered couch with Jill.
• 
Trump pushes American excellence at every turn, as he did again Thursday night in touting the record-breaking unemployment numbers we enjoyed pre-pandemic for people of every socio economic background.
• 
Biden pushes systemic racism and class warfare, as he did in calling out America's troubled history with race and vowing to increase taxes on the rich yet again.
• 
In short, these Town Hall events made it abundantly clear that 2020 is a choice between VICTOR-HOOD or VICTIM-HOOD.
• 
The Republicans unapologetically call this the greatest country the world has ever known.  They rightfully point out that we live in an age where everyone can flourish through hard work thanks to the spectacular upward mobility in our society.
• 
No, we're not perfect.  Yes we've made immense progress in the last 50 years we should continue to build on.
• 
The Democrats devoted their entire presidential election cycle to telling us the rich have stacked the deck against us and the whole country is racist.  If you believe this is true, you have to wonder why it took their candidate 47 years to realize it.
• 
But any way you slice it, the left is constantly scolding us for the America we were instead of giving us credit for all the work we've done to become the America we are.
• 
For all the hysterical claims that President Trump poses an existential threat to our country, a Gallup poll released last week shows that 56% of Americans consider themselves better off now than they were four years ago, compared to 45% of American who felt that way at the end of Barack Obama's first term.
• 
When confronted with these findings during a campaign stop in Cincinnati, Biden said voters who feel that way "should probably vote for Trump" adding, "well, their memory is not very good, quite frankly."
• 
Now to be fair, if anybody knows about having a bad memory, it's a presidential nominee who's told people he's running for Senate on multiple occasions.
• 
But Biden's dismissive attitude towards the facts is emblematic of the left's entire approach to fighting this president: push his rhetoric over his record.
• 
They continue to run this exhausted play because while the president throws tons of wild rhetorical pitches, he's had no problem finding the strike zone with his pro-growth agenda.
• 
Not only did he slash regulations at a staggering pace to get the bureaucratic boot off the neck of small businesses, but he cut taxes for 80% of Americans, with the biggest benefits being felt by women and minorities at the lowest end of the economic scale.
• 
Do we want a president who campaigns relentlessly and never stops pushing an empowering message of American greatness?
• 
Or do we want a president who's spent the vast majority of this campaign letting the media fight his defeatist, race-baiting "battle for the soul of our nation."
• 
See related About Right... (Michael Ramirez, 08/11/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Jimmy Failla: Trump is on pace to win 2020 election in a 'lawn-slide' — here's why I say that  (Fox 10/06/2020)
• 
... I can report with full confidence that a recent family road trip took us through the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and in all three states the "Biden-Harris" signs were running a distant third behind "Trump-Pence" and "Sweet Corn For Sale."
• 
... the trucker polls show Trump enjoying a massive edge in signage and that's some seriously bad news for Democrats because lawn signs represent next level passion.
• 
Look no further than the president's stay at the Walter Reed Medical Center this weekend.
• 
Thousands of fans showed up to express their support, which has to be considered an encouraging sign, especially when you consider that most nights, Biden is lucky if he gets the pizza guy to show up, let alone thousands of fans.
• 
I'm not trying to sound dismissive of the former V.P.'s chances.  There are millions of Democrats who hate this president — so much so that on Friday night Twitter had to issue a warning to any account wishing him harm after his COVID-19 diagnosis.
• 
You know, because "when they go low, we go high?"
• 
But despite their weapons-grade levels of hatred, the left still hasn't learned the key lesson from the 2016 election, which is that voters are far more passionate when they have someone to vote for as opposed to someone to vote against.
• 
Biden and the Democrats have not given anyone that sense of purpose, choosing instead to devote the vast majority of their messaging to the same old tired chorus of "Orange Man Bad."
• 
Which might explain why spotting a "Biden-Harris" sign in many states across this country is almost as rare as a sign of the candidate himself.
• 
You can tell me Joe's calendar has been light because he's trying to steer clear of the coronavirus, but to be clear, I'm not asking him to take off his mask and give people a hug, I'm asking him to give people an effort.
• 
Think about it: a hospitalized Donald Trump made more campaign appearances on Sunday than Joe Biden did.
• 
And whether you agree with the president's drive-by in a van at Walter Reed or not, there's no escaping the fact that most people campaign harder to be the president of their fantasy football league than Biden has to be president of the United States.
• 
Sure, the media is doing most of the heavy lifting by attacking President Trump incessantly, even during his hospitalization.
• 
And yes, the Biden campaign has a massive spending advantage in the final month of the race.
• 
But all the money and media support in the world can't win you the White House if voters aren't passionate about your candidacy.
• 
The truth is, there are a ton of parallels between this race and 2016.  Perhaps the most damning one for the Biden campaign is that the polls tell one story but our eyes tell another.
• 
How this plays out is still anyone's guess, but despite all the setbacks the president has endured in the past week, don't be surprised if he pulls another upset because the signs are everywhere.
 Feder  (10/29/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/16/2020) | Next sect (11/07/2021) | List bot 
      I, Domestic Terrorist  (JWR 10/29/2021)
• 
... the definition of domestic terrorist is expanding.  Soon, it may include anyone who's posted mean tweets about President Geezer, owns a pickup truck with a gun rack or doesn't run shrieking into the night at the sight of an American flag.
• 
And while I've never harassed a Senator in a restroom, burned down business districts, assaulted a cop in the name of racial equality or left our borders wide open to criminals, drugs and real terrorists — crimes which members of your party and their anarchist auxiliary commit regularly with impunity — nonetheless, it seems that I am person of interest.
• 
Here are a few of the things which (in the estimation of your party) mark me as someone who bears watching:...
• 
I believe in the Constitution, including the First Amendment.  Among other fundamental liberties, it guarantees the right to speak at public meetings against the government and its minions, including school committee members and teachers.  Our freedom of speech trumps your paranoia.
• 
I believe public education is in the business of indoctrination.  Turning children against their parent's values and into compliant subjects of the state is the foundation of totalitarianism.  A precursor of the modern Democrat Party, V.I.  Lenin said: "Give me four years to teach children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." The NEA has them for 12 years.
• 
I believe parents have a right to control their children's education.  Children are born into families, not into governments.
• 
I think the alleged existence of "white supremacy" (the basis of Critical Race Theory) is an absurdity.  In America today, whites are at the bottom of the food chain.  You can ridicule them, discriminate against them and even assault them in broad daylight without consequence.
• 
I do not believe there's an epidemic of gun violence.  In the hands of the law-abiding (used for self-defense) guns aren't a disease but a cure.  There is an epidemic of lawlessness in this country reflected in what your party and its allies have done to our once-great cities.
• 
I believe election fraud is the sine qua non of the Democrat Party.  I don't know if the last election was stolen.  I do know there was massive fraud...
• 
I believe that what happened on January 6 was more comedy than tragedy.  The so-called insurrectionists were as organized as the fire brigade in a Charlie Chaplin movie.
• 
I believe the threats to America are, in ascending order of importance: Iran, Islamic extremism, Red China, anarchy in our streets and your boss and those who pull the marionette's strings.  As a security threat, parents protesting at school committee meetings are right up there with those who don't recycle.
• 
I think face masks are a sign of servitude and a talking point for the 2022 campaign.  They are a way to keep the credulous in full panic mode over a "pandemic" that's become as dangerous as the seasonal flu.  But Democrats are going to run on face masks and vaccinations (with drugs developed under Trump) next year.  What else do they have — our "extraordinarily successful" withdrawal from Afghanistan, the remarkable Biden economy, border security?
• 
I thank God every minute of every day that your Supreme Court nomination was never confirmed.  At the most you'll be tormenting us for another 3 ?  years instead of (on average) 16 years as a Justice.
• 
I believe that America is still worth fighting for.  Too many brave men and women have spilled too much blood over the centuries to just roll over for you and the ideologues who control your party.
• 
If contempt for the elite is a terrorist impulse, you might as well take me into custody and trundle me off to the hoosegow.  Maybe I'll share a cell with Lady Liberty.
      For Marxists, there is one very special key to everything  (JWR 10/26/2021)
• 
For Marxists, killing the family is the key to everything.  The war on the family isn't peripheral; it's central to the revolution.
• 
Just as white people are "privileged," according to CRT, so too is the nuclear family, which supposedly enjoys "unearned benefits in U.S.  laws, policies and practices"...
• 
Why is it that intact (two-parent) families consistently outperform others on every measurement – income, independence and children who are healthier, happier and less prone to social pathologies.
• 
Due to the success of Black Lives Matter, everything now is seen through the lens of institutional racism – criminal justice, electoral politics and, of course, the family.  When BLM's founders described themselves as "trained Marxists," believe it.
• 
Until negative publicity forced them to take it down, BLM's website proclaimed: "We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages' that collectively care for one another..."
• 
BLM echoes the screwball theories of Marx and Engels, who insisted there was an ancient, matriarchal communist society which preceded patriarchy and capitalism.
• 
They viewed the "bourgeoise family" as capitalism in miniature, with the father/husband as the owner and his wife and children as the exploited proletariat.  Both will be abolished by the communist state, they predicted.
• 
Writing in the 1920s, Antonio Gramsci, the father of Cultural Marxism, reversed the equation.  Since the family is the chief obstacle to revolution, its destruction must precede the triumph of communism, not follow it.
• 
Gramsci said the family will be overthrown, and society reshaped, through subversion of the culture: "In the new order, Socialism will triumph – via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society."
• 
For the left, the central purpose of public schools isn't education but indoctrination.  Public education has failed miserably at the former (as may be seen by plummeting standardized test scores) but succeeded spectacularly at the latter (as may be seen in the leftward drift of the electorate – especially younger voters).
• 
The objective is to take children away from parental values and align them with the worldview of the Democratic Party.
• 
The cutting edge is CRT and the sexualization of students, seen most recently in the enthusiastic embrace of transgenderism.
• 
The battle lines are drawn, with the public education establishment (administrators, school committees and teachers' unions) and Democrat politicians on one side and parents and some conservative politicos on the other.
• 
Parents are outraged by what their children are being taught.  Progressive are outraged that families would try to interfere with the intellectual/emotional kidnapping.  For the left, the role of families in education is to pay up and shut up.
• 
... the principal purpose of the schools is to get children to reject the parental worldview (the Judeo-Christian ethic, patriotism, individualism and the free market) in favor of Cultural Marxism (neo-paganism, internationalism, determinism and collectivism).
• 
In clear defiance of the dictates of the elite, protesting parents are invading school committee meetings, calling for accountability and demanding change.
• 
The Empire is striking back with a vengeance.  In Virginia, Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and former Governor Terry McAuliffe lectured the little people, "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach."
• 
Biden, who's even more of a tool of the teachers' mafia, has his Justice Department investigating activist parents as domestic terrorists under the Patriots Act.
• 
Nothing must be allowed to interfere with the pedagogical brainwashing — the main offensive of the war on the family.
• 
Marxists hate competition.  They demand the undivided loyalty of the masses.  Thus, destroying the family is an imperative.
• 
Our true enemy has been showing us his face for more than a century.  We've seen it in planned economies, gulags and the war on parents and children.  For the family, it's the face of death.
      Actually, The Forever War is Islam's War on the West  (JWR 09/06/2021)
• 
Imagine after Pearl Harbor, FDR announcing, "We're getting into this to bring human rights to Japanese women" or "Our goal in this war is give Germany a democracy." He would have been laughed out of office.
• 
There was only one legitimate reason to go into Afghanistan after 9/11 and it's the same reason that should have impelled us to stay — not human rights, democracy or nation-building — but saving our nation.
• 
We went to Afghanistan to root out terrorism, to destroy Al Qaeda's infrastructure, to disrupt its network — and, quite frankly, to kill as many terrorists as possible.
• 
The goal was to kill them there so they wouldn't kill us here, as they did on 9/11.  Everything else was extraneous.
• 
That the mission failed may be seen in just how quickly the Taliban made a comeback, except now, with the most modern weapons in the region — thanks to Quartermaster Joe.
• 
The cut-and-run crowd called it "the forever war." Rubbish.  You want to hear about a forever war?  Afghanistan was the latest chapter in a conflict that's been going on since the 7th century.
• 
At one time, Islam engulfed much of the known world — from the Arabian Peninsula west to the Pyrenees and east to the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
• 
America's longest war, they call it.  Really?  Through April, 2,448 Americans died in the 20 years we've been in Afghanistan — fewer than the number of Americans who died in one day in the attack on the World Trade Center (2,996).
• 
Our ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan marks end of one stage of Islamic extremism's war on the West.
• 
Thanks to the blundering of the empty suit in the Oval Office, the Taliban is not only resurgent, but in possession of tons of sophisticated hardware, including Black Hawk helicopters.
• 
Once again, ISIS has a home address.  All of the other terrorist groups will flock there.  They can celebrate the 20th anniversary of 9/11 in what used to be the U.S.  Embassy in Kabul, with American weapons.
• 
China, Russia and Iran are also beneficiaries of the Geezer's abject surrender.  They've spent decades telling the world that America is a paper tiger and an unreliable ally.  Biden just proved them right.
• 
Besides providing a command post for international terrorism, Biden's open-borders policy will allow more terrorists to come here.
• 
The refugee flood which will come out of Afghanistan will be seeded with Islamist operatives.  How can they pass up an opportunity like this?
• 
Our return to Afghanistan is inevitable.  We will have no choice.  When bombs start exploding and bullets start flying from New York to LA — perhaps after the next 9/11 — we'll have to go back in.
• 
Except this stage of the conflict reinforced the lesson learned by our enemies in Vietnam — Americans don't have staying power.  All they have to do is wait us out.
• 
Given enough time, the domestic surrender lobby will carry the day.  As a young Senator in 1973, Biden was part of that lobby.  Now, he's its doddering leader.
• 
When we're forced back in, all of our Afghan allies will be dead (a process we will have facilitated by providing the Taliban with kill lists) and the jihadists will be waiting for us with 75,000 military vehicles we bequeathed them.
• 
On August 15, the day Kabul fell, Taliban commander Muhammed Arif Mustafa told a journalist: "One day mujahedeen will have victory and Islamic law will come not just to Afghanistan, but all over the world.  We are not in a hurry.  We believe it will come one day.  Jihad will not end until the last day."
• 
Unless you want your children or grandchildren to live under Sharia, you'd better take this seriously and think about how Biden's Afghan debacle brings that day much closer.
• 
The next time, and there will be a next time, we should take as our motto a line from "The Untouchables," where Eliot Ness tells Al Capone in the climatic courtroom scene: "Never stop fighting till the fight is done."
 Fischer  (11/07/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/29/2021) | Next sect (06/01/2021) | List bot 
      On Youngkin, Biden, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Braves  (INN 11/07/2021)
• 
The despicable liars of the Left Media hide the true news by shading and shaping it.  It is the exact same in Israel as it is in America.
• 
They color and distort public opinion.  They lie to us, intimidating tens of millions of people and brainwashing the public.  They distort polling.  They tell people a "truth" from an alternate universe, often persuading the weak and impressionable to lose faith in their own common sense.
• 
... Left Media aim continually to reinforce the Democrat party's headstrong rush and determination to teach schoolchildren a falsified narrative of American history.
• 
They want children, from the start, to learn that America was created to be an outlet for slavery and racism.  That is a pernicious lie.
• 
America was created to be an outlet for freedom.  Of course America's Founding Fathers were not perfect — they were deeply flawed in accepting and maintaining slavery.  But they were products of their time, just as we are of ours.
• 
Just as we look back today on them and recoil from the horror that they perpetuated with slavery,_so it is that future generations will look back on our Woke era and will see the flaws and shame and madness of our times that include:...
• 
1.  The mental illness of gender dysphoria that so many attempted to normalize;
• 
2.  The cruelty and barbarianism of transgender surgery;
• 
3.  The insanity of 1619 false history;
• 
4.  The mendacity that systemic racism exists in America against non-Whites;
• 
5.  The reality that systemic racism does exist now in America against Caucasians;
• 
6.  The historic tragedy of importing millions of illegal immigrants across America's southern border to replace the moderate, conservative American majority; and even
• 
7.  The historic error of teaching American public school students "woke math" — where all answers are correct — while assuring that those who avoid public schools learn true 1776 history and honest numerical mathematics.
• 
Americans do not want critical race theory and false self-hating "1619 American history" taught to their children in the public schools.
• 
They want children to be safe in public bathrooms that are designated respectively either for boys or for girls.
• 
They want law and order at the southern border.
• 
Americans of good will and tolerance are sick and tired of being called racist.  They want police funded and criminals suppressed.
• 
They are sick of "Black Lives Matter" and Antifa racists and thugs defining them.  They want home-sourced American energy, and they want inflation controlled.
      January 6 was not an Insurrection in America  (INN 08/03/2021)
• 
To call what happened in Washington D.C.  on January 6th an Insurrection, is not only preposterous but is an intentional lie.  Lies like these fragment society and impune national sovereignty.
• 
In America January 6 was marked by a very large public street demonstration aimed at protesting a truly questionable election: the way it was conducted, the results that were reported.
• 
No matter how anyone comes out on the November 2020 election, there was something wrong with the whole thing.
• 
States changed their election laws only months, even only weeks, before balloting.  There was despicable voter harvesting in many states.
• 
In many states people voted weeks too early, way before the last debate or simply before all the issues were on the table.
• 
Social media monopolies suppressed the news of the Hunter Biden laptop, which would have been a game-changer.
• 
The President of the United States was being denied a voice and platform!
• 
Again, no matter how anyone comes out on claims that the election results were false, there was that screwy thing about how President Trump was leading by wide margins in several battleground Midwestern states in the middle of the night .  .  .  and then the Midwestern states stopped counting .  .  .  and then, when they resumed, Biden suddenly was ahead.
• 
Whatever the true tally as the numbers had been reported, something manifestly had been unfair.  Half the country knew it, and that is why half the country voted as they did and remains dissatisfied.
• 
In the face of all that stuff, many thousands came to Washington, D.C.  to protest.
• 
They did not come to kill Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi and to seize the reins of power.
• 
Anyone who ever has read or learned anything about military coups or Bolshevik-style revolutions knows that January 6 was a cookie-cutter Washington, D.C.  demonstration that got out of hand, as did scores of racist, anti-Semitic, "Death to the Police" Black Lives Matter demonstrations all summer.
• 
There were no U.S.  military generals or captains or colonels or lieutenants involved in leading or strategizing a coup.  Many people came dressed for a carnival, like the ones dressed in bear or wolverine outfits.  There was not shooting of rifles, taking of hostages.
• 
Rather, the D.C.  and Capitol Police proved incompetent — something we knew already — and failed to set up sufficient barriers.  Consequently, a bunch of angry people in the front lines charged the police barricades and got through, and the throng mindlessly followed them.
• 
That is what throngs do.  They do it at movies, at restaurants, at soccer games, at heavy metal concerts.
• 
They burst into the Capitol because that's where the throng unpexpectedly flowed.  For 99 percent of those inside, it was pure curiosity.  So much video shows most people milling about, not sure what next to do once inside a building they had not come to enter.
• 
... the character who ended up in Pelosi's office with his shoes on her desk was having fun.  He had followed the throng, and he ended up where he did.  He had not come to seize the government nor to kill Pelosi.
• 
But where was the insurrection?  Where the coup?  That also is why the trespassers now on trial for January 6 law-breaking are getting incredibly light sentences like eight months or just probation.
• 
... these people did not come to overthrow the elected government of the United States.  They came to demonstrate their disgust with a broken system, and the thing got no less out of hand than did a summer of left-wing Antifa and Black Lives Matters "insurrections."
• 
Certainly, perhaps four or five people came to overthrow the government.  They just forgot to tell anyone else.  What kind of insurrection is that?_
• 
Would the Bolsheviks have taken Russia or Mao China if simply Lenin, Stalin, and Trotsky had shown up one day with a manifesto and a few thousand people chanting slogans?  Would Mao have gotten China that way?
• 
Pelosi has fixated on a political strategy of doing an annual Passion Play about "rescuing democracy" from "fascism" (i.e., from those who do not vote Democrat).
• 
One year it was a Trump impeachment.  The next year another Trump impeachment.  This year: no Trump in the White House, so a "January 6 Insurrection Investigation."
• 
In truth, this canard of "Insurrection" does grave damage to America.  Democracy is not in danger from Republican conservatives nor from populists among Independents who just want to be left alone, to enjoy their lives, to keep the lies of "systemic racism" and "critical race theory" out of kids' and grandkids' schools, to keep the police maximally funded and reinforced, to control inflation as it was in the Trump days, and to be spared having to pay "reparations" to people whom they did not harm and who do not deserve a penny from anyone anyway.
• 
Instead, by fostering the Big Lie of "January 6 Insurrection," Pelosi inserts the idea of insurrection into the American psyche and arena.
• 
This is terrible.  Americans must get rid of her in November 2022.  The old-fashioned American way: at the ballot box.
• 
See related Witch-Hunt Continues (Antonio Branco, 06/01/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Tantrum! (Mike Shelton, 01/14/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The Mainstream Media and social media oligarchs are to blame for the D.C.  rioting  (INN 01/07/2021)
• 
The Mainstream Media are to blame for the D.C.  rioting.  Through four years they relentlessly pursued a single-minded goal: to take down the fairly-and-squarely democratically elected presidency of Donald Trump.
• 
Towards that end, they escalated non-stories into major "news" and elevated non-entities into major public figures.
• 
They highlighted stories that belonged on back pages, and they blacked-out or back-paged stories that belonged above the fold on front pages.
• 
They carefully selected spokespeople aligned with their liberal-progressive ideologies as their sources for quotation, and they discarded press releases and ignored statements issued by significant voices whom they chose to blackout or blacklist.
• 
When selecting dramatic photos to highlight stories, they chose the pictures that told their ideological narrative and censored those that depicted other realities.
• 
As a result, Americans do not have a reliable source of information.  A society is imperiled when information — not opinion — is so unreliable that no one knows what to believe.
• 
In a democracy, astute citizens know they cannot rely on politicians for the truth, not even from their favorite government leaders.  Even honest Congressional representatives, Senators, and Presidents regularly have to balance realities and their very consciences when they speak to the public.  ... It has always been a delicate duty of leadership to manage expectations and to calm untoward fears.
• 
Sophisticated people know they simply cannot rely primarily on their democratically elected leaders for the absolute truth.  A head of government may wish to say publicly that the leader of another country is dishonest, crooked, even a murderer — and yet prudently restrains his or her tongue because that very tyrant is en route to negotiate a major treaty or other agreement whose consequences are enormous.
• 
Historically, free citizens have looked to the mainstream media — the "Fourth Estate" — for the truth.
• 
Something terrible happened in America these past four years, as the country divided more sharply than ever, frequently incited precisely by the media on whom the public relied for truth.
• 
America reached a point that, as a society, the public cannot — and do not — trust the Mainstream Media.
• 
Americans cannot trust their "news." Cannot trust their photographs.  Cannot trust their "reliable sources." Cannot even trust the raw data in their surveys and polls.
• 
Along the way, the social media that we all hoped at its gestation would prove to be one of humanity's greatest boons proved instead to be yet another contributor to social discord and national division.
• 
America's Mainstream Media are not as in tow with totalitarian governmental ... but U.S.  Mainstream Media utterly lost their credibility and reliability these past four years, a trustworthiness on which the general public needs assurance.
• 
That is the reason that, when many sensible and responsible voices tell Americans and bring compelling supporting data that the November 2020 Presidential election was decided fairly — while other sensible and responsible voices tell Americans and offer corroborating data and meaningful circumstantial evidence that the November 2020 Presidential election was decided unfairly — half the country does not believe the other half.
• 
The Mainstream Media and social media oligarchs are to blame for the D.C.  rioting now arising from a sincerely held belief by nearly half the country that the election was stolen in November.
• 
If the media had been doing their jobs in the responsible, dispassionate, balanced, investigative way that American societies of the past had come to expect, then today Americans would hear their reports on the November election and, for the most part, would accept the journalism and the narrative.
• 
The tragedy is that America now is a country of "alternate facts." No one knows whom to believe — and there are virtually none in America who have earned the trust that makes a greater society functional.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      The Democrat Con-vention: Pros and cons  (INN 08/18/2020)
• 
No one kneeling during the National Anthem.  No one wearing African kente cloths and kneeling as Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer did.
• 
A reverend or priest prays to "Almig-ty G-d" ... In his prayer, he avoids discussing the movement among Democrat "progressives" to kill fetuses even after they are born and become unequivocal living human beings...
• 
A White farmer tells us about the soybean tariffs against China impacting him.
• 
He does not tell us that China has been cheating America for more than half a century, has been stealing American intellectual property, hacking U.S.  computer systems, cheating in international trade, sending outright spies into America and basing them in consulates and at universities to steal national secrets.
• 
There was no way to stand up to the despicable cheating by China except by taking the tough stands on trade that President Trump took and that led to China blinking, buckling, and ultimately conceding on issues of trade — and on purchasing American soybeans.
• 
Next, throughout the evening, we are treated to little brief sound bytes of Biden.  "We choose [this] over [that] , [this] over [that]." I remember a Biden quote like that, but they omit the last part: "We choose unity over division.  We choose science over fiction.  We choose truth over facts." He really said that.
• 
We hear from George Floyd's brother: "My brother George was selfless." He does not mention the selflessness of George when he broke into a Black woman's home and pressed a firearm into her pregnant torso as he burglarized her home.
• 
He does not mention that, between 1997 and 2005, "selfless" George Floyd was sentenced to jail terms eight times on various charges, including drug possession, theft and trespass.
• 
In 2009, he was sentenced to five years in prison for that armed robbery invading that woman's home.
• 
On the day of his truly tragic death, Floyd's body was filled with restricted drugs including fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.
• 
Next we get lectured on COVID-19, on how President Trump has not handled the coronavirus battle the way the Democrats would.
• 
Who lectures us?  The inadvertent though recklessly liable mass killer, Governor Andrew Cuomo, who singularly has killed more people by leveraging Government to mishandle COVID-19 than has any other person alive.
• 
An Arizona young lady named Kristin Urquiza next comes on screen to blame President Trump for her father's death from coronavirus.  It is Trump's fault that her 65-year-old father got infected by coronavirus and died.
• 
So now she is her dead father's spokesperson.  Did she turn against Trump just now, with her Dad dying?  No.  Rather, her own biography at radical-left UC-Berkeley tells us:
• 
"...  I am confident we cannot enact the type of change we need without transforming our society's definition of ‘leader,' and I realize I am a trailblazer in the environmental movement for others like me — brown, queer, community-focused, ethically-minded changemakers; future leaders who are not benefiting from the current status quo and are ready to upend our current systems of oppression and privilege."
• 
This brings us to a bashing of the President over COVID.  The alternative is that Joe Biden would have saved us.
• 
There is no mention that Biden attacked Trump when the President closed air travel to visitors from China, where the coronavirus erupted and was virulent.
• 
How many more would have died if that infection source had not been cut off?  Is it Trump's fault that coronavirus exists throughout the world, that there have been "second waves" everywhere?
• 
Next we get Rockefeller Republicans, liberals who would vote Democrat — again.  ... And then we get poor rejected John Kasich, whom the Republican electorate roundly rejected during the 2016 GOP primaries.  So now he carries the bitterness by appearing four years later on the Democrats' show.
• 
Next, we get clips of Kirsten Gillibrand, Robert O'Rourke, and other dismally failed Democrat Presidential candidates.
• 
And then, at 10:36 p.m.  EDT, Bernie the Communist: This millionaire "Socialist" attacks "greed," though it is not clear from which of this millionaire's three houses he is speaking.
• 
He talks of people of color without reminding us that he fled the demographic diversity of Brooklyn for lily White Vermont.
• 
The same Bernie who supported and praised Castro Cuba, Hugo Chavez Venezuela, and extolled bread lines in the Communist Soviet Union when he honeymooned there tells us that he is concerned about Trump's commitment to democracy.
• 
He blames Trump for the economic crisis derived from the pandemic, overlooking that Trump had achieved the lowest unemployment numbers ever for Blacks, Latinos, and women and had boomed the economy until the tragedy of COVID came and destroyed economies uniformly all over the world.
• 
Bernie is not done.  He extols Biden for adopting sections of the Bernie agenda and reminds us that "the future of our economy is at stake."
• 
Next it is time for Michele Obama.  And she reminds us that, four years ago, the American people had a chance to extend the Obama vision by electing Hillary — and instead threw her out and freely dumped the entire Obama agenda.
• 
She tells us that "we don't stand in judgment," but she does not remind us that her husband, when the cameras were off, mocked Americans who "cling to their guns or religion" :
• 
"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
• 
She tells us that she "must be as honest and clear as she possibly can." She — the wife of Obama — tells us that Donald Trump is "in over his head." But —
• 
We saw what her husband Barack Obama did to stagnate the American economy for eight years.
• 
how Putin took the Crimea and marched into Eastern Ukraine on Obama's watch.
• 
how Obama signed a "climate accord" that imposed devastating restrictions on the American economy while allowing polluters like India and China free reign.
• 
We saw what Obama did with Iran, secretly flying $400 million blackmail in cash to Iran.
• 
We saw "Fast and Furious," Lois Lerner, and now are learning more daily about how the Obama government spied on the incoming Trump Administration and used the FBI to spy.
• 
And yet she tells us that Donald Trump, who boomed the economy, brought record unemployment lows, stopped Putin's expansions, deregulated the economy, transmogrified America from needing to import oil from Arab dictatorships to becoming a net energy exporter — that he is "in over his head."
• 
And we realize that Michele Obama was being as honest and clear "as she possibly can."
• 
End of Day One of the Democrat National Convention.  The rest was more of the same.
• 
Is this what the critical Independent voters of Middle America want?  One can only hope they will ask themselves that very same question because the convention's first night may have begun by catering to them, but it ended warning them what lies in store if Biden and Kamala slither in.
• 
See related About Right... (Michael Ramirez, 08/11/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      A time to hate  (INN 05/14/2020)
• 
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: ... A time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.  — Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 (KJV)
• 
Through eight years, I accepted the rules of the game.  Obama was president.
• 
He won fair and square because the Republicans serially put up two milquetoast opponents who were incapable of offering a vision or articulating a message that inspired.
• 
I accepted Obama.  I never articulated his first name, and I never called him "president," but I accepted the results and accepted that this Pretender was our country's lawfully elected chief executive.
• 
I watched his arrogance, the unctuous way he carried himself literally with his nose up, the way he never held a railing while walking a stairway because he was too cool, the kinds of human refuse he regularly invited as his White House guests, and I accepted it all with the soft whisper, "This, too, shall pass."
• 
I watched the Corrupt Journalist Corps idolize him, crown him a king, admire him as a messiah and a deity, and I accepted the milieu.
• 
This, too, in time would pass.  It meant living through eight years of the deepest public corruption.
• 
Amid my speeches and writings throughout the Wasted Obama Decade, I never published a piece aimed at bringing down Obama before his term was up.
• 
He won.  Although I saw him as despicable beyond words, the rules of the game, as set forth in America's Constitution, made him the U.S.  president.
• 
That meant Americans would die needlessly because of a commander in chief who was a Pretender and an Incompetent.  But he won fair and square.
• 
So ISIS grew from a small terror band to a caliphate.  ISIS-inspired terror attacks occurred in our homeland.  Western Europe sustained terrible deadly attacks.
• 
The American economy went nowhere.  Half a billion dollars ent down the drain with Solyndra while Obama tried to close down America's energy sector and maintain dependence on Arab oil, attacking the genius of hydraulic fracturing, obstructing oil exploration, blocking the construction of new pipelines that offered even more oil and more thousands of jobs.
• 
Instead, America got "shovel-ready jobs" that were not ready but rather were chummy payoffs to union heads and other political insiders.
• 
We got Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and Benghazi as testimonial to her vision.
• 
We got Susan Rice, raised paradoxically to head of national security after spending a day lying on five television stations about Benghazi and later going on to describe Bowe Bergdahl, a coward and deserter, as a hero who had served with honor and distinction.
• 
We saw the world's worst murderers freed from Gitmo so that they could rejoin the war against America.
• 
We got eight years of Washington attacking and trying to humiliate Israel while supporting Mahmoud Abbas, even refusing to veto a Security Council resolution that denied Jewish rights to Jerusalem.
• 
When Arab terrorists targeted and attacked a Jewish kosher-food market in France, Obama explained it away as an attack on a random deli.
• 
And yet I accepted that under the rules, he was in charge.  The waters did not stop rising on Obama's watch.  The Earth was not healed.
• 
On his watch, a country that finally had healed itself from the shame and scourge of imposing slavery on human beings more than a century earlier, a country that had atoned and that had created and institutionalized a new social infrastructure by which people no longer were denied because of their skin color or religion — a country that reflected that healing by electing a Black man president despite his manifest lack of personal achievement, close ties with an organized-crime felon, and questionable biography — suddenly erupted into a new era of racial bitterness.
• 
Michael Brown and Ferguson aflame amid the "Hands Up, Don't Shoot" lie promoted by Obama and by Eric Holder, but shot down by a Missouri grand jury.
• 
Freddie Gray and Baltimore aflame followed by a series of outright judicial exonerations handed down by a Black judge who saw that every accused cop had acted properly and lawfully.
• 
A lowlife killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, a thug whom Obama told us would have been the likes of his own son if he had had a son.
• 
Eight years of racial divide, social division aimed at tearing us up as a color-blind and religion-blind American People, just to promote electoral successes.
• 
And yet I accepted that Obama had won.  No derangement syndrome for me.  It was what it was.
• 
But these past three years have been something different.  Trump and Pence won fair and square.  But there was no grace.
• 
Advertisements urging electors to violate their Electoral College oaths.  Fabrications of collusion with Putin.  Investigations that hamstrung a presidency.
• 
Lies and innuendoes leaked and published by the unindicted co-conspirators we call the "mainstream media."
• 
A never-ending hunt to find scandals and Trump accusers: a bimbo who pole-danced at bars, her lawyer who now dances behind bars, another crooked lawyer who tape-recorded his own clients and now is locked up, disbarred from the Bar.  One cartoon character after another.
• 
I have come deeply to hate.  I hate that Donald Trump never was given a chance to be president of the United States for even one day's honeymoon.
• 
I hate that, long before he won the presidency — fair and square — corrupt crooks and criminals in the United States Department of Justice, its Federal Bureau of Investigation, were actively plotting to take him down.
• 
I hate that there are so few outlets in the media that give voice to condemn the criminality and corruption that broke every accepted societal norm by which we play the game.
• 
I hate that Obama was in on it, yet continues to pontificate on what is just and on what threatens freedom.
• 
I hate that they all keep getting away with it.  Every single one of them gets away with it.  There is absolutely no price to be paid on the left for perjury, for conspiracy to overturn a legitimate election, for treason.
• 
Lt.  Gen.  Flynn never deserved what was done to him.  He was targeted for destruction by criminals and crooks in the FBI.  They set out to destroy him.
• 
The FBI is not allowed to bother law-abiding people like you and me, to set us up, and to induce us to commit a crime.
• 
They are permitted to pursue criminal investigations only when they have a predicate before them.
• 
They took advantage of a good man who suddenly found himself combating in a different kind of military theater outside his field of expertise.
• 
He never should have been questioned about the call.  He never should have been sucked into an interview without an attorney present.  He never should have been lulled into what he said to the FBI.
• 
Donald Trump has been the chief executive of this country for more than three years, and he has proven to be a great president in so many ways, but he sadly has proven incapable of cleaning the swamp.
• 
He at least identified the swamp's existence, and he is fighting its effort to swallow him within its muck.
• 
But he has proven that, despite the glorious slogan he inspired, he cannot drain it.  Not one single slime in the swamp has been brought to justice.
• 
There is something so evil in a society that tolerates a dual standard of justice, dual standards of everything.
• 
On the one hand, we political conservatives harbor profoundly deep feelings, but we do not destroy people's lives based on abstract politics.
• 
Yes, we oppose them and expose them, and we hope that contemporary society and history judge them for the evil they represent.  But we do not destroy them in their lives.
• 
They get away with everything.  ... Not one single slime among them in the swamp has been brought to justice.
• 
These animals destroyed the life of Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn.  They drove him into such financial ruin that he had to sell his home to pay his legal bills.
• 
They went after a good boy, Nick Sandmann, and they cruelly made him into the face of racism.  His own Catholic diocese in eastern Kentucky sold him out and sold out all the boys who stood with him that fateful day in Washington, D.C., when he was harassed by a messed-up Indian with a drum.
• 
And they did everything they could to destroy Brett Kavanaugh, a good man, a family man, a man who has devoted time throughout his life to his church and to the need.  They endeavored through outright perjury to destroy him.
• 
The liars destroy with impunity because they know they always will get away with it.
• 
Republicans watch the character assassination and then go on Sean Hannity to sound brave for five minutes.
• 
They all got away with it.  Comey.  Brennan.  Clapper.  Blasey Ford.  Schiff.  Hillary.  Strzok.  Page.  McCabe.
• 
If the Left truly believed in the truth of the slogans they chanted in their failed effort to destroy Justice Kavanaugh, does anyone truly believe that Biden still would be standing today?
• 
There is a time to love and a time to hate.  This is a time to hate.
 Fitzpatrick  (06/01/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (11/07/2021) | Next sect (04/21/2021) | List bot 
      China's Communist Party vs.  the world — we must fight back before it's too late  (Fox 06/01/2021)
• 
As an FBI Counterintelligence Special Agent and federal prosecutor, every single crime that I ever solved was accomplished through one method more than any other: Following the money.
• 
Want a transparent view of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) whole-of-government "soft influence" campaign to take over the world?  Follow the money.
• 
A large chunk of the CCP's financing comes from intellectual property and trade secrets that they steal from us, literally, on a daily basis.
• 
As FBI Director Wray has stated: "It's the people of the United States who are the victims of what amounts to Chinese theft on a scale so massive that it represents one of the largest transfers of wealth in human history."
• 
It is estimated that the CCP's theft of American intellectual property currently costs us between $225 billion and $600 billion annually.  And that's only what we're aware of.
• 
Another large chunk of the CCP's financing comes from U.S.  businesses and U.S.  individuals willingly giving it to them.
• 
Unfortunately, countless American and other international companies have gone along with the CCP's foreign direct investment and joint venture requirements and have signed over their intellectual property, technology, and future profits to access the Chinese market.
• 
The CCP has used these U.S.  resources to steal our military secrets in a deliberate effort to replicate some of the United States' most critical weapons systems.
• 
The CCP's "debt-trap diplomacy" is also acquiring critical infrastructure in other countries through their predatory "Belt and Road" initiative, by building hundreds of billions of dollars in railroads, highways, ports, and shipping lanes, and then taking over critical assets when the borrowing country can (predictably) no longer afford to repay for the infrastructure.
• 
The CCP's intentions here are clear: to undermine America both domestically and internationally.
• 
... the CCP has identified the "Five Spheres" of American influence: Academia, Professional Sports, Hollywood, Media and Big Tech platforms.
• 
The CCP knows that if they can control these Five Spheres, they can change and influence American thinking from within.
• 
And, lest we forget, the CCP uses these resources to bio-engineer a highly contagious, highly deadly virus which, after an accidental leak followed by a criminal cover-up, leads to the death of over 3.5 million souls, costs our global economy over $30 trillion dollars, and causes permanent psychological and emotional damage to our children.
• 
The CCP's end goal?  First to become the world's economic superpower, then become the world's military superpower, then become the world's currency standard, so they can then spread their communist, authoritarian and totalitarian oppressive system across the globe when the world has zero defense mechanisms left.
• 
Not only are we allowing them to do this, we're paying them to do this.
• 
The solution?  Decouple from and isolate the CCP on all fronts.
• 
Sanction anyone who financially contributes, directly or indirectly, to their economy.  Strip them of their sovereign immunity for the CCP's role in the coronavirus pandemic.
• 
Revoke their "Most Favored Nation" status.  Remove them from the World Trade Organization.  Severely scrutinize and limit their visas.
• 
Prevent the World Bank from issuing them low-interest loans.  Harness and leverage every single international relationship we have to spread the truth of the CCP's sinister mission, loudly and clearly, across the globe.
• 
If we do all of this, we can't lose.  If we don't do all of this, we can't win.
• 
The current trajectory has China accomplishing their goals in a decade.  Will we stop them?  That entirely depends on the American resolve.
• 
China is banking and betting that we will fail this test.  Their tactic?  Through influencing our "Five Spheres," divide us against ourselves.  Turn American on American.  Implosion from within.
• 
That's the only way that the CCP can overtake us.  Let's not allow them to buy our silence, distract us, and turn us against each other.
• 
Democracy can only die in the dark.  We can win this fight.
• 
See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
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      Big Tech crushing free speech – this censorship report card reveals growing and dangerous bias  (Fox 04/21/2021)
• 
Big Tech went to war with conservatives in a place that was once one of the most free places on earth – the internet.
• 
The power-mad powerbrokers of Big Tech went after President Donald Trump following the Capitol Hill riot.  At least 10 separate tech companies censored him.  Trump had long been in their sights.
• 
Leftist journalists and their friends in the tech world were furious that he had used social media to win election in 2016.  They spent years getting revenge.
• 
It wasn't enough that they censored him and his campaign 625 times, compared to zero for Team BIden.  The tech overlords were determined to take away his online powerbase and used the Capitol Hill riot as an excuse to do so.
• 
Once Big Tech companies got away with that, they figured they could do anything to anybody.
• 
The results were staggering.  Three major tech firms tried to destroy the free speech platform Parler.  Google and Apple proved to the whole world they have too much control of app downloads for phones.
• 
Amazon Web Services followed by banning Parler from its platform, effectively shutting down the social media site for more than five weeks.
• 
Amazon Employees For Climate Justice, one of the many leftist pressure groups in the tech world, demanded the company censor Parler.
• 
The incident was just one more reminder that Big Tech is liberal from top to bottom.
• 
Of course, Amazon was being completely hypocritical.  The riot was organized more heavily on Facebook and Twitter, according to news reports.  But Amazon didn't target them.
• 
Amazon's attitude about hate was especially ironic, given the preponderance of it on the Amazon platform.  Our analysis of the things the company sells found at least 270 hateful items.
• 
Those included close to 100 items with Nazi or White supremacist symbols and runes – jewlery, patches, flags and clothing.  Amazon even sold a T-shirt with the slogan "Kill All Republicans."
• 
Nothing typifies Amazon's attitude toward the right better than a shirt calling to kill every member of the opposing political party.
• 
See related Hang Em’ High-Tech (Antonio Branco, 01/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Marching (Mike Shelton, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related Out of Books (Mike Lester, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Dan Gainor: Can conservative speech online survive 2020 efforts to stop Trump?  (Fox 02/27/2020)
• 
The 2020 presidential election won't just be a battle about who wins the White House.
• 
It's a fight to see if the idea of free speech can survive a full-on attack from the very forces that once claimed to support such freedom.
• 
Social media sites — like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook — have become the most active political battlegrounds.
• 
But this election, conservatives are battling for their right to simply stay on the platforms and spread their message.
• 
The issue of Big Tech bias against conservatives escalated rapidly after the 2016 election.
• 
The major media alleged a minor Russian influence operation had helped Trump win.
• 
The narrative stuck and both journalists and tech staff have been having a collective freakout ever since.
• 
What has followed has been an ever-growing battle over what people can say and do on social media.
• 
Conservatives are fighting for free speech on platforms run by liberal executives with heavily liberal workplaces.
• 
They have created policies that reflect their left-wing worldview and then have those same biased employees enforce them.
• 
The companies have employed so-called "fact-checkers" who push left-wing opinion as fact and restrict traffic to conservative outlets that don't bow to their agenda.
• 
The companies have expanded their so-called "hate speech" policies so much that they've grown to hundreds or even thousands of words.
• 
The resulting documents are legalese only a lawyer could love and vague enough to ban everything from the Declaration of Independence to the Bible.
• 
The pressure on social media companies to do even more is immense.
• 
Actor Sacha Baron Cohen, who made a career with offensive speech and characters like "Borat," has decided that others should not be given the same opportunity online.
• 
He has been at the forefront of those who want to limit what the platforms allow, using the slogan, "Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach."
• 
In other words, the platforms don't have to allow whatever you say to be seen by anyone else.
• 
Traditional media outlets have pushed the firms to restrict advertising and even shut down Trump's Twitter account.
• 
Some of the companies gave in and restricted political ads.
• 
Facebook didn't and has been bombarded by negative press.
• 
... The Washington Post wrote a massive article ridiculously claiming that Facebook "has tilted rightward" because it refuses to restrict political ads.
• 
And Zuckerberg, desperate for a way out of the conflict, wrote an op-ed in The Financial Times headlined: "Big Tech needs more regulation."
• 
Conservatives have pushed for fair treatment.  ... The goals are simple — to preserve the ability of people to share their opinions online without companies and governments stopping them.
• 
The potential of social media remains incredible and gives every person the chance to share his or her views around the world.
• 
... Google alone could influence up to 15 million votes this election simply by how it displays search results.
• 
The other top social media companies have the power and reach to influence elections across the globe, not just here in the United States.
• 
Most of these companies are based here in the United States.
• 
They should be spreading American ideals of freedom and not trying to turn the online world into a global safe space.
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      Texas school shooting was evil.  Here are 8 steps to confront it  (Fox 05/27/2022)
• 
Evil exists.  Evil hunts for opportunities to infect humans.  Humans infected and overpowered by evil do horrible things.
• 
The more than two-centuries-old drive to replace religion with secularism and faith with popular rationale, has been a stunning failure in the disasters it has created for mere mortals.
• 
Swapping Isaiah for Freud and the Gospels for modern psychology has left a nation of empty souls – and a desperation for meaning.
• 
As people become desperate in the absence of inner faith and meaning, their need for reassurance and a sense of being alive leads to more dangerous addictions.  The search for salvation is replaced by the search for sensation.
• 
Far too many people behave as though they have become gods in redefining their sexuality, their right to be addicts, and their right to harm themselves and others.  A godless world is a dangerous jungle filled with predators and victims.
• 
Ancient Greeks warned that hubris (excessive pride – and specifically a belief that you are beyond the laws of gods and nature) attracts Nemesis (a spirit of vengeance who inflicted retribution upon arrogance and caused powerful humans to fall from great heights to great depths).
• 
The West's rejection of God and salvation, its focus on self and the right to redefine reality, and the assertion of earthly values over spiritual values, attract the multitude of nemeses we now face.
• 
If we are really going to change the trajectory of decay and death, we must be prepared to bring back into our public dialogue a set of values and ideas that the current establishment will find frightening and totally unacceptable.
• 
Here are a few first steps: First, acknowledge evil exists in our society.
• 
Second, allow prayer in schools.  Students should be allowed to pray freely in circumstances which don't disrupt classrooms.
• 
Third, recognize that the experiment in closing mental hospitals and putting severely ill people on the street has been a huge failure and has led to levels of drug addiction, violence, murder, and decay which would have been unthinkable a generation ago.
• 
Fourth, recognize that bringing God back into public dialogue is essential.  The Alcoholics Anonymous 12 steps program is a prime example.  Among other things, participants must admit they are powerless; acknowledge they need a greater power to manage their lives; confess their deepest failings to God, themselves, and others; and ask God to forgive and remove those failings from them.
• 
Fifth, we must recognize that Rev.  Martin Luther King Jr.'s hope of a country in which the content of our character is more important than the color of our skin suggests that re-centering education and much of life on character development is vital.  Simply asking what has happened to the character of people who commit violence, sell drugs, and prey upon others starts a totally different conversation about solutions.
• 
Sixth, the drug crisis and the deaths from overdose are now such an epidemic we should re-establish widespread drug testing and mandatory rehabilitation.
• 
Seventh, threats of imminent, aggravated violence on the internet must be quickly detectable, unacceptable, and punishable.
• 
Eighth, the legal system must be radically overhauled so murderers and drug dealers can face speedy punishment.  A legal system which takes years to execute sentences – and involves massive procedural obstructions – is a system which separates crime from punishment and has no effective impact on deterring potential criminals.  Justice must be swift to deter unacceptable behavior.
• 
These examples are designed to begin a dialogue.  Some of these ideas may work.  Some may be rejected.  Others may be improved.
• 
Bringing God back into the public dialogue and acknowledging the existence of evil as a real danger to humanity are important first steps.
      Biden says 'no' to Ukraine's Zelenskyy — and keeps America in the backseat  (Fox 03/17/2022)
• 
The world's democracies are cowering.  Without any clear leadership, we have been left to clamor over which aircraft and weapons to provide the Ukrainians – and how we can do so in the most timid, feckless way possible.  These debates have stagnated the whole process of ending the war...
• 
The reality is that while the West is squabbling over trivial questions, the Ukrainian president and his people are fighting for their lives.
• 
Our cowardice, confusion, and incompetence on the global stage feeds Putin's evil and weakens the resolve and morale of the Ukrainians, who believe that democracy is something worth fighting for.  Every day that we are hand-wringing, Ukrainians are dying, and freedom is getting weaker.
• 
American incompetence from the White House to the Pentagon is unacceptable.  The Biden administration is the most fearful and pathetic administration in modern American history.
• 
However, America has an enormous capacity to defeat Putin.  Decisive American action would result in Putin being driven out of power altogether.  Our technology and weapons are superior to that of any other nation.
• 
But instead of confronting Putin, we are watching him commit war crimes and unravel democracy altogether.
• 
Each day Putin is allowed to succeed, he will become more ruthless, evil, and emboldened.  And no one should think he will stop with Ukraine.
      War on critical race theory: Gov.  Noem emerges as national leader in fight against classroom indoctrination  (Fox 02/05/2022)
• 
All across America over the past year, a growing army of concerned parents has been rising up to take a stand against political indoctrination in the classroom.
• 
Through training and curriculum, educators and students are being inundated with left-wing politics and malicious concepts which deliberately pit Americans against one another.
• 
As an historian, I believe deeply in teaching young Americans about their nation's history — that includes our mistakes and shortcomings.
• 
But it also includes our heroes and values.  The glorious revolution in human freedom and equality that began in 1776 remains a work in progress even today.
• 
Teaching honest history is not about prompting second-graders in a class read-aloud to actively differentiate the characters in a book by race, as one educator in Connecticut was told to do.  That teacher recently resigned in protest.
• 
Teaching honest history is not making high school students play "privilege bingo" to better understand their supposed unearned advantages over other students, as happened in Virginia.  One such unearned advantage listed was being a "military kid."
• 
This isn't about "teaching racism" or "teaching history." This is about teaching ideology – and thankfully Republican governors and legislators around the country are not sitting idly by and doing nothing.
• 
While it is less well known, action civics is a key battleground in the left's assault on our schools.  It is designed to indoctrinate our youngest students into political activism.
• 
The idea behind action civics is to give students course credit for participating in protests and advocacy campaigns which overwhelmingly support left-wing causes.
• 
So, CRT makes students hate their country, then action civics turns them into foot soldiers for the Woke Revolution.
• 
America's big government socialists have wedded themselves to the false, destructive ideology that their own country is systemically evil and racist.
• 
Rather than working to build an America in which one's future is defined by merit and character, they are promoting education materials and rules that encourage students to see race in every facet of their lives.
• 
This is why restoring honest, patriotic education is so important.  It's about telling the full story of America.
• 
Our next generation must understand the bravery of George Washington and the brilliance of Thomas Jefferson.
• 
Likewise, they must understand the selflessness of Rev.  Martin Luther King Jr.  and the steely resolve of Rosa Parks.
• 
Regardless of the left's lies, all these heroes fought for the same fundamental vision –"one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all."
• 
See related Alligator in the Pool (Dick Wright, 07/08/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Garbage in... (Bob Gorrell, 05/16/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Parents (Mike Shelton, 11/05/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Biden-Dems' Big Government Socialism isn't working  (Fox 12/12/2021)
• 
It is important to tie the continuing failures all around us to the underlying philosophy of Big Government Socialism, which simply does not work.
• 
The Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress are committed to the most radical experiment in imposing government on Americans since the British failed to coerce free Americans in the period from 1770 to 1783.
• 
Big Government Socialism seeks to control our bodies through vaccination and mask mandates while controlling our minds through radical indoctrination in schools, businesses and government offices.
• 
This passion for total control fits the warnings of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World," George Orwell's "1984" and "Animal Farm," and Friedrich Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom."
• 
We have seen this kind of radical effort to remake society before – from the Jacobins of the French Revolution, the Russian Communist effort to create the New Soviet Man, and the thought control of Maoist China (which is still underway with Xi Jinping as the new Mao).
• 
Again and again, radical belief systems have tried to force people into a government-imposed version of reality.
• 
Why not release murderers, rapists, robbers and others back into the population?  Why not recognize and speak well of the Taliban and other terrorists?  Why not tolerate the aggression of Communist China, Vladimir Putin's Russia, the Iranian Mullahs or the dictatorship of Kim Jong Un?  They are committed to the Big Government Socialist worldview, why be mean to them?
• 
If you don't want to study and succeed in school, the Big Government Socialists will simply abolish grades, so you don't feel bad.
• 
If you work hard and save, the Big Government Socialists will take your money to give it to others who have learned to be dependent on government.
• 
If you have been diligent and acquired some property, the Big Government Socialists will tolerate criminals who steal your hard-earned goods or vandalize your home or business.
• 
... as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money."
      Congress must investigate Hunter Biden – and those protecting him.  Here's why  (Fox 12/05/2021)
• 
As more stories about Hunter Biden's meetings with foreign agents in Serbia, China and elsewhere come out, serious scrutiny will become unavoidable.
• 
The evidence is overwhelming that Hunter Biden's activities in Ukraine, Russia and China have direct national security implications.
• 
We simply do not know how much the Biden administration's weakness toward Communist China is influenced by the Chinese corruption of the Biden family and its allies.
• 
We do not know how much Vladimir Putin has been emboldened by his knowledge of the corruption of Hunter Biden – and through him the governing family of the United States.
• 
There has been a complete absence of honesty and inquiry from the FBI and the Justice Department.
• 
It is amazing that the Hunter Biden laptop has not already led to an indictment of President Biden's son for a series of amazing influence-peddling schemes.
• 
Sadly, the U.S.  attorney for Delaware, where the laptop was found and where the Bidens live, has shown no interest in pursuing a case that involves public corruption at the highest levels.
• 
The FBI has had the laptop and yet nothing has been done to pursue the clear corruption outlined in the various emails it contains.
• 
Hunter Biden's irresponsible marketing of "a unique relationship" with the vice president during the Obama years, (then with a presidential candidate, and now with the president) has enormous national security implications.
• 
It is no accident that Hunter was actively seeking business in Communist China, Putin's Russia and Ukraine.
• 
These were countries keenly interested in developing influence in Washington and it seems they felt they were getting real access and impact through Hunter and his family.
• 
Former U.S.  Navy Lt.  Tony Bobulinski has had virtually all his allegations of Biden corruption validated by the emails discovered in the Hunter Biden laptop.
• 
.His allegations clearly implicated the president and his son – and suggest a Biden family mired in the most venal kinds of corruption.
• 
Imagine the contempt with which Chinese, Russian and Ukrainian bribers must have looked at the cocaine-using, prostitute-hiring son of a major national politician as they paid him again and again for influence.
• 
Ask yourself: Is it at all plausible that all this foreign money and business was coming to Hunter Biden – a clearly unqualified, deeply troubled and totally unprepared broker – and Joe Biden did not ask about it, look into it or ask staff to monitor what Hunter was doing?
• 
If Joe Biden knew, he is clearly implicated in corruption involving foreign powers.  If he willfully avoided knowing, it would be a sign of parental indifference and determined neglect that seems almost impossible to believe.
• 
It is vital that any investigation include Hunter Biden and his associates (which may or may not include his father).  It should also look into the network of cover-up officials who were clearly failing to do their duty and the widespread collection of traditional and social media collaborators who consciously suppressed and lied about Hunter Biden's corruption.
• 
How could the FBI have avoided taking apart the Hunter Biden laptop and tracking down the details found in the emails?
• 
How could the authorities have avoided tracking the vice president's son as he dealt with nations actively dangerous to America?
• 
What officials made the decisions to avoid looking and avoid knowing?
• 
Not since Hillary Clinton deleted more than 33,000 emails while her staff used a hammer to literally destroy the hard drives on her computer has there been such a willful avoidance of knowledge by law enforcement officials.
• 
When you compare the Justice Department's benign neglect of Clinton and Hunter Biden with its illegal overreach in pursuing what we now know was a totally phony Russian dossier designed to smear President Donald Trump, it is clear something is profoundly sick in our federal criminal justice system.
      Waukesha Christmas parade mass murder coverage is low point in American journalism  (Fox 12/03/2021)
• 
The willful avoidance of facts and deliberate obscuring of what happened in Waukesha, Wisconsin is a low point in American journalism nationally.
• 
It is stunning how much the propaganda media distorted and misreported the massacre at the Christmas parade last week.
• 
Here are the facts: The alleged killer, Darrell Brooks Jr., is an African American who was previously released from jail on an "inappropriately low bail" after reportedly running over the mother of his child with a car.
• 
He has openly talked about using a vehicle to kill people and posted anti-white racism on social media.  On Nov.  21, he reportedly used his car to murder six people and maim more than 60 others (including children and senior citizens).
• 
These horrendous facts apparently violate the established media's narrative of inherent White racism and Black victimization.
• 
The propaganda media's answer has been to simply avoid the facts and focus on reporting which can at best be described as inadequate and at worst be described as maliciously dishonest and misleading.
• 
The amazing thing is that this was not the work of one or two news outlets.  Consider this deafening repetition of false and misleading headlines:
• 
"After SUV slammed into Wis.  Parade and killed 5, driver to be charged with homicide" (The Washington Post, Nov.  22)
• 
"A sixth victim has died after the Waukesha Christmas parade crash, prosecutors say" (CNN, Nov.  23)
• 
"Child is 6th death in Waukesha parade crash: suspect charged" (AP, Nov.  23)
• 
"Waukesha parade crash suspect captured on doorbell camera shortly after crash" (USA Today, Nov.  23)
• 
"More than a dozen remain hospitalized after deadly Waukesha parade crash" (CNN, Nov.  25)
• 
Read these headlines and ask yourself: Was this a crash or an intentionally malicious act of violence?  Did the SUV drive into the crowd and murder or maim people, or did the person driving it?  Is that person a "crash suspect" or a suspected mass murderer?
• 
The propaganda media (as the mouthpiece of the left) seems on the verge of calling for SUV control akin to gun control.  The SUV only did what its homicidal driver wanted it to do.
• 
But recognizing that the driver is an African American with a criminal history who spouts racism on social media appears politically unacceptable.
• 
Saying so would have destroyed years of carefully convincing people of the left's vision of a "systemically racist" White America preying upon innocent African American victims.
• 
The headlines were just the start.  News outlets also took to Twitter.  "HAPPENING NOW: The man accused of deadly Christmas parade crash in Waukesha, WI makes his first court appearance" (CBS News, Nov.  23)
• 
"Waukesha will hold a moment of silence today, marking one week since a car drove through a city Christmas parade, killing six people and injuring scores of others." Here, on Nov.  28, CNN asserted that "a car" drove through the parade as though it weren't being driven by a person.
• 
Similarly, The Washington Post withdrew a tweet after it absurdly posted, "Here's what we know so far on the sequence of events that led to the Waukesha tragedy caused by a SUV."
• 
Again, the newspaper suggested this "tragedy" – not mass murder or a massacre – was "caused by a SUV." It can't be an individual held to account, because that violates the spirit of collective guilt and societal causation at the heart of the left's worldview.
• 
On television, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow spent an entire segment on the horrific attack without mentioning Brooks once.  She only referred to him as "the suspect." MSNBC didn't put his mugshot on screen during the segment.
• 
On the day of the attack, Maddow reported, "A red SUV inexplicably sped into the parade route and then directly into people marching in the parade and people watching on the sidewalk."
• 
Note, she said, "inexplicably sped into the parade route." What a lie.  The vehicle was deliberately driven at a high speed by a man who had recently used a car to attack someone.
• 
Only after all the national false coverage did the truth began to come out in local media.  ... "Darrell Brooks Jr., the driver accused in the Waukesha Christmas Parade massacre, is charged with sixth count of first-degree homicide."
• 
This is a disgraceful act of deliberate false reporting and misinformation by the national media to protect a political ideology.  The journalists involved should be ashamed of themselves.
• 
The American people should remember this effort to misinform them and protect the narrative of the left at the expense of the truth, respect for the victims, and justice for their families and loved ones.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Biden's Afghanistan surrender – who will be held accountable for this national disgrace?  (Fox 09/12/2021)
• 
We surrendered the country that we'd been defending to a seventh-century tribe, which had endured immense casualties and was unable to defeat the U.S.  on the battlefield.
• 
But the Taliban was able to defeat America politically and psychologically.
• 
How can we have spent 20 years, thousands of lives, and trillions of dollars and then lose to a band of medieval thugs with no air force?
• 
This is the kind of question the generals, diplomats and analysts should be asking in the halls of government.
• 
It's troubling how unfazed many of our leaders appear to be, especially the principals of the Biden administration.
• 
What they don't seem to understand – or perhaps worse, don't recognize the importance of – is that what happened in Afghanistan isn't just about Afghanistan.
• 
China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, other jihadists – they're all taking note of what's transpired over the past several weeks.  The world now sees America as completely unreliable.
• 
Accountability is absolutely crucial to come to grips with how big a problem this is and to reestablish respect among allies and enemies.
• 
The leaders who, through their shameless incompetence, threw away two decades of sacrifice in a matter of days, left Americans behind enemy lines, betrayed our Afghan allies, and left Afghanistan to reemerge as a terrorist haven must be held responsible.
• 
When Biden decided to push ahead with his plan ... Austin and Milley had two choices: resign in protest or follow the order and take responsibility for the outcome.
• 
Unfortunately, no one is taking responsibility – not Biden, not Austin, not Milley.  And the nation will suffer as a result, with its leaders refusing to learn lessons from their failures.
      Newt Gingrich: Biden's Afghanistan debacle reminds us that when the world gets tough, Joe hides from reality  (Fox 08/18/2021)
• 
The gap between the television scenes of thousands of panic-stricken Afghans desperate to leave their country and Biden's calm, almost subdued speech was enormous.
• 
He stoically defended his decision to surrender and blamed everyone except for his own administration for the disastrously chaotic, dangerous U.S.  exit from the country.
• 
Meanwhile, the rest of the world witnessed a clearly massive failure of leadership in which the American government turned its back on a 20-year ally.
• 
How could Biden say, "I have been clear that human rights must be the center of our foreign policy, not the periphery," as the Taliban begins to oppress every woman and girl in the country and institute a policy of seizing women and girls to force them to marry Taliban fighters?
• 
Does Biden truly not understand that the Taliban victory is a massive victory against women by a medieval movement rooted in the ideas of the 7th century?
• 
How could Biden smear the courageous Afghans who had risked their lives for decades fighting against the Taliban and allying with the United States?
• 
This is among the most cowardly lies any American president has said about an ally.  While some 2,448 Americans have been killed in the 20-year war, the Afghan military has lost nearly 30 times as many (an estimated 69,000).
• 
This by no means diminishes the sacrifice and bravery of American troops – but it refutes Biden's callous denigration of our Afghan allies.
• 
Further, to suggest that the interpreters, guides, and informants who risked their lives – and their family's lives – helping American troops were unwilling to sacrifice for their own future is a vicious lie told by a failing leader who is trying to mask his own incompetence.
• 
Contrast Biden's words Monday with his words in July, when he told reporters a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan was not inevitable.  At that time, he said, "the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban.  It is not inevitable... Do I trust the Taliban?  No.  But I trust the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped, and more re- — more competent in terms of conducting war."
• 
See how quickly Biden turns his back on allies when he's trying to save face?  Can you also see how dangerous this is for America?  With the world watching the Biden decision to chaotically cut and run on an ally, why should Taiwan, the Europeans, South Korea, or any other ally trust and rely on President Biden?
• 
There is a reason former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (who served under Presidents George W.  Bush and Barack Obama) said Biden has been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." When the world gets tough, Biden hides from reality.
• 
And to be perfectly clear: This is dangerous for our allies, our troops abroad – and Americans at home.
• 
With a historically porous southern border, President Biden is presiding over the recreation of a worldwide wave of terrorist enthusiasm – and the rebuilding of a terrorist sanctuary in Afghanistan.  If there was ever a time for implementing serious, robust border security, it is now.
• 
Unfortunately, President Biden's failure in Afghanistan is just the latest in a series of failures that weakened America and strengthened hostile nations.
• 
Killing the Keystone XL pipeline and attacking American energy production while approving the Russian pipeline to our allies in Western Europe hurt America.
• 
Dividing and demoralizing the American military with internal, ideological witch hunts and special courses on woke radical social values is enabling the Chinese and Russians to keep their militaries focused on learning how to defeat us.
• 
Responding to the continuing and enormous Chinese military buildup (including two new intercontinental ballistic missile fields) with an American defense budget that has no increase – even while the U.S.  Navy is shrinking to its weakest position since before World War I – is hurting America.
      Newt Gingrich: Fighting 'woke industrial complex' – here's how we restore faith, patriotism and morality  (Fox 08/15/2021)
• 
Stakeholder capitalism is the idea that companies should serve not only their shareholders but also other interests and society at large.
• 
This ideology, championed by America's business and political leaders, promises a better, more diverse, and environmentally friendly world.  Social justice is the purported goal.
• 
In reality, this insidious idea is an invitation for politics to infect business, creating a marriage between big business and big government that has the two working in concert.
• 
The result is a hybrid behemoth of immense power, capable of controlling our money, our voice, even our identity.
• 
One way this malevolent force exercises power is by creating a culture of fear.  Anyone who questions woke dogma is labeled a racist and effectively exiled as a pariah.
• 
Big Tech silences conservative speech under the Orwellian guise of stopping "misinformation." The list of authoritarian tactics goes on.
• 
... we live in a moment when both religion and patriotism are on the decline.  There is a dark void at the center of our national identity being filled by malevolent forces.  One of those forces is wokeness, which has all the characteristics of a religion but does more to divide than to unite us.
• 
Absent faith, patriotism and any sense of a traditional, objective morality, multiple generations of younger Americans are hungry for identity and a sense of purpose.  For many, wokeness is serving as a seductive yet ultimately inadequate replacement.
• 
Contributing to our current cultural crisis is a deep and justified mistrust of society's most prominent institutions.
• 
From corporate America to the media to our education system, we're being lied to and fed propaganda about COVID-19, race and our own history.
• 
The proper response to all this is to push back with a renewed vision of moral and American identity that is more meaningful and satisfying than wokeness.
• 
This is a crucial moment in American history.  We must begin to counter the insidious advances of the woke industrial complex and work to restore faith, patriotism and a proper sense of morality to our culture.
• 
See related The Circle of Life (Glenn McCoy, 03/30/2016) cartoon from Government picture album
      Crisis of American civilization – here's what we must do to oppose forces trying to destroy US  (Fox 04/18/2021)
• 
We are now in a crisis of American civilization fully as dangerous and real as the crisis of the U.S.  Civil War or World War II.
• 
During both those crises, if America had lost, it would have ceased to be America – and the cause of freedom around the world would have been dramatically weakened.
• 
Today, we face combined internal and external threats that are as great or greater.
• 
Internationally, we face a surging China whose economic, scientific and technological power is now fully competitive with the United States.
• 
The announcement of a joint China-Russia moon project is an example of the collective authoritarian challenge to the American-led freedom coalition.
• 
However dangerous the foreign challenges are they fade away when compared with the domestic threats to American civilization.  Consider these indicators that our civilization is beginning to fall apart.
• 
Several days of looting and rioting in Minnesota have occurred even as a trial of a former policeman is underway proving the rule of law works.
• 
A policeman is killed during a car stop in New Mexico, and our elites ignore the murder.  ... There is a war on police underway with 264 killed in 2020, a jump of 96% over the previous year.
• 
Faced with aggressive criminal behavior and violence against innocent people – including young children being killed – Democratic Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib calls for "no more policing, incarceration and militarization."
• 
In Seattle, Portland and Milwaukee, no-go zones similar to those in France have been created that are effectively localized secessions from the United States.
• 
Portland continues to be attacked nightly by anarchists.  Despite pious statements by public officials, no effective action is underway to restore law and order.
• 
In San Francisco, the declaration by the communist district attorney that theft under $900 will not be prosecuted has led to so much shoplifting that Walgreens is closing all 10 of its drugstores in the city.
• 
The threat to American civilization goes far beyond violence in the streets.
• 
Woke CEOs who refuse to condemn genocide and police state tyranny in China are quick to attack Georgia – even though President Joe Biden was just plain wrong (perhaps lying) about the state's new election law.
• 
The television establishment systematically lied to defeat President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.  CNN's Charlie Chester recently asserted: "I came to CNN to be a part of that.  Look what we did, we [CNN] got Trump out.  I am 100% going to say it, and I 100% believe that if it wasn't for CNN, I don't know that Trump would have got voted out...I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that."
• 
Of course, The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, NBC, CBS and ABC would dispute any CNN claim that it alone defeated Trump.  The two papers won Pulitzer Prizes for lying about Trump.
• 
Traditional media hostility and dishonesty are overshadowed by the internet giants, who are increasingly acting like Russian oligarchs.  They are trying to erase a leader who was supported by more than 75 million Americans with a ruthlessness worthy of Soviet tyranny and the Chinese Communist Party.
• 
Crony capitalism is becoming bolder as big government and big business reinforce each other at the country's expense.
• 
Overt racism through race-based reparations, school quotas, and anti-white and anti-male curricula are a return to government-fueled discrimination and segregation.
• 
Finally, when the state of California is considering requiring students to chant every day to an Aztec god who was the center of a human sacrifice cult, there are sound reasons to believe American civilization is in crisis. 
• 
If we are going to remain America, we must oppose the forces trying to destroy us.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Hang Em’ High-Tech (Antonio Branco, 01/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related USA (Gary Varvel, 01/04/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Gingrich: Senators who vote to convict Trump take part in 'profound attack on the American system'  (Fox 02/09/2021)
• 
"The idea that a bunch of politicians in D.C.  think that they have the power to say to 75 million Americans 'We will decide whether or not you get to vote for this guy again' — that is such a profound attack on the entire American system."
• 
"The level of corruption and ego that that suggests, for everybody that votes yes is astonishing.  Instead of talking about President Trump, talk about Citizen Trump.  He's a citizen."
• 
... Congress does not have the power to hold a trial-like forum against a private citizen in an effort to "limit their opportunities."
• 
"This is one of the most profound attacks we've seen on the American system, The oligarchs, the Big Tech companies, the propaganda media, all of them are on the same team.  They're all in favor of crushing the American people's right to pick the leaders that they want and instead impose the leaders that the elites want.  I think it's an amazing moment."
• 
... the trial itself is corrupt because the presiding officer, Senate President Pro Tempore Pat Leahy, D-Vt., has previously made overtures in support of voting to impeach Trump.
• 
"How can you have a judge who has already announced that he wants conviction?  This is like an old western.  No resemblance to a real trial.  It's a mock trial and pathetic."
• 
... Trump's attorneys should subpoena Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep.  Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and question them about their use of inflammatory rhetoric.
• 
"They can find 20 or 30 Democrats, and they should list all of them and say, 'These are our first defense witnesses and we want the Senate to subpoena every one of these and demand that they come and testify.'"...
      Newt Gingrich: Biden says one thing, does the opposite  (Fox 01/23/2021)
• 
After watching the elite liberal media gush over the inauguration of President Biden, I have waited for someone to analyze the fascinating difference between his inaugural speech and his inaugural actions.
• 
I thought the speech was incredibly well-delivered.  The new president promised unity, togetherness and finding common ground.  It was a speech of classic American bipartisanship and civic goodwill.
• 
Biden said he would reach out to everyone, work with everyone, and be an American president rather than a Democratic partisan president.
• 
The speech strongly reminded me of President Barack Obama's first inaugural address.
• 
And in fact, I had about the same takeaway for Biden's speech as I did for Obama's: If the president leads the way he's speaking — and acts as he says he will — he will split the Republican Party and have a large, American governing majority for his entire presidency.
• 
Of course, President Obama didn't do this.  He quickly went to the left and lost his majorities in the House and Senate.  Based on President Biden's first days, it seems he is following the same Obama playbook.
• 
Hours after giving his excellent inaugural speech, Biden went to the White House and signed 17 executive orders — including more than a dozen that totally contradict his pledge of bipartisanship, unity and finding common ground.
• 
Instead, he began the process of tearing down everything President Trump did — erasing everything Trump achieved — no matter how it benefited Americans or how many Americans supported it.
• 
We can start with immigration — an issue on which the country has long been deeply split.  President Biden immediately withdrew President Trump's emergency declaration that was funding the wall and additional security at the Southern border.
• 
President Biden canceled his predecessor's order to exclude people in the country illegally from the state-by-state Census Bureau tallies for determining the number of congressional and Electoral College seats.
• 
President Biden also withdrew President Trump's orders that made it easier for law enforcement to deport people who are in the country illegally — including people who have broken laws unrelated to their immigration status.
• 
Biden said the U.S.  – with zero stated conditions — would rejoin the World Health Organization, which continues to be beholden to Communist China and continues to lie about the origins of COVID-19 on the Chinese Communist Party's behalf.
• 
President Biden's decision to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement was, of course, inevitable.  ... Ironically, the goal of the Paris Climate Agreement has been more than met by the US.
• 
Because we've moved toward natural gas and away from coal, our carbon emissions are drastically lower than even before we joined the agreement under President Obama.  No other country in the world has reduced its environmental impact as deeply as the United States.  But this only matters if you care about reality more than symbolism.
• 
President Biden also canceled the Keystone XL pipeline to move oil from Canada to the U.S.  This was totally divisive.
• 
The pipeline was also a critical piece of President Trump's plan to keep the U.S.  energy independent.  But the left didn't like the idea of the pipeline, so it's out.
• 
To quickly name a few more, President Biden ended President Trump's travel ban on majority-Muslim countries that lacked appropriate security.  (It was never a "Muslim ban" as the left asserted.  Seven countries do not represent the entire Muslim world.)
• 
Further, why — in the midst of a pandemic — would you lift any travel bans from unstable nations?
• 
As a final example from the longer list ... President Biden's rescinding the 1776 Commission goes to the heart of the argument over our nation's identity.
• 
It is has become near-theology for the left to believe that America cannot be exceptional, and that people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson must not be considered serious contributors to our history.
• 
The left believes every American should ascribe to The New York Times' 1619 Project, which reframes all of American history around slavery and discredits virtually every person who had a hand in writing the U.S.  Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, or in winning the American Revolution.
• 
Now, none of this should be construed as a wish or desire that President Biden fail as our chief executive.
• 
Unless you are irrational, every American should want the American president to succeed.  If the president doesn't succeed, America gets in trouble.
• 
This should be taken as a challenge to Biden to make sure his actions match his words.  So far, I see the new president talking about unity and calling for all of us to work together, but I'm curious about who he thinks "us" really is.
• 
See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gingrich: Dems 'methodically trying to destroy conservatism' with Biden as 'pleasant cover'  (Fox 01/22/2021)
• 
"I think you are seeing the hysteria of the Biden system, because it's not really about Biden himself."
• 
"It's his entire team around him who are radicals who believe that they could exterminate the Republicans.  That would be one way to get the 'unity'."
• 
... noted the case of New York Times contributor Will Wilkinson who had joked that if Biden meant what he said about unity, he would "lynch Mike Pence."
• 
"That gives you a sense of the ferocity and the anger and the hatred that underlies the modern left."
• 
... "you have to think in terms of the Biden machine, not Biden personally.  Biden didn't personally sit down and draft 17 executive orders — but radicals on his staff did."
• 
"Think about this.  On the very day he was sworn in as president, he signed an executive order to destroy the 1776 Commission.  And all of our viewers tonight ought to ask themselves, what is it about this 1776 Commission that made it such a big deal that Biden went out of his way to destroy it on his first day of office?"
• 
"The answer is it is a pro-American, pro-history, pro-fact commission which threatens the very essence of the modern left and ... all of their lies about the makeup of America."
• 
... went on to contrast the "smiling" visage of Biden on the inaugural stage with the dangerous and divisive policies he immediately enacted upon leaving it.
• 
"I thought it was a great speech.  I thought it had all the right tone.  But I also know that if Eisenhower had given that speech, he would have meant it."
• 
"He's just the pleasant cover, below which they are methodically trying to destroy conservatism."
• 
See related Head Honcho (Antonio Branco, 09/01/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related I AM the Democratic Party! (Gary Varvel, 10/05/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Delusional anti-Trump forces are wrong to predict a Republican civil war  (Fox 01/16/2021)
• 
Various left-wing writers (some of them nominally Republican) have been salivating over the prospects of a GOP civil war.
• 
Nothing would make them happier than to see Republicans tearing each other apart in a fight over President Trump and the future of the GOP.
• 
Only in the delusional world of the left could a vote in which 197 people were on one side and only 10 people were on the other side be described as the beginning of a civil war.
• 
The left is using the Jan.  6 attack on the Capitol ... as an excuse to try to destroy the conservative movement in America.  It is about to discover how powerful more than 74 million Americans can be.
• 
The dramatic drop in stock prices for Twitter and Facebook (the companies have lost a combined $51 billion in market value after banning Trump) are early warnings that arrogant companies that think they can bully the American people may be running big financial risks.
• 
If a conservative social media spring up, they will financially cripple the seemingly invulnerable Internet giants, cost their founders a lot of money, and further drive the United States into a tribalized society in which the social media you use further define who you are.
• 
For the 74 million-plus Americans who voted for President Trump — despite four years of vilification and hatred from the left — it is more likely that they will learn to adopt the cultural-social tools that the left has been using rather than surrender and submit to a tyranny of left-wing bullies.
• 
When web-hosting platforms like Google, Amazon and Apple conspire to apply ideological tests for the apps they carry, they may find they've created a niche for competition.
• 
Any doubt conservative Americans had about the radicalism of the Democrats is being rapidly erased by the aggressiveness of their Washington behavior.
• 
Pelosi and her left-wing allies know full well their power is tied to seven shaky seats.  They also know that it is likely the Republicans will win the House in 2022.  Their radical actions are in part a desperate effort to impose their ideology before they lose control.
• 
When the House Democrats in their first vote on the House rules eliminate mother, father, brother, sister and more than two dozen gender-specific words from the House rules document, it is a sign of their commitment to a cultural radical left that does not represent most Americans.
• 
Any tension within the Republican Party will rapidly be replaced by anger at left-wing Democratic efforts to bully, ostracize, intimidate, and — if necessary — jail those Americans who refuse to go along with their ideologically driven reinterpretation of America.
• 
The performance failures of the Democrats will rapidly replace any lingering anger at President Trump for most Americans.
• 
Any thought of a Republican civil war will rapidly be replaced by a conservative and moderate revulsion against the Democratic Party's drive to the left — and desperate efforts to rig the game so they can't lose future elections...
• 
The supposed GOP civil war is wishful thinking by liberal elites in D.C.  and the media — nothing more.
      Newt Gingrich: Despite Trump leaving office, crusade to preserve America’s freedom must continue  (Fox 01/10/2021)
• 
More than 74 million Americans voted for President Trump in the 2020 presidential election — a record for an incumbent.
• 
The anti-Trump news media have spent four years calling them racists and are now portraying each one as an insurrectionist because of the actions of a small minority.
• 
In reality, most are patriotic, law-abiding Americans who see a culture under siege by the radical left.
• 
The ballot box was the one sure thing still available to them to foster change and make their voices heard, to change the trajectory of the country.
• 
But now many feel like that's no longer available to them and that their votes aren't being counted fairly or honestly.  As a result, many Trump supporters wonder what their recourse is now.  Hence their frustration.
• 
... President Trump's supporters believe he has awakened them to "first principles that are under assault from the left" — from cancel culture to indoctrination at schools.
• 
The movement that President Trump started isn't going anywhere, even after President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated Jan.  20.  This is in part because people are fed up and don't know what to do.
• 
All aspects of our culture — schools, the media, Big Tech, the bureaucracy, corporations — are dominated by the woke left and are becoming more radical.
• 
The media's behavior has been especially egregious.  Recall this past summer, when countless journalists defended and even championed the Antifa-Black Lives Matter riots.
• 
What happened at the Capitol on Wednesday should of course be condemned.  But the same should go for violence and chaos perpetrated by the left that destroyed businesses and ruined countless lives.  The double standard is striking.
• 
... our cultural elites have spent their time condescending and demonizing 74 million Americans with such visceral hatred.
• 
Yet, many Republicans are now caving to these left-wing forces in a moment of vulnerability, which Democrats and their allies in the left-wing media are using to their full advantage.
• 
At any given moment, somewhere between 20% and 50% of the Republican Party is eager to sell out.  They'll be happy with a pat on the head and an invitation to a cocktail party from left-wing elites.  That way, they can be accepted as "mature statesmen."
• 
In fact, some Republicans are joining the insane calls by Democrats and the media to invoke the 25th Amendment to oust a man who received 74 million votes and has already said he's leaving the White House in just a few days.
• 
Few politicians, if any, besides President Trump have demonstrated that they're willing to fight earnestly for the American people, standing up to the forces on the left that want to destroy the American system and to feckless leadership within the GOP.
      Newt Gingrich: Thanksgiving reminder – amid hardships, Americans must remain grateful  (Fox 11/23/2020)
• 
... for most Americans, the Thanksgiving table will have fewer seats – either because people are isolating or because they are no longer with us.  And, there is more potential for disagreement as families across the nation are stressed out and split on politics.
• 
... I have one serious request for every American: This week, set all differences aside and remain thankful.
• 
No matter how fiercely we disagree about matters of policy or the right direction for the country, our loved ones – and the time we share with them – are more important.
• 
If this year has taught us anything it is that we have no control over whether the person sitting across the table will be there next year or not.
• 
So, instead of arguing, let's share the time, fellowship and blessings we have and be thankful for them.
• 
Even if there are fewer seats at the table, be thankful for those which are filled.  If you have to see your relatives on the screen instead of in person, be thankful that we live in a time when this kind of communication is possible.
• 
Also, be thankful that it appears there are at least two vaccines that are near to completion.  Hopefully, next Thanksgiving will return to tradition.
• 
... let's be thankful that the underlying economy is strong, and things will improve.  Jobs will return.  Opportunities will return, and America will succeed.
• 
We can be thankful for all the men and women who put themselves in harm's way – both abroad and in our neighborhoods – to ensure that we are safe, and our freedoms are secured.
• 
No matter our differences, we can be thankful that we live in America – the only nation in history founded on the ideals that all men are created equal, and that we are endowed by our Creator with unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• 
We have the right to disagree and debate – something not every person on earth can claim.  We should set our disagreements aside this week – but be thankful we have the right to voice our opinions next week.
• 
These ideals and values make possible everything else for which we give thanks this week.
• 
So, as we gather with loved ones to celebrate Thanksgiving – either safely in person or digitally – let us give thanks that we are blessed to be American.
      Newt Gingrich: Powerful system controlling cultural institutions tries to impose far-left agenda on US  (Fox 11/22/2020)
• 
Last week Senate Republicans released a supplement to their recent report on Hunter's Biden's overseas business dealings.
• 
The five-page addendum shows millions of dollars in wire transfers further tying Joe Biden's son to the Chinese government.
• 
I bring this up not to focus on Hunter or Joe Biden, but rather to note that if this story was about one of President Trump's sons, then it would be on the front page of every major newspaper.
• 
But it was hardly covered, because the left-wing media are overwhelmingly hostile to the president — as are the social media companies that now have nearly monopolistic control over the flow of information.
• 
... the liberal media and Big Tech are also hostile to Republicans and conservatives in general, not just to Trump.
• 
Add academia, Hollywood, and the majority of political elites to the mix, and you have the ingredients for a powerful system in control of our cultural institutions, trying to impose a radical, far-left agenda on the American people.
• 
Tens of millions of Americans have suspicions about how the votes have been tallied and just want to ensure our elections are honest.  Because without honest elections, our other freedoms will quickly fade away.
• 
And yet, Democrats, the anti-Trump media, and the rest of this machine are saying: We don't care.  Just sit down, shut up, and take it.
• 
This imposition of course extends beyond the election.  Americans turn on their televisions and see people in power, many with cushy lives, calling their country systemically racist but denigrating God and the Bill of Rights.
• 
In recent years before President Trump entered the political arena, when the Republican Party was led by the likes of John McCain and Mitt Romney, Republicans were more concerned about being nice than winning these fights.  They were perfectly content to lose nobly and seemed to take pride in it.
• 
Which is fine, until America becomes unrecognizable.
• 
The GOP needs to stand up for its vision of hope and opportunity and not submit to the machine quietly.  This means channeling President Trump's energy as a fighter.
• 
If this doesn't happen, then those on the left will just continue using their levers of power to entrench their agenda until it's irreversible, regardless of who is in elected office.
      Newt Gingrich: If election riots break out, Trump should follow Lincoln’s advice  (Fox 11/03/2020)
• 
There is something obscene and repulsive about American businesses having to board up store windows on the eve of an election because they know their government cannot protect them from anti-American barbarians and thugs.
• 
There is something un-American about mobs going into neighborhoods and restaurants and intimidating innocent citizens.
• 
President Trump should respond to the vicious, destructive, and lawless mob precisely as President Abraham Lincoln did.
• 
Consider how deeply Lincoln understood the importance of enforcing the law and providing safety and order — and the obligation of the government to use force when necessary.
• 
President Lincoln understood mob rule — and he hated it.  Lincoln believed in the obligation of government to take action to protect people and property from mob violence.
• 
In Lincoln's Lyceum Address of January 1838, titled "On the Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions," he described mobs as the enemy of law-abiding citizens.
• 
He also captured the exasperation of citizens when government does nothing to suppress the mobs.
• 
Lincoln, who was only 28 at the time, said this about mobs:
• 
"Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation.
• 
"While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose."
• 
"Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocratic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed, I mean the attachment of the People."
• 
"Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of hundreds and thousands, and bum churches, ravage and rob provision stores, throw printing presses into rivers, shoot editors, and hang and burn obnoxious persons at pleasure, and with impunity; depend on it, this Government cannot last."
• 
In 1850, Lincoln wrote a "Fragment on Government," which connected the protection of people and property from lawlessness with the government's central existence.
• 
"The legitimate object of government is 'to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.' ,..  But a far larger class of objects springs from the injustice of men.  If one people will make war upon another, it is a necessity with that other to unite and cooperate for defense."
• 
Hence the military department.  If some men will kill, or beat, or constrain others, or despoil them of property, by force, fraud, or noncompliance with contracts, it is a common object with peaceful and just men to prevent it.  Hence the criminal and civil departments."
• 
Days after the Baltimore riots against Massachusetts and Pennsylvania militia on April 19, 1861, Lincoln replied to members of a delegation from Baltimore who insisted he should do nothing.  Lincoln said:
• 
"You, gentlemen, come here to me and ask for peace on any terms, and yet have no word of condemnation for those who are making war on us.  You express great horror of bloodshed, and yet would not lay a straw in the way of those who are organizing in Virginia and elsewhere to capture this city.
• 
"The rebels attack Fort Sumter, and your citizens attack troops sent to the defense of the Government, and the lives and property in Washington, and yet you would have me break my oath and surrender the Government without a blow.  There is no Washington in that, no Jackson in that, no manhood nor honor in that.  ... Keep your rowdies in Baltimore, and there will be no bloodshed.  Go home and tell your people that if they will not attack us, we will not attack them; but if they do attack us, we will return it, and that severely."
• 
In Lincoln's "Special Message to Congress" on July 4, 1861, he posed the necessity of calling out the "war powers" of the government to resist insurrection, stating:
• 
"It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretences made in this case, or on any other pretences, or arbitrarily, without any pretence, break up their Government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth."
• 
"It forces us to ask: 'Is there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?' 'Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?' So viewing the issue, no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation."
• 
Lincoln explained the results of resisting the mob in Baltimore: " I distrust the wisdom if not the sincerity of friends who would hold my hands while my enemies stab me.  This appeal of professed friends has paralyzed me more in this struggle than any other one thing."
• 
In the spirit of President Lincoln, President Trump should issue the following warning to the violent and the lawless:
• 
All honest citizens will be asked to submit video of anyone they see engaged in violence, looting and destruction.
• 
Every business will be asked to share any pictures its security cameras produce of mobs and violence.
• 
Every TV news program will be scrutinized to seek to identify the violent and the destructive.
• 
All police officers will be asked to use their phones to record videos of every violent or destructive person they encounter.
• 
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security will be tasked with coordinating with state and local authorities to track down, arrest and prosecute the violent, lawless, and criminal.
• 
Those local authorities who refuse to cooperate will have all their federal funding suspended until they are replaced by the voters with people who are anti-criminal and anti-looting.
• 
Like Lincoln, we are going to ensure "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
      Newt Gingrich: Will Trump win?  Yes.  I think history will repeat itself – here's why  (Fox 11/01/2020)
• 
In 1964, Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater asked Ronald Reagan to deliver a nationally televised speech on behalf of his campaign.  The speech was called "A Time for Choosing."
• 
In his address, Reagan made the point that freedom was at stake — that we're always taking a step toward either more freedom or more tyranny.
• 
Reagan noted that, for several thousand years, man had gradually worked to create the rule of law; to establish the right of a free people who insist their liberties come from God, not government; and to limit the power of those who would exploit us, bully us, and dominate us.
• 
In 2020, we have seen the re-emergence of tyranny in America to a degree that I would have thought impossible were I not living through it.
• 
Across the country, Democratic leaders and their allies have trampled rights, censored speech, and hidden the truth from the American people.
• 
Americans have a choice on Election Day to continue further down this tyrannical path or step back from the brink and recapture our God-given freedoms.
• 
Most egregiously, Democratic governors have abused their power during the coronavirus pandemic, discarding the Constitution to impose arbitrary bans that crush our liberty.
• 
We've also seen Big Tech, especially Facebook and Twitter, try to imitate the Chinese Communist Party by censoring political stories they find inconvenient.
• 
These tech giants are spreading across the country a San Francisco radicalism personified by Sen.  Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
• 
And then of course there's the elite media, which has become a collection of propaganda outfits dedicated to protecting Joe Biden and other Democrats — even from confirmed reports of corrupt business dealings.
• 
In short, what we're witnessing is an undermining of the United States of America — not just by the above forces but also by Black Lives Matter rioters and Antifa anarchists.
• 
In this environment, the 2020 election is occurring at one of the most amazing and consequential times in modern history.
• 
A victory for Donald Trump would be an American populous uprising against all the large systems that would sell out to the Chinese, give up the American dream, and suppress the political right.
• 
Voters have to ask themselves whether they really trust a man who hides in his basement and a San Francisco radical running the country — especially when we've seen President Trump oversee a historically strong economy and not get involved in any more wars.
• 
All Americans who care about the future of their country must go out and vote and urge their friends and family to do the same.
      Newt Gingrich: Why Biden's boffo convention speech could hobble the rest of his campaign  (Fox 08/22/2020)
• 
His theme of "the light and the darkness" is a theme President Donald Trump should embrace, embellish upon, and emphasize again and again.
• 
Let the American people decide where the darkness is and who is creating it.
• 
Neither Biden nor Harris could comment about Antifa violence in Portland, which is now going beyond 90 days.  Isn't that part of the darkness?
• 
Neither Biden nor Harris could comment on Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announcing she had lost control of the city and was deploying police to protect her own block, saying:
• 
"I have an obligation to keep my home, my wife, my 12-year-old, and my neighbors safe.  The deployments that are there are there when they are necessary – it's not a 24-hour thing and I think that residents of the city, understanding the nature of the threats that we are receiving on a daily basis, understand that I have a right to make sure that my home is secure."
• 
Isn't it darkness which leads to police protection for the elected aristocracy but increased danger and violence for everyday citizens?
• 
In city after city, crime rates are skyrocketing, and assaults and homicides are rising rapidly.
• 
This is happening because of George Soros-supported, left-wing prosecutors are protecting criminals and radical local politicians are seeking to defund (or in Biden's clever language "reallocate money away from" ) police departments.
• 
Where is the Biden-Harris condemnation of the growing crime and increasingly emboldened criminals in the cities their Democratic Party runs?  Isn't that part of the darkness?
• 
Neither Biden nor Harris could comment on the darkness created by teachers' unions.  When the power-hungry union leadership threatens to cripple the future of children unless radical demands are met, the most Biden can say is we have to strengthen unions.
• 
Biden and Harris want us to believe that they are proud of America and want to unify Americans.  Biden went so far as to even quote the Declaration of Independence (something which must have jarred the left-wing, anti-American part of his coalition).
• 
However, neither candidate could bring his- or herself to defend historic American statues and memorials or condemn those who break the law to destroy and deface them.  Yet aren't these radical forces of destruction an example of the darkness?
• 
Biden's speech talked about the importance of job creation, but his campaign promises massive tax increases, radical crippling of the fossil fuel industry, massive reregulation, and other job killing actions.
• 
Wasn't the slow growth, high unemployment, and massive increase in dependency on government a major part of the darkness for American families?
• 
Ironically, Biden quoted his father on the importance of a job as a source of dignity (sounding almost like Ronald Reagan as he said it).
• 
Yet, his policies would increase dependency, guarantee slow growth, and revert to hamstringing the economic future of minorities.  Wouldn't that be darkness for the families left behind?
• 
By contrast, the Trump policies did lead to the lowest Black and Latino unemployment rates in history – and the fastest modern wage increases for workers at the bottom of the ladder.  Shouldn't these achievements be considered a sign of the light?
• 
... he promised to provide a slew of new equipment and technology to fight the virus – which President Trump already has underway.
• 
In fact, I don't think there was a single thing in that section of the speech that the Trump administration isn't already doing.
• 
So, since that was going to be part of Biden's light, shouldn't it count as light when done by President Trump?
• 
... Biden (and the Democrats in general) refuse to admit that the worst virus responses are in states run by Democrats – and that New York Gov.  Andrew Cuomo in particular made policy mistakes which unnecessarily killed roughly 6,000 to 8,000 senior citizens and led hist state to represent about 20 percent of the virus deaths in America.
• 
... the Obama-Biden record on managing a new virus was a disaster.  ... "Former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain said at Texas A&M in 2019: ‘We did every possible thing wrong.  Sixty million Americans got H1N1 in that period of time, and it is just purely a fortuity that this isn't one of the great mass-casualty events in American history.  [It] had nothing to do with us doing anything right; just had to do with luck.  If anyone thinks that can't happen again, they don't have to go back to 1918.  Just go back to 2009, 2010.  Imagine a virus with a different lethality, and you can just do the math."
• 
Biden misrepresenting, as usual, his role in virus management under Obama is darkness rather than light.
• 
This thematic of light versus darkness was good for one night for the Democrats – but it was good for the rest of the campaign for President Trump and the Republicans.
      Newt Gingrich: Three generations of brainwashing are paying off for the left  (Fox 06/18/2020)
• 
As we watch radicals tear down statues, deface monuments, intimidate people who want to stand for the national anthem, and demand the firing of people who write or say something deemed inappropriate to the Leftist Anti-American Theology, it is utterly clear that many Americans today hate America.
• 
People ask me how we've gotten to this point.  All of this is the result of three generations of brainwashing going back at least to Herbert Marcuse, the German-born University of California, San Diego professor who taught young Americans the philosophical foundation of Marxism in the 1960s.
• 
As early as 1972, Theodore White was warning that the liberal ideology was becoming a liberal theology and dissent was less and less acceptable to the left.
• 
We have watched the hard left, the America-hating totalitarians who want to define acceptable speech, as they took over the academic world.  The college boards – made up of supposedly sound community leaders – refused to fight.
• 
Public universities and colleges continued to hire vehement anti-American professors, the state legislatures and governors refused to fight.
• 
Alumni continued to give to schools, which were teaching their own children and grandchildren to despise them.
• 
We did not think through the eventual reality that graduates who had been taught systematic falsehoods would take those falsehoods into their jobs.
• 
As President Ronald Reagan said, "the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they're ignorant; it's just that they know so much that isn't so."
• 
... this educated ignorance has now infested our news media, bureaucracies and corporate headquarters.  These are sincere fanatics.  It is this fanaticism that has been so visible in the last few weeks.
• 
The uprising by the self-righteous fanatics of The New York Times got their opinion editor fired for the sin of publishing a conservative senator's op-ed.
• 
The fanatics at The Philadelphia Inquirer got their editor fired for running the headline "Buildings Matter Too."
• 
In case after case, the new fanaticism is imposing a thought police model reinforced by the Maoist tradition of public confession and group solidarity.
• 
We were warned that this could happen.  Having defeated Marxism in the Soviet Union, President Reagan was worried by the rise of anti-Americanism in our own country.
• 
He warned of the collapse of support for America in his farewell address on Jan.  11, 1989.
• 
"There is a great tradition of warnings in presidential farewells, and I've got one that's been on my mind for some time.  But oddly enough it starts with one of the things I'm proudest of in the past eight years: the resurgence of national pride that I called the new patriotism.  This national feeling is good, but it won't count for much, and it won't last unless it's grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge."
• 
"An informed patriotism is what we want.  And are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?  Those of us who are over 35 or so years of age grew up in a different America.  We were taught, very directly, what it means to be an American.  And we absorbed, almost in the air, a love of country and an appreciation of its institutions."
• 
"If you didn't get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio.  Or you could get a sense of patriotism from school.  And if all else failed you could get a sense of patriotism from the popular culture.  The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special.  TV was like that, too, through the mid-60s."
• 
"But now, we're about to enter the '90s, and some things have changed.  Younger parents aren't sure that an unambivalent appreciation of America is the right thing to teach modern children.  And as for those who create the popular culture, well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style.  Our spirit is back, but we haven't reinstitutionalized it.  We've got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom – freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise.  And freedom is special and rare.  It's fragile; it needs [protection]."
• 
"So, we've got to teach history based not on what's in fashion but what's important – why the Pilgrims came here, who Jimmy Doolittle was, and what those 30 seconds over Tokyo meant.  You know, four years ago on the 40th anniversary of D-day, I read a letter from a young woman writing to her late father, who'd fought on Omaha Beach.  Her name was Lisa Zanatta Henn, and she said, `we will always remember, we will never forget what the boys of Normandy did.'"
• 
"Well, let's help her keep her word.  If we forget what we did, we won't know who we are.  I'm warning of an eradication of the American memory that could result, ultimately, in an erosion of the American spirit.  Let's start with some basics: more attention to American history and a greater emphasis on civic ritual."
• 
It would have been a struggle to win this fight for America 31 years ago when President Reagan warned us of the consequence of teaching falsehoods and anti-American lies.  Now it will be much, much harder.
• 
If we want America to survive as a constitutional republic under the rule of law, which protects the right of free speech and is dedicated to the belief that each one of us is endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we have no choice but to fight to defeat the anti-Americans and reassert our nation.
• 
Reagan would understand.  Lincoln would understand.  Freedom itself is at stake.
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
      Coronavirus spread because of Chinese government mismanagement, corruption and dishonesty  (Fox 03/26/2020)
• 
Watching the Chinese Communist dictatorship mismanage the initial coronavirus epidemic, cover it up and then lie about it has been infuriating.
• 
But it is also a good lesson in how dangerous and how profoundly dishonest the dictatorship is.
• 
China's guilt at having allowed a local epidemic to turn into a worldwide pandemic is even more infuriating when the Chinese Foreign Ministry publicly alleges that the coronavirus came from America.
• 
Both President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have correctly pushed back hard against the Communist dictatorship's lies.
• 
The simple fact is that Communist-ruled China has a long record as a source of potential epidemics and pandemics.
• 
In 2005 Laurie Garrett warned in Foreign Affairs: "Scientists have long forecast the appearance of an influenza virus capable of infecting 40 percent of the world's human population and killing unimaginable numbers.  Recently, a new strain, H5N1 avian influenza, has shown all the earmarks of becoming that disease.  Until now, it has largely been confined to certain bird species, but that may be changing."
• 
Then in 2007 four scientists at the University of Hong Kong asserted: "Coronaviruses are well known to undergo genetic recombination, which may lead to new genotypes and outbreaks.  The presence of a large reservoir of SARS-CoV-like viruses in horseshoe bats, together with the culture of eating exotic mammals in southern China, is a time bomb.  The possibility of the reemergence of SARS and other novel viruses from animals or laboratories and therefore the need for preparedness should not be ignored."
• 
Despite these clear warnings, the Chinese Communist government did nothing to stop the sale of wild animals in wet markets or to stay adequately alert for a potential virus.
• 
In fact, the dictatorship took the opposite position in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak.  It wanted to hide any potential disease outbreak and hoped it would go away.
• 
The first confirmed case was noticed on Dec.  8, 2019, according to the Wuhan government.
• 
By Dec.  16 a patient who worked at a wildlife market that was linked to the outbreak was admitted to the hospital.
• 
By Dec.  21 there were about three dozen people showing similar symptoms (which were later found to be confirmed or suspected coronavirus cases).
• 
By Christmas, four days later, the medical staff at two separate hospitals were quarantined when they came down with an unidentified viral pneumonia.
• 
Apparently, by the day after Christmas a laboratory had identified samples from Wuhan as a new SARS-like virus.
• 
The next day Wuhan public health officials and hospital leaders were told that there was a new coronavirus causing the illness.
• 
If the dictatorship had decided then and there to call in the experts and focus on containing the new threat, the entire world would have been spared a year of pain, thousands of dead, massive costs, and economic collapse.
• 
However, dictatorships all too often reject and suppress bad news.
• 
Just as the Soviets initially tried to suppress the news of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, so too did General Secretary Xi Jinping's police state initially try to suppress the news instead of trying to suppress the disease.
• 
... the government reaction was to censor the spread of this information and take it out of social media.
• 
On the last day of the year, 23 days after the apparent first confirmed patient started showing symptoms, the Wuhan branch of the National Health Commission said: "The investigation so far has not found any obvious human-to-human transmission or infection of medical staff."
• 
Officials said "the disease is preventable and controllable."
• 
... by late December laboratories in China discovered an unknown highly infectious virus, but "were ordered to stop tests, destroy samples, and suppress the news."
• 
... in an effort to keep others quiet and stop information from spreading, eight whistleblowers ... were issued summons by the Wuhan Public Security Bureau and brought in for questioning for posting information about the virus on WeChat.
• 
The police detention was widely reported in the media.  Medical professionals all got the message to stay quiet about the disease.
• 
Ironically (and tragically) by Jan.  2 the Wuhan Institute of Virology identified and mapped the genome of a new coronavirus – but it was kept secret.
• 
By Jan.  6, the rumors were strong enough that U.S.  Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr.  Robert Redfield offered to send a team to China.  The dictatorship didn't accept the offer.
• 
However, it is clear that Xi knew about the virus by Jan.  7 – about the time the Americans were offering to help.
• 
By Jan.  9 Chinese government officials were admitting they had a virus and announced they had mapped the genetic sequence but did not release the data until Jan.  12.
• 
They did not reveal critical information about who was sick, when they got sick, and critical demographic information about those infected.
• 
On Jan.  13 the first case was reported outside of China in Thailand.
• 
On Jan.  14 the World Health Organization continued its recent behavior of protecting dictatorships.
• 
It announced that Chinese authorities have witnessed "no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus."
• 
The World Health Organization continued its recent pattern of lying for dictators when an official said during a press conference that day that there could also be "limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families."
• 
On Jan.  15 the first confirmed infected American left Wuhan while Li Qun (the head of the Chinese CDC emergency center) said on state television "after careful screening and prudent judgment, we have reached the latest understanding that the risk of human-to-human transmission is low."
• 
Finally, on Jan.  20 China confirmed human-to-human transmission and the first case was announced in South Korea.
• 
The Chinese dictatorship's efforts to suppress and deny the reality of the coronavirus came at tremendous human cost to the Chinese people and to the rest of the world.
• 
... 95 percent of the infections would have been avoided if the aggressive intervention had only occurred three weeks earlier.
• 
The amount of the damage the Chinese dictatorship has done to its own people and by letting the epidemic get out of control and turn into a pandemic – and the amount of damage it has done to people around the world – is stunning.
• 
One courageous (and maybe foolish) Chinese businessman, Ren Zhiqiang, wrote a direct critique of the Communist dictatorship, saying: "Those who live in a democratic country with freedom of speech perhaps don't know the pain of the lack of a free press and free expression.  But Chinese people know that this epidemic and all the unnecessary suffering it brought came directly from a system that strictly prohibits the freedom of press and speech."
• 
The New York Times reported on March 14 that Ren Zhiqiang is missing.
• 
Faced with growing worldwide condemnation for mismanaging and spreading the coronavirus, the dictatorship decided to create a propaganda campaign blaming America.
• 
... the head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Department of Information, tweeted that it was "absolutely wrong and inappropriate to call this the Chinese coronavirus."
• 
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian also tweeted on March 12: "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.  Be transparent!  Make public your data!  US owe us an explanation!"
• 
By the way, Twitter is banned in China.
• 
As a final note to this whole dishonest performance, Dr.  Tedros Adhanom, the Chinese- supported director-general of the World Health Organization, praised the Chinese handling of the virus.
• 
"We appreciate the seriousness with which China is taking this outbreak, especially the commitment from top leadership, and the transparency they have demonstrated, including sharing data and genetic sequence of the virus.  WHO is working closely with the government on measures to understand the virus and limit transmission.  WHO will keep working side-by-side with China and all other countries to protect health and keep people safe."
• 
Adhanom won the job with Chinese backing, even though he was accused of covering up three different cholera epidemics as health minister in Ethiopia.
• 
He is a reminder of the unending Chinese dictatorship's corruption and dishonesty.
      Newt Gingrich: Trump impeachment will bring Pelosi and House Democrats condemnation by history  (Fox 01/18/2020)
• 
"He's been impeached forever.  They can never erase that."
• 
However, Pelosi has it exactly backward.  The Senate is going to refuse to convict President Trump.
• 
He will be exonerated, and she and the Democrats will be condemned by history.
• 
The wide repudiation of the House Democratic betrayal of the Constitution is already beginning.
• 
As a historian myself, I think it's important to document these reactions.
• 
"The new normal: Impeachment as a routine partisan tool, endless investigations, lying under oath with impunity, surveillance of political enemies, zero accountability."
• 
"Americans prefer to choose their presidents with elections, and whenever impeachment is used in an attempt to nullify those choices, the results aren't happy for anyone."
• 
"[Alexander] Hamilton said that the greatest danger would be an impeachment that was based on who had the most votes in the House or removal based on who had the most votes in the Senate.  And that's precisely what we're seeing happen, and the reason we're seeing it is because of the use of open-ended criteria.  Every controversial president since John Adams has been accused of abuse of power.  And obstruction of Congress?  That's part of our system of checks and balances.  ... So I think the House of Representatives violated the Constitution when they impeached him on these two grounds."
• 
"One can oppose President Trump's policies or actions but still conclude that the current legal case for impeachment is not just woefully inadequate, but in some respects, dangerous, as the basis for the impeachment of an American president."
• 
... the Pelosi strategy is simply to "bruise President Trump with an unending stream of new impeachment allegations" in order to hurt his chances at reelection.  ... we have entered the era of partisan impeachment that the Framers feared.  This is what it looks like."
• 
... Pelosi behaving in exactly the unconstitutional and narrowly partisan manner the writers of the Constitution hoped to avoid.  Again, it is Pelosi – not Trump – who is undermining the Constitution.
• 
... "Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff has been lying to the world for years in his nonstop campaign to smear President Trump." ... it is Schiff, D-Calif., – and not Trump – who has been a continuous serial liar.
• 
... "further exposes how Democrats have defined impeachment down.  The House hearings blocked GOP witnesses and limited cross-examination.  Despite selective leaks and a pro-impeachment media, they failed to move public opinion or persuade Republicans that Mr.  Trump committed impeachable offenses."
• 
... "it was a transparently partisan performance from beginning to end."
• 
... "blinded by factionalism, the House of Representatives would abuse the power of impeachment to serve nakedly partisan goals rather than the long-term interests of the American people and their Republic."
• 
"With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone.  In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him.  It is in this realm in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies.  It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political views, or being personally obnoxious to or in the way of the prosecutor himself."
• 
So no, Nancy.  President Trump does not have to fear the judgment of history on this impeachment effort.
• 
The judgment of history is going to be that a group of scoundrels in control of the U.S.  House of Representatives placed partisan interests above the country, undermined the Constitution, weakened America in the world, and lied about the duly elected president of the United States.
• 
This will become Pelosi's moment of shame, and Trump's moment of redemption.
• 
See related The Adam Schiff Family (Michael Ramirez, 10/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Don't Need No... (Gary Varvel, 10/12/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Guilty and Sentenced (Gary Varvel, 09/24/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Want to destroy lawless cartels?  The starting point may surprise you  (Fox 11/08/2019)
• 
The key to destroying the Mexican cartels is in America not Mexico.
• 
As long as Americans send an estimated $19 billion to $29 billion in drug money a year to Mexico (as estimated by ICE) there will be cartels willing to take it.
• 
Kill one generation of cartel leaders, and a new generation will emerge.
• 
The cartels have so much money and so much organized power that they are virtually a state within a state.
• 
Let me be clear: This lawlessness and violence isn't being fueled by Mexico.
• 
American money and American drug addiction have paid for the growth of huge criminal organizations of extraordinary violence and cruelty.
• 
The tragic reality is we have been fighting a "war on drugs" since President Richard Nixon declared it in June 1971.
• 
For 48 years, the official American position has been to stop addictive drugs.
• 
Yet, many of our policies undermine that war and, in fact, guarantee defeat.
• 
Everyone who advocates for open borders is advocating for easier access and greater profits for the drug cartels.
• 
Everyone who opposes controlling the border is actively making life easier for violent cartels.
• 
A controlled border could stop most of the drugs coming north and most of the guns flowing south.
• 
So-called "sanctuary cities" are in effect "drug trafficker sanctuary cities."
• 
We have a deep interest in helping the Mexican government defeat the drug cartels and regaining control over all of Mexico.
• 
We also have a deep interest in starving out the drug cartels before they bring their corruption and their violence further into the United States.
• 
If we are serious about wiping the drug cartels off the face of the earth, the place to start is the United States not Mexico.
• 
If American illegal drug purchases fell radically – even to less than a billion a year – the cartels would collapse because they would not have the money to pay their troops and to support their infrastructure.
• 
Follow the money is a good rule, and in this case, the money is made in America, spent by Americans, and needs to be cut off by Americans.
• 
The central battlefront in this war is dollars in America – not violence in Mexico.
      The resistance against Trump began the day he was elected — This is not an impeachment process  (Fox 10/10/2022)
• 
The fake impeachment movement taking place is part of an ongoing effort to drive President Trump from office.
• 
It is part of a determination on the left that Trump must be expelled from the White House.
• 
This coup attempt – which is exactly what it is – has nothing to do with evidence or any single accusation.
• 
As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said when asked what she would do if the whistleblower accusation involving Ukraine collapsed, "We have many other, shall we say, candidates for impeachable offense in terms of the Constitution of the United States, but this one is the most understandable by the public."
• 
In other words, no matter the evidence and no matter how many times President Trump and his team knock down the attack, there will always be another effort designed to drive him from office.
• 
This "destroy President Trump" coup effort developed in the first 24 hours after the 2016 election.
• 
"In a shock result, Donald Trump has been elected president - but the people can rise up and defeat his bigoted, extreme right-wing agenda!  The ANSWER Coalition is mobilizing across the country to organize and take part in emergency actions."
• 
The left's first reaction was simply to protest Trump's election.
• 
It was essentially a protest against democracy and our electoral system.
• 
It didn't take long for the members of the left to find impeachment was the best vehicle for their coup to drive the president from office.
• 
... bout five weeks after the presidential election and roughly five weeks before the presidential inauguration, Vanity Fair published an article ... "Democrats are Paving the Way to Impeach Donald Trump."
• 
By the day of the inauguration ... "The Campaign to Impeach President Trump Has Begun."
• 
... this effort to drive President Trump from the White House has never been about finding truth.
• 
It has always been about subverting the will of the people.
• 
You are not watching an impeachment process.
• 
You are in year three of an attempted coup d'etat, which started the day the president was elected.
• 
See related Allegiance Pledge (Gary Varvel, 05/09/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Mueller tries desperately to continue bogus Russia collusion narrative against Trump  (Fox 06/01/2019)
• 
Mueller was insinuating that President Trump has not been exonerated of wrongdoing, while refusing to explicitly declare the president guilty of any crime.
• 
Dershowitz rightly pointed out that Mueller "went beyond the conclusion of his report and gave a political gift to Democrats in Congress who are seeking to institute impeachment proceedings against President Trump."
• 
Mueller's report said there was no evidence President Trump broke the law.
• 
Mueller's mouth said there was no proof Trump didn't.
• 
The problem is, Mueller's verbal statement distorted the role of a prosecutor and flipped a core concept of the American justice system on its head – the idea that people are innocent until proven guilty.
• 
Dating back to John Adams's principled defense of British soldiers against an incensed public after the Boston Massacre, Americans have held that proving the burden of guilt falls on the state.
• 
And the bottom line is: After a nearly two-year investigation consisting of 15 lawyers, many millions of taxpayer dollars, and interviews of more than 500 witnesses, everything in Mueller's 448-page report leads to the conclusion that President Trump is not guilty of any crimes.
• 
Mueller had said that "it is important that the office's written work speak for itself," but then he kept talking.
• 
"Mueller's report was released to the public by Attorney General William Barr nearly six weeks ago.  The entire report, minus limited redactions required by law, has been publicly available, pored through, and dissected...  If it's important for the work to speak for itself, then why did Mueller schedule a press conference in which he would speak for it weeks after it was released?"
• 
Mueller is making the political suggestion that President Trump should be impeached on allegations of obstruction of justice for which Mueller and his team of hot-shot lawyers found no proof.
• 
This is a clear example of a prosecutor who is trying to get an outcome regardless of evidence.
• 
In a desperate pursuit to keep the bogus Russia collusion narrative alive, Mueller is turning to Soviet-style tactics.
• 
The foundations of our justice system have served us well for 243 years.  We should not abandon them now.
      China wants to replace America as THE global superpower — Here's what we must learn  (Fox 04/25/2019)
• 
... describe China's challenge to the rules-based world order and how, as a result, American interests and security are being put at risk.
• 
China is the most serious and formidable competitor that the United States now faces.  It is essential to examine Chinese tactics and strategic thinking to better position the U.S.  for this new era of competition.  It will affect the future of our country for generations to come.
• 
One of the most revealing comparisons to Chinese strategy is the game wei qi, which is said to have originated in China thousands of years ago.
• 
Wei qi — more commonly known by its Japanese name "Go" in the West — is a game played with two players using a checkered board lined with 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines.
• 
One player has 180 white round stones and another has 181 black round stones.
• 
The players take turns placing their stones on the board one at a time on the intersections of the checker lines.
• 
The goal of the game is to capture the most territory either by encircling empty spaces or your opponent's pieces on the board.
• 
The player with the most territory after all the pieces have been played, or after both players pass on their turns, wins.
• 
Go is an incredibly complex game due to the number of possible moves and board configurations.
• 
As the game progresses, there are multiple invasions, engagements, fights, and confrontations between players that occur in all different areas of the board at the same time.
• 
Moreover, it is a lengthy game that requires players to capitalize on short-term victories – but to never lose sight of the long-term strategy.
• 
... the Chinese approach to strategy is reflected in Go.
• 
The American approach to strategic thinking ... is reflected in chess.
• 
American strategy relies on our technological superiority and capabilities.
• 
The U.S.  focuses on force-on-force competition that seeks the result of total victory over the opponent.
• 
In chess, there are pieces that are more powerful than others that are deployed with the objective of capturing the opponent's king.
• 
Every move is directed toward protecting your own king and seizing your opponent's.
• 
In this way, chess is narrowly focused.
• 
Chess players must also preserve their stronger pieces to keep the balance of power in their favor and ensure a better chance of victory.
• 
The player with the most powerful pieces in play during the game will likely win.
• 
"On China," "If chess is about the decisive battle, wei qi is about the protracted campaign."
• 
In Go, every stone is equal.  Players can unleash massive amounts of potential power by creatively and tactically placing their stones.
• 
All stones placed on the board work in close connection with one another, as each individual is a part of a larger, bigger strategy.
• 
Moreover, in Go there are multiple campaigns, pursuits, battles, and maneuvers happening at the same time across the board.
• 
As the board is constantly changing in complex, subtle, and dynamic ways, players must always have a sharp awareness of the overall situation.
• 
Due to the number of possibilities where players can place their stones and the limited number of stones available, players must know when to fight for or defend territory.
• 
More importantly, they must know when to let it go.
• 
In an evenly matched game, Go is a competition of simultaneous incremental victories.
• 
Total, decisive, and complete defeat of an opponent is not typically an attainable objective.
• 
Usually, games are won by just a few points.
• 
... playing Go with a chess approach is dangerous.  Similarly, it will be dangerous for the U.S.  to continue to approach the challenges we face with China without understanding and seeing the totality and breadth of their strategy.
• 
We must examine all of these campaigns — in addition to others — collectively.
• 
We must understand this go-based approach, rather than look at each endeavor as an independent challenge.
• 
Each of China's campaigns work in concert with one another and will ultimately result in China's emergence as a global hegemon.
• 
China's current aggressive tactics will eventually undermine the United States, jeopardize our security, hurt our economy, compromise our values, and alter our way of life.
• 
Those trying to understand the challenges that the United States now faces with China need to learn how to play Go.
• 
Moreover, the United States must develop an American-based strategy in this new era of competition that is focused on our strength, capabilities, ingenuity, and American spirit. 
• 
See related US-China Maritime Tensions (Dave Granlund, 10/28/2015) cartoon from World picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Caught up in the Mueller media madness  (Fox 04/19/2019)
• 
This madness is crippling the country, maximizing partisan divisions and absorbing so much time and energy that it's keeping the U.S.  from coming to grips with dangers that could destroy it.
• 
Mueller reported after a nearly two-year effort which involved 19 lawyers, 40 staff, more than 2,800 subpoenas, nearly 500 search warrants and roughly 500 witnesses.  The investigation spent more than $25 million.
• 
If the Mueller team could have found President Trump guilty, it would have.
• 
After all, Mueller recruited as his legal team – 14 Democrats, 12 of whom have contributed to Democrats.
• 
Of these lawyers, seven were Clinton donors, one attended Clinton's election night party, and one represented the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton herself.
• 
Far from being innocent of bias, two of the Mueller team's lawyers met with Christopher Steele, the author of the discredited dossier, before the 2016 election.
• 
When almost two years of digging by this anti-Trump wolfpack could produce no signs of guilt, it is reasonable to conclude that was because there were no signs of guilt.
• 
However, the anti-Trump news media has too much invested in hating Trump to give up just because two years of work by 14 highly motivated, aggressive Democrat lawyers found no laws broken.
• 
Just watch: Reporters who were totally wrong will interview Democratic politicians who were totally wrong, and they both will focus on the next phase of the anti-Trump cycle.
• 
It doesn't matter how much Democratic congressmen or senators were wrong, they will just launch a new attack on President Trump.
• 
The fascinating thing is President Trump's ability to ignore the madness and focus on leading the country.
• 
Through all the hysteria, he has been able to focus on getting conservative judges on the federal bench, cutting regulations, tax cuts, job creation, North Korea, the Middle East, Venezuela, China, and trade negotiations with multiple countries – even with 92 percent negative news coverage and Democrats attacking him every day.
• 
Now President Trump is liberated from the dark cloud of the Mueller investigation.
• 
After 448 pages, the conclusion was no collusion of any kind with Russia and no proof of obstruction of justice strong enough to warrant prosecution.
• 
Given the ongoing hostility and negativity with this positive report, imagine what would have happened if President Trump had received the kind of judgment Ken Starr rendered on President Bill Clinton.
• 
In the Starr Report, Clinton was found to be guilty of breaking the law 11 times.  Seven of those charges included acts of perjury (some multiple times), and five were explicitly obstruction of justice (including the ninth charge of witness tampering).
• 
Imagine where we would be today if Robert Mueller had used the word guilty on 11 different counts involving President Trump.
• 
Imagine where we would be if the Mueller Report had said President Trump was guilty of five counts of obstruction of justice.
• 
That is where the left, the news media, and the Democrats had hoped Mueller would end up.
• 
They were counting on a definitive finding of guilt – just as they were counting on Hillary Clinton to win on election night 2016.
• 
The 2016 disappointment led the left to invent the Russian collusion explanation because they could not bring themselves to tell Hillary it was her fault she lost.
• 
Meanwhile, the reality of the Trump presidency – and the renewed strength of President Trump as a vindicated innocent man – will continue to change America in a direction the country likes and the left hates.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Newt Gingrich: Make the Mueller report public — Here's why  (Fox 03/22/2019)
• 
President Trump is right: Every American should be able to see what Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his team have been doing for the last two years.
• 
For two years, virtually every news organization – and every left-wing political organization – has been opining, speculating and fantasizing over what dirt Mueller's team of anti-Trump lawyers could dig up on the president and his associates.
• 
Again and again, they have used the investigation as a cudgel to attack the Trump administration and rally the so-called "resistance."
• 
However, with each new indictment and each new case that Mueller has handed off to various district courts, it's become increasingly apparent that the special counsel's office has simply been using the power of the Justice Department to conduct an inquisition on anyone in Trump's orbit – and do whatever was necessary to gain their cooperation or put them in jail.
• 
Many have commented that Mueller is treating this investigation in the same way he went about taking down the Gambino crime family.
• 
Let that sink in.
• 
The special counsel's office is treating the duly elected president of the United States and his associates as though they were a murderous organized crime family.
• 
This is why the Mueller report should be made public.
• 
The American people should be able to see how far Mueller and his team have been willing to levy the power of the government to torment people and extract cooperation from them – in a political investigation.
• 
... Mueller's investigation has been a historic effort by the left and the Washington establishment to unseat a sitting president.
• 
... the American people should see – in detail – all the lengths to which Mueller's team went to get what they wanted.
• 
All the arm-twisting, threats, promises and punishments – everything.
• 
I have no doubt that the Democrats are going to cherry pick pieces of the report to serve their own purposes – and the media will gleefully amplify and echo them.
• 
However, the American people have the right to see the investigation in full and decide for themselves whether this has been a legitimate investigation – or an inquisition carried out by bureaucrats who didn't like the choice Americans made in 2016.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Glick  (03/20/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (05/27/2022) | Next sect (07/28/2021) | List bot 
      Ukraine’s lessons for Israel  (INN 03/20/2022)
• 
In the months and weeks that led up to Russia's Feb.  24 invasion of Ukraine, Western powers signaled clearly that they were prepared to accept the disappearance of Ukraine as an independent state.
• 
But once Russian forces invaded, the West's plans to yell a bit and look away went awry.  The Ukrainians failed to play their assigned role of Paschal lambs.  Instead, they rallied around their flag and their president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
For his part, Zelensky captivated the hero-starved West.  His rejoinder, when the Biden administration offered to evacuate him from Ukraine on the second day of the war, "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition," reminded Americans of a time when they weren't being attacked for being transphobic or systemically racist, a time when patriotism was permitted.
• 
Once Americans and other Western audiences got a whiff of Ukrainian nationalism, it became politically impossible for Washington, Brussels, Berlin, Paris and London to turn their backs on Kyiv.
• 
And so, with little deliberation, Biden and his European counterparts announced a series of unprecedented financial and economic sanctions on Russia and massive shipments of arms and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
• 
For a moment, it was possible to wonder whether Russia's reminder that the problems of the world cannot be reduced to the pronouns one uses or the amount of carbon one burns on an average day would change the focus of Western elites.
• 
But it was not to be.  The ruling classes in Brussels and Washington made clear that the war in Ukraine would not steer them off course.
• 
While Poland is giving refuge to nearly two-thirds of the 3 million Ukrainians who have fled their homes, and Hungary has taken in 10% of them, the E.U.  parliament passed economic sanctions against both nations last week.
• 
Their crime?  The nationalist governments in Warsaw and Budapest refuse to toe Brussels' line on Muslim immigration and LGBTQ indoctrination.
• 
As for the Biden administration, Ukraine's fight for national survival in the face of Russian aggression is all well and good.  But appeasing Iran is the Biden administration's top priority.
• 
And Biden can't appease Iran without Russia.  So to keep Russia on board with his administration's efforts to close a deal with Iran, Biden agreed to cut Russia's lucrative business with Iran out of the sanctions.
• 
Russia can expect to receive $10 billion developing Iran's nuclear installations and billions more in arms sales.
• 
The implications for Ukraine are clear: The US is willing to let them fight the Russians, but will not help the Ukrainians defeat Russia, because the United States cares more about empowering Iran than helping Ukraine survive.
• 
The deal that Biden is concluding with Iran is itself a stunning testament to the radicalism of the Biden team and its refusal to let reality interfere with its policies.  It will provide Iran with $90 billion from sanctions relief.
• 
That astronomical sum guarantees massive cash infusions into the coffers of Iran's in-house global terrorist organization — the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Biden is set to remove from the State Department's list of foreign terrorist organizations — and to Iran's terror armies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the Gaza Strip.
• 
Iran will have the funds to expand its missile and drone capabilities.  And thanks to the lax restrictions it will face on its nuclear operations, it will become a nuclear threshold state by 2025 at the latest.
• 
Although the West's progressive agenda necessarily limits the support it is willing to provide Ukraine, the West's ruling classes need to placate their publics, who admire Ukraine, compelling them to provide significant if not determinative military, humanitarian and political assistance to Kyiv.
• 
And given Ukraine's willingness to fight it out with Russia, that support may be sufficient to enable Ukraine to withstand Russia's assault for long enough to maintain its independence.
• 
The widespread assessment today is that the Ukrainians will be able to continue fighting, despite Russia's clear military superiority, for another month or six weeks.
• 
Given the high losses the Ukrainians are inflicting on the Russians, and assuming that the Russians begin to feel the full impact of the economic and financial sanctions within the next two to three weeks, it is possible that by mid-April, the Ukrainians will be able to negotiate ceasefire terms with Russia that will leave the country independent and more or less intact.
• 
Ukrainians can still hope for and expect a future of freedom and independence because they have refused to bow before either Russia or to the West.
• 
If Israel were paying attention to the dynamics at work in the West's behavior towards Ukraine, it would be adopting policies opposite to those it is currently pursuing, both in relation to Ukraine and Russia and in relation to the West.
• 
Unlike Zelensky, who hasn't hesitated to call the United States and Germany out for their fence-sitting, the Bennett-Lapid-Gantz government has subordinated all Israeli policies to the Biden administration's agenda.
• 
If Israel were putting its own interests first, as Zelensky has, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett wouldn't be trying to mediate between Zelensky and Putin.
• 
Instead, Israel would make do with a simple but clear message: Israel supports Ukraine's sovereign independence and territorial integrity and calls on Russia to end its offensive operations.
• 
Israel ought not and need not go beyond that statement.  The reasons for this are obvious.  This is not Israel's war, and words have consequences.  Israel cannot mediate this conflict because it has no leverage over either actor to persuade them to compromise.
• 
As for the significance of words, in order to succeed, a mediator has to be perceived by both sides as someone who accepts the basic legitimacy of their positions.
• 
But as a threatened democracy, it is a dangerous proposition for Israel to accept Russia's view that Ukraine has no right to exist as an independent and distinct nation-state.
• 
Zelensky's fierce defense of his country, and the Ukrainian people's refusal to stand down in the face of Russia's advance, have compelled the Biden administration to support Ukraine even at the risk of a world war because the Ukrainians are standing for the values of freedom and independence that the United States is supposed to personify on the world stage.
• 
If Israel were to take a page from Ukraine's playbook, its leaders would be attacking the immorality of the Biden administration's capitulation to Iran's demands in the appeasement talks in Vienna.
• 
When Israel opts to remain silent as its interests and position are undermined, not only does it strengthen its enemies, it loses its friends.
• 
After Russia invaded Ukraine, many Ukrainians told Israeli reporters on the scene that they were inspired by Israel, which has always fought its own battles and survived even in the face of global indifference and hostility.  Today, the opposite should be the case.
• 
Israel's government must learn from the Ukrainians.  The West will not fight for a threatened democracy.  States that wait for green lights from the West to defend themselves will not survive.
• 
But states that defend themselves will see sufficient forces rally to their side to enable them to persevere and survive.
      Where America now stands  (JWR 11/09/2020)
• 
On Wednesday, supporters of President Donald Trump gathered outside ballot counting centers in Arizona and Michigan to demand a clean and honest vote count.
• 
Standing behind the protesters, the reporter tried to paint the crowd as violent and dangerous even as they stood and kneeled in silent prayer for election integrity.
• 
It was a hard sell, but other reporters quickly got in on the action and videos appeared throughout the day of reporters describing the swelling crowd chanting "Count the Vote" as violent.
• 
Perhaps the men and women with the mics simply don't know the meaning of the word "violent." After all, for the past seven months, they have been describing riots replete with broken windows, burning tires and looted stores as "peaceful protests."
• 
The urge Trump voters feel to protest the vote count is easy to understand.  The widespread fear that the Democrats were working to falsify the U.S.  presidential election results grew with each news update about another 369,000 ballots suddenly appearing in Philadelphia or 10,000 votes in Nevada cast by people who don't live in Nevada.
• 
On Wednesday afternoon, Trump supporters at a ballot counting facility in Detroit were stunned as a poll worker used cardboard boards to block Republican poll watchers from watching the vote count.
• 
Tuesday night, Trump was leading Biden by comfortable margins in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
• 
And suddenly, election officials in Detroit, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Atlanta — Democrat-run cities in states where Trump was leading — announced they were stopping the vote count.
• 
... based on information published by election officials in Michigan and Wisconsin, while the vote-counting had officially been suspended, strange things were happening.
• 
In the wee hours of the night in Michigan, 138,339 mail-in ballots were counted.  Biden won every single one of them.
• 
Hours after the stunning, vertical rise in Biden's numbers was reported (and after Twitter censored Republicans, including President Trump, who demanded an explanation), Michigan election officials claimed the numbers were a "data error."
• 
A glitchy vote-counting software accidentally added a zero — that is, 100,000 votes — to Biden's tally.  The same glitchy software accidentally forgot to enter the votes that Trump won.  Oops.
• 
In Wisconsin, Biden got a similar 120,000 vote boost during the night and when Republicans woke up on Wednesday morning, Trump's 4.7 percent lead had all but disappeared.  Trump got none of the votes.
• 
Trump's campaign filed lawsuits in Michigan and Wisconsin regarding the apparent irregularities.  The campaign also filed suit against Nevada's Board of Election for allegedly counting 10,000 votes cast by non-residents.
• 
There are also multiplying claims of improprieties in vote-counting in Philadelphia.  ... Republican poll watchers were barred from observing election officials count 120,000 ballots.  A court order to permit the Republicans to observe the vote-counting was ignored by election officials and Democrats appealed the ruling.
• 
The Democrats' response to all of the Trump campaign's claims is to accuse Trump and his supporters of trying to suppress the vote.
• 
Most of the alleged irregularities have to do with mail-in ballots.  This is no surprise.  Trump and the Republicans warned from the outset of the Democrats' mail-in ballot campaign that the purpose of the move was not to minimize the spread of the coronavirus.
• 
... it may take time for the legal challenges to work their way through the courts and determine definitively who will be inaugurated on January 20.
• 
But we can already see that whoever wins, America's democratic order is steeped in crisis.  The Democrats' post-election shenanigans are an expression of this crisis.
• 
To be clear, Trump did not cause the crisis.  It has two authors: The Democrats and the media.
• 
The Democrats fomented the crisis, which places America's very future as a constitutional democracy on the line, when they refused to accept the results of the 2016 election.  The media caused it by abandoning journalism in favor of political activism.
• 
Although the media and the Democrats have spent four years insisting that Trump supporters are violent, dangerous racists and Nazis, the merchants in Kenosha and Los Angeles didn't post Trump election signs in their storefronts to win brownie points from the rioters.
• 
They posted signs of support for the looters.  And they all hailed from Black Lives Matter, Antifa and allied Democrat voting groups.
• 
... Biden's supporters in Black Lives Matter and allied groups started posting detailed instructions to their supporters about where to gather and where to protest a week before Election Day.
• 
And late Tuesday night, the riots began on schedule in Washington, New York, Portland and Los Angeles.  And they weren't kneeling in prayer.
• 
... a "protester" in Portland was arrested Wednesday carrying hand grenades and a loaded AR-15 assault rifle.  "Protesters" in New York were arrested carrying commercial military-grade firecrackers, a taser, knives and hammers.
• 
Black Lives Matter rioters in Washington reportedly stabbed five Trump supporters close to the White House early Wednesday morning.
• 
Political violence, like ballot harvesting, is a feature of the Democrats' post-democratic political playbook.
• 
During the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, her campaign and the media presented Trump and his supporters as illegitimate political actors.
• 
When Trump won the race, their delegitimization of Trump and his supporters quickly led them not to oppose Trump's presidency, actions and policies, but to reject the legitimacy of both his presidency and of the democratic process that enables "deplorables" to choose a president that the Democrats don't support.
• 
That is, the delegitimization of Trump and his voters morphed into a rejection of the rules of American democracy.
• 
All Democrat efforts to oust Trump from office and to block his ability to govern since, like the political violence the Democrats have employed with greater intensity in the intervening years, are a function of that move.
• 
The Democrats revealed their new post-democratic character and totalitarian bent on inauguration day.  When the millions of Democrats came out to protest the peaceful transfer of power, they called themselves "the Resistance."
• 
The media have been a full partner in the Democrats' efforts to overturn America's constitutional order in favor of one that denies their opponents (or "enemies" ) the ability to lead the country.
• 
In 2008, the U.S.  media replaced its traditional pro-Democrat bias with full mobilization when Barack Obama entered the presidential race.
• 
The media writ large presented Obama as a man without blemish.  His domestic and foreign policies were deemed ingenious, completely successful and kind-hearted, and were never subjected to serious scrutiny.  Obama's personal and policy failings were airbrushed out.
• 
Obama's opponents were demonized as corrupt and evil foreign agents and avaricious "moneymen."
• 
From the moment Trump rode down the escalator of Trump Towers, he received the exact opposite treatment.  If Obama was a messianic figure and Biden a kindly, wise grandpa, Trump was the devil incarnate.
• 
The media's abuse of Trump has known no bounds.  The legacy newspapers and television networks competed over who could report more Trump-Russia lies.
• 
Trump's dizzying array of accomplishments in office, at home and abroad were deliberately ignored or downplayed all day, every day for the past four years.
• 
Media executives, editors, anchors and reporters made clear the moment Trump was elected that their only goal, and the only legitimate goal, was to oust him from office.
• 
It's impossible to know how things will develop in America in the coming weeks.  But it is hard to see a rainbow over the horizon.  If Trump is declared the winner, the Democrats won't accept the legitimacy of the verdict.  Their use of political violence will undoubtedly rise.
• 
And if Biden is declared the winner, the Democrats will not rest on their laurels.  Having already adopted the totalitarian mindset, they will insist their newfound power be used to advance their program.  Indeed, they already are.
• 
MSNBC commentator Jason Johnson said ... "You cannot come into this White House with the idea that these people [Trump supporters] aren't the enemy.  They are.  They are the enemies of democracy."
• 
As for Trump's supporters, after being called "chumps" by Biden, after watching the Democrat-run vote counts and Big Tech's censorship of the president, Trump's supporters will not trust the integrity of the process that brought Biden to the White House.
• 
And it is hard to imagine them taking it silently.
      The great threat to America, and to American Jewry  (JWR 06/08/2020)
• 
Scattered among the thousands of cellphone videos depicting looting and destruction in the streets of America's greatest cities are clips of a different sort.
• 
In these short videos, we see throngs of white people on their knees, bowing before black people and asking for forgiveness for their "white privilege" and the "structural racism" in the deplorable, irredeemable United States of America.
• 
These videos point to a socio-political phenomenon that sparked the riots throughout the country following George Floyd's brutal death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer.
• 
They also make clear the reason that the liberal media in the United States continues to back the protests despite the fact that from the outset they have involved wide-scale violence, destruction and looting.
• 
Contrary to the narrative being pushed by the media and America's elites, the riots are not a consequence of increased police brutality towards African Americans.
• 
The violence we are seeing is a result of the steep radicalization of progressive white Americans.  Biden gave voice to this radicalization last summer when, during a campaign appearance in Iowa he said, "We choose truth over facts."
• 
... between 2010-2019, white progressives became the only demographic group in U.S.  history to prioritize the interests of other groups over its own interests.
• 
White progressives prioritize the advancement of the interests of minorities and immigrants over their own and over those of American society as a whole.
• 
Online platforms have created an information bubble that has created a warped presentation of reality to those inside the bubble.  In this warped reality, race relations are far worse than they are in reality.  Hence, those who inhabit this bubble prefer "truth" as presented in the bubble to facts.
• 
But the internet isn't the only source of the radicalization.  The Obama presidency was also a factor.
• 
When Barack Obama won the presidential race in 2008, many Americans believed his victory was proof the United States had overcome its racist past.
• 
Obama however, did not support this view.  Throughout his tenure in office, Obama used the power of his position to resonate and legitimize positions on race that until then had been relegated to the leftist margins of American politics.
• 
Obama cultivated the view that far from being a post-racial society, America is inherently racist and that American racism is structural — that is, it was baked in and impossible to overcome.
• 
In so doing, Obama gave credence to the false claim at the heart of the riots: that black Americans are under continuous, existential threat from the state as a whole and from law enforcement bodies first and foremost.
• 
A third cause of the radicalization of white progressives is the higher education system.  The more radicalized campuses are, the more radicalized graduates become.
• 
As progressives, many American Jews share the views of their non-Jewish progressive counterparts regarding the need to prioritize the interests of minority communities over their own interests.
• 
Black Lives Matter, the radical group leading the demonstrations, is an anti-Semitic organization.
• 
One progressive Jew tried to square the circle writing in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, "Today Jews need to support Black Lives Matter; tomorrow we can talk about Israel."
• 
... as white progressives became radicalized on issues related to minorities and immigration, they also turned against Israel.
• 
Although New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio has prevented New York police from taking firm action against looters and arsonists, he did instruct them to use all necessary force to prevent ultra-Orthodox Jewish children from going to school.
• 
Earlier this week, police in Brooklyn chased a group of Hassidic children and their mothers off a playground in Williamsburg.
• 
Democrats believe the riots will wreck President Trump's reelection hopes.  Polls this week indicate that at least in the short term, the unrest is hurting Trump's chances of being reelected.
• 
Then again, it's possible the chaos in the streets will strengthen public support for President Trump, who voters may view as the last bulwark separating them from national destruction.
• 
Whether Trump wins or loses in November, the radicalization of white progressives at the heart of the mayhem represents the greatest short and long-term threat to social cohesion in America.
 Gonzalez  (07/28/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/20/2022) | Next sect (09/27/2021) | List bot 
      Mike Gonzalez: Critical race theory, Team Biden and our schools – 2 big lessons conservatives must learn  (Fox 07/28/2021)
• 
When the Biden administration retreated twice this month from its attempts to shoehorn critical race theory into K-12 classrooms, it showed two things: The first is that a strategy of exposure and pressure works, the second is that the American people can never let up.
• 
The second is particularly vital.  President Joe Biden has surrounded himself with committed ideologues who themselves have appointed mid-level managers devoted to far-leftist causes, and they are determined to impose these ideas on the rest of us.
• 
If anything, this is a "teachable moment." Conservatives often remind themselves that personnel is policy, but when it comes to filling out administrations, they sometimes buckle under to the wishes of the left-of-center entrenched federal bureaucracy.
• 
Example A is the Department of Education's hasty decision to eliminate a radical CRT outfit from its recommendations to schools on how to open up in the fall after the lengthy COVID-19 shutdown, and how to spend moneys allocated in the American Rescue Plan.
• 
The guidance, called the "Roadmap to Reopening Safely and Meeting all Students' Needs," had promoted the Abolitionist Teaching Network, a grifting outfit that (sadly) is fairly typical of companies that offer "anti-racist" trainings programs or curricula.
• 
The network itself says it is gearing toward building "abolitionist teachers ... requires students, families, and educators who disrupt Whiteness and other forms of oppression."
• 
The "roadmap" called for the elimination of "all punitive or disciplinary practices that spirit murder Black, Brown, and Indigenous children."
• 
And it included calls to "remove any and all police and policing from schools" and institute "reparations for children of color stolen by the school-to-prison pipeline."
• 
... Bettina Love, co-founder of ATN and chair of its board, said during a welcome webinar, "If you don't recognize that White supremacy is in everything we do, then we got a problem." Love added, "I want us to be feared."
• 
All of this is ugly stuff, but average fare for the outfits that suck tax dollars out of hard-strapped communities with their "Social Emotional Learning" (SEL) programs.
• 
The outrageous posturing of these trainers and "educators" has helped convinced parents across the country to resist CRT.
• 
The thinking is also classic Critical Race Theory — even though now that a natural resistance to CRT has built up, those practicing these divisive concepts deny that they are part of CRT.
• 
They can't hide, however; defining deviancy down, and decriminalizing crime, is at the heart of the writings of Regina Austin, Angela Harris and Paul Butler, undeniable CRT academics.
• 
And, it is important to note as well that the use of the term "abolitionist" is not meant to associate this effort with the actual abolition of slavery, the work of Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, or the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
• 
No, abolition in this sense is a Marxist term.  ... "The word ‘abolition' is omnipresent throughout Marx's writings.  As [Marx scholar] Robert Payne noted, the word almost seems to jump off every page of the Manifesto.  ‘And after he has "abolished" property, family, and nations, and all existing societies, Marx shows little interest in creating a new society on the ruins of the old'."
• 
In fact, in a video that Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors cut in February, she praised her intellectual guru, Angela Davis, as one of her "favorite abolitionists."
• 
Lest we forget, Davis ran twice for VP on the Communist Party ticket and received the Lenin Peace Prize from the ruthless East German leader Erich Honnecker.
• 
She fills auditoriums at universities today where she informs her clueless audience that "I am now and have always been a Marxist."
• 
... as Fox News had reported that the administration was recommending ATN materials, a spokesperson said the whole thing had been "an error." A rushed-out statement said, "The Department does not endorse the recommendation of this group, nor do they reflect our policy positions."
• 
The episode over the abolitionist teaching network was but the second time the Department of Education leads with its CRT fist, and then folds when America punches back.
• 
Americans are faced with an administration that pretends to be moderate, and which a fawning media portrays as moderate, but which appoints people who attempt to impose fringe ideas onto impressionable minds.  Parents and taxpayers must remain vigilant.
• 
See related Critical Child Abuse (Antonio Branco, 04/22/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related What’s in a Name (Antonio Branco, 06/24/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Garbage in... (Bob Gorrell, 05/16/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
 Goodwin  (09/27/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (07/28/2021) | Next sect (04/15/2020) | List bot 
      Michael Goodwin: Hunter Biden's China connection – is link to president already paying off for Beijing?  (Fox 09/27/2021)
• 
While reading a New York Times story about the Justice Department plan to drop serious charges against a Chinese tech executive, I looked for the Hunter Biden angle.  It wasn't a long search.
• 
Then came this: "The deal to release Ms.  Meng could signal a more conciliatory approach in Washington's stance toward Beijing under the Biden administration."
• 
It might be a conciliatory move, but it might also reflect a corrupted president.  That's where Hunter Biden comes in, and he doesn't come alone. 
• 
He brings with him lots of baggage and the whole Biden family, including President Joe, aka "the big guy."
• 
That was the name of a secret partner slated to get 10% of a deal with a Chinese conglomerate put together by Hunter and Jim Biden, Joe's brother, and several others.
• 
Although the venture later collapsed, the Biden family still got $11 million from the Chinese executive involved, according to a Senate investigation last year.
• 
Did Joe get 10% of the $11 million?  Did he ever get any money from Hunter's decades-long business of selling access to his father?
• 
These are legitimate questions.  Consider that the evidence Joe was a secret partner of his son's and brother's scams all along is far more compelling than any evidence that Donald Trump colluded with Russia.
• 
Yet Trump was tortured by the accusation for nearly three years, and even the failure of special counsel Robert Mueller to find sufficient evidence didn't satisfy the left.
• 
We know for certain the Russia, Russia, Russia charge was a lie concocted by Hillary Clinton and weaponized by the FBI and the Obama-Biden White House.
• 
The media, blinded by its own hatred of Trump, swallowed the lie and poisoned politics for a generation.
• 
Meanwhile, nearly a year after The Post published the first articles on the contents of Hunter's infamous laptop, and was censored by Big Tech and largely ignored by the Big Media, that same confederacy remains uncurious about whether the current president is compromised by his family's lucrative business with America's adversaries.
• 
What if the real collusion is between Joe Biden and China?  Merely to ask the question throws a new light on what we already know.
• 
The Ukraine boondoggle is the best known of Hunter's scams, with the drugged-up son getting $4 million from Burisma, a corrupt energy company, despite knowing nothing about Ukraine or energy.
• 
Is it really and truly just a coincidence that Daddy was at the time Barack Obama's point man on Ukraine?  And why would Joe blatantly lie about never even discussing his son's business when there is proof he actually used his government power to help?
• 
Recall the famous video of Joe boasting about getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired in exchange for American support – does it really bear zero connection to Hunter, even though the prosecutor was said to be investigating Burisma?
• 
The Huawei case also smells.  The company was the world's largest maker of smartphones and a dominant leader in 5G networks, but the Trump administration and other Western governments suspected it was using its equipment to spy for China.
• 
... the daughter of the founder, was indicted by a U.S.  grand jury on charges that included stealing trade secrets, obstructing a criminal investigation and helping Iran avoid U.S.  sanctions.
• 
And now Joe Biden suddenly pulls the plug as a bid to improve relations.  Why this case, and what about his promise never to tamper with the Justice Department?
• 
In fact, this is at least the second time Biden has given China a free pass with no visible reciprocation.  Notice how the talk that the coronavirus escaped from a Chinese lab suddenly died down after an intelligence review said it couldn't be certain either way.
• 
If that case is closed, China walks on one of the deadliest pandemics ever despite snubbing international probes.
• 
Heaven forbid anyone should think the president's lack of interest in the origins has anything to do with the money his family got from China.
• 
In addition to the $11 million wired to accounts controlled by Hunter and an associate, some of which went to Joe's brother Jim, another $28 million from the same Chinese executive passed through Hunter's bank accounts, according to the Senate probe.
• 
Whatever the reason, that kind of money doesn't come without strings.  But because of the media blackout of The Post's stories and even the Senate report, most Americans still don't know about the Bidens' suspect dealings.
• 
But rest assured the Chinese government knows everything about the deal, just as it knows everything about an earlier deal where Hunter secured a $1.5 billion investment from a Chinese bank during a trip to Beijing with Father Joe in 2013.  On Air Force Two, no less.
• 
It's not the cynic who wonders whether Joe Biden's pussyfooting around China now is a result of his being compromised.
• 
It's the realist who knows that nobody, not even Chinese communists with printing presses, gives away millions of dollars without expecting something very big in return.
• 
See related Biden Bible (Fuller, 12/2020)") cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Foreign Affairs (Antonio Branco, 05/16/2019) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Made in China (Antonio Branco, 08/28/2020) cartoon from World picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Biden's Big Tech blunder – here's how admin's actions threatening First Amendment  ()
• 
Any assessment of Joe Biden's performance last week runs into an obstacle.  While it was awful from start to finish, the hard part is deciding which was the absolute worst moment.
• 
Was it the president's latest attack on state voting law reforms, which he bizarrely called "the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War" ?
• 
Was it the administration's outrageous invitation for the pampered popinjays at the United Nations to sit in judgment of America's racial strife?
• 
Or perhaps it was Biden's decision to push a one-party spending spree of trillions of dollars even as inflation levels reached their highest mark in 13 years? 
• 
Under almost any president, each of those events would qualify as a low point.  But Biden is proving to be spectacularly awful at his job, and he did something else that captures the award for the week's Worst of the Worst.
• 
Friday, the president accused Facebook of "killing people" and demanded it silence those opposed to or questioning the coronavirus vaccines. 
• 
Coming from the president, this is a breathtaking accusation and demand.
• 
It far exceeds anything Donald Trump ever said or did.  Trump wrongly called some media "the enemy of the people," but never accused them of actually "killing people."
• 
But Biden has – recklessly – and no doubt assumes the lapdog news media will echo his charge.
• 
Notably, Facebook's defense is that it is silencing as many people as it can find who question or criticize the vaccines.
• 
That's hardly a defense of free speech, but rather shows Big Tech fundamentally agrees with Biden's goal.  They just differ on the success rate.
• 
"Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages."
• 
The White House and the DNC are going to monitor and "dispel misinformation" on social media and private text messages?  And work with congenitally-corrupt "fact checkers"?
• 
... the government is not only "flagging" people it doesn't like, it's also helping to "boost trusted content."
• 
... how about the fact that today's "misinformation" on COVID is tomorrow's approved "information?"
• 
Recall that government officials, including the unreliable weathervane, Dr.  Anthony Fauci, switched directions so many times it's hard to say with certainty what the latest official line is.
• 
If that weren't bad enough, Psaki dug a deeper hole Friday by arguing that people banned from one social media platform should also be banned from others.  Her proposal effectively urges the companies to create a unified ban against American citizens.
• 
On top of Biden's inflammatory accusation, her remarks and the government's actions make it clear we are far down the slippery slope.
• 
There's already one example of the potential impacts.  The Post's expose on Hunter Biden's laptop last October was blocked by Big Tech for two crucial weeks while voting in the presidential election was underway.
• 
Later, a poll found most voters were not aware of the stories and some 8 percent said they would have voted differently had they known the facts.
• 
That restriction was done for partisan purposes by private companies.  Imagine if the government had demanded the blackout, as it is doing now on vaccines and who knows what else.
• 
... the Big Tech platforms are so huge that they really operate as monopolies.  When they work together as one, as they did in squelching the Hunter Biden stories, they have almost absolute power to shape events.  They even silenced Trump when he was president, a blackout that continues.
• 
... some Democrats and others on the left embrace the cancel culture habit of silencing dissent.  What started on college campuses has metastasized into a national phenomenon, with even large companies insisting that some routine disagreements are intolerable and must be banned.
• 
And now we have the government endorsing these developments and trying to unite them.
• 
The effort is not a mere suggestion, as Biden's demand to the social media platforms carries an implicit threat of government compulsion.
• 
As such, the administration is moving toward gutting the First Amendment and controlling private companies.  That's a new low, even for Biden.
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Top 10 biggest lies liberal media has been caught peddling — and why it matters  (Fox 06/14/2021)
• 
The latest lie to die is the false claim the feds cleared Lafayette Park of protesters last year so then-President Donald Trump could hold a photo op.
• 
The Interior Department's inspector general says police planned to clear the park so a contractor could install a fence, a decision unrelated to Trump's walk to a nearby historic church burned in a riot.
• 
... the truth usually emerges not because of the press, but despite it.
• 
Take growing acceptance of the idea the COVID-19 pandemic started with a leak from a virology lab in Wuhan, China.
• 
The idea was always plausible, but the press and big tech declared it a "conspiracy theory" and snuffed it out of circulation.
• 
The pattern is so pronounced that it's easy to assemble your own list of Top Ten Media Lies.  On mine, the recent cases involving Lafayette Park and the lab-leak theory are Nos.  8 and 9.*
• 
No.  1 is the oldest and biggest: Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016 and might be a Russian agent.  That scam involved crooked FBI agents and led to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller, who took two years to conclude there was no evidence to back the charge.
• 
Yet the probe had enormous impact, with the drumbeat of anonymous leaks hampering the Trump agenda and helping Democrats take the House in 2018.
• 
Remember Lie No.  2, the "Muslim ban" that wasn't?  Or No.  3, the mantra that the 2017 tax cuts were only for the "rich" despite studies showing 80% of the population benefitted?
• 
How about the "kids in cages" firestorm, complete with gripping photographs of migrant children in metal containers?
• 
That was Lie No.  4 and the hottest story going, with Democrats such as Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., rushing to the border with photogenic outrage.
• 
They vanished when it was revealed the Obama-Biden administration built the cages and the heart-wrenching photos were from 2014.
• 
Apologies, corrections and retractions came in bunches, right?  You must be kidding.  Big media and big tech are too big to admit error. 
• 
Even now, with historic surges of young people at the border, the press doesn't complain about Biden banning their cameras.  That's not journalism – it's complicity.
• 
Lie No.  5 was the Ukraine impeachment of Trump, a creative fiction based on a complaint from an anonymous member of the swamp who never testified.
• 
But others did to say the president, in trying to get information on Biden family corruption in Ukraine, was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors.
• 
What Trump actually did was threaten the scam Joe Biden and son Hunter created that involved selling the suggestion that Joe's influence could be had by hiring Hunter.  That's the sort of thing reporters are supposed to expose, not protect.
• 
Five years after the New York Times and others abandoned standards of fairness to become anti-Trump activists, press misconduct is repeatedly exposed as willful malpractice.  In a word, lies.
• 
Just as liberals have become illiberal, media have become more focused on suppressing the truth than revealing it.
• 
Take Hunter Biden's laptop, which is No.  6 on my Top Ten, although it rivals Russia, Russia, Russia in importance.
• 
The outlets that held their noses over the laptop had no trouble embracing the claim from Joe Biden's campaign that the e-mails on it were "Russian disinformation." In what felt like a coordinated move, big tech instantly blocked The Post and other users from sharing them.
• 
The final proof that media caution had morphed into coverup came when Tony Bobulinski emerged.  ... They were especially loathe to report anything supporting Joe Biden's role, even though Bobulinski gave all his evidence to the FBI.  That cone of silence goes well beyond bias.  That is Lie No.  7.*
• 
Finally, the 10th lie remains active, so the truth has not fully emerged.  The subject is ballot integrity, which the left demonizes as improper voter suppression.  Joe Biden made the astonishing claim that demands for photo identification are the new Jim Crow.
• 
... there are antidotes to a corrupt press: Facts, facts and more facts.  Or, as the late economist Herb Stein put it, "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."
• 
Media lies are no exception.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Oh the Humanity! (Michael Ramirez, 06/06/2021) cartoon from Media picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Israel vs.  Hamas – Biden should let Netanyahu fight this war his way.  Here's why  (Fox 05/17/2021)
• 
... there is a long, bloody history between the combatants, the current fighting is unique in ways that make the endgame especially crucial for the Jewish state and the entire region.
• 
The most obvious change is that Hamas increased its rocket capacity, both in numbers and range.  In previous battles, the relative handful of explosives launched from Gaza were a threat only to Israelis near the border. 
• 
While the explosives are unguided and many are destroyed by Iron Dome batteries, the sheer number has at times overwhelmed the defense system, making all of Israel more vulnerable.
• 
Air raid sirens are sending residents to defense shelters all over the country and some civilians have been killed, including a child. 
• 
The rockets are smuggled from Iran or built in Gaza using Iranian supplies, making the weapons a proxy for Iran's malign reach.
• 
There also are outbreaks of violence in the West Bank and Arab villages in Israel, some involving Jewish and Muslim civilians ­attacking each other. 
• 
Still, the main event is the Iranian connection and the willingness of Hamas to fire indiscriminately on civilian areas, including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.
• 
That combination justifies Israel's ferocious response and its effort to wipe out the terrorist group's leadership. 
• 
The decapitation strikes illustrate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's plan to inflict massive and lasting damage on Hamas.
• 
... Israel needs sufficient time to smash the organization's operating ability and destroy its arms cache.  How much time is a guess, but it is probably a matter of days, not weeks.
• 
Naturally, Israel's superiority drives the left crazy, with the anti-Semitic wing of the Democratic Party calling the response inhumane and even terrorism.
• 
... Hamas paints a target on its own civilians by hiding explosives in residential neighborhoods and putting rocket launchers near schools.
• 
The vast tunnel system Hamas built under Gaza City is a glaring example of how it diverts millions of dollars and construction material to war while using ordinary Palestinians as shields.
• 
Israel goes the extra mile by often warning Arab civilians by telephone to evacuate buildings it is targeting, showing more concern for them than Hamas does.
• 
Does Israel make mistakes, and sometimes hit innocent civilians?  Of course.  But these are accidents, while Hamas targets Israeli civilians.  Where's the outrage over that?
• 
The confrontation came days after the feckless Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas canceled elections in the West Bank because Hamas would have made gains and become part of the government.
• 
The rocket barrage is Hamas' way of showing Palestinians it is their defender, and that Abbas can't be trusted. 
• 
Oddly, Hamas is right on the trust issue.  Now in the 16th year of a four-year term, Abbas foolishly rejected every overture from the Trump administration and ended up further isolated.
• 
David Friedman, who was Trump's ambassador to Israel, argues Hamas aimed to inflict damage on Israel while being spared a full retaliation because it believed Biden would quickly pressure Israel to de-escalate. 
• 
... Biden's "seemingly irrational eagerness" to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal.  The new president wants to lift the Trump-era economic sanctions without demanding any restraint on either Iran's nuclear program or aggressive support of Hamas. 
• 
Count that as another reason why Israel deserves the time to deal Hamas a crushing blow.  Anything less will embolden the terrorists and Iran to start yet another round of bloodletting.
      Biden's radicalism – weaponizing race, crushing dissent are new hallmarks of Dems, far left  (Fox 05/10/2021)
• 
The e-mail was short and nasty.  After first calling Sen.  Tim Scott "the token Uncle Tom" and the N-word, the writer added: "You knuckle dragging conservatives should be sent to the ovens."
• 
The writer, Mildred50, if that's her real name, was one of many on the left who were infuriated that Scott, a Black Republican from South Carolina, had the gall to declare that "America is not a racist country" in his rebuttal to President Biden's address to Congress.
• 
Scott did not duck the unfinished business on race or his experiences of being stopped for no reason by police.  He was frank in acknowledging there is more work to do.
• 
But he also put Biden to shame by hailing the enormous progress America has made, in stark contrast to a president who sounds stuck in the past when he compares new voting laws to the Jim Crow era and insists the country remains riddled with "systemic racism."
• 
For his common sense and optimism, Scott received deserved acclaim and, distressingly, an outpouring of hatred, with the "Uncle Tim" slur trending on Twitter for 12 hours. 
• 
The e-mail from Mildred50 echoed that vile language, but the second sentence revealed something more.  By saying "You knuckle dragging conservatives should be sent to the ovens," the writer effectively identified as a liberal.
• 
... here is a racist who identifies as a liberal while wishing conservatives get "sent to the ovens." The Holocaust reference is also unmistakable and repugnant.
• 
Although it's impossible to know what shaped that warped outlook, raw hatred is a growing and powerful force in American politics, especially on the left.
• 
That is not to suggest all Republicans are innocent, or that every Democrat is a racist who wants Republicans dead.
• 
Rather, it is stating the obvious to say the new left alone wants to irrevocably change America, rewrite its history and tear down its institutions.
• 
And many are prepared to crush any and all dissent.
• 
Unfortunately, millions of Democrats fit that description and they are driving the party.  Many are in Congress and the administration, including, I am sorry to say, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
• 
This is not the Biden we expected, but, based on his actions, this is the Biden we have.
• 
With traditional liberals fast disappearing, the ascendant left no longer champions equal rights.  Instead, it champions racial prejudice and even resegregation under the guise of equity.
• 
The open, unabated hatred for Tim Scott and others who don't subscribe to this new orthodoxy is especially alarming.
• 
While politics has always been a tough business, radicalism grew more powerful under President Barack Obama, where a coercive, moralistic tone clouded every discussion.
• 
If you didn't accept his programs, you were either ignorant or corrupt.  There was no room for honest disagreement.
• 
Those who felt abandoned and betrayed responded by electing Donald Trump, who embraced the role of their avenger.
• 
In its response, the left upped the ante again by starting a resistance that adopted the posture of moral and intellectual superiority on steroids.
• 
The refusal of Dems in Congress and the media to accept Trump's legitimacy shredded any hopes of reconciliation and led to the bitter polarization we now face.
• 
We saw the flowering of the madness during the violent anti-police protests last summer.  Most often, it was young Whites, some of them graduates of elite universities, who, while demonstrating over the George Floyd case, were caught spitting on and cursing police and calling Black officers traitors to their race.
• 
Just like Tim Scott, the brave officers were accused of not being authentically Black because they dared to break from the stereotype leftist Whites demanded of them.
• 
Biden, seeing the widening breach and numerous fault lines, cleverly sold himself as someone who would lower the temperature and get things done by working with both sides.
• 
It was a ruse.  The bonfire of rage is still burning and his administration is using its power to further racialize and radicalize daily life.
• 
No leading Democrat, including Biden, condemned the outrageous attacks on law enforcement, and few spoke honestly about the rise in violent crime.  Similarly, few Dems condemn Big Tech's silencing of voices that oppose the left's worldview.
• 
The weaponization of race and a commitment to blocking dissenting speech goes beyond rhetoric.
• 
Traditional liberals were inherently suspicious of the FBI and CIA because they had sometimes trampled on Americans' rights, but the new left enlists those agencies to criminalize dissent.
• 
"We have a president who is a life long creature of the swamp and left wing elements are pulling the strings. 
• 
"The criminals are viewed as heroes and cops are the bad guys.  We are lectured and accused of being racist.  I'd like to think the good guys will eventually win, but I'm losing hope."
• 
See related Stayin’ Alive (Antonio Branco, 02/22/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related The Left (Mike Shelton, 01/28/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Tim Scott's speech – here's what Biden, Dems can learn from SC senator's inspiring words  (Fox 05/03/2021)
• 
Biden talked America down by building the government up, painting 330 million people as hopelessly lost unless Washington takes more and more control of the economy and everyday life.
• 
His plans for $6 trillion of spending and tax hikes are so far out of the mainstream that they are by definition radical.
• 
... Biden's continuing refrain of "systemic racism" is fundamentally at odds with his promise to unite the country.
• 
A reckless charge of racism might silence speech in college dorms, but coming from a president, it's an intolerable insult to millions of people and fuels growing rancor.
• 
Scott, the only black GOP senator, gracefully sliced and diced Biden's remarks with a tone of disappointment, lamenting "this feeling that our nation is sliding off its shared foundation."
• 
Scott offered contrast by noting how, with Donald Trump in the White House and the GOP holding the Senate, "we passed five bipartisan COVID packages," with all five bills getting 90 votes in the Senate.
• 
"I have experienced the pain of discrimination.  I know what it feels like to be pulled over for no reason.  To be followed around a store while I'm shopping," he said evenly before quickly adding: "I've also experienced a different kind of intolerance.  I get called ‘Uncle Tom' and the N-word by progressives, by liberals."
• 
He cited his efforts to get a police reform bill through the Senate after the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, only to have Dems use the filibuster to kill it.  Dems, Scott said, "want the issue more than they wanted a solution."
• 
He called the practice of having children focus on skin color a new racism and said it was "absurd" for Biden to refer to Georgia's new voting law as worse than Jim Crow.
• 
"Hear me clearly.  America is not a racist country.  It's backwards to fight discrimination with different types of discrimination.  And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present."
• 
Given the shaky state of our union, Scott's speech is the most valuable thing said in Washington this year.  In under 15 minutes, he made vastly more sense than Biden did in 65 minutes, while also outlining the case against the nihilistic attacks on America's history, culture and institutions.
• 
But what happened after his speech is almost as important.  The reaction on social media and elsewhere confirmed everything Scott said about the left's intolerance and bigotry.
• 
He was instantly insulted as an "Uncle Tim" on Twitter for saying America is not a racist country and, revealing its own bias, Twitter highlighted the offensive term for 12 hours.
• 
This is the same left that is quick to label as racist anyone who doesn't subscribe to its agenda.  Yet here it is, actually using racist language against a Black man because he dares to disagree.
• 
For Scott, the outpouring of vitriol was proof that blacks "cannot step out of your lane," as he put it the next day.
• 
The attacks were indeed brazen but, sadly, consistent with the mindset of many Dems.  Black supporters of Trump were mocked as traitors to their race, mostly by far-left Whites who presume to know how Blacks should think.
• 
Biden himself scolded a Black interviewer, saying "You ain't Black" after the interviewer suggested he was undecided about how to vote last year.
• 
Sadly, this is increasingly leftists' approach to all people on all issues.  Your authenticity and legitimacy are recognized only if you behave in the way they say you should, based on your race, ethnicity or gender.
• 
There is only one accepted path, and those who disagree are stupid or racist or misogynist – and that includes Blacks, Latinos, Asians and women.  No honest disagreement is acceptable.  It's either conform or we will ridicule and silence you.
• 
This intolerance is the greatest threat to America and is turning public life into a nightmare.  It makes the nation brittle by leaving no room for disagreement and offers no respect for those who differ.
• 
Worse, this coercive approach is force-fed into the education system.  Even in kindergarten and elementary grades, children are being taught to judge themselves and others by race, with Whites deemed oppressors and nonwhites victims.  If you or your parents don't agree, shut up or leave.
• 
Biden, who seems besotted by this madness, is giving it a boost by handing out grants as an incentive for schools to teach critical race theory, which pits people against each other on the basis of race.
• 
Thankfully, Scott, for one night at least, was the antidote.  He finished his remarks in uplifting fashion, saying, "Original sin is never the end of the story.  Not in our souls, and not for our nation.  The real story is always redemption."
      Michael Goodwin: Old Biden vs.  New Biden – here's why the president is such a changed man  (Fox 04/26/2021)
• 
The old Biden was a windbag who wouldn't shut up, the new Biden is a silent Sam, especially when it comes to answering press questions.  He ducks, dodges, hides and mumbles.
• 
The old Biden was proud about his friendship with Southern segregationists and called Sen.  Robert Byrd, a former member of the KKK, a mentor.  The new Biden declares all America guilty of "systemic racism" and says it's "a stain on the nation's soul."
• 
The old Biden defended the Senate filibuster and opposed packing the Supreme Court.  The new Biden calls the filibuster a relic of Jim Crow and forms a commission to study court changes.
• 
The old Biden pushed back against the Green New Deal during the campaign, but the new Biden wants to upend industries and alter daily life by imposing draconian cuts on fossil fuels.
• 
The old Biden claimed credit for writing the 1994 crime bill, which funded 100,000 local police officers and 125,000 new prison cells and toughened mandatory penalties.
• 
The new Biden marked the guilty verdict against former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin for killing George Floyd by saying the case "ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism.  The knee on the neck of justice for black Americans."
• 
... the new Biden is not the result of evolution.  Rather, his radical views on race, government institutions, climate change and criminal justice represent such sudden, wholesale reversals that they invite skepticism about his sincerity and whether he is fully in charge of his faculties.
• 
Does he really believe these things, or are they convenient lurches as he tries to keep up with the "woke" wingnuts who dominate his party in Washington?  Does he recognize the implications of his sweeping condemnations of law enforcement and White Americans?
• 
One revealing moment came last week when a Post reporter, Steven Nelson, asked the White House this question: "To what extent does President Biden acknowledge his own role in systemic racism?"
• 
It's a fair question because Biden has been a pivotal player in a system he now denounces.  Does he regret his own conduct as it relates to race?
• 
Does he believe he, his children and grandchildren benefited from the systemic racism he sees everywhere?
• 
A thoughtful, honest answer might have been revealing about events or experiences that changed the president's views.
• 
Instead, press secretary Jen Psaki responded with a nonresponse, saying in part, "One of the president's core objectives is addressing racial injustice in this country."
• 
The same question could be asked of other long-serving, powerful Dems who regularly echo the race-baiting claims.
• 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been in Congress since 1987.  What has she done to stop systemic racism, and has she benefited from it?  Was her father, also a politician, a racist?
• 
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., has been in public office since 1975, starting with the New York state Assembly.  When did he discover America is riddled with systemic racism, and what did he do about it?
• 
The same pattern holds on other ideas Biden is pushing.  He talked for years about helping "lunch pail" workers, but his first action as president was killing 11,000 good-paying jobs by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline.
• 
While Biden's entire big-ticket, big-cost agenda is roiling the nation, his approach on race is explosive and polarizing.  Already his Department of Education is proposing grants to incentivize schools to teach critical race theory and push The New York Times's error-ridden 1619 Project.
• 
Purveyors of this propaganda aim to destroy pride in American history and cast every aspect of modern life as evidence of White supremacy.  You can bet a push for reparations is coming.
• 
It is one thing for crackpot academics and racialized newspapers to indoctrinate students with anti-American trash.  It is scandalously awful when the president of the United States joins the amen chorus.*
• 
Race relations declined under the Obama-Biden administration and are now in free fall.  Unfortunately, the damage is not limited to academic debate.
• 
The national surge of criminal violence is a direct result of politicians handcuffing cops and preventing them from making arrests because of the ideology and/or race of perpetrators.
• 
With nonwhite Americans making up the vast bulk of both crime victims and suspects, restricting cops will mean more victims among the very people Biden says he wants to help.
• 
Of course, he also says he wants to unite the country.  How's that going?
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Left (Mike Shelton, 01/28/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Biden\\\'s Brain Trust (Gary Varvel, 07/20/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Biden border, White House chaos — if it ain't broke, president will break it  (Fox 04/14/2021)
• 
The sage advice that "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is older than Joe Biden, but apparently he never heard of it.  Or doesn't think much of it. 
• 
The president is on a tear, as in tearing up arrangements that were achieving their objectives.  His early results are disastrous.
• 
In the Mideast, he looks determined to undo the Arab-Israeli alliance Donald Trump forged by returning to the failed policies Biden helped to implement in the Obama-Biden administration.
• 
Biden also wants to end the Senate filibuster and took the first step toward packing the Supreme Court.
• 
The easy description of what Biden is up to, assuming he's really calling the shots, is that he is simply the anti-Trump president.  Whatever Trump did, Biden will undo it.
• 
While that approach tugs at the heartstrings of the hate-Trumpers, it's hardly a path to success.
• 
Instead, it's more like a child throwing a tantrum and breaking all his favorite toys.  What's he going to play with tomorrow?
• 
Tomorrow has arrived, and how well Biden's approach is working can best be seen at the border.  The chaos in the migrant facilities overflowing with minors is mirrored in chaos at the White House.
• 
The aide Biden tapped to be his "border czar," Roberta Jacobson, announced Friday she is leaving at the end of the month.  ... Even the Biden bootlicking New York Times called her departure "striking" given the problems.  It quoted Jacobson as claiming the system is moving toward "an immigration system that is humane, ­orderly and safe."
• 
Good grief.  Only a committed virtue signaler could call it "humane, orderly and safe" when coyotes and sex traffickers brought nearly 30,000 unaccompanied minors to the border in just February and March.  Caring for them is costing taxpayers $60 million a week.
• 
... officials caught 172,000 migrants at the border last month, a 71 percent increase from February.  Reports say as many as 1,000 others escape capture and enter illegally every day.
• 
This is all on Joe Biden and his arrogant decision to break what Trump fixed, without a workable plan of his own.
• 
First, he ended the "Remain in Mexico" compact that kept asylum-seekers in Mexico, he stopped wall construction and said children traveling alone would be exempt from rules blocking most families and childless adults.
• 
His implicit invitation to come was accepted by tens of thousands of migrants from Central American hellholes.
• 
The result is a new generation of illegal residents and "Dreamer" children that will make it impossible for any president to achieve a bipartisan solution.
• 
No doubt some American money again will pay the families of terrorists who kill or attack Israelis, and some will disappear into the secret bank accounts of corrupt Arab leaders.
• 
The United Nations relief agency, riddled with anti-Semites, will also get funded so it can continue the fiction that Palestinians remain refugees nearly 75 years after Israeli independence.
• 
... includes courting Iran, a ­theocracy committed to exporting terrorism.  Already the president is offering to lift sanctions Trump imposed on oil exports if only the mullahs would make promises about nuclear enrichment they never ­intend to keep.
• 
In Washington, Biden is using his wrecking ball to demolish institutions he served and defended for 40 years. 
• 
The filibuster he once said is essential he now calls a legacy of Jim Crow.  He revered the Supreme Court but now reviles it.
• 
Because his moves are so confusing, Washington chin strokers are searching for a Biden Doctrine to explain it all. 
• 
Let me save them time.  There is no doctrine because what Joe Biden is doing doesn't make a whit of sense.
• 
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Hunter Biden's laptop – end of media cover-up for president, family would be beautiful thing  (Fox 04/05/2021)
• 
In a TV interview, Hunter effectively conceded for the first time the laptop was his, opening the door to a new round of scrutiny about his foreign business scams and influence peddling.  This time, the door must stay open until America gets the truth.
• 
... because Democrats and their media mouthpieces tried to hide the truth, emails revealing suspicious conduct of the man who is now president have never been fully examined and explained.
• 
So far, all we've gotten are lies, as when Joe Biden called the laptop "a Russian plant" during a presidential debate.  He had help in concocting that claim, with 50 former intelligence leaders, including the odious John Brennan, saying that the contents smelled like Russian disinformation.
• 
That was a dog whistle for Big Media, which tried to debunk stories about the shocking content.  ... with Facebook and Twitter promptly blocking The Post's reports during the stretch run.
• 
The performance was a national embarrassment – and a successful dirty trick that helped Biden win the election.
• 
How successful became clearer in a poll where 45% of his voters said they didn't know about Hunter's business deals, and 9.4% said they would not have voted for Biden had they known.
• 
Weeks later, in December, Hunter admitted he was the target of a criminal tax probe by the Department of Justice, in part because the FBI also had the laptop's contents.  How convenient that the information held until after the election.
• 
While I'm not naive enough to assume The New York Times, CNN and Twitter will suddenly become anything other than leftist shills, they no longer have a monopoly on the information many Americans get.
• 
Moreover, as president, Biden cannot hide as easily as he did last year.  Press conferences provide journalists opportunities to ask him directly about his role in Hunter's deals.
• 
It's way past time Joe Biden answers questions about how his family, including brothers Jim and Frank, managed to make tens of millions of dollars off contracts and connections to Joe's government power.
• 
The short answer is that they were selling access and foreign governments and oligarchs were happy to buy at exorbitant prices.
• 
The best known scam, Hunter getting $4 million from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company, despite knowing nothing about energy or Ukraine, sums up the family business model.
• 
See related Biden Bible (Fuller, 12/2020)") cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Election Interference (Antonio Branco, 10/16/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Biden revives Obama policies – and each one hurts Americans.  Take a look  (Fox 02/22/2021)
• 
As winners never fail to remind losers, elections have consequences.  But rarely is there a single day where consequences pack as much wallop as Friday, where the irrationality of Joe Biden's policies came into full view.
• 
From the border with Mexico, where the new administration started opening the doors to at least 25,000 migrants seeking asylum, to the Mideast tinderbox, where it moved to rejoin the misbegotten Iran nuke deal, the new president appears fixated by the desire to turn back the clock to 2016.
• 
It's as if Biden has been seized by a sentimental longing to try to make the world like it was when the Obama-Biden administration left office.
• 
Still, trying to recapture the past would be reasonable if those years had created prosperity at home and peace abroad.
• 
In fact, the world ­Donald Trump inherited was brist­ling with trouble and America's economy was moving forward at a snail's pace.
• 
Despite revisionist efforts by the media and the left to erase the achievements of the president they hated, Trump had major policy successes that benefited all Americans.
• 
It's especially unnerving, then, that Biden is choosing to reverse the very policies that produced those benefits.
• 
Trump Derangement Syndrome leads people to do weird things, but Biden's attempt to cancel Trump's biggest victories is among the weirdest.
• 
The "Remain in Mexico" program was an effective solution to the endless stream of caravans of Central Americans that moved north to escape violence and find work in a booming U.S.
• 
The Obama-Biden policy had been to admit the asylum applicants and turn them loose pending hearings.  Naturally, many never showed up because they knew they could not qualify as refugees from persecution.  But their ability to stay here illegally served as an incentive for others to follow.
• 
Instead of building on the program that reduced mass migrations, Biden returned to the broken system Trump had fixed.  Biden also pledges not to build another foot of border wall and pause nearly all ­deportations for 100 days.
• 
In what world does any of that make sense, especially in a pandemic?
• 
Something similar happened at the G-7 Security Conference Friday, where Biden abandoned Trump's America First policy and embraced the "Kumbaya" notion that everybody is better off when we ­outsource our interests to globalist institutions.
• 
Although he didn't mention Trump, Biden went out of his way to distort recent history.  "I know the past few years have strained and tested our transatlantic relationship, but the United States is determined – determined – to reengage with Europe, to consult with you, to earn back our position of trust and leadership."
• 
In truth, America's major fight with Europe, especially Germany, was over the failure of NATO members to meet their agreed-upon commitment to spend at least 2% of their GDP for defense.
• 
For years, American presidents, including Barack Obama, had made the same complaint and were ignored.
• 
Trump of course cannot be ignored.  He loudly questioned the value of the alliance and railed against the fact that America was paying far more than a fair share for the common defense.  He also was not amused that NATO spent more than $1.4 billion for a new Brussels headquarters.
• 
Bingo, he succeeded.  Most of the deadbeats increased their defense spending, to the tune of more than an additional $100 billion a year, while agreeing to a reduction in U.S.  contributions.  They remain unhappy but why should Biden care?
• 
And why is he such a generous sap with American taxpayers' money?
• 
His plan to rejoin the Iran nuke deal that Trump scuttled is perhaps the looniest idea of all because of the shock waves it sends around the Middle East.
• 
The deal didn't even address, let alone stop, Iran's military aggression and terror proxies, which the Obama-Biden administration admitted.
• 
After Trump withdrew from the pact, reimposed sanctions and droned Iran terror leader Qasem Soleimani, an odd thing happened.
• 
As Democrats, including Biden, were running around like Chicken Littles warning of new wars, four Muslim countries signed historic peace and diplomatic accords with Israel, part of which involve joint security – against Iran.
• 
So again questions arise: Why would Biden trust the untrustworthy Iranians and undo the enormous progress Trump achieved?  Does he hate Trump more than he loves peace?
• 
Before you answer, remember what former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said about Biden: "I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national-security issue over the past four decades."
• 
Finally, Friday was the day America formally rejoined the Paris climate accord that Trump abandoned.
• 
Soon the White House will push more job-killing restrictions on ­industry and consumer emissions, all while China and India keep ­increasing theirs.
• 
But fear not, the intrepid John Kerry is on the case.  The private-jet warrior for eliminating greenhouse gases used the occasion to restart the countdown to catastrophe.
• 
"Well, the scientists told us three years ago we had 12 years to avert the worst consequences of climate crisis.  We are now three years gone, so we have nine years left."
• 
To underscore that this time is different, Kerry insisted, "There is no room for BS anymore.  There's no faking it on this one."
• 
Funny he should put it that way.  If you eliminate fakery and BS, Biden's policies don't have much going for them.
      Michael Goodwin: Trump impeachment verdict – here's who won and who lost  (Fox 02/14/2021)
• 
This was a show trial, an attempt by Democrats to humiliate Trump after his election defeat and force Republicans to side with him or against him.
• 
While the president's speech before the Capitol riot was at times too angry and bitter, there was nothing in it that could reasonably be seen as intending to incite an insurrection, as the single House article charged.
• 
In the long history of our republic, there have been only four presidential impeachments, and two of them came courtesy of Pelosi and Schumer in the last two years.  That's making history in all the wrong ways.
• 
They have normalized impeachment as a partisan weapon, which is the last thing our country needs.
• 
For Trump, the acquittal allows him to begin moving on with his life and focus on what role he wants to play in the 2022 midterms and whether he wants to run in 2024.
• 
He must also deal with the fact that various prosecutors are looking at his businesses and other ­issues.
• 
Beyond that, expect Democrats to be especially creative in trying to keep Trump's name in the headlines.
• 
Nothing unites their fractured party like hating him, and Saturday's failure will provide more fuel for their perpetual outrage.
      Michael Goodwin: Biden family has no shame – here's why they get away with it  (Fox 02/01/2021)
• 
They can't quit the grift.  No sooner had Joe Biden won the White House than his family went back to trying to make a buck off his name.
• 
The latest sordid example involves one of Joe's younger brothers, Frank Biden, appearing in a Florida law firm's ad – on Inauguration Day no less.
• 
The ad used the president's name to draw attention to the Berman Law Group's class-action suit against sugar cane growers.
• 
"The two Biden brothers have long held a commitment to pushing environmental issues to the forefront," says the ad.
• 
"The president-elect has vowed to rejoin the Paris Agreement and wants to set ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets."
• 
The ad ... carried a picture of Frank Biden and quotes him saying, "My brother is a model for how to go about doing this work." How touching.  And shameless.
• 
After the enormous political trouble Hunter Biden's shady business ties caused during the campaign, Frank's bid to piggy-back on Joe's election sounds especially reckless.  But here's another way to look at it.
• 
Biden family members are oblivious to conflicts and criticism because they've been swimming in swamp corruption for decades.
• 
The two brothers, Frank and Jim, and Hunter have made millions and millions based on selling the perception of access to Joe's power.
• 
Having gotten rich and gotten away with it, why quit now?  Joe is no longer one of 100 senators or just the vice president.  Now he's the "big guy." Ka-ching!
• 
As a candidate for president, he insisted he never discussed Hunter Biden's vast foreign businesses with him.  Yet Hunter flew to China with him on Air Force 2 in 2013 and returned with a $1.5 billion investment from a bank controlled by the Communist Party.
• 
So we're supposed to believe that during the long round trip flight, Joe never said, "Son, what are you doing on my plane?  And what are you doing in China?"
• 
Even more galling, when Hunter abandoned his laptop at a repair shop and The Post published e-mails and photos from it showing how the son had been reaping a king's ransom from autocrats, oligarchs and various thugs, Joe called the whole thing "Russian disinformation."
• 
He was the one spreading disinformation, though most Americans didn't know it because Big Media ignored the story and Big Tech blocked The Post's accounts.
• 
Still, we know Joe knew the truth because the laptop contained an email from an adviser to the corrupt Ukrainian energy company Burisma, thanking Hunter for arranging a meeting with Joe.
• 
Burisma, recall, paid Hunter more than $4 million for sitting on its board despite his knowing nothing about Ukraine or energy while Joe was vice president.
• 
See related Biden Bible (Fuller, 12/2020)") cartoon from Politics picture album
      Michael Goodwin: I'm ignoring Biden's 'unity' talk, here's why you should, too  (Fox 01/25/2021)
• 
Biden won the right to pursue the leftist agenda he campaigned on.  But his promise that he will also work for the Americans who didn't vote for him is more fig leaf than honest invitation.
• 
Again, he's entitled — elections have consequences.  But knitting together a fractured America around a far-left agenda was never going to work.  And Biden knows it.
• 
In fact, his actions suggest the "Kumbaya" appeal is not directed at Trump voters or even the public in general.  It's really a disguised call to the factions in his own party to stick together, to give him a chance.  I'll keep you all happy, he's saying, just watch.
• 
Biden kept Dems together during the campaign because everyone wanted to dump Trump.
• 
Now that he's won, he's got to find other ways to keep the fault lines from widening.  Early signs show he believes he can straddle the divide by staffing his administration with establishment veterans and party warhorses while giving the passionate far left early policy victories.
• 
Consider that just hours after the new president moaned in his inaugural address that "Millions of jobs have been lost, hundreds of thousands of businesses closed," he deliberately killed more jobs in the energy sector.
• 
One executive order revoked the permit for the Keystone XL Pipeline, which snuffed out thousands of good-paying union jobs in Canada and the United States.
• 
He halted new oil, gas and coal leases on public lands and water and rejoined the Paris climate accord, which is certain to be a massive jobs killer once he sets targets for reducing carbon emissions and enforces them with regulations.
• 
Naturally, the global climate elites cheered because, well, their jobs are secure.
• 
Trump's policies on the pipeline and fuel exploration, along with pulling America out of the climate pact, succeeded at creating jobs and achieving energy independence.  By reversing those policies, Biden keeps his promise to do the opposite of Trump.
• 
The effective campaign tactic is economically disastrous as a governing principle.  It's not even clear the politics will work for long in his own party if he keeps killing jobs before creating any.
• 
History teaches that raising unemployment is a fast ticket to a short honeymoon.
• 
There are other oddities as well.  After months of trashing the Trump White House over its handling of the pandemic and the vaccine, Biden said Friday "there is nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months."
• 
Lowering expectations is an old political trick, but his comment reflects a defeatist concession that can only deepen the nation's funk.
• 
Similarly, he said in his inaugural that America is both a great nation and systemically racist, which is hardly an uplifting message to a broad public.
• 
Then again, if you're only appealing to wokesters and racial arsonists, the seeming incoherence makes sense.
• 
Despite high unemployment and the pandemic, Biden invited Central American caravans to come on in.
• 
With a moratorium on deportations of illegal crossers, he made it certain the border will be flooded, and that criminals and the COVID-infected will be among them.  His press secretary described the policy as contributing to "racial equity."
• 
Biden also signed a radical order letting boys compete in girls' sports events if they identify as transgender.  The practice already is causing an uproar and now Biden has put the federal government on the side of glaring unfairness.
• 
He rejoined the World Health Organization, which Trump accused of obscuring China's role in spreading the coronavirus.
• 
So Biden will spend upwards of $450 million a year for the privilege of being the WHO's largest donor — and we'll never get the truth about what the organization knew and when it knew it.
• 
The conflicts and incoherence aside, the far left and media echo chambers swooned their approval of these and other measures, but that was predictable.  The real test will come when Biden doesn't have Trump to kick around anymore.
• 
Impeachment 2.0 moves to the Senate this week when Nancy Pelosi transmits the House charge of "incitement of insurrection" regarding the Jan.  6 riot at the Capitol.  While Biden has ducked questions about whether trying a former president is good for the country, his failure to object is all the answer we need.
• 
He's on board and why not?  As long as Trump is the target, Biden can keep his coalition intact.  Trump is the best uniter Dems ever had.
• 
Even if he is convicted and barred from public office, that won't be the end of the Trump obsession.  Pelosi, driven mad with hate, wants a commission to probe any Trump ties with Russia.
• 
At some point, however, the smoke will clear and voters will judge Biden on the merits of his own presidency.  For some of us, that time began the moment he took office.
• 
See related Endorsements (Sean Delonas, 08/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Pelosi and Schumer's America – welcome to the new abnormal  (Fox 01/18/2021)
• 
... the unrest and growing use of violence to achieve political ends are outgrowths of the extreme resistance movement against Trump.
• 
He ran as a disrupter, but was a piker compared to those who hated him and were willing to smash every social, political and legal norm to drive him from office.
• 
That resistance was started by Hillary Clinton and holdouts from the 2016 election and spread to Democrats in Congress, especially Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
• 
Their refusal to treat Trump as a legitimate president and worthy of their cooperation marks them as early victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
• 
They incited and fanned the flames of the Russia collusion scam and used it, with the help of J.  Edgar Comey and other crooked players in the FBI and intelligence agencies, to sabotage the president.
• 
The bid to overturn the 2016 election was the first pandemic to strike America, and the contagion sickened mayors and governors in blue states, the mainstream media, Hollywood, academia, the courts and much of the sports and entertainment world.
• 
The anything-goes madness made it acceptable in many quarters to declare that the president deserved to be assassinated.
• 
The final industry to put its full force against him, the social-media giants, used their monopolies not just to restrict but ultimately to silence the president of the United States.  It's as if Facebook, Twitter, Google and Apple stamped the word "cancel" on the White House.
• 
The tech blackout, while largely a response to the Capitol invasion, was the capstone of four years in which unwritten codes of conduct were broken and traditions shattered.
• 
The players were different, but the central explanation was always the same: Trump is dangerous, this time is different, we have no choice.
• 
Trump certainly made his share of mistakes, especially during the post-election period, but the most provocative thing he did was refuse to surrender.
• 
For four years, each time he punched back, the would-be destroyers escalated their attacks, which were amplified by a media chorus.
• 
The New York Times, Washington Post, broadcast networks and CNN and MSNBC were on a mission to destroy him.
• 
The claim that Trump's conduct demanded an extraordinary effort against him is a convenient excuse.  The truth is that elite institutions, businesses, unions and others aligned with Democrats made the choice that getting rid of Trump was more important than anything else.
• 
Trump didn't break those institutions and cause half the country to distrust them.  The people running them did that.
• 
Before Pelosi, in the entire history of the United States, presidential impeachment was used only twice.  She doubled that total in the last 13 months.
• 
If the departure of Trump could cure what ails America, we should be seeing signs of it already.  But the victory has only stoked the anger of those who never accepted him as president.
• 
Revenge is in the air, as members of Congress and far-left activists demand that airlines, hotels, publishing houses and other businesses shun Trump supporters.
• 
Some firms are complying in a craven bid to curry favor that smacks of banana republics where the vanquished are hounded and punished for daring to dissent.
• 
In a move straight out of George Orwell, Dems and the media have twisted the plain meaning of words.  "Violence" is speech when committed by Black Lives Matter, and "speech" is violence when it comes from Trumpers.
• 
Political opposition from Republican members of Congress is deemed "sedition" and 74 million Trump voters are blithely smeared as White supremacists.
• 
The Times bemoaned the "mindset" of those who still support the president while others talk of "deprogramming" them.  Comparisons of Trump to Hitler, Nazis and even 9/11 terrorists are so routine they no longer shock.
• 
Unfortunately, this radical talk is accompanied by equally radical plans.  The Dems aim to use the coronavirus and the riot as Trojan horses to expand government power and shrink individual freedoms in a push toward socialism.  Election safeguards are being permanently dismantled.
• 
To underscore the sweeping nature of what is coming, Rep.  Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a member of "The Squad," tweeted Thursday that "There will be no reset button.  No return to normal.  The status quo was unjust in the first place."
• 
Will Biden stop the madness?  Can he?  Our hopes for America hang by a very slender thread.
      Michael Goodwin: Trump's last stand – how will final days impact Georgia Senate runoffs?  (Fox 01/04/2021)
• 
With apologies to Mark Twain, reports about the death of Trumpism are premature.  At least for a few days more, Donald Trump has license to keep upsetting apple carts in Washington.
• 
Just when it seemed the president was roadkill and about to be abandoned by his own party, growing numbers of GOP members of Congress are signing on to a last-ditch effort to challenge the election results.
• 
Because success in any state would require a majority of both houses to vote no, the objectors are virtually certain to fail.
• 
Yet the swelling ranks of supporters in both chambers signals that it's still Trump's party and that enough of his 74.2 million voters are sticking with him that the pols have concluded it's not politically healthy to go against him.
• 
Most important, the challengers have more than enough clout to force debates on each state they dispute, and to require every member of Congress to vote yes or no on whether to accept the results as reported.
• 
The development will turn what is normally a routine procedural step into a heated battle and marks a major victory of sorts for Trump.
• 
It follows weeks where the president and his legal team got almost no traction among elected officials for their claims of widespread voter fraud, largely because court after court dismissed their filings.
• 
Claims by lawyer Sidney Powell alleging an international conspiracy involving voting machines drew widespread scorn.
• 
Suffering from Trump fatigue and eager to focus on the future, most Republicans simply wished the president would go away quietly.
• 
Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated Joe Biden on his victory and urged GOP senators to accept the election results, scheduled for final certification on Wednesday.
• 
But in recent days, more and more House members said they would object to a tally showing Biden getting 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232.
• 
Reports say up to 140 of the 211 GOP members would vote no on the grounds that results in some states are not trustworthy.
• 
Until Saturday, just one senator, Josh Hawley of Missouri, said he would join them, arguing that some states, such as Pennsylvania, had improperly changed or not followed their election laws, a move that would force both houses to conduct the debate and vote.
• 
Suddenly, however, nearly a dozen other senators, some just elected, issued a Saturday statement saying they, too, would vote no.
• 
Led by Sen.  Ted Cruz of Texas, they demanded that Congress appoint an electoral commission to conduct a 10-day emergency audit of states where Trump has charged there were sweeping instances of fraud.
• 
They cite as precedent the 1876 election between Democrat Samuel Tilden and Republican Rutherford Hayes, where the electoral votes in four states were in dispute amid a flurry of charges of cheating.
• 
"Congress did not ignore those allegations, nor did the media simply dismiss those raising them as radicals trying to undermine democracy, Instead, Congress appointed an electoral commission — consisting of five senators, five House members, and five Supreme Court justices — to consider and resolve the disputed returns."
• 
The most immediate impact of the sudden shift of support for the president could be felt in Georgia, where voting will close Tuesday for the two Senate runoff elections.
• 
... if Democrats win both seats, they will flip the Senate and gain control of Congress and the White House.  The implications of one-party rule are enormous, especially given the growing ranks of socialist-leaning Dems.  As Trump has acknowledged, his America First agenda would be a dead letter.
• 
... hovering in the background is the question of how Trump leaves the Oval Office.  I have never doubted he would do so voluntarily, and the fact that he and Melania are searching in Florida for a home and a school for their son illustrates he has privately accepted the reality of a Biden presidency, even as he rails against the results and exercises every possible right to contest them. 
• 
By convincing many Republicans to object to the certification, he has extended those rights to Wednesday.  As president, it is his last stand.
      Michael Goodwin: Coronavirus vaccine is Trump’s greatest achievement as president  (Fox 12/25/2020)
• 
"I think that the administration deserves some credit getting this off the ground with Operation Warp Speed," Joe Biden said as he got his Trump vaccine shot.
• 
"Some credit?" Then who deserves the rest of the credit?
• 
Notice, too, that Biden can't bring himself to say "President Trump." It's just the "administration" that deserves "some credit."
• 
This is stingy stuff.  Imagine for a second that Trump had not pushed as hard as he did and instead allowed the vaccine research, development and human trials to follow the usual drawn-out process through the maze of approval checkpoints.
• 
That would mean a delay of possibly four or five years, putting the vaccine's debut near or after the end of Biden's term.
• 
In the long interval, how many more Americans would have died from the coronavirus?  Half a million more?  A million, 2 million?
• 
Whatever the additional horrific toll, the worst clearly has been avoided and many, many lives have been saved.
• 
Think also of the economic impacts of going another four or five years without a vaccine.  Repeated waves of infections would have been met with more lockdowns and restrictions, slashing or eliminating income to tens of millions of families and driving cities and states closer to bankruptcy.
• 
Even Washington's money-printing presses would have had trouble keeping up.
• 
There's little doubt how Biden himself would have reacted absent a vaccine.  He said during the campaign he would "follow the science" and if that meant national lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, so be it.
• 
One of his top advisers suggested a lockdown across the country lasting "four to six weeks" would control the pandemic and allow the economy to reopen.
• 
Right, except remember that the initial lockdowns were going to be for just two weeks and that would be enough to flatten the curve.  That was nine months ago.
• 
In fact, the Trump vaccine is a great gift to the nation and the world, and that includes the Biden administration.
• 
Its agenda on issues like climate and tax hikes would have been dead on arrival without a way to reopen the country and give people hope that better and safer days are coming.
• 
The vaccine also will allow Biden to pursue something like a normal presidency in that he will no longer be forced to shun most human contact because of his age and health problems.
• 
The vaccine will free him personally, so it shouldn't be asking too much for Biden to acknowledge Trump's contribution in a complete and honest way.  But apparently it is asking too much.
• 
Nonetheless, getting the vaccine successfully produced and with millions of doses now being distributed and administered, Operation Warp Speed must be counted as Trump's greatest achievement as president.
• 
It is hard to believe any other modern commander in chief would have done it nearly as well, let alone ­better.
• 
This was a triumph of the first ­order made possible by the sheer force of his personality.  Trump's relentless pressure on private companies as well as the sprawling bureaucracy turned what many in the left-wing media and even some in the medical community regarded as a pipe dream into a lifesaving reality.
• 
It's as if his take-no-prisoners determination was made for the moment, an impression that adds to the irony given that the pandemic wrecked the final year of his presidency and probably cost him four more years.
• 
... despite the fact that the vaccine came soon enough to save an enormous number of lives, it came too late to save Trump's job.
• 
Still, it was a remarkable achievement for which all Americans should be grateful.
      Michael Goodwin: New York Times admits to major blunder – but these errors go uncorrected  (Fox 12/21/2020)
• 
Here are a few recent examples that had far worse impacts than "Caliphate" and none has been admitted or corrected.
• 
The Times was the lead offender in the greatest error in modern journalism: The false claims that President Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election.
• 
The paper pushed the narrative and was rewarded with Pulitzers and other awards.  The Times played Pied Piper to pack rats from other outlets who joined the feast of fabrication.
• 
The campaign, based largely on anonymous sources, sabotaged a presidency for nearly three years.  Even after special counsel Robert Mueller came up empty in trying to find collusion, the Times and fellow culprits never expressed contrition for their destructive errors.  Their hatred of Trump was their justification.
• 
The paper also played a major role in the unforgivable smearing of Brett Kavanaugh during the 2018 Supreme Court nomination battle.
• 
Times reporters reflexively gave credence to lurid allegations that had not a shred of evidence in a bid to block his confirmation.  To this day, there have been no apologies or explanations.
• 
Then there is the 1619 Project, where the Times took it upon itself to rewrite American history, despite esteemed historians pointing out its major errors.  ... facts didn't matter in their bid to advance a radical racial narrative.
• 
The list of errors also includes things the Times doesn't print because the facts conflict with its partisan position.  It withheld until after the election the knowledge that e-mails linking Joe Biden to his son Hunter's foreign business schemes were authentic.
• 
The Times runs afoul when it shapes stories to make the truth appear what reporters and editors want it to be.  When facts don't fit, they are ignored or massaged.
• 
... eliminated those standards in 2016 when he gave reporters free rein to trash Trump in virtually every story.  Although the daily dose of Trump hate brought increased revenues, the more enduring result is a collapse of public trust in the Times.
• 
Not coincidentally, the number and scope of major screwups has also ballooned.  That's what happens when you stop being a newspaper and become an activist chasing social and political agendas.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Hunter Biden investigation – to protect probe, Attorney General Barr must do this  (Fox 12/14/2020)
• 
Now that the election is over and it is safe for the media to cover the Hunter Biden scandal they ignored when The Post broke the story in October, things in Washington are getting back to normal.
• 
FBI and Justice Department officials are once again leaking like sieves to their favorite reporters.
• 
... the Times writes that "the inquiry originally focused on possible money laundering but did not gather enough evidence for a prosecution, according to people close to the case."
• 
... the real question is, what else did the Times know and when did it know it?  And why did it keep silent before Election Day?
• 
Try to imagine Donald Trump and his family getting the same deference.
• 
... the Journal story says that, in addition to the Delaware tax case, federal prosecutors in New York had been examining Hunter for a year as part of an "international financial investigation." That would have been worth knowing earlier.
• 
Sources always have an agenda, but when they are permitted to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, readers cannot judge their credibility and motive.  Worse, readers increasingly don't believe reporters even try to tell the truth.
• 
The supposed cream of the Washington press corps not only showed zero curiosity about the Biden family's lucrative business schemes, they actively tried to debunk The Post's stories as "Russian disinformation" or a smear.
• 
Democrats clearly wanted to erase the states' guardrails on ballot integrity, and they did, sometimes with GOP assistance or indifference.
• 
Then there's Big Tech, whose censors always lean in one direction.  Their political donations and news blackouts are two sides of the same agenda.
• 
The Deep State was a zealous backstabber.  More than 50 former intelligence officials, many of whom probably wanted jobs in a Biden administration, signed a letter suggesting the Post reports on Hunter Biden smacked of Russian disinformation.
• 
An honest media would have blown the whistle on all these dirty tricks.  But we don't have an honest media.  The one we have either looked the other way or played cheerleader.
• 
Someone wrote that, by standing alone against the mob, The Post proved itself the nation's indispensable newspaper.
• 
That high praise is borne out by the fact that the October reports were on the money — and there were no anonymous sources.
• 
The paper identified Rudy Giuliani as the source of the contents of the laptop Hunter left at a Delaware repair shop and failed to retrieve, and the repair-shop owner confirmed it.
• 
To this day, neither Hunter nor Joe Biden has disputed any of the e-mails, messages and lurid pictures found on the device.
• 
Consider this, too: The Post's reports, including interviews with Tony Bobulinski, a former partner to Hunter and Jim Biden, presented more solid evidence about dirty dealings by the Biden family than anyone found on Trump and his family.
• 
This is true despite special counsel Robert Mueller's two-year probe into Russia, Russia, Russia and the nonstop House impeachment investigations.
• 
The confederacy against Trump gives rise to another reality: The only way to protect the probe into the Biden family money-grubbing is through the appointment of a special counsel.
• 
The need for protection was the logic behind the Mueller appointment, and it applies now in spades.
• 
Not only must the probe be protected from Joe Biden's White House but also from FBI Director Christopher Wray.  Biden indicated he wants Wray to stay on, so the lackluster chief starts with an enormous conflict of interest, as will the eventual attorney general.
• 
In fact, the special counsel provision is to be used when there are conflicts of interest among investigators and prosecutors.  This case fits the definition in every possible way.
• 
Most worrisome is that the foreign governments that tried to buy influence with Joe Biden by paying millions to his brother and drug-addled son know if they got anything in return, and whether Biden has compromised himself.
• 
Hunter's biggest deals took place when his father was vice president and in countries where Joe was the frontman for the Obama-Biden administration, including Ukraine, Russia and China.
• 
The potential implications for America's national security are enormous.  The Trump administration has forcefully confronted China on numerous fronts...
• 
As a result, Joe Biden will be under pressure from President Xi Jinping to take a softer approach.  If he does, will that show he is bought and paid for?  And what else does China know about the Bidens that Americans don't?
• 
The decision is up to Barr.  When he announced he had elevated John Durham, the prosecutor probing the FBI's spying on the Trump 2016 campaign, to the position of special counsel, Barr said he wanted to provide Durham and his team "with the assurance that they could complete their work, without regard to the outcome of the election."
• 
The Biden probe is potentially far more consequential, and it deserves at least those same protections.
      Michael Goodwin: Biden's Iran delusions – Trump policies offer option to failed nuclear deal  (Fox 12/07/2020)
• 
The assassination of Iran's top nuclear scientist counts as a rare piece of good news from the mad mullahs' gulag.  It eliminates a key player in the bid to get nuclear weapons and creates a safer world.
• 
The event is being celebrated by the Trump administration, which has been relentless in bringing Iran to its knees.
• 
Israel, which likely carried out the bold hit, is delighted by the demise of a man whose weapons threatened to wipe the Jewish state off the map.
• 
Also cheering are the Sunni Arab nations whose governments are targeted by Iran.
• 
In short, the death of Moshen Fakhrizadeh is an unmitigated good thing to millions upon millions of innocent people.
• 
Yet to read The New York Times or listen to Joe Biden, the death is a bad thing because it complicates Biden's plan to persuade Iran to rejoin the nuclear pact that President Trump wisely scuttled.
• 
Welcome to a bizarro land ruled by nostalgia for a past that never was.
• 
In the real world, Fakhrizadeh's death is a gift to Biden, and if he has any sense, he will recognize it as such.  The next president might even whisper, "Thank you," to Trump and the Israelis.
• 
That Biden is instead complaining and trying to woo Iran illustrates how stuck in the past he is.  The Mideast has changed dramatically for the better since he left office in 2016, or maybe he hasn't noticed that Israel and Arab states signed historic accords of mutual recognition, trade and tourism and are united in opposing Iran.
• 
The core problem is that he and the Democrats' media handmaidens continue to fetishize the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran as a triumph of diplomacy and believe in Iranian "moderates" the way children believe in Santa Claus.
• 
In fact, the terms of that deal, negotiated by John Kerry and approved by the Obama-Biden White House, were a surrender that paved the way for the mullahs to get nukes in due course.
• 
Almost as bad, international sanctions were lifted and Obama returned unfrozen Iranian funds, much of which went to finance terror in the region.
• 
Why would anyone want to go back to that time, especially when subsequent events weakened Iran and put it on defense?
• 
Biden said the mullahs must adhere to the enrichment limits before he removes sanctions and wants to expand talks to include the proxy wars and missile production.  In response, Iran, sensing that Biden seems desperate, demands that he simply drop all sanctions and says no talks are needed.
• 
Left unsaid is that in the last 40 years, Israel destroyed two nuclear reactors built by its enemies, in Iraq and Syria.  Biden and Iran should remember that history.
      Michael Goodwin: Trump's election challenges — time is running out  (Fox 11/23/2020)
• 
In calendar time, it's less than three weeks since the election.  In political time, it's beginning to feel like an eternity.
• 
President Trump has every right to pursue substantive court challenges and doing so does not undermine democracy, despite what the left insists.  But at some point, much of the broad public's patience will wear thin.
• 
At its exhaustive press conference Thursday, the team, led by Rudy Giuliani, outlined a sweeping theory of a "national conspiracy" by Democrats to steal the election.
• 
A map highlighting Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia was titled "Multiple Pathways to Victory," as if this were a pre-election, get-out-the-vote event.
• 
To support his charges, Giuliani cited mostly individual affidavits where voters and poll workers reported seeing or hearing about fraudulent activities.  The sworn statements, even if true, did not seem to match the scope of the broad claims.
• 
"What we are really dealing with here is the massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China and the interference with our elections here in the United States," Powell insisted.  "This is 1775 of our generation and beyond."
• 
Such language aims to stir the heart of patriots, but will ring hollow in a courtroom unless she has solid evidence.  If she does, she's done a great job of keeping it secret.
• 
That's not to say there wasn't fraud and human error.  Of course there was.  That happens in most elections, and this one was especially vulnerable given the turnout (about 160 million voters) and the tsunami of mail-in ballots, which are easier to manipulate.
• 
Also, Democrats invited suspicions by intentionally lowering safeguards, including barring GOP observers in urban areas, where they ran up big margins.
• 
Still, the overarching fact is that the Trump legal team hasn't presented a provable claim that looks likely to overturn the results in a single state.
• 
In her Friday briefing, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the General Services Administration will certify the results at the "right moment," which suggests internal talks are taking place about a formal transition process.
• 
That's good because Trump will pay a steep price if he appears to be stonewalling without hope of prevailing.  Most immediately, he could undermine GOP chances in the two Georgia election runoffs, where control of the Senate is up for grabs.  If Dems win both, they get all of Congress and the White House.
• 
Outside Washington, Dems are doing all they can to toxify Trump's legacy, and he shouldn't help them.  The pernicious Barack Obama has a new book, and he and wife Michelle are making a Netflix film that slams the president.
• 
The left's cancel culture will try to erase Trump's achievements on job creation, border security and foreign policy.  Don't be surprised if Biden gets credit for the historic sprint to develop the COVID vaccine.  Anything that goes wrong will be Trump's fault.
• 
In other words, nothing has changed.  Trump was spied on, sabotaged and impeached for purely partisan purposes, and the corrupt press corps rooted for failure.
• 
But it was the media that truly failed the American people by betraying their public trust — and Trump still got 10 million more votes than he got in 2016.
• 
Almost by definition, one-term presidents are failures.  Donald Trump defies the assumption.  He secured the peace and kept the American dream alive for millions upon millions of people.
      Michael Goodwin: Trump's COVID diagnosis – left displays a shameful lack of decency  (Fox 10/05/2020)
• 
Perhaps they are channeling a line from an Oscar Wilde play: "I can resist everything except temptation."
• 
The president of the United States tests positive for the coronavirus, is soon moved to a hospital and given a cocktail of drugs to fortify his body for the fight ahead.
• 
Whereupon truly awful people erupt in joy, revealing themselves to be self-hating Americans.
• 
Some take to Twitter to exhibit their soullessness, enough so that the site, which too often blocks routine conservative viewpoints, vows it will suspend users who wish for the president's death.
• 
It is shameful that such a statement is even necessary.
• 
Others try to veil their pleasure, yet their satisfaction is unmistakable in their self-righteous scolds of "We told you so" and "He had it coming."
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., displayed her heart of stone by saying the president had issued a "brazen invitation" to the deadly virus by meeting with people and holding rallies.
• 
She impeached him over next to nothing, tried to have him removed from office and still calls him a Russian agent.
• 
Now she resents that he continued to do the routine things a president should and must do.
• 
... even before the president entered the hospital, the Gray Lady had advanced her argument into the fever zone by speculating – or was it a hope?  – that Trump's illness "could raise questions about whether he should remain on the ballot at all."
• 
Still others revealed their brainlessness by suggesting Trump was faking his illness so he could skip the final two debates.
• 
By contrast, her colleague Rachel Maddow, hardly a fan of Trump, set exactly the right tone by saying: "God bless the president and the first lady.  If you pray, please pray for their speedy and complete recovery – and for everyone infected, everywhere.  This virus is horrific and merciless – no one would wish its wrath on anyone.  We must get its spread under control.  Enough."
• 
Similarly, Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who had called Trump a liar, a clown and a racist at Tuesday's debate, responded to the president's illness with a gracious note wishing him and Melania well.
• 
And so it goes in a year where the word "unprecedented" has become a cliche.
• 
Still, it is a fact that we are now sailing in uncharted water, as we wait for updates on the president's health a month before Election Day.
• 
First, a spirit of national unity is not only desirable, it is necessary.  The world is full of malevolent actors always on the prowl for weakness, and expressions that reflect and harden polarization when a president is hobbled amount to an invitation to take advantage of us.
• 
If you are anti-Trump, that's what the ballot box is for.  Shut up and vote, or at least shut up.
• 
Second, the speculation about how Trump got infected reeks of amateurism, especially among those who claim to "follow the science."
• 
Nobody knows exactly where and when it happened and the insinuation by Pelosi and others that the president caught it by acting recklessly is itself reckless.
• 
While Trump certainly said and did things that were cavalier in the last seven months, he was also indefatigable in ordering and overseeing a vast mobilization of government and private resources to combat the once-in-a-century virus.
• 
Nearly as important, he was determined that America not be held hostage to fear and ignorance.
• 
His push to reopen the economy, get people back to their jobs and his meetings with health workers and others were exactly the kinds of things a president must do to rally the nation during a crisis.
• 
He campaigned because the alternative was to let the media that hates him define him.
• 
Remember, too, that the president was true to the oath of his office when he pushed and prodded mayors and governors to stop the urban riots and looting and demand that they secure the civil rights of law-abiding citizens.
• 
In fact, while many on the left have held up Biden's hermit-like behavior as a model of safety, it is impossible to govern that way.
• 
No president can remain isolated and appear to be frightened and still command the respect and trust of the public, law enforcement and the armed forces.
• 
Biden's behavior, where he stays out of sight about every other day, suggests he would also hide in the White House, at least until a vaccine is widely available.  That doesn't seem tenable in any situation, especially during a crisis.
• 
To his everlasting credit, Trump never stopped being president out of fear of getting sick.  While you are praying for his recovery, you might also thank God for giving him uncommon courage.
      Amy Coney Barrett's Supreme Court confirmation – this issue will be front and center  (Fox 09/28/2020)
• 
If Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed for the Supreme Court, the credit will go to President Trump for nominating her and the GOP Senate for producing the votes.  But Barrett will also owe a big thank you to Sen.  Dianne Feinstein.
• 
It was Feinstein, a California Democrat, who inadvertently made the Roman Catholic mother of seven a conservative star two years ago.
• 
At Barrett's confirmation hearing for a federal Court of Appeals seat, Feinstein complained that Barrett's faith was apparent in her writings and said she was concerned because "the dogma lives loudly within you."
• 
The overt expression of anti-Catholic bigotry made Barrett an instant hero among religious conservatives and it's no leap to conclude Trump's embrace of Barrett has something to do with Feinstein's attack.  After all, the disrupter in chief has a special fondness for those who drive Dems crazy.
• 
... Trump did call on "the other side" to conduct "respectful and dignified" hearings.  He also urged the media and others to "refrain from personal or partisan attacks."
• 
Fat chance.  This is war and if truth is the first casualty, the innocent are close behind.
• 
In her remarks, Barrett was poised and gracious, paying homage both to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whom she would replace, and her mentor, Antonin Scalia.
• 
She cited their famous friendship, despite their deep differences, as a model for her own life, while also allowing that she does not assume "the road ahead will be easy."
• 
Given the issues already rocking the presidential campaign, it's possible the selection of Barrett won't make much of a difference – unless Dems go overboard in their personal attacks.  Even now, the gutter is already crowded.
• 
Some on the left are taking to social media to denounce – yes, denounce – Barrett and her husband for adopting two Haitian children.
• 
Others, supposedly feminists, wonder how Barrett will have time for her children as a means of objecting to her confirmation.  Imagine the media storm if a conservative dared say that about a progressive nominee.
• 
Meanwhile, what is certain is that confirmation of the 48-year-old Barrett would seal the remaking of federal courts under Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
• 
In one term, Trump nominated and the Senate confirmed more than 200 federal judges, or more than 25 percent of the total positions.  Barrett would be the third on the Supreme Court.
• 
Most important, by replacing Ginsburg, she would be flipping a liberal seat to the constitutional conservative side.  That would tilt the court 6-3, and dilute the power of Chief Justice John Roberts, who made himself the swing vote in some key cases by joining with the four liberals.
• 
Those enormous stakes mean Barrett will face mountains of mud concocted by Dems and their media handmaidens.
• 
They aim to trip her up and run out the clock on Trump's term, but if that fails, at least make their voters angrier and more determined to defeat the president and capture the Senate in November.
• 
The spectacle promises to be nauseating – but also informative.  Because the attacks will continue Feinstein's smear that Barrett will let her religion rather than the Constitution guide her rulings, Americans will get to witness the contempt many Dems have for people of faith.
• 
The clause is commonly seen as requiring a separation of church and state.  But many on the secular left go way beyond that and demand that religion play no role at all in the public sphere.
• 
She has said that although she opposes abortion, it is unlikely the basic thrust of Roe v.  Wade would be overturned without actually saying the entire case is settled law.
• 
That script would get her confirmed mostly along party lines, but my hope is that the hearings will also offer ringing defenses of both religious liberty and the role of faith in public life.
• 
For example, the vast educational, social, health and charitable works of religious institutions have always been and remain a large part of what makes our country exceptional.
• 
More fundamentally, faith in God motivates millions of individuals to pursue virtuous privates lives.  And faith has called generations of worshipers to serve their neighbors and nation in every conceivable field, from the military and law enforcement to child and elder care.
• 
In that light, perhaps a GOP senator could ask why Barrett's tormentors feel free to impose their secular political views on others, whether it's unlimited abortion rights, radical climate ideology, open borders or racial preferences.
• 
And why, this senator might ask, are the views of religious believers given less weight in public debate than the views of those who worship at the altar of socialism?
• 
The more they can demonize and diminish religion, the more power they have over people.
• 
As many believers note, during times as unsettling as these, America needs more religion, not less.
• 
More than just abortion, the right of the faithful to participate fully in public life is on trial in the Barrett confirmation.
• 
While religious dogma should not rule on the Supreme Court or elsewhere, neither should it cower in silence anywhere.
      Michael Goodwin: Election 2020 – Supreme Court can't risk a vacancy.  Here's why  (Fox 09/21/2020)
• 
Democrats vehemently vow to oppose the prospect of a sixth constitutional conservative on the bench, and already far-leftists are threatening violence.
• 
If nothing else, that should stiffen the spines of some Republican senators who are leery of taking up the issue.
• 
It is their job, and slinking into the fetal position in the face of controversy and threats is unspeakable cowardice.
• 
If the outcome of the election depended on a court ruling, which is certainly possible given the passions and the potential machinations involved in universal mail-in voting, a tie vote at the Supreme Court could leave America without a president and no way to resolve the issue.
• 
Politically motivated violence is already spreading, so imagine what might happen if the election remains undecided.  America's great history of the peaceful transfer of power could be at risk.
• 
If that sounds far-fetched, consider some of the suspect decisions already being made in various states that deliberately weaken ballot security.
• 
... a recent Post story revealed the dirty tricks and fraud committed by a longtime Dem operative in the state, who says mail-in ballots are a gold mine for those who want to cheat.
• 
"Ron Tims said he checked his mail Wednesday and found a voter registration application addressed to Cody Tims – his cat, who died 12 years ago."
• 
Giving a cat a ballot is one thing – but a dead cat?  The secretary of state's office said it had nothing to do with the application, blaming "out-of-town activists" trying to register voters in hopes of swaying the election.  How comforting.
• 
Most state systems are not designed to handle mass mail-in voting, which is why the decisions to create new, extra-lenient rules on the fly are so troubling.
• 
The argument that every vote should count is valid only to the extent that every voter's identity has been verified.
• 
That is especially important in states and municipalities that allow noncitizens, including illegal immigrants, to vote in local elections.
• 
It would be a crime if they voted in federal elections – if they are caught.  But with the guardrails removed, who is to catch them?
• 
Because disputes are certain to emerge over how and what votes are counted in November, Trump and Joe Biden are loading up with lawyers ready to fight it out in swing states.
• 
The approach makes it almost certain some cases will get to federal courts, and one or more likely will make it to the high court.
• 
While it might seem a no-brainer for Dems to oppose a lifetime Trump nominee as they aim to win the White House and Senate, the prospect of a deadlocked Supreme Court on the election presents an unacceptable danger for the entire nation.
• 
Elections need to be seen as fair and final if Americans are to keep what little faith we still have in our government institutions.
      Michael Goodwin: Dems cast Trump's Middle East achievements as political ploy  (Fox 09/13/2020)
• 
First, it was the United Arab Emirates and Israel making peace.  Then it was Serbia and Kosovo agreeing to set aside political disputes to sign an economic deal.  And now Bahrain and ­Israel are set to sign a peace treaty.
• 
These breakthroughs were brokered by President Trump and his administration.  It is an extraordinary record of peacemaking, yet in too many circles, it is being treated as a sideshow without significance.
• 
Naturally, The New York Times took the low road, insisting Saturday that the deals show Trump trying "to position himself as a peacemaker before the elections in November."
• 
So being an actual peacemaker doesn't count because the Times spies a personal motive?
• 
In the same vein, talk of the president getting a Nobel Peace Prize is instantly dismissed.  Over the dead bodies of the world elite will Trump be so honored.
• 
Make no mistake — had these feats been achieved by a Democratic president, he would be celebrated.  When Trump does it, meh.
• 
That much is obvious, but there's another dimension to these deals, one that bears on the dangerous polarization gripping America.
• 
We are now in an election year where political violence is growing and both parties are expressing reservations about whether they will accept the outcome.
• 
Future historians will chart the decades-long path of how we got to this perilous point, but they must not ignore the incredible damage done by Democrats' decision to reject the legitimacy of the Trump presidency.
• 
Having never accepted his election, they resisted and tried to destroy him.
• 
They weaponized the Justice Department and the FBI, CIA and State Department, and enlisted the left-leaning media — meaning most of the media — to paint Trump as unfit, unworthy and even a Russian agent.
• 
Worse than personal slander, it was character assassination masquerading as concern for national security.
• 
It reached rock bottom in the impeachment fiasco, where they tried to undo 2016 and prevent Trump from being on the ballot this year.
• 
Now imagine if Dems had taken a different course.  Imagine if Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer had acted as responsible opposition leaders starting in 2017 instead of surrendering to the mob.
• 
They would have found a president eager to negotiate on almost ­everything.  Trump prides himself on being a dealmaker and loves nothing more than a signing ceremony.
• 
Call it vanity, but because that's who he is, Pelosi and Schumer could have gotten much of what they wanted.
• 
Trump, remember, had been a Democrat, a party donor, and many of his policy outcomes, such as rising wages for poor and middle-class families and record low unemployment for black and Latino workers, were things Democrats always said they wanted to achieve.
• 
... they abdicated their responsibility to the nation in exchange for partisan power.
• 
They claimed to want a national infrastructure program but said no when Trump pushed for one.  They said they wanted the first big immigration deal since 1986, but rejected Trump's demand for improved border security and enforcement, along with a deal on the "Dreamers."
• 
The details of the big GOP tax-cut package could have been reshaped if Dems played ball.
• 
Dems did, briefly, cooperate on fighting the coronavirus, but soon decided it was better used as a weapon against Trump.  It was ­impeachment by another name.
• 
None of this is to suggest that Trump is easy to deal with or predictable.  He can be difficult to the point of exasperating, insufferably boastful and gratuitously mean in his personal attacks.
• 
But those undesirable traits haven't stood in the way of the international peace deals.  Is Trump a different person in those negotiations, or are Arabs and Israelis, Serbs and ­Kosovars more focused on the fruits of the deal than on the dealmaker's personality?
• 
To be sure, much of Trump's Mideast success has to do with big strategic decisions that reversed Barack Obama's approach.
• 
Trump's policy of isolating the mad mullahs of Iran instead of coddling them included withdrawing from Obama's misbegotten nuclear pact, reimposing harsh economic sanctions and taking out Gen.  Qasem Soleimani, the military leader whose specialty was spreading death and mayhem.
• 
At the same time, Trump reduced our troop presence in hot spots and became the most supportive American president Israel has ever known.
• 
... Trump "has forced all Arab-Muslim states in the region to choose between placating the Mullahs and making a common front against them.  The Bahrain and UAE agreements with Israel show that they are choosing to oppose — not appease — Iran."
• 
Obama, by comparison, got an emboldened, aggressive Iran and no peace treaties between Arabs and Israel.  But he did get a Nobel Peace Prize.
      The New York Times Times is plunging head first into new depths of partisanship and deceit  (Fox 09/07/2020)
• 
In the 1930s, the paper cozied up to Josef Stalin and ignored the famine in Ukraine, then downplayed the Holocaust and later supported the rise of Fidel Castro while hiding his commitment to communism.
• 
Using distortions and duplicity to influence a presidential election deserves to be included in that roster of infamy.
• 
At some point, perhaps next January, Trump will leave the White House.
• 
But what then of the Times and the many news outlets that followed it into the gutter?
• 
They have destroyed the foundations of fairness and nonpartisanship that gave American journalism its credibility, so why should anyone ever trust them again?
• 
How debased they have become was obvious at a Biden press conference Friday.  Except for once earlier in the week, the Democrat has refused to take questions, a fact that would normally lead reporters to grill him about policies, the campaign and his health.
• 
Instead, they fed him a diet of loaded invitations to attack Trump.
• 
And so it went, as the ostensible cream of the journalism crop took turns embarrassing themselves.  If there is any competition among them, it's to see who hates Trump most.
• 
Government institutions that corrupted themselves in a bid to dethrone Trump, such as the FBI, the Justice Department and the State Department, are at least trying to restore their agencies' professionalism and regain public trust.
• 
Not the media.  Tragically, most have actually gotten worse.  Now they don't even pretend to be fair and impartial.
• 
See related Unmasking (Glenn McCoy, 04/04/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Michael Goodwin: Poor Biden, looks like he's got a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome  (Fox 09/01/2020)
• 
Joe Biden had a good thing going.  In a rare adventure outside his basement, he was giving a speech in Pittsburgh that contained some fine passages about national unity mixed with blistering attacks on the president.
• 
Most important, he had — finally — crossed the Rubicon in condemning the crime and violence plaguing the nation's urban areas.
• 
"Rioting is not protesting.  Looting is not protesting.  Setting fires is not protesting.  None of this is protesting," he declared.  "It's lawlessness, plain and simple.  And those who do it should be prosecuted."
• 
So had Biden stopped with his condemnation, it would have been progress enough for one day.  He had left the basement and done what he had to do.
• 
To combat Trump's claim that electing Biden would give free reign to lawlessness — a claim that has been resonating among swing-state voters — the Democrat tried to turn the tables and pin all the blame on the president, saying:
• 
"He can't stop the violence because for years he's fomented it." And "he's not been part of the solution thus far.  He's part of the problem."
• 
"Murder is up 26 percent this year under Donald Trump," Biden said...
• 
The problem with the witches' brew he concocted is that the ingredients don't go together.
• 
The most obvious contradiction is that virtually all these cities engulfed in destabilizing turmoil are in blue states and are run by Democratic mayors.
• 
Trump has offered to send in federal help and the mayors have generally said no.
• 
Similarly, Democratic mayors preside over the cities at the heart of the racial fires involving allegations of police misconduct.  If there are bad cops on their forces, why didn't the mayors supporting Biden remove them?
• 
That's just one of the logical problems with the argument, but Biden is not appealing to logic, only to the erogenous zones of anti-Trumpers.
• 
Nothing turns them on like another excuse to justify their hate for the president and now they have one.
• 
It presumably is meant as a replacement for the excuse from last week, when the media Praetorian Guard declared that the murder surge Biden now finds troubling really isn't that big of deal.
• 
... pray tell, is Trump responsible for riots that were started and continue with the goal of ending his presidency?
• 
Recall that the FBI was so determined to paint him as a Russian agent that it corrupted itself in the process.
• 
The New York Times and other lefty outlets were willing to forfeit their public trust and trash standards in an effort to thwart him.
• 
Congressional Democrats gave up being a governing partner to join the resistance and many federal judges ignored their oaths to become partisan players.
• 
Apparently the rioters, arsonists and common criminals were all good little boys and girls in the pre-Trump era and their assault against America just demonstrates that they, too, are casualties of the president's toxic being.
• 
The idea is so fatuous, so idiotic that it only adds to the concerns about Biden's well-being.
• 
On top of all his other health maladies, he, too, seems to be suffering from a serious bout of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
• 
Even a mask can't help him with that.
• 
See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related About Right... (Michael Ramirez, 08/11/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Streetfighter Trump hits Biden with flurry of solid punches at Republican Convention  (Fox 08/28/2020)
• 
"This election will decide whether we save the American Dream, or whether we allow a socialist agenda to demolish our cherished destiny."
• 
"How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?"
• 
After saying Biden had buckled to the demands of the socialists in his party, Trump asked: "If he can't stand up to them, how is he going to stand up for you?"
• 
Many of the lines echoed Ronald Reagan, and the two men share key traits, perhaps the most important being a willingness to take on Washington from the inside without ever losing their outsider's perspective.
• 
... he detailed numerous examples of where he believed he was fighting the entire establishment to get things done for the American people, including standing up against China's theft of jobs and intellectual property and stopping illegal immigration.  In his mind, he is often a lonely warrior.
• 
On the merits, it was an effective argument on every front, from the economy to foreign policy to law and order.  The routine was for Trump to cite his own first-term accomplishments as more than Biden had done in his 47 years in Washington.
• 
... while the speech on the White House lawn had a rally feel about it, the attacks on Biden were substantive and policy-based.
• 
The riots, looting and crime surges in the nation's cities have become a political flashpoint.
• 
One reason is that nearly all the cities are run by Democratic mayors.  Another is that Biden and the party didn't say a single word about the destruction at their convention, instead embracing Black Lives Matter and treating the protesters as new-age heroes.
• 
Trump and the GOP have been jumping on the error ever since, and it became a major focus of the convention.
• 
The spreading violence is scaring Americans everywhere, with the situation in Kenosha, Wis., perhaps more frightening than what's been happening in Portland, Seattle and elsewhere.
• 
Kenosha is a city of only 100,000 people, and the violence there is all the more shocking than what is happening in much larger cities.
• 
In effect, Kenosha is something of an Everytown, and the riots, arson and murder could cause more people to identify with it and wonder if their town is next.
• 
In effect, the Trump team is asking: Who would you rather have on your side in a street fight — a tough puncher like Trump, or a guy like a Biden who feels the opponent's pain?
      Michael Goodwin: Trump's opportunity – Dems mum on this issue, giving president an opening  (Fox 08/24/2020)
• 
In case you didn't have the time or stomach to watch the Democrats' convention last week, I humbly offer this summary: Trump bad.  Biden good.  You're all racists.
• 
The disciplined approach was admirable, even though the "facts" used to support each element often were shaky or flat-out false.
• 
The ideas were hammered home repeatedly because they reflect the core of the Dems' case and show how they intend to oust the incumbent.
• 
The Trump Bad, Biden Good contrast displays an obvious plan to make the election a referendum not just on Trump's record, but also his character.
• 
His handling of the coronavirus was the central focus, with former President Barack Obama and others claiming that Trump failed miserably because he only cares about himself.
• 
Oddly, the Russia hysteria and the Ukraine impeachment, both of which Dems had insisted justified removing him from office, were not mentioned.
• 
The third main element, the focus on race, is the most radical and risky, especially the frequent endorsement of the Black Lives Matter movement.
• 
Group leaders are avowed Marxists and say numerous incendiary things, including that destroying property is not violence and that looting is a form of reparations.
• 
My suspicion is that the campaign decided not to condemn the lawbreakers for two reasons.  First, the most violent cities have Democrats as mayors, so Biden's team was not about to alienate key supporters.
• 
Second, condemning the violence would amount to a call for the police to intervene.  That, in turn, would upset the supporters of Black Lives Matter because the organization is essentially anti-police.
• 
The net result is that a major party's nominee for president is silent during a nationwide urban crisis.
• 
Biden's promise to "remove the stain" of pervasive racism also raises potential policy pitfalls, from quotas in college admissions and jobs to reparations.
• 
While the activists driving the party's agenda further and further left support a racial-spoils system, there is no indication that the general public does.
• 
The Dems' failure to address the crime situation and the massive spending plans are two obvious openings for the GOP at its convention.
• 
"Would you," the president might ask his TV audience, "buy a home today in Portland, Seattle, Chicago or New York, knowing that you and your family stand a good chance of being victims of crime and that the police might not show up?"
• 
"Also, the homeless are allowed to set up tent cities on your sidewalks, and your mayor and governor don't stop them.  Would you buy that house even if it were dirt cheap?"
• 
There are ... no shortages of areas where Trump can draw a favorable contrast with Biden.
• 
But the trick is to weave them together in a way that paints a coherent picture of what is at stake in November.
• 
And in a way where the narrative, not the narrator, is the message.
      Michael Goodwin: Biden gives an OK DNC speech — now he needs to hit campaign trail and give interviews  (Fox 08/21/2020)
• 
He did it.  Joe Biden got through the biggest speech of his life cleanly and coherently Thursday night, without stumbling or mumbling or getting that far-away dazed look in his eyes.
• 
Coming into his party's virtual coronation, the test was not whether he would give a good speech or a bad speech.  It was whether he could give a speech at all.
• 
So congratulations to Biden for clearing a fundamental hurdle.  Now the bar is raised and he should be treated as any other candidate.  He can start by releasing his health and medical reports, which he has so far refused to do.
• 
Most importantly, there is no excuse for him to hide any longer in his basement.  Hidin' Biden must be a thing of history.
• 
He must come out into the sunshine and, while protecting himself from COVID-19, get on the campaign trail and take his claim to the presidency to the people of America.
• 
If he can't or won't, how can he possibly be president?  Would he isolate himself in the Oval Office?
• 
The enormous promises he made about defeating the killer virus, creating jobs, combatting climate change, "removing the stain of racism" and uniting the nation will mean nothing if he continues to shrink from public view.
• 
So, too, his accusation that President Trump's performance on COVID-19 has been "unforgivable" and that giving the incumbent four more years would let him continue to "fan the flames of hate and division."
• 
Joe Biden has broken the protective shell and he can't now wrap himself in it again.  Ever.
• 
As for the actual content of the speech, it was more pedestrian than soaring, and the ideas were presented in simple, stark contrasts.  Light vs dark, hope vs fear, almost always in short sentences.
• 
Two notable points: he did not explicitly promise the huge, socialist-leaning items the left is demanding, though that hardly means the issues are settled.
• 
The aim from the Bernie Sanders wing is clearly to help Biden get elected, then move him to the far left.
• 
Also missing was any mention of the violence convulsing the nation's cities.  These are no longer protests over George Floyd.
• 
These are anarchists in Seattle and Portland and elsewhere attacking the police and the courts on direct assaults on society.
• 
In addition, common criminals have stepped into the void left by police forces that have been handcuffed and abandoned by Democratic mayors and governors.  This is a major urban crisis that neither Biden nor anyone else over four nights said a single word about.
• 
That is shameful and a major opening for the Trump campaign.
• 
Otherwise, the fourth night was like every other night.  With a sneering Hollywood leftist presiding ... the Dems effortlessly cemented their reputation for being a bunch of coastal elitists talking down to voters.
• 
As in the first three nights, the aim was to paint Trump as the devil and Biden as a saint.
• 
Part of that image involved injecting faith into the proceedings, with Sen.  Chris Coons giving a semi-sermon on Biden as a devout Catholic.
• 
When Republicans have invoked faith as a presidential trait, the secular left always goes crazy, claiming it's a threat to the separation of church and state.
• 
It's either progress or hypocrisy that there will be no such accusation against the Dems.  I vote for hypocrisy.
      Michael Goodwin: Democratic Convention long on pain and grievance, short on hope and faith  (Fox 08/19/2020)
• 
Old and young, progressive and super progressive, left and far left, Black, White, Asian, Latino, Native American — they all had something to say.  But if there was a theme running through the night, I couldn't find it.
• 
Oh, yes, Donald Trump bad, got that.  Really, really bad.  OK, got that, too.
• 
Then what?  What do Democrats stand for and, more to the point, what are they promising voters if they gain the White House?  I honestly don't know.
• 
I do know that, once again, they failed to address the violence erupting across the country, as if it isn't happening.  Or maybe they are afraid to criticize it because it will somehow come off as pro-police, which would infuriate the Black Lives Matter movement the party is embracing.
• 
For whatever reason, Dems are ceding a huge issue to Trump, one that resonates across income, race and geographic boundaries.  Public safety is a civil right and it matters to everyone.
• 
Normally, those issues would be settled by the nominee, whose victory puts the party under his command.  But that hasn't happened because the man who beat Sanders is not in full command of his own faculties.
• 
Joe Biden, I accept as a fact, is a decent enough guy whose life story of tragedy and resilience is admirable.  The testimonials the first two nights about his consoling others in their grief are truly touching.
• 
But that Joe Biden is not the same man who is now the official nominee for president.
• 
The man who finally climbed that mountain after a lifetime in Washington is greatly diminished and every live appearance he makes even at his own convention must terrify the handlers.
• 
What if he wanders off script?  What if he forgets where he is?
• 
There is another kind of pall over the convention, too, and that is by choice.  There is a constant refrain that America is fundamentally ruined by racism and all forms of bigotry.  "An ingrained system of inequity," said one speaker.  "Racial inequality," said another.
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez added to the gloom when she used her minute to talk about a movement to erase "racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia."
• 
... I suspect the party is too much in the thrall of the activists who want to overthrow most of our institutions.
• 
The old Joe Biden wouldn't have put up with that.
      Michael Goodwin: Biden's basement strategy will backfire if he doesn't show up for this  (Fox 08/05/2020)
• 
... the mere entertaining of the idea that Biden could break with tradition that goes back nearly half a century and take a pass on face-to-face showdowns with his opponent may masquerade as strategy, but it is a sign of fear, plain and simple.
• 
It is the fear that Biden will be unmasked as mentally unfit to be president.
• 
His deficiencies are not a secret to those who know him, and general-election voters have a right to see them clearly before they make their final choice for the presidency.
• 
So far, Biden's team hasn't suggested he won't debate Trump, but it is almost certainly something they have thought about.  It's even possible they have given a silent approval to the media Praetorian Guard floating the trial balloon to see if it flies.
• 
As of now, it's still flying, unmolested by any hostile fire from other top Democrats.  Where are Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi?  Where is the Democratic National Committee?  Where is Barack Obama on this one?
• 
Their silence shows they, too, want to know if the no-show ruse will work.  After all, they, too, must suspect that Biden cannot go for three, 90-minute encounters with Trump and emerge intact.
• 
Think what that means; it means the Biden campaign and the entire establishment of the Democratic Party are prepared to foist an impaired man into the Oval Office, uncertain that he can fulfill his duties.
• 
Trump Derangement Syndrome has done some strange things to people, but this one takes the cake.
• 
In reality, if it became widely understood among independent voters that the insiders wanted Biden to skip the debates because they knew he wasn't up to them, that would almost certainly lead to a Trump victory.
• 
Put it this way: Why would anyone who isn't mad with Trump hatred vote for an opponent whose most intimate associates know he can't do the job?
• 
If Biden doesn't show, that will be conclusive proof that he's not capable of being president.
      Michael Goodwin: Mail-in ballot problems — here are issues the left ignores  (Fox 08/03/2020)
• 
A fundamental and tragic fact of life in America today is that whatever President Trump is for, most media and half the country instantly reject.
• 
Even when he's clearly right, the zombie-like resistance leaps into frenetic opposition.
• 
Trump insists that the plans of some states, such as California and Colorado, to counter the pandemic by mailing a ballot to every registered voter is a formula for disaster.
• 
It will, the president says, guarantee mayhem and cast doubts on the November results.
• 
Nonsense, shout the usual suspects.  That's unfounded, he's making it up, there's no evidence, blah blah blah.
• 
Ah, but there is evidence.  Lots of it, and right in front of us, thanks to the continuing saga of two New York congressional races.
• 
Five weeks after the Democratic primaries, no winners have been declared.  Results for two others were delayed for three weeks.
• 
State officials, who included pre-stamped return envelopes when they sent the ballots, apparently didn't know that such envelopes often don't get postmarked.
• 
Thus, there is no way to know if those ballots were marked and mailed by Election Day.
• 
In some cases, ballots were returned late because election officials did not send them to voters until the day before the primary.
• 
Some lacked signatures and ran afoul of other technicalities.
• 
That's smoking-gun evidence of chaos and grounds to doubt the accuracy of the final outcome.
• 
Now imagine the enormous opportunity for mischief and mistakes if every state opts for universal mail-in and 160 million ballots are mailed to registered voters and back to election offices in the fall.
• 
Nothing like it has ever been attempted, so to assume it would go smoothly is beyond foolish.  Indeed, it would be a miracle if it weren't a disaster.
• 
And not just for the presidential election.  Congressional, state and local races all could be upended by ballot issues and disputes.
• 
By comparison, fights over hanging chads in one state would seem like a walk in the park.
• 
So Trump wins the argument, right?  On the merits, he does, but he doesn't make it easy for himself or his supporters.
• 
Sometimes a tweet is just a tweet, and sometimes it's an exploding cigar.  He specializes in the latter.
• 
The president, who has cited the New York cases as examples, drew heated attention by tweeting a suggestion that the November election be delayed because a national mail-in plan would cause the most "fraudulent election in history."
• 
"It will be a great embarrassment to the USA.  Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???"
• 
In a nanosecond, the chattering class declared the end of the world was near.  Even some allies were alarmed, with Steven Calabresi, co-founder of the Federalist Society, calling for a new impeachment of the president.
• 
Eight hours later, Trump said never mind, suggesting the initial tweet was intentional misdirection.  "Glad I was able to get the very dishonest LameStream Media to finally start talking about the RISKS to our Democracy from dangerous Universal Mail-In-Voting..."
• 
In a later press conference, he went further, saying "Do I want to see a date change?  No," Trump said, "but I don't want to see a crooked election."
• 
The incident was a good example of how his instinctive habit of poking the hornet's nest can result in his getting stung and valid policies getting overshadowed.
• 
Of course, the backlash also proved that the media don't want to confront the obvious problems of mail-in ballots — for the obvious reason.
• 
Many are openly hostile to Trump and don't seem to mind whether the results are trustworthy nearly as much as they want the ­result to be that Joe Biden wins.
• 
So while the president got them talking about the issue, what they were saying, and still are, is that Trump is a threat to democracy.
• 
He's not.  That dishonor belongs to those who can't see straight because of their hatred for him.
• 
The left's endorsement of riots, its support for China and its disdain for the police, American history and culture are tearing this country apart.
• 
And now the same people are willing to let the election be thrown into chaos because Trump dared to point out problems.
• 
No tweet, no matter how off-key, can match the danger of their madness.
      Michael Goodwin: Bari Weiss resignation latest example of New York Times' decline  (Fox 07/15/2020)
• 
... groupthink now dominates the paper's coverage from front to back and readers are encouraged to obey, not think.
• 
... the Times no longer functions as an actual newspaper.  Its "mission" is to rewrite the story of America, one that dovetails with the paper's obsession with race, gender and every new form of identity politics.
• 
The paper is now published not to give readers facts and information, but to browbeat them with the far, far left political and social positions of the writers.
• 
It's a predictable Lord of the Flies outcome, where the official party line is the only acceptable position and you either go along or get out.
• 
So day after dreary day, from front to back, the Times reeks with the delusion that it knows best about everything.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      During coronavirus pandemic, essentials are the new protected class  (NYP 05/23/2020)
• 
For socialists and those who lean that way, pandemic time is boom time.
• 
Washington is printing and spending money like never before and both parties support sending cash to businesses and the unemployed.
• 
A time of great need and fear is shattering any stigma about being on the dole.
• 
A logical conclusion is that politics will follow culture and Bernie Sanders- and AOC-types will call the shots in America.
• 
Unless ­Republicans and conservatives get on board, they will be consigned to history's dustbin.
• 
Perhaps.  But pay attention to another potential reaction to the pandemic.  Think of it as the revenge of the nonessentials.
• 
"There are the protected and the unprotected.  The protected make public policy.  The unprotected live in it.  The unprotected are starting to push back, powerfully."
• 
Happily, the unprotected and deplorables carried the day and gave themselves a fierce advocate in the 45th president.
• 
The Trump revolution, for all its progress, clearly has more work to do.  For by hook and crook, the protected managed to hang on to power.  This time they call themselves "essential."
• 
Just as the Founders and countless guardians of liberty warned, those with too much power inevitably go too far.
• 
Just as inevitably, when government picks winners and losers, the unprotected are the losers.
• 
Being designated an "essential" business or employee meant you could keep working, keep your paycheck and standard of living.
• 
If you were unfortunate enough to be labeled "nonessential," you could lose your business, your home and your nest egg.
• 
Unless you worked for the government.  Despite shutdown orders in New York and other blue states, municipal and state workers continued to get paid even as most didn't have to work.
• 
While most had nothing to do, some got the merciless tasks of making sure that nonessentials didn't work.
• 
In an especially galling example, Post reporters caught city inspectors staking out upscale neighborhoods to catch contractors working despite a state ban.
• 
The arbitrary distinction between essential and nonessential recalls the gag about the difference between a recession and a depression.
• 
A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job.
• 
Naturally, most of Big Media favor extreme shutdowns, which are happening primarily in states with Democratic governors.
• 
It's possible the journalists are genuinely concerned about the health of their fellow Americans, but it's more likely they see economic ­catastrophe as bad for Trump.
• 
The New York Times, which congenitally opposes good news with Trump in the White House, said in a recent Page One headline: "New Cases in U.S.  Slow, Posing Risk of Complacency."
• 
Trump weighed in Friday and used the magic words to boost religious freedom, declaring that churches, synagogues and mosques are "essential places that provide essential services" and urging governors to open them.
• 
As the president put it, "In America, we need more prayer, not less." Finally, somebody in government sees the light: Praying is ­essential.
• 
See related Coronavirus (Sean Delonas, 03/012/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Media and Corona (Gary McCoy, 03/12/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Finally Got Him (Chip Bok, 03/31/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Blame governors for the coronavirus deaths in nursing homes  (NYP 05/16/2020)
• 
An article ... several years ago explored the ways ancient cultures dispatched the elderly, a practice known as senicide.
• 
Author ... recounted several gruesome rites that made the Inuit habit of putting Granny on an Arctic ice floe seem humane.
• 
If they are honest, historians judging the American experience during the coronavirus pandemic will excoriate our barbaric failure to protect the elderly.
• 
We think of ourselves as civilized, but mindless policies and bureaucratic indifference turned many nursing homes and rehabilitation centers into killing fields.
• 
At least 28,000 residents and workers in long-term care facilities already have died from the virus, according to ... analysis done more than a week ago.
• 
That represented one out of every three COVID-19 deaths recorded in the United States at the time and was likely an undercount because of reporting lags and varying state methods.
• 
This massacre of a helpless population shames America and Washington must find out why it happened and who is responsible.
• 
Elderly people in these institutions could not protect themselves, and because most states banned visitors early in the outbreak, the institutions, their regulators and elected officials were fully obligated to shield them against infection.  They failed miserably.
• 
Many if not most could have been avoided.  The earlier outbreaks in Asia and Europe demonstrated that the elderly were easy prey for the virus, doubly so when they have underlying health conditions.  Everybody knew that.
• 
Florida got the message and implemented a model response.  Despite its vast enclaves of long-term care homes, it reported ­under 750 deaths in them, or slightly more than one for each of its 615 facilities.
• 
The striking contrast between Florida on one hand and New York and New Jersey on the other can be traced largely to policy decisions by their governors.
• 
Gov.  Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gov.  Phil Murphy of New Jersey issued almost identical orders in late March requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients being discharged from hospitals.
• 
The orders barred the homes from even asking if the patients had the virus, lest they be discriminated against.
• 
Those politically correct orders quickly became death sentences as infections spread like wildfire.
• 
Florida, thankfully, followed a different path.  Gov.  Ron DeSantis said his state moved early to protect the elderly because statistics from South Korea showed "that not all age groups were equally at risk" and that most deaths happened to "folks 65 and up."
• 
As a result, he allowed his nursing homes to reject hospital referrals who were still infected.  More recently, Florida started sending infected residents in the opposite direction, from nursing homes to hospitals.
• 
"Our goal is to keep the virus out of our facilities.  Hospitals are more concerned about their beds."
• 
Because Cuomo and Murphy had the same information as ­DeSantis, their ruinous actions ­remain inexplicable.  They can't say they weren't warned.
• 
One of the worst is the state-run Veterans Home in Paramus, which has recorded at least 72 deaths.  A man who lost his 91-year-old Army-veteran father there was quoted as saying the home should be demolished and replaced with a memorial park.  "It's like a mass shooting," he said.
• 
Despite the surging death count, Cuomo defended his directive for more than six weeks.  He reversed himself only last Sunday, ruling that patients must test negative before hospitals can send them to nursing homes.
• 
Yet he insisted that the initial policy "worked." If more than 5,000 dead was success, what would failure look like?
• 
Despite the enormous consequences of Cuomo's arbitrary decision-making, only a few New York lawmakers have dared to call for investigations about what went wrong.
• 
A designated US attorney, for example, could use a grand jury to demand answers about why so many elderly people were put in harm's way despite the warnings and simple common sense.
• 
As for witnesses willing and eager to come forward, the feds should start with grieving families.  For each of the 28,000 dead, there are relatives whose stories of heartbreak and rage will move the nation.
• 
The families want answers and they want action.  They deserve both.
      So many to blame for coronavirus crisis, so don’t bother  (NYP 04/04/2020)
• 
As a deadly virus sweeps across America, it was inevitable that we would also suffer an outbreak of the blame game.
• 
With the body count soaring and the economy collapsing, finger pointing is in full bloom.
• 
Never mind that all the blame in the world will not save a single life or create a job.
• 
The game must go on because politics is ultimately a zero-sum affair.
• 
Democrats and the media are ganging up to create a narrative that people died because Trump failed to act fast enough.
• 
... cite the president's reluctance in January and early February to fully grasp the threat of the coronavirus and ­delays in providing test kits.
• 
They have a point, especially about the testing fiasco.  But they conveniently ignore their own culpability.
• 
First, the president was up to his neck in the flimsy Ukraine impeachment case Pelosi and the media cooked up.
• 
The final acquittal vote came on Feb.  6, but recall that the accusers, which included every Dem in Congress and the party's presidential candidates, demanded additional witnesses.
• 
Had they gotten their way, the trial would have run through the end of February and maybe into March.
• 
The second fact they ignore is that Trump already had declared a public health emergency over the coronavirus on Jan.
• 
31, barred entry for most people who came from or visited China and put American travelers under quarantine.
• 
At the time, there were only seven known cases in the US, with zero deaths.
• 
Trump's decisions rocked travel and tourism businesses and rattled stock markets, but also kept out infected visitors who would have accelerated the calamity here.
• 
The China restrictions were not popular among Dems, and the president's second ban, which covered Europe and was announced on March 11, also drew scorn from the usual cabal.
• 
The New York Times, which now insists the president acted too slowly, said then he acted "without evidence" in claiming European travelers were a threat.
• 
Reflecting its own bias and ignorance, the paper lumped Trump in with foreign leaders who shut borders and accused them all of xenophobia.
• 
"The same denigration of science and urge to block outsiders has characterized leaders from China to Iran, as well as right-wing populists in Europe."
• 
Most of the big media outlets disgraced themselves by falling for the early lies from China and the World Health Organization about a relatively small number of deaths and the claim the virus was probably not spread by human-to-human contact.
• 
In addition, the media mistakenly likened the coronavirus to the SARS outbreak of 2002, which also started in China and killed about 800 people worldwide.  As of Saturday, the coronavirus has killed nearly 64,000 people.
• 
"This isn't our first rodeo," Cuomo said confidently on March 2.  "We are fully coordinated, and we are fully mobilized, and we are fully prepared to deal with the situation as it develops."
• 
... with more than 20,000 cases in the state, the governor insisted on March 23 that "many people will get the virus, but few will be truly endangered."
• 
De Blasio ... an the health commissioner downplayed risk and urged New Yorkers to attend Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown.
• 
... said on Feb.  13 that fears of the coronavirus "are not based on facts and science.  The risk of infection to New Yorkers is low.  There is no need to avoid public spaces."
• 
Clearly, few people in public life will emerge unscathed from the blame game if we ask everyone the same questions: What did you know, when did you know it and what did you do about it?
• 
On the other hand, mutual destruction is neither required nor desirable, and there is a better option.
• 
We can just skip the blame game for now and work together to help America get through this worst of times.
• 
Think of that as the patriotic choice.
• 
See related Coronavirus (Mike Lester, 03/13/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      It’s pearl-clutching Democrats who got massacred by Trump impeachment trial  (NYP 02/08/2020)
• 
... conventional wisdom got it right when it declared that Trump had one of the best weeks of his presidency while Democrats had one of their worst.
• 
He beat impeachment, they screwed up the Iowa caucuses, he gave a roaring State of the Union address and Nancy Pelosi was reduced to being a paper shredder.
• 
Friday's boffo jobs report was the icing on Trump's cake, then he got the cherry when a federal appeals court unanimously rejected a suit by 200 Dem lawmakers over foreign payments to his businesses.
• 
But arrogance springs eternal in the land of nattering nabobs and expect media bigs to assure their fellow never-Trumpers that soon enough, the world will be set right.
• 
Trump, they will say with certainty, can't sustain the momentum and Pelosi, she of the alleged brilliant political skills, will lead Dems back to their entitled supremacy.
• 
Anything is possible and there is no denying that Trump has a bad habit of stepping on his own good stories.
• 
But the larger notion that last week was an aberration strikes me as fanciful if not delusional.
• 
The heart of the case is that Dems dug themselves into a hole and won't drop the shovel.
• 
They have nothing to show for their 2018 House victory except a partisan impeachment that was rejected by the public before the Senate killed it.
• 
Wonder of wonders, party leaders reacted by vowing to stay the course.
• 
Pelosi, not a whit embarrassed by her shameful stunt of tearing up the president's State of the Union address, launched into another hateful rant.
• 
Saying Trump looked "sedated," she called his speech a "manifesto of mistruths" and claimed he "shredded the truth in the speech, shredded the Constitution in his conduct, and so I shredded his state-of-mind address."
• 
In other words, they learned nothing from last week, or the last three years for that matter.  Blinded by their personal contempt for the president and his supporters and captive to the wacko wing of the party, Pelosi's team still acts as if there is a magic button that will persuade even the deplorables to turn on the president.
• 
A November platform of resistance, rage and failed impeachment is a narrow base appeal, not an effort to win the middle.
• 
The counting debacle in Iowa obscured a larger problem: the caucus turnout was about 25 percent below estimates.
• 
This is all great for Trump, but the fact that he is in his strongest position yet is not owing solely to Dems' errors.
• 
His policy successes are undeniable, starting with the economy.
• 
Its continued expansion is simply remarkable and when the president says it is the envy of the world, he's not exaggerating.
• 
... he gets a whopping 63% approval on the economy confirms that more and more people are seeing and believing the jobs boom.
• 
Gallup also found that 90% of Americans, the highest ever, report they are satisfied with their personal lives, and that a record 65% say they are "very satisfied."
• 
Those kind of numbers rip the heart out of the claim by Sanders and others that the economy is working only for the rich.
• 
In fact, wages are rising faster at the bottom of the income ladder than at the top.
• 
While Dems are busy feuding and feeding their base, the president is broadening his outreach by stealing some of their policies.
• 
Paid family leave, curbing prescription-drug prices and prison reform all run counter to GOP orthodoxy, but Trump is embracing them while keeping near-unanimous Republican support.
• 
To be sure, the election is a long way off and events, like Trump, are unpredictable.
• 
But for now he is on a roll while the other team is stuck in a hole.
      Nancy Pelosi shamed herself at Trump’s State of the Union address  (NYP 02/04/2020)
• 
Here's a question for Speaker Nancy Pelosi: Have you heard of Albert Einstein's definition of insanity?
• 
The one where he says it's "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"?
• 
To judge by your conduct, I'm guessing you haven't.
• 
Then again, maybe you're a secret Republican agent trying to re-elect President Trump.
• 
You've been screwing up for three years, starting with the juvenile resistance where you refused even to negotiate over big national interests such as border control.  Then, just when it seemed you couldn't sink any lower than that cheap, partisan impeachment you engineered, you hit a new low during the State of the Union.
• 
Your mumbling and sneering smiles throughout President's Trump's powerful address were bad enough, but your decision to tear into shreds your copy of his speech and drop it like a dead fish was shameful beyond measure.
• 
Coming immediately after he finished, and while he was still on the podium, you had to know the television cameras would catch you.
• 
No doubt that was your goal — to display your disgust to the nation and the world.
• 
Message received, and here's back at you: You disgraced your office and all of Congress.
• 
If you had an ounce of decency and respect for something other than your own power, you would apologize.
• 
Better yet, take a hike and give your job to somebody who wants to help make America better, not tear it up.
• 
House Republicans must immediately demand a censure vote, making clear their strong disapproval of Pelosi's temper tantrum.
• 
Let Democrats show where they stand on such reprehensible conduct.
• 
In one sense, Pelosi's distress is understandable.
• 
Trump's address was long because he had a long list of big accomplishments to cite, and every Republican standing ovation had to drive her closer to the edge.
• 
She often seemed to be talking to herself, and finally snapped.
• 
The economy is, naturally, at the heart of it, and his recitation of record low unemployment, rising wages, soaring consumer confidence and stock markets are so familiar that it is easy to forget how important they are to the health and welfare of millions of families.
• 
Pelosi certainly has forgotten.  She and many fellow female Dems wore white to protest — who knows what?  — and most could not bring themselves to cheer the good news for their fellow Americans.
• 
... the House speaker, who made a point of telling TV anchors Tuesday that she hasn't spoken to Trump since October, when impeachment began, demonstrated repeatedly that she hasn't learned anything from her failures and the president's success.
• 
... Pelosi once again charged into the cannon fire after the speech, her only weapon her personal hatred of the commander-in-chief.
• 
It's not proving to be much of a fight.  The president is on a winning streak, and he had every right to brag about his record in his third State of the Union address.
• 
And she's just led her party into another embarrassing dead end.
• 
... the president is off to a roaring start for the campaign.  We can add Pelosi's televised tantrum to the growing list of his achievements.
      Parties must move on from Trump impeachment — or end in mutual destruction  (NYP 01/29/2020)
• 
As part of his closing remarks Tuesday, Jay Sekulow, a defense attorney for President Trump, urged senators to put themselves in Trump's shoes.
• 
It was an odd but interesting challenge.
• 
When you accept it, the view from there is a series of unhappy flashbacks.
• 
It starts with Trump's 2016 campaign being investigated by the FBI.
• 
Before he took office, then bureau Director James Comey showed Trump parts of the Steele dossier, calling it "salacious and unverified."
• 
"It was so salacious and unverified, the FBI had used it to get FISA warrants" to spy on the campaign.
• 
Within weeks of taking office, Trump fired Comey and special counsel Robert Mueller was appointed, starting a two-year probe that hung over the Trump White House like a giant cloud before coming up empty.
• 
Along the way, FBI agent Peter Strzok and his office paramour, lawyer Lisa Page, became household names for their texts about an "insurance policy" in case Trump won and the "smell" of his voters.
• 
Seizing on the Ukraine issue, he suggested, was just the latest stage of the relentless effort by Democrats to block Trump from getting to the White House, and then knock him out after he got there.
• 
... making a larger point, namely about the disastrous impact the anti-Trump agenda is having on our nation, and will have, perhaps, for generations.
• 
Never in modern times has there been such a nasty, permanent campaign to thwart and take out a president.
• 
The effort has taught a new generation of Americans that Dems are ruthless and have two enormous advantages, and both have played major roles in the anti-Trump campaign.
• 
That the permanent bureaucracy leans left has never been a secret.  But the shockingly brazen role of the FBI, the CIA and others in the law enforcement and intelligence agencies convinced me that the term "deep state" is indeed appropriate.
• 
The other Dem advantage is the media.  It, too, has always leaned left, but the bias involved in demonizing Trump and his supporters is unlike anything we've ever seen.
• 
Right out of the gate, it was obvious that the same media that had served as cheerleaders for the Obama administration were committed to stopping Trump.
• 
That these two forces, the deep state and the left-wing media, would unite as they have is also unprecedented.
• 
... if the Bolton leak doesn't drive enough GOP senators into the Dem camp for witnesses, expect another leak or line of attack to emerge.
• 
That's the left's playbook, and as the confirmation hearings for Justice Brett Kavanaugh demonstrated, the deep state and the media will do anything they can to sink Trump.
• 
But that alliance is up against a president who is willing — and eager — to fight back.
• 
Those who doubt should remember that Kavanaugh was confirmed because Trump didn't buckle.
• 
For all the talk of fighting corruption, the Biden family was getting rich from it.
• 
Do Schumer and Pelosi want to sacrifice Biden in a bid to damage Trump?
• 
Either the nation moves on to other business and the election, or the parties engage in mutual destruction over Bolton and the Bidens.
• 
Acquittal and moving on is my hope.  Mutual destruction is my fear.
      Democrats still delusional about Trump even after Qassem Soleimani death  (NYP 01/04/2020)
• 
The notion that Trump was wrong to act, if followed to its logical conclusion, means America should play only a tit-for-tat game with terrorists everywhere and all the time.
• 
This is the same screwy thinking that demands Israel hit its enemies only as hard as the enemies hit it.
• 
What is the point of having a superior military force if it can't be used to defend its homeland and citizens?
• 
... a counsel of timidity is now virtually the only voice heard on the left.
• 
President Barack Obama's global apology tours shattered historic norms and his attempts to appease Iran's mad mullahs broke new ground in the worst possible way.
• 
Iran took his concessions — and stacks of American cash — and used them to foment even more mayhem against our allies, including Saudi Arabia and Israel.
• 
Soleimani was the spearhead of this violent expansion, and it is noteworthy that both Obama and his predecessor, President George W.  Bush, passed up opportunities to drone him, fearing the backlash.
• 
Trump, too, was patient, even as he shifted our Iran policy 180 degrees by exiting Obama's misbegotten nuclear deal and using tough economic sanctions to try to force the regime to mend its ways.
• 
But his offers to meet were met with threats, the slaughter of Iranian dissidents, repeated attacks on our allies and, finally, our Baghdad embassy.
• 
Naturally, the president's decision that enough was enough led the celebrity sewer to open its mouth ... sputtering foul nonsense.
• 
The vapid comments reveal that the Soleimani targeting is triggering the same strain of derangement that fueled impeachment.
• 
If you hate Trump, every event is just grist for the effort to tear him down.
• 
Whatever he says or does must be mocked and resisted.  Don't let facts or even national security get in the way of your moral preening.
• 
Their approach makes a virtue of weakness and invites further attacks.
• 
Of course we should try to avoid war, but passivity in the face of evil has never yielded a durable peace.
• 
Even the most plausible Dem criticism — that Trump acted without congressional approval — fails the test of common sense.
• 
Should he have called for a public vote?  Should he have trusted Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep.  Adam Schiff to keep the mission secret?
• 
The fact is that Soleimani deserved to meet his maker years ago but would be alive had he heeded warnings to stop spreading terror throughout the Middle East.
• 
None of this is to deny there are risks associated with such a dramatic mission.
• 
The mullahs will feel the need to avenge a key leader, with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warning the US that "harsh revenge awaits the criminals."
• 
If nothing else, the last 40 years reveal that Iran's Islamic rulers are big on other people becoming martyrs but show remarkable restraint when their lives are at stake.
• 
"We took action last night to stop a war, we did not take action to start a war."
• 
He repeated his promise that the US is not seeking regime change, but urged Iran to end its "aggression."
• 
He also warned it would pay a heavy price for any retaliation, saying, "If Americans anywhere are threatened, we have all of those targets already fully identified, and I am ready and prepared to take whatever action is necessary."
• 
That is what peace through strength sounds like.
• 
Democrats and the mullahs would be wise to pay attention.
      Goodwin: Why are Democrats acting like they have something to hide?  (NYP 10/28/2019)
• 
With no end in sight to the madness gripping Washington, it is wise to seize on any possible sign of humor to brighten the day.
• 
Responding to reports that Attorney General William Barr's investigation into the 2016 spying on Donald Trump's campaign is now a criminal probe, Schiff and Nad­ler laid down their thumbscrews and emerged from their impeachment dungeon to express outrage.
• 
In unison, the twin Trump tormentors declared that partisanship has infected the Justice Department and "the rule of law will suffer new and irreparable damage."
• 
Despite stiff competition from two centuries of congressional hypocrisy, that is a first-rate howler.
• 
If you can't laugh at Schiff and Nadler accusing anyone else of damaging the rule of law for partisan purposes, you don't have a sense of humor.
• 
They have violated every historic precedent, not to mention simple decency, by conducting their impeachment probe in a secret star chamber.
• 
They leak juicy fragments to the media echo chamber, which would be a federal crime for real prosecutors.
• 
Then they squeal and gnash their teeth when the worm starts to turn.  Come on, people, this is hilarious!
• 
It is true, of course, that some in Washington will see nothing amusing about Barr's monumental decision.
• 
Still, if they've done nothing wrong, they have nothing to hide, right?
• 
After all, that's the standard Schiff, Nadler, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and every two-bit prosecutor in America has applied to the Trump White House.
• 
Their approach from Day One has been merciless: Guilty first, a trial later.
• 
Give us everything we want, or we'll accuse you of ­obstruction of justice and treason, too.
• 
Oh, and when you come to testify behind closed doors, bring your toothbrush because if you don't tell us what we want to hear, you're not going home.
• 
Finally and thankfully, the other side of the story is about to be ­revealed.
• 
"It's all the stuff that scares the crap out of people.  ... We may find out that the people entrusted with our most sacred powers are criminals themselves."
• 
Although there is no certainty, logic suggests that Barr authorized the switch to a criminal probe because there are, in fact, prosecution referrals in the IG report.
• 
In addition to the review of the wiretapping issue, Barr and Durham also interviewed foreign intelligence officials who may have been recruited by the Obama administration to meddle in the campaign and help spy on Trump.
• 
... The New York Times, CNN and the rest of the Democratic propaganda outlets are furious that the public may finally learn the whole sordid story about one of the most disgraceful episodes in presidential history.
• 
And so they have joined forces with Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi in attacking Barr for daring to hunt for the truth.
• 
In effect, the left-wing media, instead of leading the search for truth, has become the errand boys of those trying to hide it.
• 
This is the ultimate irrationality of the anti-Trump zealots, in and out of the media.
• 
Their hatred for him has distorted their judgment so much that they are willing to help cover up potential crimes and turn Barr into a villain for seeking to enforce the law against corrupt officials.
• 
What if it's all a head fake?
• 
What if the Russia-collusion narrative was created by the FBI and CIA to steal the election?
• 
What if Ukraine is the same thing by another name with a separate group of rogue agents?
• 
The mere possibility that "yes" is the answer to any of those questions should shake every American to the core.
• 
Remember, too, that none of this would have come to light if Hillary Clinton had been elected.
• 
Indeed, the assumption that she was a sure thing for the Oval ­Office helps explain the arrogance of the plotters.
• 
They thought they were immune from suspicion and, ultimately, above the law.
• 
... it is worth repeating again Sen.  Chuck Schumer's infamous warning to Trump: "You take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you."
• 
      Bias has killed the ‘Gray Lady’ — and Dean Baquet fired the fatal shot  (NYP 08/26/2019)
• 
"No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up."
• 
In this case, it is also impossible not to be disheartened and furious.
• 
The transcript shows that the rot of bias at the Times is far beyond the pale and there is no hope of recovery.
• 
Yet not a single person there declared the obvious — that the paper is betraying its principles.
• 
Rigor in reporting and restraint in judgment once made the Gray Lady noble.
• 
Now she is dead, her homicide an inside job.
• 
The transcript ... reveals a confederacy of ignorance and bigotry involving hundreds of people. 
• 
By giving reporters and editors license to try to stop Donald Trump from becoming president, then letting them peddle the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax, Baquet helped unleash the hatred that is tearing America apart.
• 
Never before has a single media institution played such a destructive role in the nation's life.
• 
"How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks?  How do we cover the world's reaction to him?  How do we cover America, that's become so divided by Donald Trump?  How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven't done in a large way in a long time?  That, to me, is the vision for coverage ... for the rest of the next two years."
• 
This isn't journalism.  It's political activism aligned with the talking points of Democrats.
• 
Though none of those asking questions are identified, they are indistinguishable in wanting the paper to regularly call Trump a racist and a liar.
• 
These are supposedly straight news reporters and editors, yet are unrestrained in demanding that their partisan opinions dictate coverage.
• 
"Could you explain your decision not to more regularly use the word racist in reference to the president's actions?"
• 
"You mentioned that there could be situations when we would use the word racist.  What is that standard?"
• 
"I just feel like racism is in everything.  It should be considered in our science reporting, in our culture reporting, in our national reporting."
• 
"What is the overall strategy here for getting us through this administration?"
• 
Not once does he express any doubt that Trump is guilty as charged, or say that reporters should not be expressing partisan opinions.
• 
He's only quibbling over how to present the agreed-upon conclusions.
• 
... there is zero evidence in the transcript that anyone in the room objects.
• 
Even allowing that some might have doubts about an entire news organization speaking with one scripted voice, the silence shows nobody felt secure enough to say so.
• 
The failure of anyone to recognize that the approach violates the paper's historic standards of fairness and the strict separation of news from opinion speaks volumes about how low the Times has sunk.
• 
If there is a silver lining, it is that the public has been warned.
• 
Readers who want straight facts and fair play won't find it in the Times.
• 
All they will get is a biased agenda and a guaranteed conclusion.
• 
See related Newz (Glenn McCoy, 08/18/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related Unmasking (Glenn McCoy, 04/04/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Goodwin: America is being scandalized by four enormous events – Trump is just one of them  (Fox 08/29/2018)
• 
By scandalized, I mean that people are shocked and outraged at what they regard as breaches of acceptable behavior or morality.
• 
That wouldn't be a problem if the vast majority were scandalized by the same things.
• 
The vicious polarization stems from the fact that the country is split almost exactly in half over what people are outraged about.
• 
The first scandalizing event is Donald Trump — his candidacy, his election and his presidency.  And, on some days to some people, his existence.
• 
Trump is unlike any president in history, taking the Oval Office after a notorious business career and personal life.
• 
Still, Trump won the election fairly and the economy is booming, yet too many Americans can't accept those truths.
• 
Their attempts to bring him down define the three other scandalizing events.
• 
First is the conduct of the mainstream media, which has abandoned all standards of fairness and continues to embarrass itself with overt bias against the president.
• 
Another scandalizing event is the behavior of some federal agencies.  The Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA took liberties that were morally offensive, and possibly illegal, because they didn't want Trump to be president.
• 
Some individuals, like former top FBI agent Peter Strzok, were dumb enough to put it in writing — on government computers!
• 
That, in turn, outrages Trump supporters and others, with the result that among half the country, the FBI remains untrustworthy.
• 
The fourth scandalizing event is the reaction of Democrats to Trump.
• 
Dems' answers to his presidency can be divided into two: political assassination and political suicide.
• 
The assassination group is putting all its chips on special counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
Their hope, their dream, their fantasy — their everything — is that Mueller will find collusion, obstruction or anything that will lead to impeachment and removal.
• 
Political suicide is the path other Dems are taking, as shown by their embrace of any shiny new thing, including socialism.
• 
I predicted the coming months will be nasty but hoped that "people of good will on both sides remember that, in the end, we're all still Americans."
• 
"We have always been taught, and many of us believed until now, that our frustrations with government can be adjudicated at the ballot box.  This Mueller investigation and the actions by the deep state and media prove that to be a lie."
• 
"With a nullification of our vote, some of ‘we the people' know we have lost not only our voice, but our constitutional rights and probably our country."
      Why it’s time for Trump to play his ace in the hole  (NYP 08/07/2018)
• 
... the hapless Jeff Sessions is still the attorney general of the United States.
• 
... Rod Rosenstein, officially Sessions' deputy but really the boss of the Justice Department and FBI, continues to get away with the biggest partisan heist of modern times.
• 
Rosenstein is guilty of three main sins.  One, he gives his spawn, special counsel Robert Mueller, virtually unlimited time, scope and budget to target anybody who worked for President Trump's campaign or administration.
• 
... the tactic involves throwing the kitchen sink of charges with the aim of terrifying defendants so they will be more inclined to spill any possible beans on Trump in exchange for leniency.
• 
The zealous approach — and exorbitant legal fees involved for defendants or witnesses — serve as deterrents for anyone who might consider public service.
• 
And although there is still no indication the president did anything wrong, the search for a crime to pin on him creates a cloud over everything he does and could influence the midterm elections.
• 
Rosenstein's second sin is his arrogant stiff-arming of congressional attempts to ferret out the facts about how the Trump probe actually started.
• 
It is a national disgrace that, 19 months after the president took the oath, the public is kept in the dark about the most basic things, including whether the FBI had any credible allegations about collusion, or whether it relied exclusively on the Hillary Clinton-financed Russian Dossier to get a surveillance warrant against Trump associate Carter Page.
• 
We also don't know how much money the FBI itself paid Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the dossier, and why the agency continued to use Steele as a source after it fired him for leaking to the media.
• 
Nor do we know why the FBI sent at least one spy — and maybe two — to snoop on the Trump campaign. 
• 
All these events are unprecedented, yet Rosenstein continues to thwart all efforts to explain them or hold anyone accountable.
• 
His imperious refusal suggests he sees himself and the Justice Department as above the laws it enforces on all other Americans.
• 
Which brings us to his third sin — his complete lack of interest in the suspect handling of the Clinton email investigation.
• 
The numerous examples of misconduct and deviations from rules detailed in the inspector general report came and went as if they never happened.
• 
The excessive secrecy and hyper-partisan taint have come at a huge cost in credibility...  the shared distrust of the nation's premier law enforcement agency is the legacy of Barack Obama's presidency and James Comey's corrupt leadership.  Unless Sessions and Rosenstein reverse course promptly, that distrust will keep growing and be their legacy as well.
• 
Fortunately, there is one card left to play.  ... a president has almost unlimited powers to declassify any document within the executive branch.
• 
It is a mystery why Trump has hesitated to use that power, especially because he rails so frequently about the unfairness of both probes.
• 
He could, in an instant, strike a blow for accountability and transparency by ordering the Justice Department to give Congress everything it wants, subject to very limited restrictions.
• 
Embarrassment does not qualify as a reason for withholding information.
• 
... it would set a dramatic precedent for a more open government, something Trump promised to deliver.  Secrecy is an important part of the deep state's permanent power and, when invoked to extremes by law enforcement, veers toward a police state.
• 
Trump should make sure he is its last victim.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The Left needs to face reality: Trump is winning  (NYP 06/30/2018)
• 
To understand the madness gripping American leftists, try to see the world through their eyes.
• 
Like the Palestinians who mark Israel's birth as their nakba, or tragedy, you regard Donald Trump's 2016 victory as a catastrophe.
• 
It's the last thing you think of most nights, and the first thing most mornings.
• 
You can't shake it or escape it.  Whatever you watch, listen to or read, there are reminders — Donald Trump really is president.
• 
And where the hell is Robert Mueller?  He was supposed to save us from this nightmare — that's what Chuck Schumer banked on.  Well?
• 
You spend your tax cut even as you rail against the man who made it happen.
• 
And you are pleased that cousin Jimmy finally got a job, though you repeat the daily devotional that Barack Obama deserves credit for the roaring economy.
• 
And now this — Justice Anthony Kennedy is retiring, and Trump gets another Supreme Court pick.
• 
The court might tilt right for the rest of your life.  He's winning.
• 
In a nutshell, our visit to the tortured mind of a Trump hater explains everything from Saturday's mass marches to why a Virginia restaurant owner declared No Soup for Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
• 
Their loathing for Trump is bone-deep and all-consuming.  This is war and they take no prisoners.
• 
For most marchers, border policies offer a chance to vent.  They didn't make a peep when Obama did the same thing.
• 
If children are their main concern, they could help the 23,000 New York City kids living in shelters.
• 
Or they could have attended the funeral of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, the innocent Bronx teen hacked to death by a Dominican gang.
• 
Instead, they give in to Trump Derangement Syndrome, which causes them to immediately and absolutely adopt the opposite position of the president's — facts and common sense be damned.
• 
One survey showed most Americans were not nearly as sympathetic to the illegal border crossers as the media.
• 
"I think it's terrible about the kids getting split up from their parents.  But the parents shouldn't have been here."
• 
... two Supreme Court rulings that favored Trump.  The first upheld his revised travel ban for a handful of Muslim-majority nations, saying it was within his ­executive authority.
• 
It rebuked lower-court judges who bought the partisan canard that it was a "Muslim ban."
• 
Their invalid rulings stood in stark contrast to plain readings of the law and show them to be hacks blowing with the political wind.
• 
The second ruling, which blocks municipal unions from forcing workers to pay dues, is a tax cut for workers who opt out...
• 
... the travel-ban case upheld broad presidential authority on national security, and the union ruling was among several supporting First Amendment rights of individuals against government infringement.
• 
Rulings like these have long-term cultural and political impacts and explain why Supreme Court appointments can have an outsize influence on a president's legacy.
• 
A second pick in the Gorsuch mold would secure a majority on the court for curbing government's appetite for more domestic power, perhaps for decades.
• 
And that could do something extraordinary for Trump's legacy.
• 
All else being stable, putting the Supreme Court on an enduring constitutional footing would make his presidency one of the most consequential of any age.
• 
See related Now You Know (Gary Varvel, 02/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
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      Peggy Grande: Coronavirus decision — Trump weighs risks of putting America back to work  (Fox 04/15/2020)
• 
President Trump has said that deciding when to reopen the economy will be the biggest and most difficult one he will make in his presidency.
• 
No one can deny the world is facing the most prolific challenge in our lifetimes.
• 
Since World War II, we as a nation have never faced decisions of global consequence like the ones we are facing today.
• 
In many respects, we are in the midst of a multi-front war.  One is battling the virus, but others are perhaps even more dangerous; preserving the economy – and preserving our freedoms.
• 
And beyond the cliche that the cure could be worse than the disease, America's retreat from the world economy will cause untold death and turmoil across the globe.
• 
Do we as a nation have the courage for tough decisions?  Are we mindful of the fragility of our prosperity and our liberties?
• 
It was our industry, our economy and the arsenal of democracy that helped win World War II.  In fact, the United States was the only nation to see its economy grow during the war.
• 
It was this same U.S.  industry that allowed the execution of the post-war Marshall Plan and the formation of most of the global institutions that have led to the prosperity of the last 75 years.
• 
That same economy will be what propels our recovery following this crisis, but it cannot do so if it remains in a self-induced coma.
• 
It's time to wake America's sleeping giant of economic growth – before it's too late.
• 
Another front of this war involves not only preserving life, but also preserving our very way of life.
• 
From every side, we are under attack by China and their execution of unrestricted warfare – a strategy that describes winning a global war against the United States without ever firing a shot.
• 
Much has already been written about China's role in the coronavirus and concerns about lack of transparency, with much still to uncover.
• 
However, one thing is irrefutable.  China is taking advantage of the crisis, profiting from the outbreak, continuing their predatory mercantilism and accelerating the provision of goods and services to many suffering from the pandemic, such as sending 1,000 ventilators to New York City and attempting to re-sell to Italy some of the very products Italy donated to China.
• 
China is also buying up distressed assets around the globe.  The virus has become China's economic weapon to destroy the economies of the U.S.  and its allies.
• 
So far, it has worked, but it has to stop.  Immediately.
• 
Part of winning the fight on this front is pushing back on China with the full weight of the American economy, not just for ourselves, but for a world that also looks to our strength for their strength, security and stability.
• 
We need to win this war on many fronts: restarting the engine of industry and preserving the values and freedoms of our country, while also protecting ourselves against further exploitation by an ever-aggressive China.
• 
If we allow ourselves to make decisions based exclusively on limiting or eliminating potential American loss of life, we are fighting this war on only one front, which is a flawed and short-sighted strategy.
• 
President Trump's instincts are correct, and many of the steps our president has taken have been bold, brave and infused with informed guidance and personal wisdom.
• 
We need to support the president in making the tough, correct decision to reopen our economy as soon as it is safe to do so.
• 
This is not an either/or decision between choosing life or livelihood.
• 
Those are two parts of a complex, achievable balance that will protect our liberties as Americans and recalibrate our relationship with China.
• 
This is the perfect equilibrium our president must find, and we all must support, knowing there will continue to be risks, but being willing to assume those risks together.
      Democrats beware — British election is final nail in the coffin of the globalist experiment  (Fox 12/13/2019)
• 
Since the era of Margaret Thatcher the U.K hasn't seen such a surge toward the Conservative Party and this is such a large win that it will hold for at least a generation to come.
• 
A controversial leader with both wide support and lots of criticism, Johnson happened to be in the right place at the right time when the tidal wave of public opinion ushered in a new era for the U.K.  and turned the pages of history simultaneously forward – to finally Leave the European Union – and backward – in returning the United Kingdom to national sovereignty and independence.
• 
The voters have been sending a clear message incessantly since 2016 – they wanted to leave the E.U.  - and it has fallen on deaf or closed ears.
• 
Yet is there really anything surprising about wanting to control one's own destiny?
• 
What began in the 1970s as merely a common market trading agreement devolved into full surrender of borders and immigration and courts and trade and laws and even fishing waters.
• 
Regardless of how the other side has tried to spin and control the narrative, the Leavers never wavered and never bought into the lies that were peddled 24/7/365 by the Remainers.
• 
They never believed the insult that their vote was a mistake or looked back wishing they had voted to stay in the European Union.
• 
They never believed the lie that the E.U.  provided stability to the U.K., but rather knew that the U.K.  was providing stability to the E.U.
• 
They never believed the doom and gloom naysayers predicting economic catastrophe would come by leaving the E.U., but instead knew that economic calamity would occur by electing Jeremy Corbyn and his progressive policies of taxation and big government.
• 
They never believed that their future opportunities for trade and growth were tied to a small, declining population in Europe with fragile, failing leadership and crumbling economies, but rather looked to the U.S., to the Commonwealth nations and to the waiting world, knowing they would be welcomed back to trade and work together and align for good globally once out of the confines of E.U.  oversight.
• 
... with the U.K.'s imminent exit now from the EU, there will likely be other countries lined up right behind them also plotting their plan of escape.
• 
Overarching supranational bureaucracies don't help individuals – they help themselves – and the U.K.  voters were smart enough to see that and brave enough to reject it.
• 
They have changed the trajectory of their nation's history and those who prosper in Britain's vibrant and independent future will thank them.
• 
Hard-working, law-abiding, tax-paying individuals don't like being told what to do or how they should live.
• 
They don't like being dismissed as uninformed or too simple to understand the complexities of government.
• 
They resent having their voices ignored and having words put in their mouths about what they think and believe.
• 
Their priorities are not always in alignment with the loudest voices who wield the most power and ultimately they will refuse to give in to intimidation but will quietly go to the polls and make their silent voices heard in the arena of equality – the ballot box.
• 
... democracy cannot – and should not – be dismissed by those who think they know better than the electorate.
• 
#The people should ultimately tell their government what to do, not the other way around.
• 
See related Brexit and Churchill (Sean Delonas, 06/28/2016) cartoon from World picture album
      Ocasio-Cortez takes a swing at Reagan — Here's what she doesn't get about our 40th president  (Fox 03/11/2019)
• 
... freshman Congresswoman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., threw sand in the eyes of capitalism while continuing her sing-song of socialism.
• 
Amongst those in the crosshairs of her juvenile rantings were our 32nd president, FDR, a Democrat who authored the New Deal, and our 40th President – Ronald Reagan – who was criticized for "screwing over working class Americans."
• 
While you have to admire her spunk and passion, perhaps it would benefit Ms.  Ocasio-Cortez to check her facts, listen more, talk less and learn from those who have gone before her – including the widely beloved and admired Ronald Reagan.
• 
He not only inspired our nation, but in many ways changed the world.
• 
That's quite a resume for her, a rookie, to be taking a swing at.
• 
Ronald Reagan famously said, "It isn't so much that liberals are ignorant, it's just that they know so many things that aren't so."
• 
AOC, and much of her generation, sadly epitomize this quote.
• 
And the irony is that only someone who lives in a free society can even make those claims and talk about embracing socialism as she does.
• 
AOC and the progressive left are in love with an illusion, the virtual reality of socialism - the hologram of its promised benefits, rather than the realities of what it actually is.
• 
The truth is there is no historic precedence for the success of socialism or anything the progressive left is currently peddling. 
• 
Socialism has begun to parade itself like a proud peacock, fanning out its beautiful feathers of enticement and entitlement with a promise of equity.
• 
It's often been said that if you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart.  And if you're not a conservative when you're older, you have no brain.
• 
AOC is a product of the transformation of the American education system from a place of learning to a place of political indoctrination.
• 
She is confident in her ideology because she believes that if she is morally right then facts and statistics don't really matter. 
• 
In fact, the true danger of her ideas and future proposed legislation is not in what she and her progressive colleagues are telling us.
• 
The true danger is in what they are NOT telling us.  The danger of omission.
• 
The danger of omission is that all these seemingly too-good-to-be-true promises are indeed just that.  Too good to be true.
• 
In addition, the underlying danger of taking the bait of all of these supposed freebies and promised benefits is the hook that lies just beneath.  The hook of government control.
• 
While the idea of safety, security, health and prosperity for everyone is enticing, if it comes without personal cost then it also comes without personal choice.
• 
For every bit of reliance on government you embrace, you sacrifice much more in freedom.
• 
And once you surrender, it's hard, if not impossible, to reclaim.
• 
Is there anything the government does that you want more of?
• 
Ronald Reagan warned us against socialism or any form of greater government influence or control, saying: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same."
• 
We would be wise to heed his warning and remember that government is rarely the solution to our problems – it often IS the problem.
• 
Government doesn't make your life better.  Only YOU can make your life better.
 Greenfield  (08/16/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/15/2020) | Next sect (01/26/2021) | List bot 
      Why America can't win wars  (INN 08/16/2021)
• 
"Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.  Americans play to win all the time.  That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war.  The very thought of losing is hateful to Americans." -General George S.  Patton...
• 
Why can't America win wars?  You've gotta fight a war to win a war.  And we don't fight wars.
• 
We were propping up a government that wouldn't exist without us.  We were exporting our ideals.
• 
We were trying to win hearts and minds.  We were trying to stabilize an inherently unstable part of the world.  What we weren't doing was fighting and winning.
• 
Wars, like stories, are simple things if you define a goal that can be achieved by military means.
• 
Not only don't we know what we're fighting for, but we couldn't define victory except in terms of Afghanistan turning into San Francisco with coffee shops, courses on feminism, and LGBT parades.
• 
The Taliban are fighting a culture war by military means.  Our elites tried to do the same thing in Afghanistan without being able to define an enemy or victory.
• 
The same establishment that excels at fighting culture wars against Americans keeps discovering that its toolbox of activism, media bias, and victimhood fails miserably outside the western world.
• 
Undermining traditional culture worked in America, they assumed that it would work in Afghanistan.
• 
Their repeat failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Europe should be a wake-up call to their bright future in Little Mogadishu and all the Islamic enclaves that they've created in America.
• 
The Taliban play to win.  We don't.  That's the simple answer to why we haven't won wars in a long time and aren't about to start.
• 
American soldiers are the best.  They win battles all the time.  When faced against an enemy that will stand and fight, our men roll over them.
• 
We aren't losing those kinds of battles: we keep losing wars in which the leaders can't define what a war is or what victory looks like in military terms.
• 
Let's get back to Patton for a moment.  "Sure, we all want to go home.  We want to get this war over with.  But you can't win a war lying down.  The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it" and "I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing.  We're advancing constantly."
• 
Wars can be won when you're out to defeat the enemy.  When you're not out to defeat the enemy, you never win the war and you never go home until you get tired of holding your position and waiting for the culture to change.
• 
The inability to define war or victory isn't a military problem: it's a cultural problem.
• 
We can't win wars because while Patton's "Americans play to win all the time.  That's why Americans have never lost and will never lose a war" may still ring true in parts of the country, it's as alien to the elites who run the country as the Taliban are.
• 
It's a strange species of exotica for people who drink organic seltzer, hand out participation trophies, and spend all their time worrying about victimhood.
• 
They view the military as a means to a non-military end.  That's how we ended up in Afghanistan.  Stability, cultural transformation, and all the rest of it are non-military ends.
• 
If you want to use the military to achieve a non-military end, you have to engage in conquest and then use force to transform a region or a society.  That's what the Taliban did and that's what they'll be doing again.
• 
After successfully using the military for a military end, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, defeating our named enemies, our elites embarked on an impotent program of cultural change in which they couldn't tell themselves the truth about what they were doing or even explain why the military was there.
• 
They assumed that they were liberating the innate forces of progress and civilization which would thrive if we just had some soldiers there to protect them.
• 
We were trying to protect client states that couldn't stand on their own.  We were practicing imperialism without the empire and it was always bound to fall apart on us.
• 
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.  If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.  If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle." - Sun Tzu
• 
Americans don't know the enemy.  And increasingly our elites don't know ourselves.
      Remembering 9/11 in a woke year  (INN 09/14/2020)
• 
The Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots that attacked the statues of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Christopher Columbus and Abraham Lincoln did not spare 9/11 memorials.
• 
The statue of a police officer was beheaded and toppled in Plymouth, Mass.  at a 9/11 memorial honoring those who had died in the attacks.
• 
But the 2,000 pound steel beam from the World Trade Center proved beyond the ability of the vandals to topple.
• 
When BLM racists defaced statues and memorials in the Boston Common, including the "Glory" regiment, they didn't spare the 9/11 memorial in the Public Garden.
• 
Beyond the radical attacks on the monuments of September 11 were the attacks on its heroes.
• 
The NYPD has suffered its worst days since 9/11, with over 400 officers injured in the BLM riots.  Police and firefighters went from the heroes of a nation to being smeared as soulless monsters.
• 
"I could see no difference between the officer who killed and the police who died, or the firefighters who died," wrote Ta-Nehisi Coates, an intellectual godfather of BLM.
• 
"They were not human to me.  Black, white, or whatever, they were the menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body."
• 
"Between the World and Me," the hateful tract in which Coates dehumanized the police officers and firefighters who had died trying to save people of all races and creeds, became a bestseller, was a Pulitzer finalist and has repeatedly shown up on corporate anti-racism reading lists.
• 
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum tried to cancel the Tribute in Light, whose beams that fill the night sky are used to light the space of the fallen towers of the World Trade Center, and the reading of the names of the fallen dead by 9/11 family members.
• 
It took an outpouring of anger from family members and alternative events by Tunnel2Towers to get the museum to reverse course.
• 
... the Tribute in Light had been decried as a symbol of "extreme nationalism."
• 
There had always been a deep discomfort with the patriotism of Sept.  11 and with its heroes and victims.
• 
In the long years after the men of the NYPD and the FDNY had raised up the courage of a nation, both organizations, like the military, have been gutted by political correctness, and have turned into shadows of their former selves.
• 
... the heroism of the FDNY and NYPD on Sept.  11 came from the fact that its men did not reflect a random sampling of the city's population.  They were extraordinary men, heroes who went where no one else would dare, climbing 100 stories in the hope of saving someone.
• 
The men who lived and died on that day were not victims and they were not trying to get famous.  They did their duty.  But to many the concept of duty has become as alien as frock coats and top hats.
• 
Nineteen years after 9/11, men and women born after the attack will be able to vote.
• 
History is made up not only of dry facts, but emotional connections.  The stories that define us are the ones that matter because they endow life with meaning.
• 
For millions of Americans, the death of an ex-con who had robbed a pregnant woman at gunpoint gave their lives meaning.  That's why so much of the country is burning and so many of its memorials have fallen.
• 
The Islamic terrorists who attacked us on Sept.  11 had beliefs that gave their lives meaning.  So did the SS soldiers who marched through Poland, or their NKVD counterparts.
• 
It is not the mere presence of evil that creates a crisis, but the absence of meaningful opposition to it.  And meaningful opposition comes from a deep moral passion without which life is empty.
• 
The 19 hijackers lied to the passengers that if they didn't resist, they would be allowed to live.
• 
Mohammed Atta told Flight 11 passengers, "Nobody move.  Everything will be okay.  If you try to make any moves, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane.  Just stay quiet."
• 
"Take prisoners and kill them.  As Allah said: ‘No prophet should have prisoners until he has soaked the land with blood,'" Atta told his men.
• 
The leftist radicals who have been in league with Islamic terrorists, defending them in court, propagandizing for their "civil rights" in the press and funding their networks, now call themselves "woke."
• 
Another Sept.  11 anniversary reminds us that we need to wake up.
• 
In our streets, the radicals chant "Death to America," they burn flags, desecrate churches and synagogues and topple the statues of the nation's founders.  And their media allies and Democrat apparatchiks tell us to go along with it and we'll be okay.
• 
The rioters and stabbers just want to issue their demands and make their point.  If we stay quiet, they'll leave us alone.
• 
The 19th anniversary is another warning from the bloody echoes of history that they won't.
• 
When the jihadis and BLMers chant "Death to America," believe that they mean it.
• 
... they want to be rid of the courage and heroism of our entire history because they know that the power of Americans to resist their brutality and hate comes from our history.
• 
That includes Sept.  11.
• 
On a cool fall day, millions of Americans woke out of a hazy dream of the end of history and remembered that we were a nation, not a borderless global order, that we needed heroes, not diversity, that history wasn't over, that we still had enemies, and that what mattered was not the color of your skin or your politically correct virtue signaling, but whether you would rush the cockpit or sit in your seat hoping that despite everything you knew, they wouldn't kill you.
• 
On the 19th anniversary of that cool fall day, we are passing through fire and havoc, flying over ruined cities and fallen rubble because too many of us had fallen asleep until the guttural voice came on again reading its hateful demands.
• 
And many of our fellow passengers kneeled while the anthem played, they disgraced their country, and the memory of our fallen dead.
• 
No amount of wishing or willing can raise the dead of Sept.  11 out of their ashen graves.
• 
All we can do this anniversary, and every one after it, is to keep resisting the terrorists, domestic and international, to stay awake and ready in the long flight of history.
• 
We must remember our heroes and honor their valor, because we may need to imitate it.
      Democrat backing for antisemitism is killing Jews  (INN 01/18/2020)
• 
After a black nationalist attack on a Jewish supermarket in Jersey City, a member of the Jersey City Board of Education defended the murder of two Jewish people and a Latino employee.
• 
"Drugs and guns are planted in the Black community."
• 
The two Black Hebrew Israelite killers, the former community organizer wrote, "went directly to the kosher supermarket.  I believe they knew they would come out in body bags.  What is the message they were sending?  Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message?  Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the Black communities of America?"
• 
The Hudson County Democratic Black Caucus argued that "her statement has heightened awareness around issues that must be addressed."
• 
"She said nothing wrong.  Everything she said is the truth," declared ... the head of the North Jersey Chapter of the National Action Network.
• 
Unlike many contemporary hate groups, the National Action Network has the unique distinction of being the destination of choice for every major Democrat and for its role in the murder of 7 people.
• 
Those were the 7 who died in the Freddy's Fashion Mart fire, 5 of them Latino women, who were killed when a black nationalist gunman ordered black people to leave before opening fire and burning the store.
• 
The worst racist hate crime in New York City was preceded by Sharpton denouncing the store owner as a, "white interloper".
• 
Morris Powell, who had been on trial for breaking a Korean woman's head during a previous protest, had headed the National Action Network's Buy Black committee.
• 
Powell had chanted, "Don't give the Jew a dime", outside the store and praised the killer as, "A Black Man who struggled for his people to be free."
• 
The New York Times headlined its piece on the black nationalist killer as, "A Life of Resistance."
• 
... the New York Times quoted an Imam in the Believers Mosque in St.  Petersburg who praised the racist arsonist as "the type of person who would encourage people to get involved."
• 
A former senior advisor to the Mayor of Tampa and Democrat campaign consultant described the killer as one in "a long line of people who thought it was up to them to stop talking, stop begging and start acting."
• 
Those comments closely echo Paige's justification of the Kosher market attack.
• 
It's why it ought to surprise no one that she has not resigned from the Jersey City Board of Education.  And isn't likely to.
• 
Instead, John Flora, a Democrats running for Congress, defended her and urged other elected officials to "be prepared to demonstrate empathy.  Was she still processing the event?  Did it traumatize her?"
• 
... running for Congress on a bold platform of the Green New Deal, gun control, legalizing drugs, abolishing the electoral college and hating Jews.
• 
The underlying problem is that the Democrats don't oppose racism or racial nationalism.
• 
They believe that under circumstances, such as a Jewish store in Harlem or in Jersey City, it might be justified.
• 
They have one standard for white nationalism and another for black nationalism.
• 
Had Dylann Roof been a black man shooting up a synagogue, we would be reading about his "life of resistance" in the New York Times.
• 
Democrats have used racial hatred for two centuries to appeal to a fractured electorate convinced of its own superiority and the unfairness of the system.
• 
... since 1828, the Democrats have gained and held on to power by convincing narrow groups that the deck is stacked against them and that only they can save them.
• 
This poison killed numberless black and white people across two centuries.
• 
It also brought countless wealth into the pockets of the politically connected.
• 
Radical politics added an ideological motive.  But all politics, whether radical or moderate, from the Dixiecrat to the Communist, is ultimately about the acquisition of money and power.
• 
Racism, white or black, is just a means of tribalizing the struggle for money and power by playing on racial fear and hate.
• 
The victims of identity politics, killed and wounded in random lynchings, are the collateral damage of progressive racism.
• 
A few dead people, in this case Jews, are a small price to pay for power.
• 
The rise in anti-Semitism is not mysterious.  It is what happens when political factions back fringe groups convinced of the fundamental unfairness of society and the need to bring it down, whether it's black or white supremacists, or Islamists, as weapons in a political war for control of the country.
• 
People are dying in racial violence across the country so that the Democrats can win elections
 Greenwald  (01/26/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (08/16/2021) | Next sect (01/18/2022) | List bot 
      Glenn Greenwald warns of Dem 'bloodthirsty' attempt to exert complete control over modern political...  (Fox 01/26/2021)
• 
Large American corporations are colluding with mainstream media outlets and prominent Democrats to silence Americans in a "bloodthirsty" attempt to exert complete control over modern political discourse...
• 
... accused the Democratic Party of believing themselves to "have a monopoly on objective truth.
• 
"They believe they are the party of science and rationality and the only way to disagree with them is you are either a deranged conspiracy theorist or exhibitionist, someone who is engaged in criminal conduct or terrorism."
• 
"Therefore, they genuinely believe — it's not a show or a pretext they all have convinced one another through the echo chamber that they've created...that if you disagree with their orthodoxies and their consensus, you are a threat and a danger."
• 
... noted the irony that the same groups who have "spent four years claiming they fight authority to some end of fascism," are now trying to harness corporate, and monopoly power to "silence everyone that disagrees with them, [represening] the very hallmark, the epitome of the facism they claim to be fighting, but in reality they embody."
• 
"...  they genuinely want everyone who disagrees with them, silenced, I know it sounds like hyperbole if you don't pay attention constantly to the news..."
• 
"They want to shut everybody off the Internet" he continued, pointing to the removal of Twitter rival app Parler from app stores and online platforms.
• 
"They destroyed an entire social media platform, they just took it off the Internet because they instructed Silicon Valley monopolies that it was their obligation to remove it."
• 
"It's very chilling, and I really can't overstate how bloodthirsty they are in the control they are trying to exert over our discourse."
• 
See related Thanks (Chip Bok, 01/12/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related Twitter Evolution (Gary Varvel, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related What Bias? (Gary Varvel, 06/13/2019) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Glenn Greenwald tears into media, Schiff, other Dems for dismissing Hunter Biden controversy  (Fox 11/13/2020)
• 
"[Wolf Blitzer] asked him a rhetorical question embedded with baseless assumptions: 'does it surprise you at all that this information Rudy Giuliani is peddling very well could be connected to some sort of Russian government disinformation campaign?'"
• 
"Schiff stated definitively that it is: 'we know that this whole smear on Joe Biden comes from the Kremlin,' adding: 'clearly, the origins of this whole smear are from the Kremlin, and the President is only too happy to have Kremlin help in amplifying it...  'there it is in the Oval Office: another wonderful propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin, seeing the President of the United States holding up a newspaper promoting Kremlin propaganda."
• 
"Schiff, as he usually does when he moves his mouth, was lying: exploiting CNN's notorious willingness to allow Democratic officials to spread disinformation over its airwaves without the slightest challenge.  Schiff claimed certainty about something for which there was and still is no evidence: that the Russians played a role in the procurement and publication of the contents of Hunter Biden's laptop."
• 
The former Intercept editor then blasted the "'more than 50 former senior intelligence officials'" who co-signed a letter declaring that they believe Hunter Biden's emails had "'all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,'" a list he noted included former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both of whom he accused of being known liars.
• 
"With these ex-CIA officials and their servant Adam Schiff disseminating this narrative into U.S.  public, both the Biden campaign and their captive media outlets began asserting this rank speculation as truth."
• 
"They did so despite the fact that even the intelligence officials were cautious enough to acknowledge: 'We want to emphasize that ... we do not have evidence of Russian involvement' — a rather crucial fact that numerous outlets omitted when laundering this CIA propaganda and which the Biden campaign and Adam Schiff completely ignored when treating the claims as proven truth."
• 
"As I noted when I announced my resignation from The Intercept, a major reason I harbored so much cynicism and scorn for their claim that my story on the Hunter Biden emails had failed to meet their high-minded, rigorous editorial and fact-checking scrutiny was because that same publication was just was one of the many anti-Trump news outlets which, in the name of manipulating the outcome of the election on behalf of the Democratic Party, had mindlessly laundered the CIA/Schiff narrative without the slightest adversarial skepticism or, worse, without a whiff of evidence."
• 
... "this disinformation campaign has done its job," which was "allowing Biden to get past the election without having to answer any real questions about those emails and his family's work in Ukraine and China."
• 
"Whatever else is true about this whole sordid affair, no evidence has emerged — none — that the Russians have played any role in any of this...  But journalism, in its minimally healthy form, requires evidence before spreading inflammatory accusations about a nuclear-armed power and, even more so, speculation designed to discredit evidence of possible misconduct by the front-running candidate for the U.S.  presidency."
• 
"But here we have yet another case where purported news outlets — knowing that there is no price to pay professionally or reputationally for publishing evidence-free intelligence agency propaganda as long as it benefits the Party and advances the ideology which they all embrace — casually spread disinformation without the slightest evidentiary basis."
• 
"Yet again we find that the most prolific propagators of Fake News and disinformation are not the enemies of the mainstream U.S.  media.  It is the mainstream U.S.  media itself that deceives, propagandizes and spreads disinformation on behalf of the coalition of the intelligence community and the Democratic Party far more than any other faction or entity."
• 
Last month, Greenwald publicly exited The Intercept, a news organization he co-founded, after his editors refused to run his story about the Hunter Biden controversy.
 Gutfeld  (01/18/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/26/2021) | Next sect (06/02/2021) | List bot 
      Greg Gutfeld: It's a great time to be alive if you're criminally deranged  (Fox 01/18/2022)
• 
It's a glorious day, if you haven't been murdered yet by a nut bag.  It's true: We have an epidemic of crazy people what we used to call the criminally deranged...
• 
... they're everywhere.  On the streets, on the subway...  But they're also in our city halls, our governments and our district attorney's offices, from New York to Chicago to L.A.  to Baltimore.
• 
It's not funny anymore.  On Saturday morning, a maniac waited as a train entered the Times Square subway station before he happily pushed an Asian woman to her death.
• 
The killer stuck his tongue out at the police like a third-grader out the window of a school bus.  The perfect metaphor for bail reform or any other garbage that passes as social justice reform.
• 
But if you dare ask, why was he out on the street?  Well, you're probably racist or worse, a Republican.
• 
Meanwhile, another punk just murdered a teenager, allegedly, in a Bronx Burger King.  It's his idea of having it his way under the new attorney general.  In a video, he was seen shouting about reparations and slavery.
• 
He sounds like every Democrat member of Congress when they're on Twitter.  And if you disagree with him, well, you're probably racist, too.
• 
Meanwhile, on the opposite coast, a UCLA grad student was fatally stabbed by - you guessed it - a deranged creep.  Brianna Kupfer, age 24, was alone working when a man, believed to be homeless, knifed her to death.
• 
Why was he out on the streets with a knife?  That's probably your fault, because you just don't care enough.
• 
There's also Sandra Shells, a hardworking nurse who died after being attacked by a homeless man near the L.A.  Union Station.  He's probably just down on his luck.
• 
Then there's George Gascon, the city's woke D.A., who says he doesn't want to send another deranged maniac, a 26-year-old transgender woman, to jail for sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over fears that the deviant will be attacked.  Oh yeah, God forbid a guard uses the wrong pronoun.
• 
... those woke prosecutors may not be criminally deranged, but...  The only thing that separates them from the psychos they're setting free is a trip to the men's warehouse and a thesaurus.
• 
The victims of this violence are almost entirely non-Whites living in the poorest parts of the city.  But if you plead for solutions, you'd probably be called a racist because lots of those killers are also Black.
• 
Of course, there's the hostage crisis at the synagogue in Texas, where an anti-Semitic fiend took a rabbi, among others, hostage in order to free a terrorist.
• 
Initially, the FBI said this attack wasn't related to the Jewish community.  Probably, they were waiting to pin it on a White supremacist.
• 
Of course, even mentioning the maniac's religion makes you Islamophobic, and we don't want to make the squad cry again.
• 
What a great time to be alive if you're criminally deranged because you got us.  You paralyzed our weak leaders with the fear of being smeared as racist or worse, a Republican if they try to fix anything.
• 
So they now accept the idea that random crazies can murder innocent people, especially on the streets where homelessness is the go-to choice by unhinged people and an unhinged person will likely commit unhinged activity.
• 
No one in power makes this connection.  The person who chooses to live crazily is more likely to do crazy things.
      Gutfeld: Did Biden just declare a civil war on Americans?  (Fox 01/08/2022)
• 
Come on, what kind of leader is he, really?  You can probably find that answer in a tweet that he posted yesterday...  "I've said it many times, and it is no more true or real than when we think about the events of Jan.  6: We are in a battle for the soul of America, a battle that by the grace of God and by the goodness and greatness of this nation, we will win."
• 
... the president of the United States just said we were in a battle for the soul of America, and that implies a good side and a bad side, right, with two teams.  Which means if you're watching this show and you like this show, you're probably on the bad team.
• 
... he's made this claim on a fabricated commemoration targeting his political adversaries, and Democrats were saying it's worse than Pearl Harbor and 9/11.
• 
Yes, that might be the worst comparison since the NFL is like slavery.  But Joe's defined himself against something that doesn't even exist.  A White supremacist movement.  A violent insurrection.  None of that is real.
• 
... did Joe just kind of declare a civil war on a sizable portion of America?  Because I can't believe he thinks we're at war with just one guy like Trump or a freak in a Viking hat.
• 
... you might not even believe this crap, because like his bladder, it's not him who's in control.  But there are people in his White House who believe we're evil, you and me, because you didn't vote for them.  Maybe you voted for the other guy, who knows.  And now Joe uses Jan.  6 to declare a war over the soul of a country.
• 
... hard times are supposed to bring out the best in men, but what if the best in one man is long gone?  And all you have is a hollowed-out husk open for exploitation from any woke operative?
• 
... when you collapse Afghanistan, spike inflation and crime and can't control corona, all that's left is creating a fake emergency.
• 
... we the people, as in all Americans, and we all know that there's no battle for the soul of this country.
      Greg Gutfeld: Joe Biden is a unifier, we all think he's nuts  (Fox 10/06/2021)
• 
... the school board and the law want you to think that parental concern is now a domestic terror threat.
• 
That's right, a mom yelling at school board members at a public meeting is the same as her donning an explosive vest and blowing up a school.  Demanding quality schools is now like crashing a plane into the Pentagon.
• 
They've taken the most necessary debate one could have: how to teach your kids, and re-cast it as the perfect left-wing fantasy: Heroic educators battling a mob of pitchfork-wielding heathens all wearing mom jeans and fanny packs.
• 
Garland published the memo right after the National School Board letter demanded help from the White House because our "public schools and its education leaders are under immediate threat."
• 
First, can you imagine asking Joe Biden for help on anything other than how to use Metamucil?  Did you not see the Kabul airport evacuation?  Asking Joe for help is like asking Ted Bundy for a ride home.
• 
Now there may be unsavory incidents — but when it comes to getting between a dad and his kid who you've labeled racist because of his race, that can happen.
• 
Teachers and parents will get in shouting matches.  Which isn't good.  But it's understandable, given the insane teachers' unions, the brainwash they call education and the utter disregard for difference of opinion.
• 
They don't care if our schools are dead last.  They only care about preventing you from having a choice of schools, or a say in the matter.
• 
The left hates open debate almost as much as they love open borders.  They hate legitimate protests as much as they love riots.  And now they have the law to intimidate you into silence.
• 
You can brutalize anyone or steal anything in New York, and be back on the streets in hours.  You could torch businesses and permanently ruin cities like Minneapolis, and never see jail time.
• 
But the FBI needs to cuff a mom because she raised her voice to a transitioning social studies teacher with a rainbow tattoo on her neck.  Yes: Antifa is just an idea, but mom and dad are deadly.
• 
That's the world we live in – where your speech is redefined as violence, and their violence is redefined as justice.
• 
See related CRT Bully (Gary McCoy, 07/07/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Greg Gutfeld: How can we have any confidence in our leaders?  (Fox 08/28/2021)
• 
So what do we do?  I'm no military general, but again does it matter?  We must take responsibility for our people over there.  Get them all out.  And obliterate those responsible for the bombings.
• 
And when we're done, we can decide what to do with Joe and the rest of that clown car.
• 
But in the meantime, I don't want to hear s** about January 6th, climate change, mask mandates or voter suppression, or whatever gassy stupid political theater you're trying to peddle - until you figure out how to get us out of this mess.
• 
But maybe, asking them for help to get us out, is as stupid us relying on the Taliban for the same thing.
      Greg Gutfeld: Our leaders botched the Afghanistan withdrawal, they were too busy destroying the US  (Fox 08/18/2021)
• 
Turns out - surprise - they aren't an enlightened bunch!  They're not only stuck in the dark ages; they prefer everyone join them there.  So they have that in common with the green new deal.
• 
... we've been told by the press this is a kinder, gentler Taliban.  So what's that mean exactly?  They only partially behead you?  They only throw gays out of an eight-story window, not a twelve-story one.
• 
Did you see how one Taliban leader freed from Gitmo by then-president Obama, is back on the job - and I don't mean as a tenured professor.
• 
I'm not bashing the decision to leave.  It's how the atrocious exit negated so much sacrifice.  This is truly a man-made disaster.
• 
... if 20 years made no difference on the exit, you think taking another few months would make any difference?  But still, it's on Biden.
• 
Remember as president, he said that the number one threat to America — wasn't the Taliban, al Qaeda, or ISIS.  It's millions of white voters.
• 
He didn't see the Taliban resurgence, because he was too busy indulging fabricated adversaries in between photo-ops of him licking ice cream cones.
• 
And as for the Democrats - it's par for the course.  In Afghanistan, just as on the border, or in law enforcement, the Dems always embrace what undermines order.
• 
Taliban leaders were in the president's palace.  One missile would have ended that photo-op.
• 
But how would the chattering classes take to that?  Sorry, that swift brutal action should be reserved only for the insurrectionists at the Capitol.
• 
Over here, our effed-up media focused on plastic straws, mean tweets, racist Halloween costumes, misgendering, refusing a vaccine, or appropriating another ethnic group's food in the school cafeteria.
• 
And in all that time, we still hadn't prepared for this moment.
• 
That's amazing.  Imagine you got 20 years to plan on your exit, and it's this bad.
• 
What were our leaders doing?  Too busy destroying this country, I guess.
      Gutfeld: As we watched terrorists waltz into power, what were we doing?  (Fox 08/17/2021)
• 
20 years, billions of dollars, and no plan.  Or maybe we had a plan but Joe left it in the men's room at Cold Stone Creamery.
• 
But what were our priorities while this war went on for decades?  For us, at home, it was bad cops, bad tweets, bad combustible engines, bad pronouns.  Yes, the CDC reminds us it's pregnant people instead of moms.  I'm so glad we won that battle.
• 
Meanwhile, our armed forces put out highly polished recruitment ads that ticked all the intersectional boxes.
• 
We're not sure how to win wars, but at least if we lose them, we won't be able to blame just old white men.
• 
We also learned that our military leaders assigned left-wing anti-racist tones to our troops.  So, at least the Afghan military can hate America as much as we're supposed to.
• 
Think about it, 20 years preparing for this moment and we're as lost as Joe Biden trying to find a White House entrance.
• 
As we watched terrorists waltz into power, what were we doing?  Well, we obsessed over white supremacists on January 6 with our commander in chief yelling nevermind the Bin Laden look-alike with the rocket launcher.
• 
You wonder why Kabul fell faster than Joe Biden walking up a flight of stairs.  How about viewing opposition to mask mandates as the same threat as terrorists?
• 
Yeah, your aunt who wants election transparency is no different than people who flew planes into American buildings.
• 
So your uncle who won't get vaccinated till it's FDA-approved, well, he'll be the first terrorist waterboarded while being made to wear a surgical mask.
• 
So as the Taliban assumes control without a hiccup, we should at least see part of the reason why.  It's in that chart which shifted the threat from one group to another and played down the madmen of the past.
• 
We weren't fighting a war in Afghanistan, we were fighting it here in America against ourselves...  Biden, Trump trade accusations on Afghanistan 8/17/21 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-trump-trade-accusations-afghanistan
      Greg Gutfeld: We are the luckiest generation of spoiled brats in the history of the world  (Fox 08/07/2021)
• 
I had no idea that society, through its own inaction and cowardice, could just let it happen...  Day by day...  Slowly...  Until, lo and behold the dystopia shows up at your front door like a naked Amway salesman.
• 
But that's what's happening.  The stats say so, but they're ignored.  The local news says so, but they're ignored too.
• 
America has become the frog sitting in that pot of slow boiling water.  Having no idea that in time he'll be some French guy's appetizer.
• 
In major cities all over, life is changing.  For the worse.  And it's incremental, but it is inexorable.  Why is that?  Why are we fine with this?
• 
It's a perfect storm of distraction, and exploitation.  We are distracted.  We have everything we need.
• 
An abundance of food, a never-ending faucet of trivia, news, and cat videos.  Instagram and Tik Tok keep the young ones enthralled.  Twitter keeps the maniacs frothing over microaggressions.  Porn keeps the boys glued to the screens because there is no stopgap.  And the cancel culture mob decides whether we live or die.
• 
We are the luckiest generation of spoiled brats in the history of the world.  But because of that, we stopped minding the store.  And in walked the worst of the worst.  The radicals.
• 
Who said, to themselves: while these suckers are nose deep in their phones, we can do this.
• 
They're in every power center - they're the politicians, the DAs, the professors, the judges.  The social media honchos.  Even kindergarten teachers.
• 
So yeah, I finally got to live in the movies I loved.  But sadly it's gonna end like the "Planet of the Apes."
      Greg Gutfeld: Corporations placating the Left are behind woke culture  (Fox 05/29/2021)
• 
So we live in a world where expecting hard work from minorities is racist and telling White people they're intrinsically evil isn't.
• 
Employees then must rebuild their identities as "agents of change" by reading over a hundred White privilege statements, where they confess their acts of bigotry.
• 
If it sounds like a cult indoctrination, that's because it is a cult indoctrination.
• 
These evil White men had to read statements from fictitious minorities and women that explain how bad White men have been to them.
• 
So why would Lockheed Martin greenlight this idiocy?  Well, what do they make?  Baskets and flutes?  Cute hats for bunnies?
• 
No.  It's air and missile defense systems.  Fighter jets.  Essentially, they sell things that kill people.  And not just White people.  Brown ones too.  And they make billions off it.
• 
You can go on Investopedia and check their products.  But you'll also find - just as important - their commitment to diversity, inclusiveness, and social responsibilities.  Those are their words.
• 
Meaning what?  They'll kill people of any color?  No - it means that the missile destroying a village was brought to you by a non-binary person of color with a degree in gender studies!
• 
You see what's going on?  Corporations have finally figured out how to defang the hard left.  The anti-war crowd can easily be appeased if you just go woke, and play the "I'm the worst race ever" card.  It's the best distraction since texting while driving.
• 
A pacifist might be disgusted by Lockheed, but what if that fighter jet has a rainbow bumper sticker on the fuselage?  And guess what: the cockpit is now called a "non-binary, inclusion space in which the aviators drops projectiles on citizens from above." Non-binary citizens.
• 
You know, I've been trying to figure out who's behind woke culture.  I thought there was no head on the snake.  But I think I'm wrong.  It's the corporations.
• 
They finally figured out how to placate the left.  And that's to throw their White employees under the M1 Abrams tank.
• 
On one hand, Jeff Bezos is supporting Black Lives Matter - in the other hand, is the steering wheel of his 500-foot yacht.
• 
Does it make better products?  No.  Does it improve race relations?  Not by a long shot.  But it does put a lot of money in the pockets of diversity coordinators and other grifters - and a smile on the face of filthy rich executives.
• 
See related Marching (Mike Shelton, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Greg Gutfeld: Media ignores good policing while highlighting the bad  (Fox 04/27/2021)
• 
If you look at nearly all police-involved fatalities, patterns emerge.  Noncompliance, illegal drug use, mental illness, even fear.  I get it: telling people cops are killing Blacks with impunity may cause Blacks to fear cops.
• 
But there's another pattern going on.  It's one in which one shooting is covered and another isn't.  This is some serious selective bias.
• 
... imagine doing this with reckless driving: only covering accidents in which the paramedic arrives at the scene, and the driver still dies.  You'd be left with a warped view that paramedics kill with impunity.
• 
The current narrative about policing is based on isolated events taken out of millions.  ... It doesn't help the people truly in trouble.
• 
Bad things happen in life — illness, accidents, vending machine honey buns — they can all cut your life short.  But life choices, the environment you live in and bad luck can lead you to a place where it can only end badly.
• 
Such terrible endings are often preceded by failed social programs and the far left that makes excuses for them.  Sadly the media ignores the problems that gets you up there until you get to that moment at the end.
• 
Then all attention is thrusted upon the person who shows up when no one else will: the cop.  And because we ignored all the factors leading to that moment — we blame that person.
• 
Of course he or she can do a terrible job, so terrible that a jury finds him guilty of murder.
• 
Others, however don't do a terrible job, but only participate in an endless cycle, to the best of their abilities.  When they do it right, we don't care.  When they don't, we take them apart.
• 
The false narrative that cops are unjustly killing minorities at an increasing rate has an unhappy ending.  Gone is the decades-long decrease in crime.
• 
Lawlessness aint going anywhere for a long time.  The left truly will have no justice - and no peace.
• 
If you're a victim of crime: too bad.  You aren't clickbait.  If you expect the protesters to help: sorry they only read the headlines.
• 
Even after the Chauvin verdict, protesters blocked the Brooklyn Bridge.  They're demanding to remove the police from city engulfed in a massive crime wave.
• 
Who will show up then?  Who will show up to help the innocent?  It won't be these marchers, that's for sure.  But they will call 9-1-1 if someone steals their skateboard.
      Greg Gutfeld: Biden wants us to unify under a belief we are racist  (Fox 04/24/2021)
• 
Our nation's great unifier, Joe Biden now wants to spend your money on critical race theory lessons for our country's already distressed students.  This guy divides the country more than time zones.
• 
... he keeps saying Kamala is president.  Cuz he's not sure if he is.  They installed the Waze app on his phone so he could find the west wing.  So it's no wonder the ignorant activist class can pull his strings.
• 
... the U.S.  Education Department — whatever that is — wants financial grants to "incorporate teaching and learning practices that reflect the diversity, identities, histories, contributions, and experiences of all students."
• 
Which doesn't sound bad at all.  Until you see their curriculum is uniformly hard leftist brainwash - from the debunked 1619 Project to the best-selling white-hating book "How to be an Anti-Racist."
• 
In this lesson plan, "social identities are viewed as an asset rather than a barrier to success." Unless you're Caucasian or Asian.
• 
Now when you learn the language of identity politics, it sets off your BS detector.  They're obsessed with identity - unless it's an ID to show you voted.
• 
You realize that it's not an education they're after, but indoctrination.  While other countries focus on reading, writing, innovating, succeeding, we're tearing ourselves apart.
• 
Division should be for math class, but no longer.  And if you disagree, well you're no better than a pedophile.
• 
According to this Oregon teacher: "So, if you're being resistant, i understand that, but you're going to have to eventually come to the light – because if you're going to keep with those old views of colonialism, it's going to lead to being fired because you're going to be damage to our children, trauma.  And so, as we fire the teachers who sexually abuse our children, we will be firing the teachers who do racist things to our children and traumatize them."
• 
Talk about child abuse.  That's from a teacher.  How does she have a job?
• 
... it is a cult, one that guarantees your kids turning on each other.  And then you.  We used to let puberty do that.
• 
It's the revolution from within.  From Ivy League discrimination against Asian students to condescending, lower standards for Blacks and Hispanics, it's a war on achievement.  And the anti-American language they use sounds just like Chinese propaganda.
• 
Their curriculum is exactly what our enemies would airdrop as leaflets to undermine the cohesion of America.
• 
Seriously - imagine if our president - in the midst of the Cold War – had sided with the USSR.  "Mr.  Gorbachev repair this wall!  Now please join me for our daily flag burning." But that's the way it is now.
• 
A White House that believes the country that owns it is evil.  When Joe says he's here to unify - he really wants us to unify under a belief we are racist.
• 
This from a guy who actually went to the funeral of a KKK member.  A geezer who helped put more blacks behind bars than Kamala Harris.
• 
But I guess this is his own personal reparations.  Because it's systemic leftism - from head to toe.  This is the one old white fart, the woke can forgive.
• 
The goal isn't to educate.  It's to convince minorities white people are the reason your schools are horrible.  The teachers unions are never accountable as they fight all competition and accountability.
• 
And this radical ideology has a built-in survival mechanism.  It labels everyone who won't play along, a racist.  Until racism has no meaning.
• 
Which is why it's key that all of us - of every creed and color - stick together, and fight this dangerous nonsense.
• 
Because, alone - they will try to take you down quicker than a Trump 2024 yard sign.  And if we don't, some old white dude who once palled around with segregationists, will use you to pay for his phony redemption.
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Head Honcho (Antonio Branco, 09/01/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Greg Gutfeld: Hunter Biden is a victimizer, not a victim  (Fox 04/10/2021)
• 
Hunter Biden is currently out pumping his new memoir like the stock he owns in Burisma.  ... Hunter says he doesn't remember anything about the laptop.
• 
BIDEN: I had expertise in corporate governance, I was asked to serve on the board for corporate governance, and I was a lawyer at Boies Schiller Flexner, which was how I was first approached.  However, what I didn't take into account was the way in which they would use the perception against my dad.  And for that [reason] I have — I wouldn't do it again.
• 
You see, it's about bad optics.  Not how Hunter was creating financial windfalls for Daddy through China or securing cash for himself from Ukraine as his dad lobbied on behalf of those directly affected.
• 
That's beyond bad optics.  That's corruption on an international scale, especially when Hunter's only experience producing energy is staying up for four days straight on a bender.
• 
Part of the strategy here is to humanize the guy to protect his dad.  But if you read Hunter's memoir "Beautiful Things", sex, drugs and trashing hotel rooms has never been less appealing.
• 
We aren't here to make fun of Hunter for waltzing around in a jockstrap and feather boa (Who hasn't done that?  Paging Mr.  Toobin ...) or posting explicit amateur porn videos online.
• 
It's really about how the story was covered — or buried — before the election when the New York Post first published their piece on Hunter's laptop.
• 
You know what happened: The media, social media companies and the Dems worked together ... to suppress, suppress, suppress.
• 
You had Twitter banning the story.  You had experts claiming it was Russian disinformation, and it all worked.
• 
The story, which is less about Hunter and really about how compromised Joe was, vanished like Kamala Harris during a border crisis.  The sex-and-drugs side, while fun to ponder, is merely the frosting on a deeply corrupt cake.
• 
Now, drug addiction really isn't anything to laugh at.  However, the "But I'm a victim!" position is, especially when you're doing most of the victimizing.
• 
Men and women alike face temptation — from sex, drugs and food — and understand the benefits of restraint.  Controlling urges is something we all deal with in order to appreciate the greater goal, which is living a long and very boring life.
• 
What most people don't have are connections so deep they can escape the consequences and learn nothing from it.
• 
      Greg Gutfeld: 'Gutfeld!' is here to scare the people who love to scare you  (Fox 04/06/2021)
• 
I like bashing creeps in power, those stupid talking pinatas in politics, entertainment and especially the news media because they're all the same people — or in Mark Zuckerberg's case, things that look like people.
• 
It's also because the only way they make money is by making people hate each other.  It's not enough to say respectful disagreement makes less money.  You have to say it's racist.
• 
That's why to them, Twitter is a news source.  It created "cancel culture," a crowdsourced version of a hit piece, a GoFundMe page for character assassination.
• 
The press used to write these hit pieces themselves.  Now they encourage steel cage matches so they can sell ads and ratings, repurposing tweets into click bait because it's profitable.
• 
Cancer culture is to the media what an ATM in the lobby of a casino is to an addicted gambler.  It's democratized media destruction, putting a Joker mask on reality and declaring everything is not debatable.
• 
But their power is an illusion.  Their numbers are small.  It's just that their constant noise scares the hell out of corporations.
• 
Look what's happening to Delta.  They're more scared of tweets than of birds flying into their engines.
• 
Clearly, these cowards got spooked by activists manipulating the media, because how is voter ID immoral?
• 
Meanwhile, the president calls Georgia's new election law "Jim Crow on steroids".  Yeah, the so-called great unifier now flinging racial discord like Frisbees at a fish show.
• 
In fact, screw all corporations.  You stupid executives are cowards and bad golfers.  You cheat on your taxes and you cheat on each other.
• 
Maybe I'm turning socialist, but after years of proclaiming corporations as engines of free markets, I realize they're actually locomotives run by meth heads who'd do anything to save their own hides.
• 
No matter how many inclusion coordinators they hire, they'll turn a blind eye to China's slave labor, knowing that adding a diversity fun run to whatever History Month is currently celebrated will stoke the woke in human resources.
• 
It's their way of doing business, no different than a bodega putting up a BLM sign so hopefully their store will survive the next demonstration.
• 
That's our job, to scare the people who delight in scaring you.  ... It's time to turn this one-way road into a two-way street.
• 
Think of it as part of Biden's infrastructure package, except it's real and it costs several trillion dollars less.
      Gutfeld on Biden claiming Trump committed an ‘assault on democracy’  (Fox 12/15/2020)
• 
Monday night Joe Biden ripped into President Trump.  "Thankfully, a unanimous Supreme Court immediately and completely rejected this effort.  The court sent a clear signal to President Trump that they would be no part of an unprecedented assault on our democracy."
• 
Unprecedented?  That's rich.  After the four-year-long assault on all of us by Democrats, the media and Joe.
• 
All beginning with a simple lie that's amplified.  "Russia collusion." for one.
• 
Then the "fine people" hoax, which Joe used to brand Trump and his supporters as racist.
• 
That hate-filled lie excused everything from the acceptance of mob rule to attacking cops.  They probably voted for Trump, so they must be bigots
• 
There were other hoaxes Biden used to ruin democracy.  Like that Hunter letter signed by 50 intelligence officials.  It was pure disinformation, and came in the nick of time for Joe.  Right before a debate!
• 
Then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., delaying COVID-19 relief, trading lives for votes to help Joe win an election.  An election where the left used intimidation at polling stations, where there were more irregularities than at an Ex-Lax festival.
• 
A Biden supporter told Biden on May 14, 2019 that Trump "is an illegitimate president in my mind.  That's it." Biden replied: "Folks, look, I absolutely agree."
• 
On Jan.  16, 2017, Rep.  Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said: "Frankly the FBI's weighing in on the election, I think makes his [Trump's] election illegitimate."
• 
On Oct.  4, 2019, Hillary Clinton said: "Trump knows he's an illegitimate president."
• 
On October 2, 2019, Hillary Clinton said: "He is an illegitimate president."
• 
On Sept.  29, 2019, Hillary Clinton said: "He knows he's an illegitimate president."
• 
So now Joe wants us to turn the page.  But it would help if he went back and read the book first.
• 
I mean: how can you mend a nation if you're unaware how you fractured it?
• 
Of course, politics means that when the fight is over, the dirty tricks become water under the bridge.
• 
But the Democrat response to 2016 changed that.  No fences were mended then.  They were burned.
• 
So you want to talk about undermining a democracy?  OK, Joe.  You first!
      Barr authorizes investigation into 'substantial allegations' of voting irregularities despite...  (Fox 11/09/2020)
• 
... Barr advised that allegations concerning voter fraud "should be handled with great care" and that "specious, speculative, fanciful or far-fetched claims should not be a basis for initiating federal inquiries."
• 
He emphasized that his authorizing federal prosecutors to pursue "substantial allegations" should not indicate that the DOJ has "concluded that voting irregularities have impacted the outcome of any election."
• 
Barr said that investigations can be conducted if there are clear and credible allegations of irregularities that could effect the outcome of a federal election in an individual state.
• 
"Any investigation of claims of irregularities that, if true, would clearly not impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State should normally be deferred until after the election certification process is completed.
      Gutfeld on the plea for healing  (Fox 11/09/2020)
• 
... after four years of pushing hoaxes, calling Trump a Russian asset — we must "accept" this outcome ASAP.
• 
This, after four years of demonizing anyone not in the resistance!  — Calling us racist... Accosting people in restaurants... Showing up at our homes and vowing harm, if Trump wins again.
• 
So, now we're old friends, again.  Weird.
• 
The good news?  Since the rioters are happy, we can now take down the plywood!
• 
Because that wasn't protecting us from rioting Trump supporters if he lost.  It was for rioting leftists if Trump won.
• 
Can you imagine if it were Biden on the short end of these state election returns?
• 
You wouldn't have Biden going to court.  You'd have a mob going door-to-door.  And the media would call it "mostly peaceful."
• 
So now they say, "time to unify." That's like telling a victim of abuse to "just kiss and make up."
• 
Too harsh?  Well, when you compare a president to Hitler and accuse him of killing a quarter-million COVID victims, forgive us for hyperbole.
• 
You painted targets on millions of backs — and they're still there, as leading Democrats vow to name and shame Trump supporters.
• 
I guess that's how you unify — if you're a Brown Shirt.
• 
The fact is, you want unity now that you're winning.  If you didn't win, you'd burn the place down.  It's very Hitler.
• 
So forgive us if we're fine with a legal process.  And if it doesn't work out, Republicans will just get back to work.
• 
But if you lose, dear Dems, I wonder how fast your calls for unity will dissolve... Since they were never there to begin with.
      Gutfeld on Trump getting rid of critical race theory  (Fox 09/07/2020)
• 
The Trump White House just killed "Critical Race Theory" (CRT) training in federal agencies – that's the stuff that claims all white people are racists in this inherently racist country.
• 
So once again, the big orange meanie does something no one had the guts to do before: eradicate a punitive ideology, that ruins businesses and lives — and it's one that you pay for!
• 
It's a disease borne from the hateful halls of leftwing academia — Critical Race Theory (CRT) undermines the positive core beliefs of America by redefining the nation as an engine of oppression.
• 
This leads to discord in schools, families, and now work.  The top attribute of a great employee: positive attitude.  CRT replaces that with grievance and envy.
• 
And what you're seeing on America's city streets are its results.  Starting on campus, then leaking into unconscious bias training at work — culminating in infantile rioters who use this ideology to justify violence.
• 
Do you wonder why these clones accost people at restaurants?  They've been brainwashed to think you're "unconsciously racist" and they're going to wake you up.
• 
"Unconsciously racist" means even when you say you aren't racist, the response is, "Well, you just aren't conscious of it."
• 
That's a cult.
• 
But those who demand such indoctrination operate on their own unconscious racism: they assume all white people are one way — possessing white privilege.
• 
That's conscious racism.  And Trump is right to expel this toxin from the workplace.
• 
Let's hope this bravery spreads.
• 
The survival of our country depends on it.
      Greg Gutfeld: The narratives of madness  (Fox 06/15/2020)
• 
... the trigger for a repeat performance presents itself daily.  And once it's pulled, such pandemonium will erupt again.  All it takes is another video, or a not-guilty verdict for one of those cops, or even a Trump win in November.  Because we've sanctioned the behavior of the mob, it's inevitable.
• 
There are 10 million arrests every year.  And out of that, roughly 1,000 people are fatally shot by police.  Most of the dead are white.  But it doesn't matter.  One video with a racial difference and this will kick off again.
• 
We are stuck in a repeat cycle, where the media selects the story offered up by the enraged and amplifies it even more.  They ignore one crime but embrace another – to fulfill a narrative.
• 
As long as we are at the mercy of many in the media's interpretation of the larger issue that these videos speak to — the chaos will never end.
• 
There are some videos you don't see.  Like the one of the death of Tony Timpa.  If he were a black man you would know of him.
• 
... the media focuses almost entirely on skin color – when there is a difference in that one variable among the police and the suspect.
• 
... you didn't hear much about Timpa or any other white victims for that matter.  This — as stark statistics undermine the racial narrative at many turns.
• 
If the media took its foot off the racial gas pedal and put it on the training and policy lever, we would not only make real progress in policing, we might even save a country – the greatest country that ever was.  And the key word of that previous sentence is "was."
      Gutfeld on new research on intolerance on campus  (Fox 02/19/2020)
• 
A new study shows that as badly educated, far-left college activists continue to label words as violence and ideas as not wrong but evil, they've helped turn arenas of "free" thought into monuments to the East German Secret Police
• 
The new study found that a quarter of students believe in silencing views they don't like and believe it's OK to obstruct speakers.
• 
Six times as many liberals felt that way as nonliberals.
• 
So college is now where you send your kids, not to be educated but to be indebted; no longer to engage, but to punish each other.
• 
It's a place where its gatekeepers realize the only way to preserve their bad ideas is to enlist zombie students to cooperate against their rebellious peers.  Like guards in a prison camp.
• 
Looking at these intolerant students on the left who shout down their opponents, you have to ask: Are those healthy minds?  Are they people you can work with upon graduation?
• 
Hell no, you don't want to be around that.  To them, community, empathy, skepticism, nonconformity and free thought are oppressive.
• 
Where once parents sent their kids to college to be educated, now they're sending them to be institutionalized.
• 
It's a cuckoo's nest.  And the lunatics are coming for you.
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Gutfeld: 'The media will take any chance to call Trump a fascist'  (Fox 01/12/2020)
• 
"Here's the theory that is going to blow your mind: Why is it that when Trump uses any force, the critics go nuts?"
• 
"Because, as even The New York Times admits, Trump has used military force less than any president since Jimmy Carter, which is why the media hysterically amplifies it because it's so rare."
• 
"So, when it happens, they have to milk it for all it's worth."
• 
"The media will take any chance to call Trump a fascist.  Example: Iran shoots down a Ukrainian passenger plane and who do the media and Dems blame?  Trump.  I mean, Iran is not even blaming him."
• 
"Unlike the media and Democrats, we aren't stuck in a prison of two ideas where it's either do nothing or it's World War III."
• 
"In between those prisons is the turf that Trump navigates so well between nothing and everything.  Trump chose a decisive action that solved a horrible problem."
      Gutfeld: Trump is sending a 'clear message' that he means what he says  (Fox 01/05/2020)
• 
"If there's one thing we've learned in three years is that Trump will always respond."
• 
"A U.S.  drone took out the guy who helped direct wars in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.  A guy whose efforts led to the deaths of hundreds of Americans in Iraq.  He was a bad guy doing really bad things for a really long time."
• 
"Iran already doesn't like us.  Hasn't liked us for decades.  Iran's been not liking us way before Trump was elected president."
• 
"If you ask me Trump took action to stop a war, not start one."
• 
"He's sending a clear message that Trump means what he says."
• 
"That it's never a good idea to stake out your army in another country and plan attacks against the U.S.  and think that you're going to get away with it.  Not while he is president at least."
• 
"Isn't the killing of old generals by drone preferable to sending waves of young men and women to their deaths on a battlefield?"
• 
"So maybe this doesn't mean war at all, war is when the old generals send young people to die."
• 
"Under Trump we just kill those old generals.  He did it with a flying robot.  That's progress."
      Gutfeld on the terrorist attack nobody is talking about  (Fox 12/11/2019)
• 
Somewhere in a parallel universe, there's a huge news story going on.
• 
It's about a terror attack on a Florida naval base, where a Saudi national killed three sailors.
• 
The terrorist embraced radical Islamic ideology years before he came here to train.
• 
He also expressed extremist thoughts on social media.
• 
According to reports, the night before, he and pals allegedly watched mass shooting videos.
• 
Two of the other Saudis investigated in connection to the attack filmed it.
• 
Why are we training so many Saudis?
• 
Have we ever reconciled the fact that the large majority of 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals?
• 
And where was armed security in this attack?
• 
This would matter in a parallel universe.
• 
But not this one, because we're too busy filling space with a sham impeachment.
• 
Not only does impeachment add false outrage to exhaust your brain, it also replaces information that you need to know.  So you know less about reality, and you carry more media-generated garbage in your brain.
• 
But in the Trump era, all stories must be about how evil he is.
• 
Perhaps if we could blame this shooting on Trump, the media would pay more attention to it.
• 
You see that word, "pay"?
• 
Attention is currency.  When you pay it to one thing, you don't pay it to another.  You only have so much.
• 
And the media, every day, robs you blind.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Gutfeld on the impeachment circus  (Fox 11/13/2019)
• 
A witness who witnesses nothing.  Hearsay based on hearsay.
• 
A bloated spectacle designed to turn a phone call into a crime.
• 
I guess they all got the same email from CNN President Jeff Zucker.
• 
So the guilty verdict comes first, which brings us to this lame show trial.
• 
It's aimed at ginning up public fears about the next "worst thing ever" that never happens, because this is never about what Trump has done.  It's about what he "could" do.
• 
This whole thing is a crappy horror movie scripted by Democrats for the media, with Schiff and his bunch playing the bug-eyed zombies.
• 
Actually, this is worse than a horror film.  It's porn for Democrats.  Remember their safe words?
• 
"This sounds like a quid pro quo directed by the president," said CNN's Wolf Blitzer.  "Very clear quid pro quo," said MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell.  Many other television hosts and guests said the same thing.
• 
No, you dopes.  That's called leverage.
• 
Using it on behalf of your country is Trump's job, especially when he couldn't trust anyone else to do it.
• 
Every day we heard of people trying to stop him, so what do you expect?
• 
And how could we have a presidential candidate whose son is beholden to Ukraine and China?
• 
If Trump hadn't investigated, that would have been impeachable.
• 
Trump broke no laws.  He may bend the rules a bit, but only because he has to do it, since the media and Democrats write the rulebook.
• 
That's why this impeachment spectacle is just a repeat of the collusion spectacle.
• 
A mysterious source triggers a massive investigation that goes nowhere.
• 
We've seen it.  We've done it.  We've paid for it.
• 
Skip it and show up next November.  Give these clowns a hearing they'll never forget.
      Gutfeld on Northwestern paper’s pathetic apology  (Fox 11/12/2019)
• 
You want to know how bad college has become?
• 
... published a hilariously pathetic apology to activists after covering a speech on campus by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
• 
Activists felt the event shouldn't be covered, because they prefer that only their opinions be heard.
• 
The cowardly paper caved like a cheap tent, apologizing for sending a reporter to cover the event, and pathetically saying that from now on, they'll only cover stuff that doesn't hurt any feelings.
• 
Think about that.  A newspaper apologizing for reporting the news.
• 
It's another example of how the lunatic fringe has silenced dialogue by smearing it as hateful or harmful.
• 
Mind you, the loudest, worst kinds of "expression" – sometimes even violent – comes from these wimpy twerps.
• 
Yet, they don't see their psychic violence as harming other people.  Why is that?
• 
It's college, a corpse rotting from within.
• 
So while the paper pretends to cover news, it will be the "news" that activists approve.
• 
Which may be why real journalism is dying.
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Gutfeld on gender reveal mishaps  (Fox 11/11/2019)
• 
The need to belong leads us to adopt behaviors we see in other people as a way not to stand out.
• 
... today, idiotic behavior seems to get the most attention.
• 
We see more people doing dumb things, subconsciously in order to belong, and knowingly in order to be noticed.  Idiocy is a virus.
• 
The media don't help, spreading dumb trends far and wide.
• 
All you're left with is a giant mess that other people have to clean up.
      Gutfeld on Obama calling out cancel culture  (Fox 10/30/2019)
• 
On Wednesday we woke up to breaking news.  President Barack Obama isn't woke.  At all.
• 
"This idea of purity and you're never compromised and you're always politically woke, and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly," Obama said.
• 
"The world is messy.  There are ambiguities.  People who do really good stuff have flaws.  People who you are fighting may love their kids, and share certain things with you."
• 
You're telling me that ruining people because they're not as politically pure as you is wrong?
• 
Hurray!  How is Don Lemon taking this?  Is Chris Cuomo still conscious?
• 
What is The New York Times editorial board going to do?
• 
I hope BuzzFeed, Vox, Jezebel, and Media Matters have taken all their meds.
• 
It's good to hear this guy bash leftist "cancel culture," but I wish he'd done it when it mattered.  That is, when he was president.
• 
My theory is that he didn't realize how bad it was until his kids came home from college and said, "Holy crap, dad!  Avocados are tools of the patriarchy!"
• 
They say you never grow up until your kids come home from college.
• 
The problem with woke culture is that the moment you criticize it, you become the enemy.
• 
So will this "red-pilled" Obama be canceled?
• 
Who knows, but I give him a year before he's listening to Rush Limbaugh in his "MAGA" hat.
      Gutfeld on the release of the 'American Taliban' scum  (Fox 05/23/2019)
• 
The creep known as the "American Taliban" is out of jail. 
• 
Three years early.  Due to "good behavior."
• 
In all the time he was behind bars, he didn't behead anyone.
• 
Who knows what this loser would've done if he wasn't in jail?
• 
Actually, we do know.  In 2015, the traitor said ISIS did a "spectacular" job.
• 
He knew what ISIS was doing.  They were killing people who had been guilty of nothing more than "good behavior."
• 
They dropped videos of terrified people about to be beheaded, burned alive, or drowned.
• 
So while innocent people were killed, he cheered.  That's what you call a monster.
• 
Now, this could've ended differently.  Treason was once punishable by death.
• 
Back when adults ran this place.
• 
But we're better than that now.  More enlightened.
• 
So prepare for the second wave of media analysis.
• 
He'll be the victim; you'll be the perp.  No – he was a political prisoner!
• 
They'll be lining up to give him that first interview.
• 
Asking him if he's healed from the trauma of terrorizing people.
• 
Then a speaking engagement at Columbia University.  A book deal.
• 
And so, as always, America is the land of second chances.
• 
Even for scum who don't deserve a first.
      Gutfeld on socialism’s deadly appeal  (Fox 05/21/2019)
• 
The fact is that people who really know what socialism is – those who fled socialist countries, who fought the wars to prevent the spread of socialism, who buried family members – are getting old.
• 
Many are dying.  The knowledge of such horror goes to the grave.
• 
Socialism's victims are being replaced by the lowest form of life allowed on campus without a leash – socialist professors.
• 
These tenured misinformation gatekeepers keep socialism from being understood the way its sober survivors remember.
• 
And really – why would socialists admit that their grim, losing team killed millions of people?
• 
Instead, these ghouls shifted emphasis to the so-called oppression of Western civilizations, hoping their assembly line of trivial outrage drowns out the horrors of the past.
• 
It's working.  We have socialists running for office.
• 
Some even win – touting a system that makes grandmothers from the Old Country weep.
• 
It used to be said that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.
• 
No – the greatest trick is convincing the world socialism didn't happen.
• 
It's no longer viewed as a vanquished, murderous ideology.
• 
It's seen as a cute and fuzzy thing that gets you free stuff.
• 
All ends, no means.
• 
Thanks to academia and the media, we've witnessed one helluva makeover – Charles Manson is now Santa Claus.
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      Nikki Haley: US corporations need to shed their China hypocrisy, practice what they preach to Americans  (Fox 06/02/2021)
• 
... the leaders of some of America's biggest companies ... chosen to talk a big game about social justice at home while propping up injustice abroad, especially in Communist China.  "Hypocrisy" doesn't begin to describe it.
• 
Look no further than the list of primary sponsors for the 2022 Winter Olympics, which will be held in Beijing.  About half are U.S.  companies.
• 
Many of them, like Coca-Cola, have spent the past year talking about "racial equity" and criticizing commonsense voting rights bills like the one in Georgia.
• 
Yet these companies have no problem ponying up $100 million or more for an event that will glorify one of the most tyrannical countries on earth.
• 
Communist China's horrible record is on full display.  It trampled the people of Tibet. It wiped out Hong Kong's freedom.  It makes near-daily threats against democratic Taiwan.
• 
It covered up the origins of the coronavirus, leading to the worst public health crisis in a century. And China's leaders are guilty of genocide against the Uyghurs – a fact formally recognized by the United States.
• 
Beijing has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs, forced them into slave labor, and committed horrible crimes against women and children.
• 
The companies backing China's Winter Olympics are whitewashing this genocide while sending out press releases on democracy and "equity."
• 
Of course, the Olympics sponsors aren't the only example.  They're just one of the most recent.  Another embarrassment is everyone's favorite phone manufacturer: Apple.
• 
In America, Apple portrays itself as the company that protects privacy, supports voting rights, and fights systemic racism.
• 
In China, Apple is planning to store its user data on servers essentially run by the Chinese government.
• 
It could use it to sniff out dissidents, stifle debate, and further strangle the Chinese people's freedom.  Apple also reportedly benefits from China's Uyghur forced labor.
• 
The list goes on, and on.  Major League Baseball is deepening its ties with Chinese tyranny while criticizing Georgia's attempts to secure elections.
• 
It recently inked a deal with a company that's helping the Communist Party keep track of – and ultimately control – the Chinese people. ...
• 
A recent report found that 83 major companies, many of them American, rely on Chinese slavery in their supply chains.
• 
These same businesses fight attempts to hold China accountable and support its victims.
• 
No doubt these companies believe that giving in to Beijing's demands is the price of doing business in China.  No one disputes that.
• 
Communist authorities have been known to force American firms to infringe on people's fundamental rights, hand over their trade secrets and generally play by a completely different rule book.
• 
That's why the Trump administration took concrete steps to hold China accountable and stop its abuse of American businesses.
• 
Once they're in the Chinese market, companies don't have the choice of ignoring Beijing's orders.
• 
But they do have a choice to set up shop in China in the first place, and they also have a choice to walk away from China's injustice.
• 
Instead of bemoaning that China "made them do it," powerful companies could avoid it by steering clear of China altogether.
• 
Companies are free to operate overseas, including in China.  But CEOs should be more self-aware.
• 
It's outrageous and embarrassing for them to self-righteously talk about social justice in America while staying quiet when it comes to Communist China's total injustice.
• 
The American people should pressure businesses to stop enabling Communist China's genocide and oppression. 
• 
Corporate America's leaders have a choice to make: support horrible wrongs or do what's right.  The American people will look, not listen, for the answer.
• 
See related Winning the Pooh (Antonio Branco, 09/15/2020) cartoon from Corporate picture album
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      American Oligarchy  (JWR 01/07/2022)
• 
Jan.  6 was the day, the narrative goes, where "deplorable" Trumpians attempted to effectuate an "insurrection" and a "coup," seeking to "overturn" the results of the perfect and pristine 2020 presidential election.
• 
The imbecilic and senile dolt who is our commander in chief dedicated his Jan.  6, 2022, remarks to excoriating his predecessor for that predecessor's alleged incitement of an "insurrection."
• 
Defying parody, a candlelight vigil was held at the National Mall — "in remembrance of the attack on our democracy that occurred on January 6, 2021."
• 
In fairness, it is true that modern America no longer meets a threshold definition of "democracy." But the left is wrong as to why.
• 
America in the year 2022 is not a nation bedeviled by a great scourge of right-wing political violence, but it is a nation bedeviled by a monolithic and intellectually homogenous oligarchy that seeks to subjugate dissenting "deplorables" by any means necessary.
• 
American oligarchy is when a duly elected president of the United States is stymied from day one by cynical ruling class fabulists concocting a false story about that president's alleged collusion with a foreign power, based on the primary "evidence" of a salacious and unverified "dossier" created in conjunction with the defeated opponent's presidential campaign.
• 
American oligarchy is when the institutional media cheers on not one but two baseless and mind-numbing presidential impeachments based on nothing more than frothing partisan fealty to the oligarchs' preferred political tribe, the Democratic Party.
• 
American oligarchy is when the nation's fourth-largest newspaper, the New York Post, runs on the eve of a monumental presidential election a prominent piece of investigative journalism about the oligarchs' preferred candidate's troubled son's shameless overseas venality — only to see that piece of journalism wiped clean from the Big Tech platforms and the Post locked out of its very own Twitter account.
• 
American oligarchy is when neoliberal purists from the left, center and right unite to thwart any meaningful attempt at antitrust enforcement against Big Tech, permitting the Birkenstock-wearing C-suite dweebs who control our digital public square to bowdlerize that public square of any "deplorable" dissent from regime rule.
• 
American oligarchy is when White House press secretary Jen Psaki and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg collude, in naked fashion, to purge Facebook of any discourse skeptical of the recent crowning regime achievement, ineffectual COVID-19 "vaccines."
• 
American oligarchy is when White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeffrey Zients, echoing the rhetoric of a Maoist "social credit system," rebukes "the unvaccinated" for "looking at a winter of severe illness and death for yourselves, your families, and the hospitals you may soon overwhelm."
• 
American oligarchy is when myriad states take advantage of a pandemic to pass massive changes to electoral regulations by executive fiat, and thus in violation of the U.S.  Constitution, in such a manner as to not-so-coincidentally benefit the regime's favored political party.
• 
American oligarchy is when even the most anodyne of post-2020 election attempts to undo the ad hoc electoral changes of 2020, such as Georgia's quite moderate voting law, are unfairly maligned by political oligarchs as "Jim Crow on steroids" and viciously opposed by Big Business oligarchs all too happy to boycott states that legislate on behalf of cultural or electoral sanity.
• 
American oligarchy is the spawning of a two-tier "biomedical security state" in which dissenters from the ruling class' preferred narrative on COVID-19 vaccines, mandates and lockdowns are punished via woke consternation, fired from their jobs, kicked off the digital public square and physically dragged out of convenience stores by police.
• 
American oligarchy is when the uniparty regime's foot soldiers, the Antifa and Black Lives Matter hooligans who savaged American urban corridors during 2020's "1619 Riots," are let off scot-free, while Jan.  6 trespassers without any previous criminal history are subjected to solitary confinement.
• 
The left is correct to bewail the sordid and fallen state of "our democracy." It just has no idea why.
      Mark Milley Exposes the Myth of American 'Democracy'  (JWR 09/17/2021)
• 
This week's deeply unsettling revelation of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen.  Mark Milley's alleged late Trump administration-era perfidy, bordering on high treason, is but one glaring fusillade in a years-long crusade by America's decrepit ruling class to condemn and ultimately subjugate us "deplorables," "wrong-thinkers" and all others with a conservative or traditionalist worldview.
• 
It is a shot across the bow in that roiling cold domestic conflict, and a clarion call as to the relevant stakes.  It is also a brazen assault on one of the most rudimentary defining features of America's constitutional order — an assault that exposes the lie that the ruling class and its left-wing echo chamber denizens care one whit about the very "democracy" they invariably claim to cherish.
• 
Specifically, Milley allegedly convened a rogue meeting with senior military officials in charge of the National Military Command Center, the Pentagon's de facto war room, to tell them not to accept military orders from anyone unless he was personally involved.
• 
In effect, Milley, haunted by hysterical cable news-induced nightmares and caving to delusions of grandeur, took impetuous action to cut out the commander in chief of the U.S.  Armed Forces himself from the formal chain of command.
• 
He did so, we are made to believe, out of fear the lame-duck president might launch a high-scale attack or nuclear weapon strike, perhaps against China.
• 
There could not possibly be a clearer example of how much the American ruling class is drunk on power and of how little it cares for any and all obstacles standing in the way of its accumulation and exercise of that power.
• 
It also just so happens that, in this instance, those obstacles take the form of the quintessential defining feature of what usually separates a democracy or a republican form of governance from a dictatorship: ultimate civilian control of the military.
• 
In undermining that ultimate civilian control, Milley and his apologists are playing with fire.
• 
How bitterly ironic, too, that the same left-wingers who opposed Trump on ostensibly "fascist" or "authoritarian" grounds while simultaneously preaching about the imperative to save our American "democracy" are now the ones who, seemingly without fail, have taken to defending a Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman who has taken a blowtorch to the very definition of "democracy."
• 
Milley is, of course, the same man who has openly defended the merits of studying critical race theory in the military and, in general, seems far more preoccupied with preening for holier-than-thou wokesters than he does with ensuring the U.S.  Armed Forces are adequately prepared to hunt down and kill America's enemies in the most efficient way possible.
• 
"To Mark Milley, the General Lee who has been dead for 151 years is a dire threat, but the General Li who commands the world's largest army on behalf of a murderous tyranny is a chum."
• 
Milley's direct attack on civilian control of the military is but the latest indication that our wokeist ruling class will take no prisoners in its systemic assault upon the very pillars of the American constitutional order.
• 
From Trump-era "deep state" malfeasance to imperious progressive judging to a woke Joint Chiefs chairman feeling justified in removing the duly elected commander in chief from the military chain of command, the ruling class has now thoroughly revealed the depths to which it is willing to sink in order to enact its agenda and force its political opposition to bend the knee.
• 
Eyes wide open, the onus is now on the deplorables to resist such an anti-constitutional — indeed, anti-American — trampling.
      Critical Race Theory admissions — and more  (JWR 07/02/2021)
• 
Consider this forthright (and harrowing) admission from "Critical Race Theory: An Introduction" ... "Unlike traditional civil rights, which embraces incrementalism and step-by-step progress, critical race theory questions the very foundations of the liberal order, including equality theory, legal reasoning, Enlightenment rationalism and neutral principles of constitutional law."
• 
CRT proponents, in line with the "anti-racism" movement and vogue notions of "equity," candidly advocate for discrimination — as long as it is anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Christian or anti-Jewish.
• 
As leading CRT "anti-racist" intellectual Ibram X.  Kendi wrote in 2019's "How to Be an Antiracist" : "The only remedy to racist discrimination is anti-racist discrimination.  The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.  The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."
• 
In practice ... CRT takes the form of crass racial indoctrination that ascribes collective and historical guilt to white Americans, urging white parents of schoolchildren to seek "white abolition" and accusing schools of wantonly "spirit murdering" black children.
• 
It is ... a logical fallacy committed to advancing profoundly un-American notions of collectivized and racially hierarchical guilt and innocence.
• 
CRT in most forms is already illegal under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, but many Republican-governed states have gone further, crafting and passing new legislation to specifically ban CRT pedagogy from corrupting their impressionable youth.
• 
Many arguing against the states' CRT bans resort to trite First Amendment appeals.  "You're infringing on teachers' speech!" they risibly claim.
• 
Nonsense.  A public school classroom is not a utopian "marketplace of ideas" derived from an Enlightenment-era political pamphlet.
• 
More generally, any society that takes the bare minimum amount of pride required to wish to sustain itself for its progeny must understand that instilling racially divisive poison in the minds of impressionable students is a recipe for disaster.
• 
No nation will long endure if its youngest generation is full of disdain, disgust and self-hatred.  The traditional goal of education, as the Founders conceived it, was to help inculcate the sound republican habits of mind and civic virtues necessary for a flourishing polity.
• 
Banning CRT is neither coercive nor liberty-infringing.  Rather, it is a prudent and necessary first step to salvaging a fractious nation teetering on the brink of collapse.
• 
See related Critical Child Abuse (Antonio Branco, 04/22/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Garbage in... (Bob Gorrell, 05/16/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      The Conservative Path Forward in the Biden-Harris Era  (JWR 01/25/2021)
• 
The presidency of Joseph R.  Biden Jr., a thoroughly mediocre and gaffe-prone career politician in the throes of debilitating senescence, has commenced.
• 
It has done so with disingenuous paeans to unity, thinly veiled swipes at his "deplorable" political foes and an immediate executive action-driven assault on his predecessor's legacy — from the environment to immigration to religious liberty — that is simply breathtaking in its scope.
• 
Worse, the Biden-Harris regime has taken power as America's myriad corporate bastions, led by Big Tech, dutifully promise to punish dissenters to the regime's enforced monolithic orthodoxy.
• 
For conservatives, it could get ugly out there as we spend our near-term future in political exile.
• 
And this is before even considering the possibility that the U.S.  Senate, now under de facto Democratic leadership, may well ditch the legislative filibuster, opening up a Pandora's box of power-grab possibilities that could irrevocably transform the republic — chiefly, "packing" the Supreme Court and lower courts, and statehood for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.
• 
... conservatives must do the hard work of actually building up the digital and corporate infrastructure to push back in earnest against Big Tech, "woke" capital and the broader "cancel culture" threat to the American way of life.
• 
The recent collusive efforts by Amazon, Apple and Google to systematically black out Parler, the pro-free speech Twitter alternative, reveal the short-sightedness of those liberals and libertarians who, for years, merely told conservatives concerned about online censorship to "build your own Google."
• 
... while we must use any remaining levers of state power to rein in unaccountable Silicon Valley oligarchs, conservative programmers and coders ought to begin laying the foundation for an entirely new, rivalrous digital domain — a rival internet dedicated to viewpoint nondiscrimination, soup to nuts.
• 
Similarly, conservative financiers and entrepreneurs must begin the long, slow process of funding and building out rival institutions affecting every area of life — banks, medical practices, universities and so forth.
• 
It is profoundly sad that we have gotten to this point, but there is no virtue in failing to confront reality.
• 
Finally, exiled conservatives must continue to build a constructive, substantive conservative agenda that is politically appealing and can actually win at the ballot box.
• 
We know the path forward: an unabashed defense of traditional American bourgeois values; opposition to the excesses of neo-Marxist "woke" -ism; a political economics that is unafraid to use government to channel productive market activity and support those in true need; unapologetic moral prioritization of the rule of law; temperance in foreign policy; and sobriety about the limits of immigration assimilation.
• 
There is plenty to lament right now.  But conservatives' time and energy would be better spent thinking ahead and plotting a future — one that, in all likelihood, can still be salvaged.
• 
See related Resist! (Antonio Branco, 07/09/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      Biden's Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Is Idiotic and Immoral  (JWR 11/20/2020)
• 
As currently structured and carried out, higher education is a blight upon the nation — an affirmative hindrance to our efforts in aiding human flourishing and securing the common good.
• 
Caviling about the systemic corruption of the academy is perhaps old hat.  ... the metamorphosis of America's ivory tower into something closely approximating a fifth column was well underway.
• 
But the situation has, in recent decades, worsened; it has metastasized into a cancer whose tendrils spread the latest faddish developments in intersectional, anti-American, anti-Western "woke-ism" all throughout the land.
• 
It is both terrifying and perverse that America's intellectual gatekeepers — the "elite" -forming, credentialing institutions that separate the "deplorables" from the ruling class — impress self-loathing pablum upon impressionable young minds.
• 
With some notable exceptions, American higher education today comprises madrasas of wokeness fundamentally hostile to the American regime and the American way of life.
• 
Many of the far left's most toxic ideas, whether moral relativism, socialism, "anti-racism" or multiculturalism, either begin on campus or gain steam there.
• 
... four years of willful indebtedness to major in such patently silly "subjects" as "gender studies." Student loans are now the second-largest source of collective American debt, behind only mortgage debt.
• 
The modern Democratic Party is heavily reliant on woke college graduates for political support, and many on the left have warmed in recent years to large-scale student loan "forgiveness"...
• 
This policy is idiotic in the extreme and brazenly immoral.  Republicans and sensible Democrats must unite to defeat it.
• 
The higher education-student loan complex is in desperate need of more transparency and accountability — not more bailouts.
• 
A prudent first step would be for creditors, whether public or (ideally) private, to present clear information about salaries and career paths for graduating high school seniors to consider before they commit to taking out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to major in "ethnic studies."
• 
The worst possible thing we could do would be a mass bailout of this nature, which would initiate a vicious, never-ending cycle of tuition spikes, more indebtedness and more bailouts.
• 
Such a bailout is inherently regressive, as it would disproportionately benefit woke children who decided they could afford four years of the decadent ivory tower wasteland, and disproportionately harm taxpayers who themselves did not go to college.
• 
Such a bailout would also be manifestly unfair to those graduates who have diligently worked to pay off their loans in earnest — even if it meant forsaking jobs they otherwise would have preferred to take in favor of jobs that pay more.
• 
In other words, such a bailout would inculcate the worst lessons in fiscal imprudence and recklessness — all while letting the universities off the hook for their running what amounts to one sustained racket.
      High stakes of Americanists v.  civilizational arsonists  (JWR 08/07/2020)
• 
The English department at Rutgers University, the eighth-oldest university in America, recently went woke.
• 
... initiatives include "limit(ing) emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard 'academic' English backgrounds at a disadvantage."
• 
A pedagogical insistence on proper English grammar and syntax, you see, is now racist.
• 
Generations of hardworking immigrants arrived on these shores from the farthest-flung reaches of the globe, toiling away in menial, minimum-wage jobs to provide their children a greater chance at success.
• 
They strived to assimilate into our culture and integrate into our politics.  Learning the English language was — and still is — a necessary steppingstone.
• 
What was and still ought to be universally lauded is now condemned as an outmoded bigotry.
• 
The Rutgers English department rejects "e pluribus unum," America's traditional motto of unity, preferring instead to stoke the flames of divisiveness.
• 
Worse yet, those Rutgers feigns to help are the very ones who will be most hurt; their odds of assimilating, and therefore building distinctly American lives, will be most hindered.
• 
... Princeton University ... offered its own sacrifice at the pagan altar of wokeness.  On Independence Day, hundreds of Princeton faculty members co-signed a disgraceful letter to Princeton University President...  That letter, echoing the worst of The New York Times' mendacious "1619 Project," baldly asserted that "anti-Blackness is foundational to America."
• 
The letter includes its own overtly racist elements, such as rewarding certain faculty members with extra privileges and perks based on nothing more than their melanin levels.
• 
Welcome to the world of American higher education in the year 2020, where up is down, left is right, good is bad, and right is wrong.
• 
U.S.  taxpayers are on the hook — via subsidized student loans, over $1 trillion in student loan debt, calamitously spiked tuition, exacerbated administrator-to-faculty ratios, the hiring of ever-more diversitycrats and the intellectual poisoning of each new generation — for the very rope to hang ourselves.
• 
Let's be clear about this: We the people, one subsidized student loan and one gender-studies major at a time, are actively complicit in destroying the United States of America.
• 
The propagation of a noxious myth about college as an indispensable rite of passage has now come full circle to bite us in the derriere.
• 
Each generation that emerges from the smoldering ashes of the once-noble academy is further indoctrinated in insufferable anti-American, anti-Western, self-renouncing claptrap.
• 
There is nothing noble about bamboozling, on the taxpayer dime, impressionable teenagers into indebting themselves to major in unemployable "academic disciplines" nonetheless feted by the woke as cutting-edge scholarship.
• 
How long a society can perdure while its educational apparatus is oriented toward churning out heavily indebted pompous ignoramuses is anyone's guess.  But we should not wait to find out.
• 
With the possible exception of narrowly targeted investments in science and technology, it is long past time to defund American higher education of every single taxpayer dollar.
• 
See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      This time the 'regime change' is BY Americans AGAINST America  (JWR 06/28/2020)
• 
How else to interpret the mass anarchy and callous disregard for the rule of law now wreaking havoc upon America's greatest cities?
• 
How else to assess the destruction wrought by the scofflaws and ingrates who patrol the land on a never-ending hunt to vandalize and topple memorials erected in honor of our noblest statesmen, such as George Washington?
• 
There is no alternative way to comprehend the ardent desire of those insurrectionists who, channeling the very worst of Mao's Cultural Revolution, would deface and demolish societal tributes to the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson) and the man who brought to fruition its ideals (Lincoln).
• 
We are now in the midst of a cold civil war between Americanists, proud defenders and preservers of the American regime and way of life, and the civilizational arsonists who seek to burn that regime and way of life into the ether.
• 
Yes, we are in a fight for America's soul — but we are also in a fight for America itself.
• 
... Republicans face a crossroads.  On the one hand, the president and his party can continue the status quo, which entails rhetorical paeans to both law and order and "criminal justice reform" and "police reform."
• 
On the other hand, Republicans can boldly rise up, paint a stark and unequivocal contrast with the civilizational arsonists, and offer a compelling defense of the moral primacy of the rule of the law and the American way of life.
• 
From here through November, President Trump and Republicans must present themselves, as their partisan forebear Lincoln once did, as the defenders and preservers of the American regime.
• 
They must call out the radicals of the modern left for what they are: unmitigated foes of an American order predicated upon the Declaration's truths about human equality, the Constitution's structural safeguards for ordered liberty, and the wisdom embodied in the Judeo-Christian moral tradition undergirding our entire governmental edifice.
• 
Every single day until Election Day, Trump and Republicans should frame the choice facing the American people as between the American regime and insurrectionism.
• 
But to credibly do so, Republicans must immediately pivot to a full-throated rhetorical and substantive defense of why the American regime is worth preserving.
• 
Campaign trail speeches, congressional bills, and everything in between ought to revolve around unabashed assertions of America's inherent worth and dignity.
• 
The New York Times' "1619 Project" should be denounced as a monstrous, ahistorical mendacity — and the spirit of 1776 should be channeled and lauded.
• 
The rule of law, as well as law enforcement itself, must be heralded as indispensable elements of a just society conceived centuries ago and still worth defending today.
• 
... there is still time to make the case.  That case must be a forceful and unrelenting call to preserve the American regime and way of life against the threat posed by those seeking to destroy it — and celebrate in its burnt ashes.
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      Sean Hannity: Biden once promised to restore civility  (Fox 01/25/2022)
• 
"This administration is providing cover for criminals, all while supporting groups like ... Black Lives Matter."
• 
"The reality is this: defund, dismantle, no bail is all responsible for this major wave of violence.  In city after city police budgets have been slashed, including a billion-dollar cut to the New York Police Department.  Now, to make matters worse, [there are] far-left prosecutors – they've stopped prosecuting crimes in the name of equality and equity.  You have some jurisdictions now even eliminating bail for many crimes and turning jails into revolving doors and our streets into a violent free for all."
• 
"We [have] dozens of Americans dead, thousands of cops injured, billions in property damage, arson, looting.  Kamala Harris actually promoted the bail fund to get violent criminals out of jail.  She praised the LAPD police cuts.  You know, protecting the peaceful, law-abiding Americans.  Why don't we protect them?"
• 
"Cops all across the country, they're being targeted at an alarming rate, according to the FBI."
• 
In a recent case, "a career criminal of viciously targeted two NYPD officers, killing one critically injuring another ... [T]he deranged killer ‘kept firing' at the wounded cops even as they lay helplessly on the floor, a complete execution."
• 
"As the Biden White House implodes, poor Joe Biden, he's lashing out ... He called our own Peter Doocy a 'Stupid son of a b****.' Oh, now it's angry, Joe."
• 
"Biden once promised to restore civility, telling his appointees he would fire them on the spot if they disrespected others.  Of course, the rules don't apply to Joe."
      Hannity: January 6 committee must subpoena Pelosi if they are to be taken seriously  (Fox 01/11/2022)
• 
"We now know, and it has been confirmed and corroborated by numerous sources right here on this show, that Donald Trump authorized up to 20,000 National Guard soldiers to protect the Capitol.  He authorized this two days before January 6.  Now, why would he authorize that?  Everybody knew a massive demonstration was planned.  Everybody knew tensions were running high in the country and given what happened over the summer."
• 
"Five hundred and seventy-four riots and all these people dead and all these cops hurt.  Everyone knew that any large protest would be vulnerable to bad actors.  We saw what had just happened in the summer of 2020."
• 
... once Trump approved the request, it was up to Pelosi and Bowser to take action – but they refused.  In that regard, if the committee seriously intends to get to the bottom of January 6, they must subpoena Pelosi and Bowser...
• 
"We now know they blocked the National Guard assistance on multiple occasions.  They refused to even call up the guard after the Capitol Police chief literally was begging for the National Guard; on at least six separate occasions that we've chronicled.  So the question tonight is why?  Why?  Why not approve the extra security that the president allocated for?  Why choose to leave lawmakers vulnerable with such a massive crowd that they knew would be going to the Capitol?"
• 
"Liz Cheney tried to tell us that nothing was off-limits, but of course, Cheney is powerless in this committee, even though she's vice chair."
• 
"In fact, she's being used frankly as a pawn by the very same people who — as I've been reminding her — accused her father of being an evil war criminal."
• 
"Meanwhile, Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio, Jim Banks of Indiana, they were booted from the committee by Nancy Pelosi.  Now ask yourself why?  Because they would ask the serious questions."
• 
"Nancy Pelosi, Mayor Bowser; they would have been held accountable.  Well, that can't happen... This committee is not about getting to the truth.  Unfortunately, Nancy Pelosi is off limits, according to the chairman, and safeguarding our lawmakers at the Capitol should be a top priority.  Instead, it's all about smearing Trump and his supporters."
• 
"Are you or have you ever been a Donald Trump supporter?  Anyone focused on securing the Capitol would look into additional fencing barriers.  I would suggest that other security measures need to be put in place.  Anyone actually interested in the truth and what went wrong would subpoena everyone responsible for bringing in the proper amount of security based on the conditions."
• 
... the panel is too focused on targeting people like Bannon for their political beliefs rather than executing a thorough and responsible probe as they claim to be doing.
      Hannity blasts Democrats, media 'clown show' focus on January 6, points out 574 uninvestigated riots  (Fox 01/07/2022)
• 
"The gaslighting from the Democrats and the mob and the media's reaching record levels.  We have fake hysteria, crocodile tears, analogies now to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and even the Holocaust complete with a special performance and the cast of 'Hamilton'."
• 
"It is a clown show unspectacular levels," he said.  "Where is the committee investigating all of those riots with dozens of dead Americans, thousands of injured cops?" he asked, going on to point to millions in property damage from Portland to Philadelphia, and noted that in one case, now-Vice President Kamala Harris helped publicize a Minnesota-based bail fund for the violent left-wing rioters.
• 
While Rep.  Bennie Thompson's, D-Miss., committee focuses on the Capitol riot, no concern from Thompson or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has been construed in response to incidents of left-wing activists attempting to break a U.S.  Secret Service barricade to the White House in 2020, where the Trump family was living...
• 
... some activists around that time went so far as to set a church on fire across from the White House.
• 
"The situation was so dangerous, the president and his family were forced to flee to a secure bunker, and ultimately 60 secret service officers sustained injuries in the attack.  Eleven were transported to a local hospital.  According to Democrats, the media mob, the January 6th committee, this never happened."
• 
"Where is the committee investigating this?" he added, tabulating 574 such incidents of riots, looting and/or arson nationwide by leftists and aligned groups.
• 
Regarding the January 6 incident, Hannity said Trump authorized 10-20,000 National Guardsman to protect the Capitol, while the Capitol Police Chief requested assistance as well.
• 
... both Pelosi and District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser had to approve such requests, and refused them multiple times.  "By doing so, they left the Capitol totally vulnerable."
• 
"Ask yourself this question, if the true purpose of the committee is to understand what happened so that it can never happen again, how can you possibly ignore the issue of rejecting the National Guard that the president called up?  The only reason I can think of is the committee is playing partisan politics and it has a predetermined outcome."
• 
... Pelosi rejected part of the Republican caucus' slate of appointees to the committee – leading Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., to pull the entire roster.
• 
"Don't forget, Trump said [on that day], ‘many of you will peacefully, patriotically March to the capitol so your voices may be heard.' But of course, those words don't matter to Democrats ... The Democratic Party, they never let truth and facts get in that we have a good narrative."
      Media calls for unity after spewing 'never-ending, nonstop psychotic rage and hatred for four years'  (Fox 11/10/2020)
• 
Republicans will not be lectured into calls for "unity" by the same media outlets and Democrats "that spewed never-ending, nonstop psychotic rage and hatred for four years."
• 
"It is a national disgrace how some states have handled this election, but I want to start...  by saying this because this is important: The double standard we are watching with the mob and the media is beyond disgusting, repulsive, sickening, and sad."
• 
"That's the same mob and the media that spewed never-ending, nonstop psychotic rage and hatred for four years and lied to all of you about so-called Trump-Russia collusion."
• 
"The media mob and the Democrats harassed this president, harassed his supporters for four straight years with lies and conspiracy theories always questioning the legitimacy of this presidency."
• 
... said the media have been exposed as a "bunch of hypocrites" with their "empty calls for civility and unity pretending like none of that ever happened."
• 
"They never accepted the election results in 2016 but in seconds, Joe Biden won, let's tell the world."
• 
The media can try as they might, but Trump supporters are "not going to be lectured by the same media frauds and Democrats, the ones that called us chumps, irredeemable, deplorable, sexist, racist, smelly Walmart shoppers."
• 
"We cling to our God, our guns, our Constitution, our religion, and bibles, while they have been fueling a blind rage every second, every hour, of every day."
      Hannity: 'The radicals are in charge'  (Fox 07/16/2019)
• 
"They are on the verge of an all-out civil war.  Nancy Pelosi has lost complete control of her radical socialist base.  Freshman Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, Congresswoman Tlaib and Omar and Ayanna Pressley are now running the show."
• 
"It does not matter what Speaker Pelosi says, what she does.  The radicals who are in charge, anyone who opposes them of course quickly labeled xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, sexist, and a bigot and want dirty air and water."
• 
"The so-called 'squad' of far left freshmen congresswomen are now using identity politics even against members of their own party.  The end goal is to fundamentally reshape America."
• 
"The base of the Democratic Party is so powerful that every 2020 hopeful has adopted their fringe socialist policies.  And if they don't adopt it completely they are trashed by many of the four."
• 
"They don't want to improve this country.  They want to remake this country into something we all know will fail."
• 
"They want to impeach the one person that's been standing in their way."
• 
See related Big Fish Little Fish (Chip Bok, 01/23/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Sean Hannity: Radical, Socialist 2020 Dems want to centralize power and control our lives  (Fox 03/21/2019)
• 
The alarming crop of 2020 Democratic hopefuls is pushing to give 16-year- olds the right to vote, even though you can't drink until you're 21.
• 
They're promising to stack the Supreme Court so they get enough justices that think their way and will legislate from the bench.
• 
And they're proposing an end to the Electoral College.
• 
This is a scary attempt by politicians to centralize power and control the lives of you - we - the American people.
• 
And right now, it is the party line among almost all the radical Democrats running to be president in 2020.
• 
It is a blatant, dramatic, frightening attempt to alter America in ways that will make it unrecognizable and forever destroy the greatest economic, wealth creation system in the history of mankind. 
• 
Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, and many more Democrats support an end to the constitutional process by which we have always elected the president of the United States.
• 
So, why is this a big deal?
• 
When our Constitution was drafted in 1787, the framers of the Constitution sought to rectify what was a very challenging conundrum.
• 
How do you create a limited, central government strong enough to defend its people against serious threats, but decentralized enough to prevent consolidation and subsequent abuse of power?
• 
The result was a Constitution filled with checks, balances, and shared power between the individual states and the federal government.
• 
The Electoral College is a product of this system, giving the states the power to conduct elections and choose the president.
• 
As a result, each state holds some power in determining the executive branch.
• 
Without the Electoral College — and our framers knew this — smaller areas with dense populations — in other words, New York, New Jersey, California — would monopolize the keys to the White House.
• 
Look at how all four of those states have been destroyed by the people who have elected liberal socialist politicians.
• 
Everywhere else — in other words, all of red America — would be pretty much totally ignored.
• 
Power would be totally consolidated.
• 
This was the scenario our framers, our Founders, feared the most.
• 
It's one of the reasons, Thomas Jefferson hated cities, writing they are harmful to "the morals, the health and liberties of men." He was smart, way ahead of his time. 
• 
And for hundreds of years, the Electoral College played an integral role in decentralizing the power of government, keeping the United States united.
• 
You think all those red states would stick around and be in the United States if they kept losing to New York, New Jersey, California and Illinois?  I tend to think not.
• 
Democrats don't share the values of our framers.  They want power for themselves, and they want it all cost.
• 
That is why every major proposal they are now pushing begins and ends with their power and a centralized federal government that they control.
• 
In other words, they will take it over.
• 
Government-run universal income, government-paid-for vacation,government-sponsored healthy food. 
• 
There will be government promises for everything and for everybody — you'll never have a worry in the world.
• 
But you also will give up all of your freedom and all of the wealth creation systems we have built up to this point in our history.
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Hanson-J  (06/01/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/25/2022) | Next sect (05/12/2022) | List bot 
      Jim Hanson: Trump's Antifa declaration – this is how it helps US fight back  (Fox 06/01/2020)
• 
"The president's accurate description of Antifa?fits the definition?under federal law of a domestic terror group.  Under that definition, such a group breaks laws ‘to intimidate or coerce a civilian population' or to ‘influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion.'"
• 
Most of the hardcore activists wouldn't even argue with the description or the goals, but previously they were dealing with a much smaller potential downside.
• 
Now the array and severity of crimes and especially punishments just jumped exponentially.
• 
Many of these wannabe revolutionaries are willing to spend a night in jail, but how many are willing to do 20 years in prison.
• 
The immediate effect will be to change the dynamic for the radical Left and their "Burn it all down" wing and create a real deterrent.
• 
They have been free to commit vandalism escalating up to violent acts and turn their protests into riots because even if they were caught the local charges were usually minor.
• 
This will help slow their ability to grow a pack of angry activists into a howling mob burning buildings, beating bystanders and even killing people.
• 
They rely on riding along with the other radical Left activist groups who are all too happy to have them do the dirty work.
• 
But if those groups risk being swept up for supporting terror, they are much less likely to tolerate Antifa & friends in their midst.
• 
It will also make the college student adventure activists wary and the folks just out for a quick looting consider whether a flat-screen is worth doing real time.
• 
Those are real benefits and should not stop anyone who wants to peaceably assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances.
• 
But it will serve as a reminder the word "peaceably" is in there for a reason.
• 
This won't deter the diehards who believe rioting is just a warm-up.  They will be targets of the increased law enforcement and surveillance powers enabled by the terror designation.
• 
This is important due to the very nature of an anarchistic movement like Antifa.  They don't organize as much as they flock together in common cause.  That makes identifying, tracking and catching them difficult.
• 
A whole array of online surveillance and nationwide warrant capabilities allow our federal law enforcement agencies to watch and identify their members and plans as well as gather evidence if crimes have already been committed.
• 
Without the designation the diffuse nature of Antifa makes it very tough to jump through all the hoops needed to make this happen.
• 
Another major damage the designation has on their efforts is the prohibition of financing and material support for terrorism.
• 
While Antifa operations are not particularly high budget, they do cost money and require some types of expertise.  Anyone providing that type of support will now find themselves in jeopardy.
• 
Antifa and other radical left organizers often pay protesters.  Drying up that funding stream and ensuring other groups sympathetic to their cause can't financially support them will severely hamper their efforts.
• 
One more positive aspect of this action is to show the vast majority of people in this country that this type of terror against them and their livelihoods will not be tolerated.
• 
The avowed goal of Antifa and the other radicals with these riots is to create fear and force changes that will appease the attackers.
• 
The governors and mayors have the still difficult task of reining in the current violence.
• 
This action by the president will make it less likely another one will happen, or if it does, that those responsible pay a heavy price.
 Hanson-VD  (05/12/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (06/01/2020) | Next sect (01/07/2022) | List bot 
      Imagine the unimaginable  (JWR 05/12/2022)
• 
The traditional bedrocks of the American system — a stable economy, energy independence, vast surpluses of food, hallowed universities, a professional judiciary, law enforcement, and a credible criminal justice system — are dissolving.
• 
Crime is now mostly a political matter.  Ideology, race, and politics determine whether the law is even applied.
• 
Politics are resembling the violent last days of the Roman Republic.  An illegal leak of a possible impending Supreme Court reversal of Roe v.  Wade that would allow state voters to set their own abortion laws has created a national hysteria.
• 
Merit is disappearing.  Admissions, hiring, promotion, retention, grading, and advancement are predicated increasingly on mouthing the right orthodoxies or belonging to the proper racial, gender, or ethnic category.
• 
When the new campus commissariat finally finishes absorbing the last redoubts in science, math, engineering, medical, and professional schools, America will slide into permanent mediocrity and irreversible declining standards of living.
• 
Remember all these catastrophes are self-induced.  They are choices, not fate.  The U.S.  has the largest combined gas, coal, and oil deposits in the world.  It possesses the know-how to build the safest pipelines and to ensure the cleanest energy development on the planet.
• 
Inflation was a deliberate Biden choice.  For short-term political advantage, he kept printing trillions of dollars, incentivizing labor non-participation, and keeping interest rates at historical lows — at a time of pent-up global demand.
• 
The administration wanted no border.  Only that way can politicized, impoverished immigrants repay left-wing undermining of the entire legal immigration system with their fealty at the ballot box.
• 
Once esoteric, crack-pot academic theories — "modern monetary theory," critical legal theory, critical race theory — now dominate policymaking in the Biden Administration.
• 
The common denominator in all of this is ideology overruling empiricism, common sense, and pragmatism.
• 
Ruling elites would rather be politically correct failures and unpopular than politically incorrect, successful, and popular.
• 
So as the public pushes back, expect at the ground level more doxxing, cancel culture, deplatforming, ministries of disinformation, swarming the private homes of officials they target for bullying, and likely violent demonstrations in our streets this summer.
• 
Meanwhile, left-wing elites will do their best to ignore Supreme Court decisions, illegally cancel student debts, and likely by the fall issue more COVID lockdowns.
• 
They will still dream of packing the Court, ending the filibuster, scrapping the Electoral College, adding more states, and flooding the November balloting with hundreds of millions more dollars of dark money from Silicon Valley.
      Heroic Ukrainians are shining light in the darkest hour of war  (Fox 03/22/2022)
• 
Weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, consensus forms about the pulse of the war and even the contours of an eventual armistice.
• 
Vladimir Putin bet wrongly that an attack would be relatively painless.  Ukraine proved no repeat of his earlier invasions of Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
• 
Instead, Ukrainians under President Zelenskyy clawed back, astonishing the world.  Nations ostracized Russia — due to the one-man shaming and shrill badgering from Zelenskyy.
• 
The much-vaunted Russian military grows dispirited.  It likely cannot defeat, much less occupy, a country the size of Texas.
• 
A sleepy West re-awoke, even if only temporarily.  Europe promises to produce more gas and oil and import less from Russia.
• 
NATO members claim they will up their defense budgets.  The West is mustering impressive financial power in ostracizing Russia, morally, economically, financially and culturally.
• 
Putin grows shriller, more desperate.  His war is stalemating.  That is a fatal combination once millions of strapped Russians suffer economic ruin for Putin's needless misadventure.
• 
The now-hated Russian military resorts to familiar fallback strategies of razing cities while blocking food and power supplies to civilians.
• 
That medieval solution won Russia the Chechnya war.  For Putin, what cannot be annexed must be destroyed.
• 
But a much larger, autonomous Ukraine is not so easily turned into Carthage.  Zelensky's crusade is now the cause celebre of much of the world.
• 
A conniving China is hedging.  It thought a defeated Ukraine would humiliate the West.  Russia would supposedly offer China a fait accompli blueprint for a similar quick victory in Taiwan.
• 
Russia would supply discounted natural resources and food to China in return for pricey financial and economic help in circumventing Western sanctions.
• 
Russia cannot close Western resupply routes from four NATO countries.  Open borders are the historical bane of any expeditionary force.  The U.S.  learned that in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.
• 
The West must tiptoe through the minefield of upping aid, while avoiding no-fly-zones, sending "advisors" into Ukraine, or crazy talk of "assassinating"...
• 
America has swept into war fever.  But it must cease its asinine demonizing of the entire Russian people.  We become reprehensible McCarthyites when we call some American skeptics of U.S.  policy "traitors."
• 
Nor can Americans be swept away by the rockstar Zelensky's demand for virtual U.S.  intervention inside a former Soviet republic.  American and Ukrainian security interests are not always identical.
• 
Instead, if the West vastly increases military and humanitarian assistance, and if Ukraine can hang on until global sanctions squeeze an anemic Russian economy into depression, then a cornered Putin will talk.
• 
But he will negotiate from a position of diminishing advantage.  Gone will be his original vision of turning the huge former republic into a vassal dependency.
• 
What might even a temporary armistice look like?  Zelenskyy could quietly concede that it is not in Ukraine's own interest to join NATO. 
• 
Kyiv might instead enter the European Union.  Zelenskyy can insist as a sovereign nation Ukraine certainly will rearm.
• 
It could cede some small areas of Russian-speaking eastern borderlands as a face-saving sop to Putin.  Zelenskyy could agree to an international plebiscite for the population of occupied Crimea.
• 
... the point is to stop the destruction of Ukraine now — but on terms that will enhance the creation of Ukrainian deterrence with Western help to discourage another Russian invasion.  The dismantlement of sanctions could be calibrated only by Russian progress in meeting its agreements.
• 
Without some of its eastern breakaway borderlands, but with EU membership, Ukraine would grow closer to Europe.  The model would be similar to a postwar non-aligned Austria and Finland, or Western but neutral Switzerland.
• 
A delusional Putin will find his postwar Russia poorer.  He will become more isolated and weaker.  But Ukraine could in time emerge in a better position despite massive damages and thousands of tragically lost and ruined lives.
• 
The survival of an outmanned and gutted but gallant Ukraine, hope for a revival of a postmodern West, possible strengthening of NATO, the growing isolation of Vladimir Putin, a wake-up to the dangers of reckless green extremism, and new consensus on the folly of empowering communist China — that would all mark victories that no one imagined less than month ago.
• 
Such light in the present darkness is not assured but at least now possible — thanks mostly to nameless heroic Ukrainians and their defiant leader who have never given up.
      Why ideology is the ancient enemy of civilization  (JWR 02/11/2022)
• 
What ultimately destroyed the evil empires of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were bankrupt dogmas.  Crackpot ideology destroyed free expression.  It ruined meritocracy and ensured unequal application of the laws — and so paved the way for far worse.
• 
The Nazi idea of a superior Aryan race adjudicated everything from physics to tank design.  Soviet commissars did the same, subordinating rational thought to communist agendas.
• 
Zealots in both systems infiltrated the universities and schools to institutionalize indoctrination.
• 
Why were most Antifa and Black Lives Matter criminals who looted, destroyed, and assaulted during the 120 days of summer 2020 not charged, much less tried?
• 
Why, in contrast, were the January 6 rioters or the current Canadian truckers treated disproportionately harshly by the media?
• 
Had the same rioters on January 6 been waving pride flags and BLM banners, would some of them have been sitting for a year in solitary confinement and still uncharged?
• 
What would have happened had conservative demonstrators cut out a police-free "MAGA Zone" in Seattle rather than the exempted Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone?  Would police have similarly left it alone, and the media similarly romanticized such illegality?
• 
One of the reasons the COVID-19 lockdown and mask policies lost public confidence was their utter corruption by ideology.
• 
Which politicians in 2020 trashed the vaccine programs and declared they would likely not get inoculations — if they were endorsed by then-President Donald Trump?
• 
If Trump is demonized as a destroyer of election legitimacy, what then are we to say of the beatified Stacey Abrams?
• 
She lost the Georgia gubernatorial race by more than 50,000 votes.  Yet for years, she has maintained the voting was rigged and the elected governor is illegitimate.
• 
In 2000, who challenged for weeks the vote count, despite numerous public and private audits confirming George W.  Bush's popular vote victory in Florida?
• 
Who in 2004-2005 — for only the second time in history — challenged in Congress the Electoral College vote?
• 
In whose party were the 31 House members and one senator who forced a congressional vote in a failed effort to overturn the election?
• 
Who in 2016 ran ads for weeks after the election, beseeching the chosen electors to violate their constitutional duties, ignore their state vote tallies, and instead vote for Hillary Clinton?
• 
And who in 2016 claimed her victorious opponent was elected president illegitimately?  Who bragged she was joining the "resistance" to undermine his presidency?  Who advised Joe Biden in 2020 not to accept the election result if he lost?
• 
If conservative zealots were ransacking American stores, carjacking innocents in the major cities, and spiking murder rates to historical highs, would the Biden Administration be mobilizing law enforcement to ensure arrests, prosecutions, and incarceration?
• 
If anti-communist Cubans by the millions were illegally crashing the southern border, would they be welcomed in as are those from Mexico and Central Americans?
• 
If, by 2024, a Republican president enjoys a Republican Congress, what would be the reaction to conservatives who advocated ending the filibuster?
• 
Voting to increase the Supreme Court to 15 justices to guarantee at least six new nominations for the Republican-controlled presidency and Congress?
• 
When ideology in places like Castroite Cuba, the old Soviet Union, and Venezuela warped the application of the law, destroyed the role of merit in assessing qualifications, silenced speech, and unequally applied the law, then society unwound.
• 
Scarier still, ideology ensures that such chaos is heralded as success.  Critics are demonized and hounded.  And the obsequious state media assures the public that things are going just great.
• 
See related USA (Gary Varvel, 01/04/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Is America heading for a systems collapse?  (JWR 01/20/2022)
• 
... most of our maladies are self-inflicted.  They are the direct result of woke ideologies that are both cruel and antithetical to traditional American pragmatism.
• 
Hard-Left district attorneys in our major cities refuse to charge thousands of arrested criminals — relying instead on bankrupt social justice theories.
• 
Law enforcement has been arbitrarily defunded and libeled.  Police deterrence is lost, so looters, vandals, thieves, and murderers more freely prey on the public.
• 
"Modern monetary theory" deludes ideologues that printing trillions of dollars can enrich the public, even as the ensuing inflation is making people poorer.
• 
"Critical race theory" absurdly dictates that current "good" racism can correct the effects of past bad racism.  A once tolerant, multiracial nation is resembling the factionalism of the former Yugoslavia.
• 
The culprit again is a callous woke ideology that posits little value for individuals, prioritizing only the so-called collective agenda.
• 
Woke's trademark is "equity," or a forced equality of result.  Practically, we are becoming a comic-book version of victims and victimizers, with woke opportunists playacting as our superheroes.
• 
Strangest in 2021 was the systematic attack on our ancient institutions, as we scapegoated our ancestors for our own incompetencies.
• 
The woke have waged a veritable war against the 233-year-old Electoral College and the right of states to set their own balloting laws in national elections, the 180-year-old filibuster, the 150-year-old nine-person Supreme Court, and the 60-year-old, 50-state union.
• 
The U.S.  military, Department of Justice, FBI, CIA, Center for Disease Control, and National Institutes of Health until recently were revered.
• 
These bureaus and agencies are losing public confidence and support.  Citizens fear rather than respect Washington grandees who have weaponized politics ahead of public service.
• 
This governmental freefall is overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president.
• 
In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular President Joe Biden seems to believe his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.
• 
As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?
      Woke ideology is 'cruel,' 'evil,' and won't end well: Victor Davis Hanson  (Fox 01/18/2022)
• 
"It's a very evil ideology because it's cruel.  It's mean-spirited.  And we haven't talked about that.  But if that's what it is and it won't end until the people start identifying it like that ... It's cruelty because it has a history throughout the centuries, and it doesn't end well."
• 
"Academics ... call this 'systems collapse,' where all of a sudden a successful society suddenly doesn't follow its tradition and rules and things happen that people cannot believe, such as empty shelves or you're not able to buy meat or you go to fill up your car, and it's a hundred dollars ... or people getting shot in the street ... And all of these things start to unwind the society.  So the point is that it can't continue."
• 
... the refusal to take criminals to task, among other injustices, is causing the American people to lose faith in institutions that were once held in high esteem.
• 
"We fear the government and so the government's lost credibility, morality, and we've got to restore it by all of these DA's [re-starting to] prosecute crimes.  You have to be arrested.  You have to be indicted if you're guilty.  You have to serve your time to regain confidence and make it safe to be a human again."
• 
"When you look at the career of a Fauci, a Milley, ...a Comey, a McCabe ... These aren't the people that we trust."
• 
"I think finally, we really have to redefine this whole woke ideology.  We think it's kind of cute or it's incompetent or it's left-wing or it's Marxist.  [But] it's cruel, it's mean.  It tells you, me, every citizen: If you get hurt, you get shot, we're not going to worry about you.  And the person who did that to you is probably going to be out without bail or not prosecuted for an earlier crime.  It tells a young child: you in the present are going to learn good racism because there was bad racism in the past.  It tells the old guy that is 68 like me, if you need treatment, you may be the wrong color – you wait in line."
      Who are the real insurrectionists?  (JWR 01/06/2022)
• 
... the Left now variously alleges that either in 2022, when they expect to lose the Congress, or in 2024, when they fear losing the presidency, Republicans will "destroy democracy" or stage a coup.
• 
A cynic might suggest that they praise democracy when they get elected, only to claim it is broken when they lose.
• 
Or they hope to avoid their defeat by trying to terrify the electorate.  Or they mask their own revolutionary propensities by projecting them onto their opponents.
• 
After all, who is trying to federalize election laws in national elections contrary to the spirit of the Constitution?  Who wishes to repeal or circumvent the Electoral College?  Who wishes to destroy the more than 180-year-old Senate filibuster, the over 150-year-old nine-justice Supreme Court, and the more than 60-year-old, 50-state union?
• 
Who is attacking the founding constitutional idea of two senators per state?
• 
The Constitution also clearly states that "When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside."
• 
Who slammed through the impeachment of former president Donald Trump without a presiding chief justice?
• 
Never had a president been either impeached twice or tried in the Senate as a private citizen.  Who did both?
• 
The Left further broke prior precedent by impeaching Trump without a special counsel's report, formal hearings, witnesses, and cross-examinations.  Who exactly is violating federal civil rights legislation?
• 
New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in December decided to ration potentially lifesaving new COVID-19 medicines, partially on the basis of race, in the name of "equity."
• 
The agency also allegedly used racial preferences to determine who would be first tested for COVID-19.  Yet such racial discrimination seems in direct violation of various title clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
• 
That law makes it clear that no public agency can use race to deny "equal utilization of any public facility which is owned, operated, or managed by or on behalf of any State or subdivision thereof." Who is behind the new racial discrimination?
• 
In summer 2020, many local and state-mandated quarantines and bans on public assemblies were simply ignored with impunity — if demonstrators were associated with Black Lives Matter or protesting the police.
• 
Currently, the Biden Administration is also flagrantly embracing the neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal law.
• 
The Biden Administration has allowed nearly 2 million foreign nationals to enter the United States illegally across the southern border — in hopes they will soon be loyal constituents.
• 
The administration has not asked illegal entrants either to be tested for or vaccinated against COVID-19.  Yet all U.S.  citizens in the military and employed by the federal government are threatened with dismissal if they fail to become vaccinated.
• 
Such selective exemption of lawbreaking non-U.S.  citizens, but not millions of U.S.  citizens, seems in conflict with the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
• 
After entering the United States illegally, millions of immigrants are protected by some 550 "sanctuary city" jurisdictions.
• 
These revolutionary areas all brazenly nullify immigration law by refusing to allow federal immigration authorities to deport illegal immigrant lawbreakers.
• 
At various times in our nation's history — 1832, 1861-65, and 1961-63 — America was either racked by internal violence or fought a civil war over similar state nullification of federal laws.
• 
Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to concoct a dossier of dirt against her presidential opponent.  She disguised her own role by projecting her efforts to use Russian sources onto Trump.
• 
She used her contacts in government and media to seed the dossier to create a national hysteria about "Russian collusion."
• 
Clinton urged Biden not to accept the 2020 result if he lost, and herself claimed Trump was not a legitimately elected president.
• 
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has violated laws governing the chain of command.  Some retired officers violated Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by slandering their commander-in-chief.  Others publicly were on record calling for the military to intervene to remove an elected president.
• 
Some of the nation's top officials in the FBI and intelligence committee have misled or lied under oath either to federal investigators or the U.S.  Congress, again, mostly with impunity.
• 
All these sustained revolutionary activities were justified as necessary to achieve the supposedly noble ends of removing Trump.
• 
The result is Third World-like jurisprudence in America aimed at rewarding friends and punishing enemies, masked by service to social justice.
• 
We are in a dangerous revolutionary cycle.  But the threat is not so much from loud, buffoonish one-day rioters on January 6.
• 
Such clownish characters did not for 120 days loot, burn, attack courthouses and police precincts, cause over 30 deaths, injure 2,000 policemen, and destroy at least $2 billion in property — all under the banner of revolutionary justice.
• 
Even more ominously, stone-cold sober elites are systematically waging an insidious revolution in the shadows that seeks to dismantle America's institutions and the rule of law as we have known them.
      The ungracious — and their demonization of the past  (JWR 12/30/2021)
• 
Critics assume their own judgmental generation is morally superior to those of the past.  So, they use their own standards to condemn the mute dead who supposedly do not measure up to them.
• 
Yet 21st-century critics rarely acknowledge their own present affluence and leisure owe much to history's prior generations whose toil helped create their current comfort.
• 
And what may future scolds say of the modern generation that saw over 60 million abortions since Roe v.  Wade, even as fetal viability outside the womb continued to progress to ever earlier ages?
• 
What will our grandchildren say of us who dumped on them over $30 trillion in national debt — much of it as borrowing for entitlements for ourselves?
• 
What sort of society snoozes as record numbers of murders continue in 12 of its major cities?  What is so civilized about defunding the police, endemic smash-and-grab thefts, and car jackings?
• 
Was it actually moral to discard the "content of our character" and "equal opportunity" principles of the prior Civil Rights movement of 60 years ago?
• 
Are their replacement fixations on the "color of our skin" and "equality of result" superior?
• 
Would America have won World War II with the current labor participation rate of only six in 10 Americans working?
• 
Would our generation have brought all American troops home and quit World War I in fear of the deadly 1918 Spanish flu pandemic?
• 
Are we proud that most standardized tests of student knowledge and achievement continue to decline, despite record investments in education?
• 
Do we ever pause to consider that we enjoy our modern standard of living and security because we were once a meritocracy that quit judging our workforce by tribal affinities and ancient prejudices?
• 
Our generation talks of infrastructure nonstop.  But when was the last time it built anything comparable to the Hoover Dam, the interstate highway system, or the California Water Project — much less sent a man back to the moon or beyond?
• 
If prior generations were so toxic, why do we continue to take for granted the moral and material world they bequeathed to us, from the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to our airports, freeways, and power plants?
• 
Did we ever defeat anything comparable to the Axis powers or Soviet communism?
• 
We know the symptoms of the current epidemic of hating the past.  One is Orwellian renaming and statue-toppling. 
• 
Historical revision often responds to puritanical mob frenzies rather than to democratic discussion and votes of relevant elected officials.
• 
Where is the pantheon of woke heroes who will replace the toppled or defaced Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt?
• 
Racial fixations tend predictably in one direction.  In good Confederate fashion, we lump all individuals who look alike into inexact collectives of "white," "black," or "brown" — often to stereotype the supposed evils of so-called white supremacy.
• 
But if we go down that tribalist and simplistic road of caricatured oppressors and oppressed, will future generations tally up each group's merits and demerits, to adjudicate the roles of millions of individuals in making America worse or better?
• 
What standard would they use to judge our ignorant world of racial stereotyping — proportional representation in Nobel Prizes, philanthropy, scientific breakthroughs, or lasting art, music, and literature versus statistics on homicides, assault, divorce, and illegitimacy?
• 
Immigration — when legal, diverse, measured, and often meritocratic — has been the great strength of America, as typified by industrious arrivals who chose to abandon their own homeland to risk new lives in a foreign United States.
• 
But if America is so flawed and so irredeemable, why in fiscal year 2021 are nearly 2 million foreigners now crashing its borders — illegally, en masse, and intent on reaching a supposedly racist nation that is purportedly inferior to those they abandon?
• 
According to the ancient brutal bargain, assimilation and integration grant the immigrant as much claim to America's present and past as the native-born.  But then shouldn't the antithesis also be true?
• 
Shouldn't immigrants at least respect those of the past who created the very country they now so eagerly desire, and died in awful places from Valley Forge to Bastogne to preserve?
• 
Never in history has such a mediocre, but self-important and ungracious generation owed so much, and yet expressed so little gratitude, to its now dead forebears.
      The importance of work and the benefits of honest labor  (Fox 12/20/2021)
• 
The United States was founded on the idea of the inherent nobility of work.  A nation of free, self-sufficient homesteaders believed their hard labor could ensure their prosperity, liberty and autonomy.
• 
Through our 233 years as a nation, the American national ethic, our various religions, even our popular culture stressed the character-building nature of labor – and its pathway to personal self-sufficiency and a prosperous and powerful nation of industrious citizens.
• 
When World War II broke out on Sept.  1, 1939, an isolationist, underemployed and neutral America was still in the throes of serial Depression-era recessions.  Its military was undermanned and nearly unarmed.
• 
... after entering the war on Dec.  11, 1941, in the aftermath of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans – men and women, teenagers and the elderly, all races and religions – worked nonstop, 24-7 as no nation has before or since.
• 
Less than four years later, the U.S.  won the war, by enrolling over 12 million men and women in uniform.  Its economy was larger than those of all the major combatants –Britain, Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperial Japan – put together.
• 
The U.S.  Navy was not just the largest sea power in the world.  Its thousands of newly built ships were also more numerous than all the navies of the world combined.
• 
America did not fall back into recession after World War II.  Instead, its work ethic grew in peace.  Labor created a massive interstate highway system, millions of new suburban homes, and thousands of new airports and skyscrapers.
• 
Americans created so much capital and wealth that they could afford to be the most generous people in the world and supported what was then called  government "relief "or ‘welfare" for the indigent, the ill, the elderly and the disabled who could not work.
• 
The work ethic persisted even amid the hippie cultural upheavals of the "tune in, turn on, drop out" 1960s.  Teens still looked forward to summer and part-time jobs in lieu of dependence on parental allowances.
• 
The nation worked feverishly on the space program, massive water reclamation projects, and won the Cold War by simply outproducing communism.
• 
Apprentice carpenters, plumbers and electricians often began steady work at 18.  "Working your way through college" was a given for students – in the days before trillion-dollar federal loan programs and subsidies.
• 
Yet the present labor participation rate stubbornly has dipped even lower to about only 62% of the available workforce.  Currently, signs like "Now Hiring" and "Help Wanted" dot nearly every city block and suburban mall in America.
• 
Trucks and vans drive the freeways with painted ads "Workers Wanted".  The recovering economy is starting to sputter.  Everything from supply chain shortages to inflation is attributed to shortages of labor.
• 
... our current crippling labor shortages is also because of state and federal serial supplemental entitlements.  The cash handouts ostensibly started out as necessary but temporary support during the pandemic.  But they now persist as a sort of de facto guaranteed income that often pays better than joining the work force.
• 
There has been relatively little pushback against this new idleness.  To suggest that the government curtail incentives not to work is considered insensitive, even mean-spirited.
• 
Few make the argument that it is far more immoral that millions of the able are not working in full expectation that millions of others will work.
• 
And the employed must work even harder to produce food for the healthy nonparticipants, to ensure their gas and power supplies, to keep them safe at home and abroad – and to subsidize their idleness.
• 
There is a danger when generations of America grow accustomed to not working – they may have forgotten why and how to work.
• 
Psychologically, citizens can become prolonged adolescents who lose the confidence that comes from independence from government and the ensuing sense of achievement that only work provides.
• 
Have we also lost the idea that a collectively hard-working America is needed more than ever to remain competitive with rival nations?
• 
China especially boasts its economy and military will soon surpass our own, in the fashion that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev once boasted over America, "We will bury you" .
• 
Let us hope we will rediscover the work ethos of an earlier generation and keep safe by outworking our enemies, while we become happier and better Americans – the more we are all busy and employed.
      Why is the Left suddenly worried about the end of democracy?  (JWR 12/16/2021)
• 
What then is behind this new left-wing hysteria about the supposed looming end of democracy?
• 
It is quite simple.  The Left expects to lose power over the next two years – both because of the way it gained and used it, and because of its radical, top-down agendas that never had any public support.
• 
After gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency – with an obsequious media and the support of Wall Street, Silicon Valley, higher education, popular culture, entertainment and professional sports – the Left has managed in just 11 months to alienate a majority of voters.
• 
The nation has been wracked by unprecedented crime and nonenforcement of the borders.  Leftist district attorneys either won't indict criminals; they let them out of jails or both.
• 
Illegal immigration and inflation are soaring.  Deliberate cuts in gas and oil production helped spike fuel prices.
• 
All this bad news is on top of the Afghanistan disaster, worsening racial relations, and an enfeebled president.
• 
In other words, leftist elites are terrified that democracy will work too robustly.
• 
After the Russian collusion hoax, two impeachments, the Hunter Biden laptop stories, the staged melodramas of the Kavanaugh hearings, the Jussie Smollett con, the Covington kids smear, and the Rittenhouse trial race frenzy, the people are not just worn out by leftist hysterias, but they also weary of how the Left gains power and administers it.
• 
They are fearful and angry not because democracy doesn't work, but because it does despite their own media and political efforts to warp it.
• 
When a party is hijacked by radicals and uses almost any means necessary to gain and use power for agendas that few Americans support, then average voters express their disapproval.
• 
That reality apparently terrifies an elite.  It then claims any system that allows the people to vote against the Left is not people power at all.
      Losing confidence in the pillars of our civilization  (JWR 11/25/2021)
• 
Millions of citizens long ago concluded that professional sports, academia, and entertainment were no longer disinterested institutions, but far Left and deliberately hostile to Middle America.
• 
Yet American conservatives still adamantly supported the nation's traditional investigatory, intelligence, and military agencies – especially when they came under budgetary or cultural attacks.
• 
Not so much anymore.  For the first time in memory, conservatives now connect the FBI hierarchy with bureaucratic bloat, political bias, and even illegality.
• 
In the last five years, the FBI was mostly in the news for the checkered careers of James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Robert Mueller, Lisa Page, and Peter Strzok.  Add in the criminality of convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith.
• 
The colossal FBI-driven "Russian collusion" hoax was marked by the leaking of confidential FBI memos, forged documents, improper surveillance, and serial disinformation.
• 
Mention the military to conservative Americans these days, and they unfortunately associate its leadership with the disastrous flight from Afghanistan.
• 
Few, if any, high-ranking officers have yet taken responsibility – much less resigned – for the worst military fiasco of the last half-century.
• 
Instead, President Joe Biden and the top generals traded charges that the other was responsible for the calamity.  Or both insisted the abject flight was a logistical masterpiece.
• 
Never in U.S.  history have so many retired four-star admirals and generals disparaged their president with charges of being either a traitor, a liar, a fascist, or a virtual Nazi, as occurred during the last administration.
• 
Never has the proper advisory role of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff been so brazenly usurped and contorted.
• 
Never has the secretary of defense promised he would ferret out alleged "white supremacists," without providing any evidence whatsoever of their supposedly ubiquitous presence and dangerous conspiracies.
• 
Conservatives have always been amused by the liberal biases of the old network news and big-city print media.  But they grudgingly admitted that many liberal journalists of the last century were mostly professionals.  News divisions mostly reported the news rather than simply made it up.
• 
Not so now with Big Tech and 21stt-century "woke" journalism.  Few reporters have yet offered apologies for helping hatch and spread the Russian collusion hoax that paralyzed the country for three years.
• 
Rarely have communication industries – veritable utilities in the public domain – so asymmetrically censored speech and applied such one-sided standards of suppressing free expression.
• 
Conservatives used to oppose regulating larger corporations.  Now, ironically, most are calling for regulating and breaking up multibillion-dollar social media monopolies and conglomerates that suppress as much as transmit private communications.
• 
The American criminal justice system also used to earn the respect of conservatives.  Prosecuting attorneys, police chiefs, and big-city mayors were seen as custodians of the public order.
• 
They were entrusted to keep the peace, to prevent and investigate crime, and to arrest and prosecute criminals.
• 
Again, not so much now.  After 120 days of mostly unchecked riot, arson, looting, and violent protests during the summer of 2020, the public lost confidence in their public safety agencies.
• 
District attorneys in several major cities – Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and St.  Louis – have often predicated prosecuting crimes on the basis of ideology, race, and careerism.
• 
In the current crime wave, brazen lawbreakers enjoy de facto immunity.  Mass looting goes unpunished.  Indictments are often aimed as much against those who defend themselves as against criminals who attack the innocent.
• 
Conservatives now have lost their former traditional confidence in the administration of justice, in the intelligence and investigatory agencies, in the nation's military leadership, in the media, and the criminal justice system.
• 
No one yet knows what the effect will be of half the country losing faith in the very pillars of American civilization.
      America and 'The Dying Citizen'  (JWR 10/07/2021)
• 
Given our privileges, affluent and leisured Americans must always ask ourselves whether as citizens we have earned what those who died at Gettysburg or on Omaha Beach bequeathed at such costs.
• 
Refusing to stand during the national anthem is not and should not be illegal.  But such blanket rejection of American customs is admittedly now a collective narcissistic tic — and hardly sustainable for the nation's privileged to sit in disgust for a flag that their betters raised under fire on Iwo Jima for others not yet born.
• 
Sometimes citizens can do as much harm to their commonwealth by violating customs and traditions as by breaking laws.
• 
Instead, freedom requires constant reinvestment in and replenishment of a nation's traditions and ideals.
• 
Self-criticism of one's country is salutary to ensure needed changes, but only if Americans accept that an innately self-correcting United States does not have to be perfect to be good — and especially when, in a world of innately flawed humans and failed states, it remains far better than any of the alternatives abroad.
      The death of science  (JWR 09/17/2021)
• 
From rewarding wokeness in medical school admissions to the peer reviewing of scientific papers, the anti-scientific mania has polluted scientific endeavors.
• 
"Critical race theory" would preposterously tell us that we need racism to fight racism.
• 
"Critical legal theory" ludicrously claims that laws have no rational basis but simply reflect power inequities.
• 
"Modern monetary theory" defies millennia of evidence and basic logic in stating that governments can simply print money without worrying about balancing expenditures with revenues or inflating the currency to ruination.
• 
Corporations are now asked to substitute a new woke agenda theory — "Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance (ESG)" — in lieu of market realities, rules of investment and economic data.
• 
Science is dying; superstition disguised as morality is returning.  And we'll all soon become poorer, angrier and more divided.
      Victor Davis Hanson: Our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing America's trust – and wars  (Fox 09/05/2021)
• 
It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream.  President Joe 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 service members, 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.
• 
On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S.  Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women's Equality Day.
• 
If so, then is the opposite of diversity — unity — our weakness?
• 
The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI's active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco.
• 
The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.
• 
Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S.  Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.
• 
Yet until Jan.  20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.
• 
Recently retired Gen.  Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion 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 Nazi death camps.
• 
Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later.
• 
None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.
• 
More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden's missing laptop might be "Russian disinformation."
• 
They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.
• 
Retired Gen.  Joseph Dunford and retired Adm.  Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden's cognitive ability.
• 
OK.  But they should have issued a similar warning earlier, when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.
• 
Gen.  Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture.
• 
Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he "considered" resigning.
• 
Think of the irony.  If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.
• 
Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X.  Kendi's racialist diatribes.
• 
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America's top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
• 
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees.
• 
Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed "partners" in organizing our surrender and escape?
• 
Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban — a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S.  aircraft carriers?
• 
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
• 
Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
• 
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people — along with the wars it fights abroad.
• 
See related Woke General Milley (Dick Wright, 06/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Gen. Milley (David Hitch, 07/06/2021)) cartoon from USA picture album
      Victor Davis Hanson: Biden created the most heavily armed terrorist nation in history  (Fox 09/04/2021)
• 
"...  If you look at all the military aid that we have given Israel since the founding of the Jewish State, this is about 85% of that [which we gave] over a 70 year period."
• 
"We are all worried about the new aircraft carrier Gerald Ford [at] $12 billion; the most expensive aircraft carrier in history.  We could have had 7 of them for the price of weapons that we have left in Afghanistan."
• 
"So this is the greatest loss of military equipment in the history of warfare by one power.  It's absolutely staggering, and yet, we take it so nonchalantly: The people responsible for this should be either fired or resigned."
• 
... the Pentagon and White House "empowered a pre-civilizational terrorist band, making them into a considerable militia that will cause havoc for the next 20 years."
• 
"There is something terribly wrong with our military.  I don't know whether it is their distraction because of wokeness, as they go through the ranks and rosters trying to weed out potential, I don't know, ‘supremacists' — or they are just incompetent, or they are too worried about the revolving door of going in and out from defense contractor boards, but we need a bipartisan investigation of our top brass and the system."
• 
See related On the Other Hand... (David Hitch, 08/22/2021)) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
      There's a problem in the upper reaches of our military  (JWR 09/02/2021)
• 
Joe 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.
• 
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America's top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
• 
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees.
• 
Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed "partners" in organizing our surrender and escape?
• 
Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban — a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S.  aircraft carriers?
• 
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
• 
Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
• 
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people — along with the wars it fights abroad.
• 
See related Incompetent Duo (Dick Wright, 08/19/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      Does America still work?  (JWR 08/26/2021)
• 
For nearly two years, Americans have engaged in a great woke experiment of cannibalizing themselves.
• 
American civilization has invested massive labor, capital and time in an effort to constantly flagellate itself for not being perfect.
• 
Yet America's resilience and its resources are not infinite.  We are now beginning to see the consequences of what happens when premodern tribalism absorbs Americans.
• 
There are repercussions when ideology governs policy or when we take for granted the basics of life to pursue its trappings.
• 
Who cares whether the blow-dried media is woke if it cannot report the truth and keep politicians honest?
• 
Once journalists became progressive poodles rather than the watchdogs of government, the Biden administration had no fear of audit.
• 
Government-engineered "equity" has replaced the goal of equal opportunity.  But such utopianism births popular anger when personal initiative, excellence and performance do not count as much as virtue-signaling groupthink.
• 
The United States just suffered a terrible and shameful defeat in Afghanistan.  The catastrophe reminds us that the Biden administration had its politicized military and bureaucracy mostly fixate on diversity, equity and inclusion, and to root out supposed internal enemies.
• 
So, our top brass and functionaries talked of redirecting the military to every possible woke agenda — except ensuring military superiority and the safety of the United States.
• 
The result is the horrific mess of a premodern Taliban army routing the most sophisticated military in the history of civilization.  We shudder when America begs premodern tribes not to murder our citizens whom we abandoned in full retreat.
• 
Airline CEOs virtue-signal their wokeness by damning voter ID laws — though such identification is required to board their airplanes.
• 
Some universities now subject their admissions, their hiring and their research to race and gender directives.
• 
Are college administrators really so virtuous when they boast of improving diversity, equity and inclusion?  Why, then, do they ignore indebted and poorly educated graduates — veritable serfs who cannot afford homes, put off raising families and prolong their adolescence rather than becoming autonomous citizens?
• 
We know from centuries past which policies ensure public safety and which guarantee crime.  All laws must be enforced equally.
• 
Yet now, suicidal legal and critical race theories sometimes govern which laws are enforced and which are ignored.
• 
If a state attorney prosecutes crimes — or chooses not to prosecute them — on the basis of ideology and race rather than on questions of impartial law, then who would obey, much less honor any of them?
• 
The police must not just be monitored, but respected and supported.  Today they are defamed and defunded.
• 
If those who commit crimes do not expect to be arrested and punished, then crime pays.  And so we get more of it.
• 
Before a country can conduct cancer research, explore outer space or defeat its enemies thousands of miles away, its citizens must have access to affordable fuel, food and shelter.
• 
But ideologues now restrict irrigation water, gasoline supplies, power generation and timber production.
• 
Social media fights, the cancel culture wars between celebrities and elites, the virtue-signaling of academics and actors — all of it means nothing if Americans do not have safe roads; viable travel; affordable gas, food and housing; and safety in their homes.
• 
Increasingly, they do not have these things.  Woke leaders are losing the ability to do the hard and essential work of civilization, largely because they are obsessed with the dispensable.
• 
Until our officials can ensure a humane and sustainable standard of living, we have no business lecturing others abroad, much less conducting endless witch hunts of our own at home.
      Victor Davis Hanson: If Biden were a Republican, Dems in Congress would have impeached him.  They should  (Fox 08/22/2021)
• 
The American-nurtured Afghan military of the last 20 years that had suffered thousands of prior casualties evaporated in a few hours in the encirclement of Kabul.
• 
Enlistees apparently calculated that their own meager chances with the premodern Taliban were still better than fighting as a dependency of the postmodern United States — despite its powerful diversity training programs.
• 
Forces more powerful than the Taliban, in places far more strategic, will now leverage an ideologically driven but predictably incompetent administration, a woke Pentagon and politically weaponized intelligence communities.
• 
Why not, when Biden asks Russia's Vladimir Putin to request that Russian-related hackers be a little less rowdy in their selection of U.S.  targets?
• 
And why not, when our own military jousts with the windmills of "white supremacy" as Afghans fall from U.S.  military jets in fatal desperation to reach such a supposedly racist nation?
• 
Biden keeps repeating that he was bound by former President Donald Trump's planned withdrawal.  Really?
• 
A mercurial Trump repeatedly demonstrated that he was willing to use air power to protect U.S.  personnel and to bomb an Islamic would-be caliphate.  The Taliban knew that and so struck when Trump was gone.
• 
Biden claims he was bound by Trump's decision to withdraw and thus cannot be blamed for his reckless operation of a predetermined departure.
• 
But all Biden has done since entering office is destroy Trump pacts, overturning past agreements on energy leases, protocols with Latin America and Mexico on border security, and pipeline contracts.
• 
In a sane world, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense would resign.  We have heard for too long their careerist boasts about assigning climate change as their chief challenge.
• 
For too long they have virtue-signaled their critical race theory credentials to Congress.  For too long they have bragged about rooting out alleged white supremacists from their ranks.  For too long they have sparred with journalists while fighting Twitter wars and issuing cartoonish commercials attesting to their woke credentials.
• 
In other words, they sermonized on anything and everything — except their plans to prevent a humiliating military defeat of U.S.  forces and their allies.
• 
Our intelligence and investigatory agencies are just as morally suspect.  ... Current and retired intelligence lackeys and careerists all wasted years promulgating Russian "collusion." They swore Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian "disinformation."
• 
They surveilled and unmasked officials and hatched adolescent plots against an elected president.  All that was more important to their careers than warning of the growing threats in Afghanistan.
• 
In the aftermath of the Afghan debacle, we must de-politicize and de-weaponize these warped agencies and incompetent institutions.
• 
We could get a symbolic start by pulling security clearances from all retired operatives, officers and diplomats who go on television to offer partisan analysis.
• 
The retired and pensioned top brass should finally be held to account if they violate tenets of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.  When four-star generals lecture the nation that an elected president is a Mussolini or Nazi-like but keep mum during the greatest military setback in a half-century, they should forfeit exemptions from existing military codes.
• 
Retired officers who revolve in and out of corporate defense contractor boards and Pentagon billets should have a cooling-off period of five years before leveraging their inside knowledge of the Pentagon procurement labyrinth.
• 
As for Biden, his team in defeat threatens the victorious Taliban with possible ostracism from global diplomacy as the price of their illiberality.
• 
We are to assume that in between executing women, the Taliban will fear losing the chance to visit the U.N.  in New York.
• 
Biden has defied a Supreme Court ruling and assumed that it was a good thing to have broken the law.
• 
Under his watch, the fate of America's border, equal enforcement of the laws, economy, energy, safety from crime, foreign policy and racial relations have imploded — and in seven months no less.
• 
If Biden were a Republican, the current Democratic House would have impeached him.  It would have been right to have done so.
      'Woke' nonsense is warping everyday life  (JWR 08/12/2021)
• 
Have we ever had a president who made no pretense about destroying federal immigration law and asking of Americans what he does not ask of those entering the country illegally?
• 
Joe Biden has also conceded that his moratorium on housing evictions defied a Supreme Court ruling.  He added that he probably didn't have the legal authority to ignore the court but didn't really care.
• 
As in the case of demolishing immigration law, the president seems either unaware or proud that he is insidiously dismantling the Constitution.
• 
America has also never before seen such overt and multifaceted efforts to undermine the foundations of free-market capitalism.
• 
At a time of resurging GDP, low unemployment and record worker shortages, Biden has announced that renters can continue to avoid paying what they owe their landlords — even after a prior year of free housing.
• 
In a rebounding economy amid record debt, the government is still sending workers unemployment benefits that are more remunerative than the paychecks they would earn if employed.
• 
Such insanity not only means that labor-short employers can't provide goods and services to American consumers; the new ethos also institutionalizes the pernicious idea that it is smarter to stay home and be idle than to get a job and be productive.
• 
Biden is also considering further extending exemptions for the repayment of $1.7 trillion in student loans.  That amnesty will only further mainstream this growing notion that borrowing money entails no legal or moral obligation to pay it back.
• 
No one seems to acknowledge that both students and the universities that lured them to borrow knew the risks they were taking.
• 
Meanwhile, millions of American youth, the working classes who choose not to attend college, and those who paid off their loans or whose parents saved enough over the years to cover their tuition obligations will subsidize the debt evaders by paying higher taxes.
• 
Inflation is roaring back.  Soaring prices are a direct result of incentivizing the unemployed not to work, while discouraging manufacturers and producers of food, gas, oil, timber, mineral and metals.
• 
Rising crime rates are likewise not accidental.  Increasing crime is the logical result of releasing thousands of criminals from prison, defunding and defaming the police, and empowering woke mayors and prosecutors to contextualize crime as the fault of society, not the criminal.
• 
Race relations have regressed 50 years.  Under the fad of critical race theory, the color of our skin is now deemed essential to who we are.
• 
... the current woke revolution is an elite, top-down effort to smear a self-critical and always improving nation as some sort of contemporary racist hellhole.
• 
George Orwell would say of these cultural Marxists that they grab power in the present to reinvent the past in order to control our futures.
• 
All this multifaceted chaos is not just faculty lounge stuff.  We are beginning to see the collective craziness filter down to disruptions in our everyday lives.
• 
What started out as elite woke nonsense now warps daily life.  If we don't wake up from wokeness, we will continue on our sure trajectory to self-inflicted, systemic paralysis — followed by civilizational collapse.
      What is American wokeness really about?  (JWR 07/29/2021)
• 
The woke movement is a slicker, more sophisticated and far more grandiose version of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson's shakedowns of the 1990s.
• 
Those, at least, were far more honest in leveraging cash with charges of racism — and came without the academic gobbledygook of critical race theory.
• 
The problem is not just that most of America is exhausted from being smeared as racists, or hearing that a wonderful country — the most free, just, equitable, affluent and leisured in civilization's history — must continually pay penance for its past and present.
• 
The public is more tired of projectionist hypocrisy.  Those who scream the loudest are usually the most guilty of woke crimes.
• 
The woke madness coincides with an epidemic of crises that go largely ignored as a distracted America cannibalizes itself.
• 
The border is being breached at a time of pandemic.  Migrants barge in without either COVID-19 testing or vaccinations — during a coronavirus spike that has government officials talking about going door to door to roust out American citizens to get vaccinated.
• 
Whiteness is supposedly the cause of America's problems.  But our inner cities are suffering historic levels of violent crime.  Couldn't our critical race theory accusers take time out from their merchandising to address the soaring violence?
• 
The Biden administration denies that huge deficit spending and generous cash payments to workers fueled inflation.  But America hasn't seen anything like the current price hikes and labor shortages in the last 40 years.
• 
The military, CIA and FBI have lost the confidence of the public — and not just because of their woke politicking.
• 
They are perceived as distracted and ignoring their primary missions of winning wars, catching terrorists before they strike, and offering superb intelligence about our enemies.
• 
Wokeness is many things.  But increasingly it seems a cover for careerism, profiteering and utter incompetence.
      The secret that Biden, Obama, Hillary won't say aloud about today's Democratic Party  (Fox 07/17/2021)
• 
How often during the last year of wokeness have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions?
• 
University presidents with million-dollar salaries virtue-signal on the cheap their own sort of "unearned white privilege."
• 
Meghan Markle and the Obamas, from their plush estates, indict Americans for their biases.
• 
Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors Brignac decries the oppressive victimization she and others have suffered — from one of her four recently acquired homes.
• 
Do we need another performance-art sermon on America's innate unfairness from billionaire entertainers such as Beyonce, Jay-Z or Oprah Winfrey, or from multimillionaire Delta or Coca-Cola CEOs?
• 
During the 1980s cultural war, the left's mantra was "race, class and gender." Occasionally we still hear of that trifecta, but the class part has increasingly disappeared.
• 
The neglect of class is ironic given that a number of recent studies conclude class differences are widening as never before.
• 
Middle-class incomes among all races have stagnated, and family net worth has declined.  Far greater percentages of rising incomes go to the already rich.  Student debt, mostly a phenomenon of the middle and lower classes, has hit $1.7 trillion.
• 
So why are we not talking about class?  First, we are watching historic changes in political alignment.
• 
The two parties are switching class constituents.  Some 65% of the Americans making more than $500,000 a year are Democrats, and 74% of those who earn less than $100,000 a year are Republicans, according to IRS statistics.  Gone are the days of working people automatically voting Democratic, or Republicans being caricatured as a party of stockbrokers on golf courses.
• 
Increasingly, the Democrats are a bicoastal party of elites from corporate America, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, the media, universities, entertainment and professional sports.  All have made out like bandits from globalization.
• 
The Democratic Party does not wish to admit it has become the party of wealth.  All too often its stale revolutionary speechifying sounds more like penance arising from guilt than genuine advocacy for middle-class citizens of all races.
• 
The wealthy leftist elite has mastered the rhetoric of ridicule for the lower-middle classes, especially struggling Whites.
• 
Class is fluid; race is immutable.  So by fixating on race, the left believes that it can divide America into permanent victimizers and victims — at a time when race and class are increasingly disconnecting.
• 
The wealthy of all races are the loudest voices of the woke movement.  Their frequent assumptions of "victimhood" are absurd.
• 
Americans who struggle to pay soaring gas, food, energy and housing prices are berated for their "white privilege" by an array of well-paid academics, media elite and CEOs.
• 
Note that the woke military is the brand of admirals, generals and retired top brass on corporate boards, not of the enlisted.
• 
It's multimillionaire CEOs who bark at the nation for their prejudices, not saleswomen or company truck drivers.
• 
America is a plutocracy, not a genocracy.  Wealth, not race, is the factor most likely to ensure someone power, influence and the good life.
• 
The more the elites scream their woke banalities, the more they seem to fear that they, not most Americans, are really the privileged, coddled and pampered ones — and sometimes the victimizers.
      The systemic con behind wokeism  (JWR 06/24/2021)
• 
Wokeism ... illustrated a psychological pathology of projection: transferring one's own prejudices onto others in order to alleviate or mask them.
• 
Barack and Michelle Obama occasionally venture out of their multimillion-dollar Washington, D.C., mansion or their Martha's Vineyard estate to lecture the country on its systemic racism.
• 
Does such sermonizing square the circle that the Obamas have no desire to return to their Chicago home — a city where hundreds African-American males were murdered in 2020, most of them by other black men?
• 
The second catalyst of wokeism is the distraction it provides from scary problems that threaten American civilization.  While the country consumes itself in demanding more than 12% representation of Black actors in television commercials, it is nearing $30 trillion in national debt.
• 
The woke Biden administration can't stop hundreds of thousands of immigrants from illegally entering the United States this year.  Almost all are in need of free American health care, housing, food and legal subsidies.  Violent crime is spiking at an alarming rate.  Yet few dare say why that is — or how to stop it.
• 
America can't seem to face the likelihood that Chinese researchers engineered a gain-of-function virus — with oversight from the Chinese military and subsidies from the United States.
• 
So instead of offering real solutions to these crises, we war with each other over whether the deceased children's book author Dr.  Seuss or the plastic toy Mr.  Potato Head were racist or otherwise exclusionary.
• 
When our elites are clueless about national debt, inflation, illegal immigration, crime, soaring gas prices and a global pandemic, they reassure themselves that at least they can cancel out Father Junipero Serra or knock down another statue of Robert E.  Lee.
• 
Finally, the hysterias of wokeism are being channeled for profit — if they do not already reflect the reality of many of our most woke being the richest among us.
• 
For next-generation grifters such as Ibram X.  Kendi and Robin DiAngelo, to claim that America was, is and always will be racist means more than just speaking gigs and book sales.
• 
The solution for the pseudo-crises they invent is the mass reeducation of self-confessional whites — with lucrative consulting fees for both, and for thousands of others.
• 
America is systematically being conned by those who disguise their hypocrisy, who manipulate the guilt-ridden, who have no interest in solving America's most dangerous problems, and who get or stay rich by hyping an America in need of massive rebooting.
      This isn't your father's left-wing revolution  (JWR 06/10/2021)
• 
Starry-eyed radicals in the 1960s and 1970s dreamed that they either were going to take over America or destroy it.
• 
One of their favorite mottos was "Change it or lose it," even as protests focused on drugs, music, race, class, sex, fashion — almost anything and everything.
• 
Most of these silly revolutionaries were not unhinged Weathermen killers or SDS would-be communists, but just adolescents along for the good-time ride.
• 
With the end of the draft in 1972, the winding down of the Vietnam War, the oil embargoes and a worsening economy, the "60s revolution withered away.
• 
The "60s were at heart a narcissistic free-for-all, when "freedom" often entailed self-indulgence and avoiding responsibility.
• 
By 1981, the Reagan revolution finished off the dead-enders of the Woodstock generation.  Most eventually grew up.
• 
They rebooted their self-centered drug, sex and party impulses to fixations on money, status and material things.
• 
Sixties protestors mainlined divorce, abortion on demand, promiscuity, drug use and one-parent homes.  But by the late 1970s and the 1980s, most veteran cultural revolutionaries had gotten married, were raising a family, bought a house, got a job and made money.
• 
This time around, their offspring"s left-wing assault is different — and far more ominous.  The woke grandchildren of the former outsiders are now more ruthless systematic insiders.
• 
The woke and wired new establishment knows how to use money and power to rebirth America as something the founders and most current Americans never envisioned.
• 
Name one mainline institution that the woke left does not now control — and warp.  The media?  The campus?  Silicon Valley?  Professional sports?  The corporate boardroom?  Foundations?  The K-12 educational establishment?  The military hierarchy?  The government deep state?  The FBI top echelon?
• 
The left absorbed them all.  But this time around, members of the left really believe that "by any means necessary" is no mere slogan.  Instead, it is a model of how to disrupt or destroy American customs, traditions and values.
      Biden flirting with disaster – here's where division at home, weakness abroad will lead  (Fox 05/16/2021)
• 
Human nature stays the same across time and space.  That is why there used to be predictable political, economic and social behavior that all countries understood.
• 
The supply of money governs inflation.  Print it without either greater productivity or more goods and services, and the currency cheapens.  Yet America apparently rejects that primordial truism.
• 
The United States is more than $28 trillion in debt – about 130% of the country's annual gross domestic product.  The government will run up a $2.3 trillion budget deficit for 2021 after a record $3.1 trillion deficit the year before.
• 
The Biden administration still wants to borrow more – another $2 trillion in new social programs and "infrastructure."
• 
In the crazy last 100 days, the price of everything from lumber, food and gas to cars and houses has soared.  Yet many interest rates are still stuck at or below 3%.
• 
Jobs are plentiful; workers are not.  Is it a surprise when government handouts discourage the unemployed from taking a pay cut to go back to work?
• 
Are the old principles really obsolete?  Should we be printing money while expanding government debt?
• 
Is it wise to keep interest rates close to zero and to discourage employment, production and thrift?
• 
This dangerous behavior used to ensure inflation, followed by ruinous stagflation.
• 
Police response times have slowed in many places, perhaps because officers are worried about being fired for using force.
• 
The result?  In major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, homicide and violent crime rates have increased by double digits.
• 
State and local governments believed they were exempt from primeval laws of deterrence that warned when criminals assumed they would not be caught and punished, then they committed more crimes.
• 
The same dangers of ignoring unchanging human nature apply to foreign policy.
• 
Aggressive opponents such as Iran, North Korea, China and Russia expect that the Biden administration will ignore their brinkmanship.
• 
They assume the administration will cut American defenses.  And Biden sounds to them more critical of Trump foreign policy than of America's enemies.  Why not take previously unwarranted risks?
• 
Apparently, the Biden administration did not believe that dictatorships and theocracies would interpret its virtue signaling as weakness to be exploited rather than as magnanimity to be returned in kind.
• 
In the old days, the greater the impediments to crossing a nation's border – walls and the enforcement of laws – the less likely was illegal immigration.  Here too, the Biden administration apparently rejected the ancient warnings.
• 
Stopping construction of the border wall, promising amnesties in advance and damning the tough enforcement of the previous administration has only led to more illegal immigration.
• 
Refusing to call the chaos at the southern border a "crisis" did not mean it was not a disaster.
• 
Wisdom of the ages also warned that humans' first allegiance was to their own tribe, as defined by race, ethnicity or religion.
• 
That existential danger is why multiracial nations always wisely sought to tamp down tribal differences, and to emphasize common ties of citizenship and transcendent common interests.
• 
Otherwise, a diverse country ended up like Lebanon, Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia, where tribal feuding turned bloody and barbaric.
• 
Yet for three months, the Biden administration has emphasized racial differences rather than our melting-pot commonalities.
• 
It has stereotyped America's White population – hardly uniform in terms of class and ethnicity – as somehow uniformly enjoying unearned privileged and acting systemically racist.
• 
Amid such talk, the danger is that racial tensions will increase, hate crimes will spike, racial demagogues will dominate, meritocracy will vanish and tribal solidarity will replace it.  And the ancient idea of America will unwind.
• 
When an arrogant present dismisses the wisdom of the past, then an all too predictable future becomes terrifying.
      Are Americans becoming Sovietized?  (JWR 05/06/2021)
• 
What ultimately ended the nihilist Soviet system?  Was it not that Russians finally tired of the Kremlin's lies and hypocrisies that permeated every facet of their falsified lives?
• 
Here are 10 symptoms of Sovietism.  Ask yourself whether we are headed down this same road to perdition.
• 
1.  There was no escape from ideological indoctrination — anywhere.  A job in the bureaucracy or a military assignment hinged not so much on merit, expertise or past achievement.  What mattered was loud enthusiasm for the Soviet system.
• 
Wokeness is becoming our new Soviet-like state religion.  Careerists assert that America was always and still is a systemically racist country, without ever producing proof or a sustained argument.
• 
2.  The Soviets fused their press with the government.  Pravda, or "Truth," was the official megaphone of state-sanctioned lies.  Journalists simply regurgitated the talking points of their Communist Party partners.
• 
In 2017, a Harvard study found that over 90% of the major TV news networks' coverage of the Trump administration's first 100 days was negative.
• 
3.  The Soviet surveillance state enlisted apparatchiks and lackeys to ferret out ideological dissidents.
• 
Recently, we learned that the Department of Defense is reviewing its rosters to spot extremist sentiments.  The U.S.  Postal Service recently admitted it uses tracking programs to monitor the social media postings of Americans.
• 
4.  The Soviet educational system sought not to enlighten but to indoctrinate young minds in proper government-approved thought.
• 
Currently, cash-strapped universities nationwide are hiring thousands of diversity, equity and inclusion staffers and administrators.  Their chief task is to scan the admissions, hiring, curriculum and administration at universities.
• 
Like good commissars, our diversity czars oversee compliance with the official narrative that a flawed America must confess, apologize for and renounce its evil foundations.
• 
5.  The Soviet Union was run by a pampered elite, exempt from the ramifications of their own radical ideologies.
• 
Now, woke Silicon Valley billionaires talk socialistically but live royally.  ... 
• 
What unites current woke activists such as Oprah Winfrey, LeBron James Mark Zuckerberg and the Obamas are their huge estates and their multimillion-dollar wealth.  Just as the select few of the old Soviet nomenklatura had their Black Sea dachas, America's loudest top-down revolutionaries prefer living in Martha's Vineyard, Beverly Hills, Montecito and Malibu.
• 
6.  The Soviets mastered Trotskyization, or the rewriting and airbrushing away of history to fabricate present reality.
• 
Are Americans any different when they indulge in a frenzy of name-changing, statue-toppling, monument-defacing, book-banning and cancel-culturing?
• 
7.  The Soviets created a climate of fear and rewarded stool pigeons for rooting out all potential enemies of the people.
• 
Since when did Americans encourage co-workers to turn in others for an ill-considered word in a private conversation?  Why do thousands now scour the internet to find any past incorrect expression of a rival?  Why are there now new thought criminals supposedly guilty of climate racism, immigration racism or vaccination racism?
• 
8.  Soviet prosecutors and courts were weaponized according to ideology.
• 
In America, where and for what reason you riot determines whether you face any legal consequences.  Politically correct sanctuary cities defy the law with impunity.
• 
Jury members are terrified of being doxxed and hunted down for an incorrect verdict.  The CIA and FBI are becoming as ideological as the old KGB.
• 
9.  The Soviets doled out prizes on the basis of correct Soviet thought.
• 
In modern America, the Pulitzer Prizes and the Emmys, Grammys, Tonys and Oscars don't necessarily reflect the year's best work, but often the most politically correct work from the most woke.
• 
10.  The Soviets offered no apologies for extinguishing freedom.  Instead, they boasted that they were advocates for equity, champions of the underclass, enemies of privilege — and therefore could terminate anyone or anything they pleased.
• 
Our wokists are similarly defending their thought-control efforts, forced re-education sessions, scripted confessionals, mandatory apologies and cancel culture on the pretense that we need long-overdue "fundamental transformation."
• 
So if they destroy people in the name of equity, their nihilism is justified.
      American universities have lost their prestige  (JWR 04/30/2021)
• 
Not long ago, Americans used to idolize their universities.  Indeed, in science, math, engineering, medicine and business, many of these meritocratic departments and schools remain among the top-ranked in the world.
• 
Top-notch higher education explains much of the current scientific, technological and commercial excellence of the United States.
• 
After World War II — won in part due to superior American scientific research, production and logistics — a college degree became a prerequisite for a successful career.
• 
The university from the late 1940s to 1960 was a rich resource of continuing education.  It introduced the world's great literature, from Homer to Tolstoy, to the American middle classes.
• 
But today's universities and colleges bear little if any resemblance to postwar higher education.
• 
Even during the tumultuous 1960s, when campuses were plagued by radical protests and periodic violence, there was still institutionalized free speech.
• 
An empirical college curriculum mostly survived the chaos of the '60s.  But it is gone now.
• 
Instead, imagine a place where the certification of educational excellence, the Bachelor of Arts degree, is no guarantee that a graduate can speak, write or communicate coherently or think inductively.
• 
Imagine a place where after an initial trial period, a minority of elite employees receive lifetime job guarantees.
• 
The money devoted to non-teaching administrative costs is now about equal to the money devoted to classroom instruction.
• 
Imagine a place where "diversity" is the professed institutional ethos, while studies reveal that liberal faculty outnumber their conservative counterparts by over 10 to 1.
• 
Imagine a liberal place where in 2021 race can still be used as a criterion in selecting and rejecting applicants, choosing prospective dorm roommates, organizing segregated dorms and restricting access to special places on campus.
• 
Imagine a progressive place that once renounced unconstitutional "loyalty oaths" but now rebrands them as "diversity pledges" and requires reeducation and indoctrination training.
• 
Imagine a place with non-taxable endowments that restricts free speech and expression.  Nonprofit universities make it impossible for some speakers to lecture, and often suspend constitutionally protected due process for students facing particular allegations.
• 
Imagine a place loudly devoted to income, capital and marketplace equity measured against the reality that 800 of the largest colleges and universities hold more than $600 billion in endowments.
• 
Yet just 20 elite universities account for half that total.  And just four — Harvard, Yale, Stanford and Princeton — account for almost a quarter of all endowment funds.
• 
Imagine a liberal place that has upped its tuition and total costs far beyond the rate of inflation, with its graduates now collectively owing $1.7 trillion in student loan debt.
• 
Imagine a place that has institutionalized human rights but welcomes nearly 400,000 students from human rights-violating China — a great many of whom are the offspring of elite Communist Party members who provide a lucrative source of university income.
• 
Imagine a place where faculty and students now selectively change the names of campus streets, centers and buildings that honored supposedly illiberal, long-dead donors, graduates and former heroes.
• 
As long as universities produced highly educated and open-minded graduates at a reasonable cost and kept politics out of the lecture hall, Americans didn't care much about peculiarities such as tenure, legacy admissions, untaxed endowments, rebellious students and quirky faculty.
• 
But once they began to charge exorbitantly, educate poorly, politick continuously, indebt millions of people and act hypocritically, universities turned off Americans.
• 
Just as a sermonizing Hollywood grates when it no longer can make good movies, a once-hallowed but now self-righteous university seems hollow when it charges so much for so little.
      A nation's well-being hinges on only a few factors – is US teetering on the edge of ruin?  (Fox 04/24/2021)
• 
As Americans know from their own illustrious history, any nation's well-being hinges on only a few factors.
• 
Its prosperity, freedom and overall stability depend on its constitutional and political stability.  A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military.
• 
Perhaps most important is a first-rate inductive educational system.  Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm (often dependent on a reverence for the past) and secure borders.
• 
The ability to produce or easily acquire food, fuel and key natural resources ensures a nation's independence and autonomy.
• 
Unfortunately, in the last few months, all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have been put into doubt.
• 
The challenge is not just enemies abroad such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.  The greater problem lies within us, as we erode the inherited and acquired strengths that made us singular, both materially and spiritually.
• 
We are now witnessing a concentrated effort to alter the constitutional order and centuries of custom and tradition.  The left believes that's the only way it can retain its transient power, given the unpopularity of most of its current agenda.
• 
A nation's institutions are its bedrock.  Yet, the Electoral College and the Constitution's emphasis on individual states establishing voting laws are under assault.
• 
Already gone is the 176-year-old tradition of a pivotal November Election Day.  The 152-year-old nine-member Supreme Court, the 184-year-old Senate filibuster and the 62-year-old idea of a 50-state union are all being targeted by the New Democratic Party.
• 
Given that the last presidential election was hotly contested, that Democratic congressional majorities are minuscule and that the Supreme Court is unsympathetic, the left seeks to change the rules to stay in power rather than adjust its unpopular policies.
• 
We are running up vast multitrillion-dollar annual deficits as we race to a $30 trillion national debt.  More worrisome, our elites justify the spending with sophistries about debt being irrelevant, or inflation and stagflation being relics of the past — even as prices are now soaring.
• 
After costly strategic stagnation in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, our military is now turning on its own.  Some of the politicized top brass seem more worried about the politics of their own soldiers than the dangers of foreign militaries.
• 
Our public schools and colleges are systematically downplaying meritocratic curricula and substituting ideological, racial and cultural litmus tests.  Admissions now often hinge as much on race, gender and ethnicity as on quantifiable achievement.
• 
The First Amendment and Fifth Amendment, covering free speech and due process, have vanished from most college campuses.
• 
The year 2020 saw the most destructive riots in American history.  Yet very few of the looters, arsonists and rioters were ever indicted.  Most were never arrested.
• 
Whether government arrests violent protesters or those assembling en masse and breaking quarantines is contingent on their ideology.
• 
Private monopolies that control most of the written communications of Americans censor expression entirely on the basis of politics.
• 
Modern Jacobins seek to erase our founding in 1776.  Mobs tear down statues and deface monuments with impunity.  There is no consistent rhyme or reason to why the names of schools, institutions and streets are erased overnight — except the relative dangers of a nihilistic electronic mob.
• 
Our officials at the Justice Department and the United Nations either will not or cannot defend the history and reputation of their own homeland.
• 
Record natural gas and oil production has been giving the public affordable heating, cooling and transportation.  Self-sufficiency in energy made the United States exempt from worries over Middle Eastern wars and foreign oil embargos.
• 
Yet in just 100 days, energy prices have soared.  The Joe Biden administration has canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and limited energy leasing on federal lands, threatening to all but end our gas and oil independence in just a few years.
• 
In the drought-stricken West, key irrigation water is still being diverted from farms to the ocean.  Billions of dollars in farm aid are doled out on the basis of race.  And promised new regulations and estate taxes may well kill off what's left of family farms.
• 
Adam Smith said of successful nations that they have a lot of "ruin" in them.  He meant that a dissolute, leisured and ahistorical generation has to waste a lot of its generous inherited wealth before it runs out.
• 
We are learning how much will soon be left of what our ancestors bequeathed.  And the rest of the world is watching — some with glee, others with horror.
      How to start a war  (JWR 04/16/2021)
• 
Wars often arise from uncertainty.  When strong countries appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not.
• 
Every new American president is tested to determine whether the United States can still protect friends such as Europe, Japan, South Korea and Israel.
• 
And will the new commander in chief deter U.S.  enemies Iran and North Korea and keep China and Russia from absorbing their neighbors?
• 
Soon after Donald Trump left office, Vladimir Putin began massing troops on the Ukrainian border and threatening to attack.
• 
Putin earlier had concluded that Trump was dangerously unpredictable, and perhaps best not provoked.  After all, the Trump administration took out Russian mercenaries in Syria.  It beefed up defense spending and upped sanctions.
• 
The Trump administration flooded the world with cheap oil to Russia's chagrin.  It pulled out from asymmetrical missile treaties with Russia.  It sold sophisticated arms to the Ukrainians.
• 
The Russians concluded that Trump might do anything, and so waited for another president before again testing America.
• 
In contrast, Biden often talks provocatively a" while carrying a twig.  He has gratuitously called Putin "a killer." And he warned that the Russian dictator "will pay a price" for supposedly interfering in the 2020 election.
• 
Unfortunately, Biden's bombast follows four years of a Russian-collusion hoax, fueled by a concocted dossier paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the campaign of 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
• 
Biden and others claimed Trump was, in the words of Barack Obama's former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, a "Russian asset."
• 
If Biden is seeking to provoke a nation with more than 6,000 deliverable nuclear weapons, he is certainly not backing up his rhetoric with force.
• 
Biden may well decrease the Pentagon budget.  He also seems to have forgotten that Trump was impeached for supposedly imperiling Ukraine, when in fact he sold Ukraine weapons.
• 
While Biden was talking loudly to Putin, his administration was being serially humiliated by China.  Chinese diplomats dressed down their American counterparts in a recent meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.  They gleefully recycled domestic left-wing boilerplate that a racist America has no moral authority to criticize China.
• 
If Trump was unpredictably blunt, Biden is too often predictably confused.  And he appears frail, sending the message to autocracies that America's commander in chief is not fully in control.
• 
... as Russia puts troops on the Ukrainian border, China is flying into Taiwanese air space, testing its defenses and the degree to which the United States cares.
• 
For a half-century, American foreign policy sought to ensure that Russia was no closer to China than either was to the United States.  Now, the two dictatorships seem almost joined at the hip, as each probes U.S.  responses or lack thereof.  Not surprisingly, North Korea in late March resumed its firing of missiles over the Sea of Japan.
• 
In the Middle East, Biden inherited a relatively quiet landscape.  Arab nations, in historic fashion, were making peace with Israel.  Both sides were working to deter Iranian-funded terrorists.
• 
Under Trump, the United States left the Iran nuclear deal, which was a prescription for the certain Iranian acquisition of a nuclear weapon.  The theocracy in Tehran, the chief sponsor of terror in the world, was in its most fragile condition in its 40 years of existence.
• 
Now, U.S.  diplomats bizarrely express an interest in restoring cordial relations with Iran, rebooting the Iran deal and dropping sanctions against the regime.  If all that happens, Iran will likely get a bomb soon.
• 
More importantly, Iran may conclude that the United States has distanced itself from Israel and moderate Arab regimes.  One of two dangers will then arise.
• 
Either Iran will feel it can up its aggression, or its enemies will conclude they have no choice but to take out all Iranian nuclear facilities.
• 
Biden would do well to remember old American diplomatic adages about speaking softly while carrying a big stick, keeping China and Russia apart, being no better friend (or worse enemy) and letting sleeping dogs lie.
      Victor Davis Hanson: The 10 radical new rules that are changing America  (Fox 04/11/2021)
• 
1.  Money is a construct. It can be created from thin air.  Annual deficits and aggregate national debt no longer matter much.
• 
Prior presidents ran up huge annual deficits, but at least there were some concessions that the money was real and had to be paid back.  Not now.
• 
2.  Laws are not necessarily binding anymore. Joe Biden took an oath to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed." But he has willfully rendered federal immigration laws null and void.  ... Ideology governs when a law is still considered a law.
• 
How useful the crime is to the larger agendas of the left determines whether a victim is really a victim, and the victimizer really a victimizer.
• 
3.  Racialism is now acceptable. We are defined first by our ethnicity or religion, and only secondarily — if at all — by an American commonality.
• 
The explicit exclusion of whites from college dorms, safe spaces and federal aid programs is now noncontroversial.  It is unspoken payback for perceived past sins, or a type of "good" racism.
• 
Falsely being called a racist makes one more guilty than falsely calling someone else a racist.
• 
4.  The immigrant is mostly preferable to the citizen. The newcomer, unlike the host, is not stained by the sins of America's founding and history.
• 
Our elites believe illegal entrants more closely resemble the "founders" than do legal citizens, about half of whom they consider irredeemable.
• 
5.  Most Americans should be treated as we would treat little children. They cannot be asked to provide an ID to vote.
• 
"Noble lies" by our elites about COVID-19 rules are necessary to protect "Neanderthals" from themselves.
• 
Americans deserve relief from the stress of grades, standardized testing and normative rules of school behavior.  They still are clueless about why it is good for them to pay far more for their gasoline, heating and air conditioning.
• 
6.  Hypocrisy is passe. Virtue-signaling is alive.  Climate change activists fly on private jets.  Social justice warriors live in gated communities.  Multibillionaire elitists pose as victims of sexism, racism and homophobia.
• 
The elite need these exemptions to help the helpless.  It is what you say to lesser others about how to live, not how you yourself live, that matters.
• 
7.  Ignoring or perpetuating homelessness is preferable to ending it. It is more humane to let thousands of homeless people live, eat, defecate and use drugs on public streets and sidewalks than it is to green-light affordable housing, mandate hospitalization for the mentally ill and create sufficient public shelter areas.
• 
8.  McCarthyism is good.  Destroying lives and careers for incorrect thoughts saves more lives and careers. Cancel culture and the Twitter Reign of Terror provide needed deterrence.
• 
Now that Americans know they are one wrong word, act or look away from losing their livelihoods, they are more careful and will behave in a more enlightened fashion.  The social media guillotine is the humane, scientific tool of the woke.
• 
9.  Ignorance is preferable to knowledge. Neither statue-toppling, nor name-changing, nor the 1619 Project require any evidence or historical knowledge.
• 
Heroes of the past were simple constructs.  Undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees reflect credentials, not knowledge.  The brand, not what created it, is all that matters.
• 
10.  Wokeness is the new religion, growing faster and larger than Christianity. Its priesthood outnumbers the clergy and exercises far more power.
• 
Silicon Valley is the new Vatican, and Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and Twitter are the new gospels.
• 
Americans privately fear these rules while publicly appearing to accept them.  They still could be transitory and invite a reaction.  Or they are already near-permanent and institutionalized.
• 
The answer determines whether a constitutional republic continues as once envisioned, or warps into something never imagined by those who created it.
      Delta Airlines CEO, others prove that the woke revolution is not a grassroots movement  (Fox 04/08/2021)
• 
Ed Bastian made $17 million in 2019 as chief executive officer of Delta Airlines, Georgia's largest employer.  Bastian just blasted Georgia's new voting law.
• 
He thinks it is racist to require the same sort of ID to vote that Delta requires for its passengers to check in.
• 
Yet most Americans believe voting is a more sacred act than flying Delta and, moreover, may have noticed that Delta has partnerships with systemically racist China.
• 
The most privileged CEOs of corporate America — those who sell us everything from soft drinks and sneakers to professional sports and social media — now jabber to America about its racism, sexism and other assorted sins.
• 
The rules of cynical CEO censure are transparent.  First, the corporation never harangues unless it feels it has more to lose — whether by boycotts, protests or bad publicity — than it stands to gain in staying neutral and silent.
• 
Second, class concerns are never mentioned.  Bastian made about $65,000 for each working day of 2019.  In a sane world, he might seem a ridiculous voice of the oppressed.
• 
Third, CEOs never fear offending the conservative silent majority, who are assumed not to boycott or protest.
• 
The woke revolution is not a grassroots movement.  It is powered by a well-connected and guilt-ridden elite.
• 
Yet the religion of wokeness assumes that these high priests deserve exemptions.  Their wealth, credentials, contacts and power ensure none are ever subject to the consequences of their own sermons.
• 
Multimillion-dollar NBA stars blast America's "systemic racism." They utter not a word about Chinese re-education camps, the destruction of Tibetan culture or the strangulation of Hong Kong's democracy.  Players' salaries depend on coaxing a huge Chinese market to the game.
• 
Players' domestic endorsements hinge on a young, woke American clientele.  Defending the professional sports lifestyles of rich and famous stars apparently requires loud penance by blasting an unfair America.
• 
Examine almost any woke hotspot and a growing class divide is clear.  Academia?  Tenured administrators and university presidents pulling down seven-figure salaries are far more likely to virtue-signal their universities' "racism" than are untenured, poorly paid, part-time lecturers.
• 
It is easier for a college president to blather about his own "unearned privilege" than to support the rights of exploited part-time faculty — much less resign to give someone else a spot.
• 
The woke media?  Its clergy are elite network newsreaders, not so much reporters on the beat.
• 
The military?  The retired and current officers who lecture us on the evils of Donald Trump or promise to ferret out "insurrectionists" among the ranks are mostly generals and admirals — and some retired top-brass multimillionaires.
• 
The richest people in America — the heads of our biggest corporations — are the most likely to voice their derision for the unwoke lower and middle classes.  Ditto the multimillionaires of politics — Al Gore, Dianne Feinstein, John Kerry and Nancy Pelosi.
• 
Celebrity billionaires such as Jay-Z, George Lucas, Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey weigh in often about the oppression of the supposedly rigged system they mastered, but rarely about the plight of the less-well-paid in their own professions.
• 
So wokeness is medieval.  Sin is not given up as much as atoned for — and excused — through loud confessionals.
• 
Self-righteous elites rant about carbon footprints, needless border security, defunding the police, gun control and charter schools.
• 
But they rarely forgo their private jets, third and fourth homes, estate walls, armed security guards and prep schools.  Apparently, the more you rant about "privilege," the less you need to worry about your own.
• 
Wokeness is an insurance policy.  The louder the damnation of American culture, the more likely a career will be saved or enhanced.
• 
Wokeness is classist and elitist.  Those who made or inherited a fortune, got the right degree at the right school, made CEO or a four-star rank, live in the right ZIP code or know the right people believe they have earned the right to decide what is moral for their inferiors.
• 
So, some of them have created an entire vocabulary — "deplorables," "irredeemables," "clingers," "dregs," "chumps" and "Neanderthals" — for the peasants and losers who must do as they are told.
• 
Wokeness is not really about fairness for minorities, the oppressed and the poor, past or present.  It is mostly a self-confessional cult of anointed bullies, and hypocrites of all races and genders, who seek to flex, and increase, their own privilege and power.  Period.
      Trump impeachment trial takes center stage but world goes on while America sleeps  (Fox 02/14/2021)
• 
The Democratically controlled Senate just spent thousands of collective hours conducting an impeachment trial against a president who is no longer president.
• 
The president's acquittal on Saturday was predetermined, as in the first impeachment effort a year ago — and known to be so to the Democratic prosecutors.
• 
The constitutionally mandated presiding judge — the chief justice of the Supreme Court — refused to show up.
• 
The Democratically-controlled House of Representatives is busy ferreting out purportedly extremist Republican House members.  For the first time in memory, one party now removes committee members of the other.
• 
Yet for each Republican outlier, there is a corresponding Democratic firebrand member who has either called for violence or voiced anti-Semitic slurs — and yet will not be removed from House committees.
• 
The subtext to this madness is that the Democratic Congress, the new administration, the administrative state and the political left are obsessed with dismembering the presidential corpse of now citizen Donald Trump.
• 
Apparently, they fear that one day he will rise from the infernal regions to wreak his revenge.
• 
Yet few of our leaders are very worried about the existential crises left unaddressed by their obsessions with the ghost of Trump.
• 
Our allies, such as democratic France, warn America that it is cannibalizing itself — and becoming dangerous to others.  Our enemies, such as the totalitarian Chinese, are delighted with our suicidal wokeness.
• 
The cost is not just the expense of cleaning up the billions of dollars of destruction from the summer riots, the thousands of memorials and statues destroyed and defaced, the hundreds of schools and buildings to be renamed.
• 
Far more consequential is the suppression of creative thinking — from humanistic study to scientific research.
• 
Scholars, journalists, artists and educators feel they must mouth politically correct platitudes.  They constantly hedge their public discourse in fear of career cancellation.
• 
They strain to synchronize their research with some approved woke ideology to save their livelihoods.
• 
When professors must write "diversity statements" and hire, promote and fire on the basis of race, the model is not the U.S.  Constitution, but something out of contemporary China.
• 
No one pays much attention that our capital is now weaponized with soldiers in camouflage and barbed wire.
• 
Ex-military officers who once warned Donald Trump not to deploy federal troops to ensure the safety of the White House from Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators now are silent about a veritable army deployed in Washington.
• 
Joe Biden has signaled that all new pipeline construction is over.  Fracking on public lands is taboo.  The border is to become wide open.  Federal immigration law is now effectively nullified.
• 
Americans may soon have to be tested for COVID-19 before flying into or out of the country.  But undocumented immigrants will not be so COVID-19 certified when — illegally — they cross the border.
• 
Iran is bankrupt, isolated and roundly despised by most of the countries in the Middle East.
• 
Now America is doing its best to resuscitate the most radical and anti-American regime in the world — at the expense of our allies in the Arab world, Israel and America's own interests.
• 
While we are busy devouring each other, China is smiling because once-feared American capitalists have become laughable Keystone Cops.
      Our Animal Farm  (02/07/2021)
• 
The short, allegorical novel's human-like farm animals replay the transition of supposedly 1917 revolutionary Bolsheviks into cynical 1930s Stalinists.
• 
Thereby, they remind us that leftist totalitarianism inevitably becomes far worse than the supposed parasitical capitalists they once toppled.
• 
Orwell saw that the desire for power stamps out all ideological pretenses.  It creates an untouchable ruling clique central to all totalitarian movements.  Beware, he warns, of the powerful who claim to help the helpless.
• 
Something so far less violent, but no less bizarre and disturbing, now characterizes the American New New Left.
• 
It is completing its final Animal Farm metamorphosis as it finishes its long march through our cultural, economic, and social institutions.
• 
Leftists may talk of revolutionary transformation, but their agenda is to help friends, punish enemies, and to keep and expand power.
• 
First, remember the 1960s and 1970s agendas of the once impotent, young, and supposedly idealistic leftist revolutionaries.
• 
The First Amendment was said by them to be sacred, even as the "free speech movement" transitioned to the "filthy speech movement."
• 
Leftists sued to mainstream nudity in film.  They wanted easy access to pornography.  They mainstreamed crude profanity.
• 
The supposed right-wingers were repressed.  They were the "control freaks" who sought to stop the further "liberation" of the common culture.
• 
"Censorship" was a dirty word.  It purportedly involved the religious bigots and medieval minds that in vain had tried to cancel ideological and cultural mavericks...
• 
Only drunken "paranoids" like Joe McCarthy resorted to "blacklists." We were reminded that the inferior nuts tried to cancel the brilliant careers of their betters whom they disliked, or feared.
• 
Conservatives, the radicals lectured us, masked the poverty of their thinking by "red-baiting." They talked as if "commies" and "insurrectionists" were around every corner — in hopes of militarizing the country, and using police and troops to intimidate the "people."
• 
Snooping, surveillance, wiretaps — all that and more was awful — the purported work of nutty J.  Edgar Hoover.
• 
Hollywood went wild in the 1960s and 1970s by warning us about "them." Endless movies detailed the solo efforts of heroes, who were watched and threatened by the "government," working hand in glove, of course, with either corporations or the "rich."
• 
Fearing Russia was the mark of a conspiracist nut.  In films like "The Russians are Coming, the Russians Are Coming," we were reminded that the paranoia about the Soviets was as deadly as the Soviets themselves, who were pleasant enough, not much different from us.
• 
Students in the 1960s high schools were spoon-fed Nineteen Eighty-Four, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and other dystopian novels.  Orwell and Huxley warned them of the dangers of a super-spy apparat, a one-party state that reorders a docile subservient population, and the combination of "science" with thought control...
• 
So better to be an individualist, the Left preached, a rebel at war with all orthodoxy and conformity...
• 
On campus, professors began to drop F-bombs in class.  They dressed like students, tore down hierarchies between student and teacher ("Just call me Mike").
• 
Once staid academics now invited edgy campus speakers to blast America.  In melodramatic fashion, they considered themselves perennially teaching from the barricades.
• 
We were told that they were the frontline speakers of truth to power.  These were the nonconformists who had defeated loyalty oaths.
• 
Reporters were either iconoclastic Gonzos or shoe-leather investigators on the scent of deep state overreach.  They were obsessed with wrongdoing at the CIA and FBI.
• 
Generals were caricatured as caudillos, cigar choppers with shades, showy ribbons and bronze on their chests, and oversized hats and epaulets.  We were warned they threatened us with a militarized police state.
• 
Civil and women's rights were the twin pillars of the 1960s radicals.  ... The problem was never 1776 or 1787, but those who had not yet fully met the Founders' exceptional ideals.
• 
The good guys, the students, and the activists, if they only had power, were going to break up corporations, shame (or "eat") the rich, and bring in young, hip politicians.
• 
They would all push hard for assimilation and integration of the races, and the equality of the sexes in pursuit of universal equality of opportunity.
• 
Fast forward a half-century.  What did these now-late septuagenarians give America?
• 
We are now finally witnessing the logical fruition of their radical utopia: Censorship, electronic surveillance, internal spying, monopolies, cartels, conspiracy theories, weaponization of the intelligence agencies, pouring billions of dollars into campaigns, changing voting laws by fiat, a woke revolutionary military, book banning, bleeding the First Amendment, canceling careers, blacklisting, separate-but-equal racial segregation and separatism.
• 
Conspiracies?  Now they brag of them in Time.  Read their hubristic confessionals in "The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election."
• 
They are exactly what they once despised, with one key qualifier: Sixties crudity and venom are central to their metamorphosis.
• 
Our left-wing American revolutionary cycle from the barricades to the boardroom was pretty quick — in the manner that the ideology of the Battleship Potemkin soon led to Stalin's show trials, or Mao's "long march" logically resulted in the Cultural Revolution.
• 
The credo, again, is that the noble ends of forced "equity" require any means necessary to achieve them.
• 
The Left censors books in our schools, whether To Kill a Mockingbird or Tom Sawyer.  It is the Left who organizes efforts to shout down campus speakers or even allows them to be roughed up.
• 
The Left demands not free-speech areas anymore, but no-speech "safe spaces" and "theme houses" — euphemisms for racially segregated, "separate-but-equal" zones.
• 
The mere way we look, smile, or blink can indict us as counterrevolutionaries.  Stalin's Trotskyization of all incorrect names, statues, and commemoratives is the Left's ideal, as they seek to relabel Old America in one fell swoop.  No one is spared from the new racists, not Honest Abe, not Tom Jefferson, not you, not me.
• 
The Left spun conspiracy theories about computer pings in Trump Tower, and nefarious meetings of Trump's campaign officials colluding with Russian agents.
• 
The racist Covington kids, on the National Mall no less, mocked and insulted a noble indigenous combat veteran.  And Jussie Smollett fought off racist thugs while managing to hold his sandwich and cell phone, as he stumbled home with a racist rope around his neck, stained with iconic bleach.  "Hands up, don't shoot" should have been true, even if it wasn't.
• 
Assimilation and integration are not our goals.  Instead, we are to ferret out "cultural appropriation" and the odious culture of "white supremacy" and "unearned privilege."
• 
Deprogramming 74 million "whites" and "Republicans" is the advice on the pages of the progressive Washington Post.  Don't like an idea?  Then wash clean the polluted minds of those who embraced it.
• 
The new and improved ACLU's job is to encourage the suppression of conservative free speech.  ACLU trains its handlers not to protect unfettered speech, but to spot "hate speech."
• 
To advocate burning or destroying a book is not some nightmare from Fahrenheit 451, but a woke way to "stop the hate."
• 
The old racist boilerplate of apartment owners and realtors was "You can live anywhere you want, just not here." The new hate mantra of Silicon Valley cartels is, "You can tweet or socially post anywhere you like — if you can manage to find a place."
• 
Surveillance and spying are now good.  How else to ferret out "right-wingers," "white supremacists," and "insurrectionists"?
• 
So the FBI and CIA have transmogrified into heroic agencies run by stalwart social activist fighters like John Brennan, the old Gus Hall supporter, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe.
• 
What a wonderful world they have created: Eavesdropping on the national security advisor, forging FISA documents, spying on American citizens, aiding one presidential candidate by surveilling another.
• 
Militarization is now beautiful.  The U.S.  Army may become our People's Revolutionary Army as generals sniff out counterrevolutionaries hidden deeply in their ranks.  Maybe a cleansing purge or two is necessary, in the Soviet fashion.
• 
Barb-wiring the capitol and stocking it with camouflaged troops send the message that the military is, at last, woke and in control of America's central nervous system.  Corporate profiteering for retired generals and admirals is a necessary amplifier of their critical work.
• 
Bank of America helps to find out which enemy of the people bought which coffee where.
• 
Could we have ever stopped the hate without the help of billions of dollars from Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros?
• 
The media?  It is a Ministry of Truth.  Informers and readers beg the Great Leader to let drop his favorite flavor of ice cream or the details of the Oval Office makeover.
• 
There is no need for censorship: the media are the censors.  Whatever sinister idea a paranoid politician has for muzzling journalists, reporters themselves have already trumped it.  Pravda is their model.
• 
Who can be disinterested when there is a war to be fought for diversity and equity, against climate change and white supremacy?
• 
The revolutionary animals are now running the farm in a way that would be nightmarish even to Farmer Jones.
• 
They won.  They are now one with — but also far, far worse than — what they rebelled against.
      Biden leads the most radical left-wing movement in US history – will he pay a price?  (Fox 02/06/2021)
• 
... social, cultural, economic and political extremism prompt reactions — and sometimes counterreactions.
• 
The Bush-Clinton-Obama continuum of 24 years cemented the bipartisan fusion administrative state.  Trump and his "Make America Great Again" agenda were its pushback.
• 
The counterreaction to the populism of the Trump reset — or Trump himself — is as of yet unsure.
• 
Joe Biden's tenure may mark a return to business as usual of the Bush-Clinton years.  Or, more likely, it will accelerate the current hard-left trajectory.
• 
Either way, it seems that Biden is intent on provoking just such a pushback by his record number of early and often radical executive orders — a tactic candidate Biden condemned.
• 
On almost every issue — open borders, blanket amnesties, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, promoting the Green New Deal, and hard-left appointees — Biden is touting positions that likely do not earn 50 percent public support.
• 
When Biden made a Faustian bargain with his party's hard-left wing of Sens.  Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to win the election, he took on the commitment to absorb some of their agenda and to appoint their ideologues.
• 
But he also soon became either unwilling or unable to stand up to them.
• 
Now they — and the country — are in a revolutionary frenzy.  The San Francisco Board of Education has voted to rename more than 40 schools honoring the nation's best — Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln — largely on racist grounds that they are dead, mostly white males.  Statues continue to fall.  Names change.
• 
The iconic dates, origins and nature of America itself continue to be attacked to meet leftist demands.  And still, it is not enough for the new McCarthyites.
• 
Social media are banning tens of thousands.  Silicon Valley and Wall Street monopolies go after smaller upstart opponents.
• 
A wrong word destroys a lifelong career.  Formerly sane pundits now call for curtailing the First Amendment.
• 
Thousands of federal troops blanket a now-militarized Washington, D.C.
• 
If Trump's pushback tried to return to traditions ignored during the Obama years, Biden's reset promises to become far more radical than Obama's entire eight years.
• 
Trump likely lost his second pushback term for two reasons — neither of which had anything to do with his reset agenda.
• 
First, the sudden 2020 pandemic, quarantine, recession, summer-long demonstrations and riots, and radical changes in voting laws all ensured that 100 million ballots were not cast on Election Day, derailed a booming economy, and finally wore the people out.
• 
Second, Trump underestimated the multitrillion-dollar power and furor of Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the media, Hollywood and the progressive rich.  Those forces all coalesced against him and swamped his outspent and outmanned campaign.
• 
With 24/7 blanket ads, news coverage, endorsements and social media messaging, Trump sometimes was easily caricatured as a twittering disrupter.
• 
The inert and mute Biden in his basement was reinvented as the sober and judicious Washington "wise man" antidote to Trump's unpredictability.
• 
... Biden is now unapologetically leading the most radical left-wing movement in the nation's history.
• 
... the idea of just one term has liberated the 78-year-old Biden.  ... Some old guys can feel their careers only have a few remaining years and might as well go out with a bang — and a legacy.
• 
How ironic that Biden will not just be pushed and pressured by the radicals whom he brought to power, but he may be leading them forward to cement an even harder-left legacy.
• 
The left is assured that radical changes in voting laws and demography, the fears of COVID-19, the Antifa-Black Lives Matter uprising and anger at Trump over the Jan.  6 Capitol riot have all permanently changed the electorate — and pushed it further leftward.
• 
If they are wrong, they have instead alienated and insulted the American people, and will reap the whirlwind in 2022 of the wind they are now sowing.
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Worst Cooks (Gary Varvel, 01/25/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Biden\\\'s Brain Trust (Gary Varvel, 07/20/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Thoughts on the 1776 Commission and its report  (JWR 01/21/2021)
• 
The unanimously approved conclusions focused on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the historical challenges to these founding documents and the need for civic renewal.
• 
The 16-member commission was diverse in the widest sense of the familiar adjective.  It included historians, lawyers, academics, scholars, authors, former elected officials and past public servants.
• 
First, the commission offered a brief survey of the origins of the Declaration of Independence, published in 1776, and the Constitution, signed in 1787.
• 
It emphasized how unusual for the age were the founders' commitments to political freedom, personal liberty and the natural equality endowed by our creator — all the true beginning of the American experiment.
• 
The commission reminded us that the founders were equally worried about autocracy and chaos.  So they drafted checks and balances to protect citizens from both authoritarianism, known so well from the British Crown, and the frenzy of sometimes wild public excess.
• 
The report repeatedly focuses on both the ideals of the American founding and the centuries-long quest to live up to them
• 
It notes the fragility of such a novel experiment in constitutional republicanism, democratic elections and self-government — especially during late-18th-century era of war and factionalism.
• 
The report does not whitewash the continuance of many injustices after 1776 and 1787 — in particular chattel slavery concentrated in the South, and voting reserved only for free males.
• 
Indeed, the commission explains why and how these wrongs were inconsistent with the letter and spirit of our founding documents.
• 
So it was natural that these disconnects would be addressed, even fought over, and continually resolved — often over the opposition of powerful interests who sought to reinvent the Declaration and Constitution into something that they were not.
• 
Two of the most widely referenced Americans in the report are Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr.  Both argued, a century apart, for the moral singularity of the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
Neither wished to replace the founders' visions; both instead demanded that they be fully realized and enforced.
• 
The report details prior ideological and political challenges to the Constitution as we approach America's 250th birthday.
• 
Some were abjectly evil, such as the near-century-long insistence that the enslavement of African Americans was legal — an amorality that eventually led to more than 600,000 Americans being killed during a Civil War to banish it.
• 
Some ideologies, such as fascism and communism, were easily identifiable as inimical to our principles.
• 
Both occasionally won adherents in times of economic depression and social strife before they were defeated and discredited abroad.
• 
Perhaps more controversially, the commission identified other challenges, such as continued racism, progressivism and contemporary identity politics.
• 
The report argued how and why all those who insisted that race might become a basis from which to discriminate against entire groups of people were at odds with the logic of the Declaration.
• 
Historically, progressivism assumed that human nature is malleable.  With enough money and power, Americans supposedly can be improved to accept more paternalistic government, usually to be run by technocrats.
• 
Often they sought to curb the liberties of the individual, under the guise of modernist progress and greater efficiency.
• 
The commission was no more sympathetic to the current popularity of identity politics or reparatory racial discrimination.
• 
It argued that the efforts to insist that race, ethnicity, sexual preference and gender define who we are, rather than remain incidental in comparison to our natural and shared humanity, will lead to a dangerous fragmentation of American society.
• 
Finally, the commission offered the unifying remedy of renewed civic education.  Specifically, it advocates far more teaching in our schools of the Declaration and the Constitution, and other documents surrounding their creation.
• 
The commission may be short-lived with the change of administrations, given that it was born in the chaos of the divisive present.  President Joe Biden reportedly planned to terminate the commission through an executive order.
• 
But any fair critic can see that the report's unifying message is that we are a people blessed with a singular government and history, that self-critique and moral improvement are innate to the American founding and spirit, and that America never had to be perfect to be both good and far better than the alternatives.
      Assault on the Capitol has let loose the electronic octopus  (JWR 01/14/2021)
• 
Two days after the 2020 election, a defiant Kathy Griffin retweeted the notorious picture of her holding a prop that looked like the bloody head of a decapitated Donald Trump.
• 
Earlier last year, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted out a call to his followers to destroy Israel.
• 
Both tweets passed the censorship rules of Twitter's 20-something judges in San Francisco.
• 
In contrast, Trump has been banned for life from Twitter and barred indefinitely from Facebook.  Twitter said in a statement it excluded Trump "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
• 
The president had called for thousands of his followers to assemble at a massive Washington, D.C., rally protesting the results of the election.
• 
Splinter groups broke off from the massed protesters.  Some stormed into the halls of Congress, Social media platforms canceled Trump after he urged his followers, albeit "peacefully and patriotically," to go protest at the U.S.  Capitol, where the mayhem followed.
• 
After the assault — and after Democrats won the presidency, kept the House, took the Senate and threatened to pack the Supreme Court — furor broke out against Trump.  The outrage included the banning of Trump and some of his supporters from social media.
• 
Is Madonna banned from social media?  Shortly after the 2017 inauguration, she voiced a desire to blow up the White House with the Trump family in it.
• 
Is AK-47-toting rapper Raz Simone banned from social media?  He took over a swath of downtown Seattle last June and declared it an autonomous zone.
• 
For weeks, his armed guards reigned supreme without worry of police.  There were at least four shootings and two deaths in or around Simone's kingdom.
• 
He was neither prosecuted nor deplatformed from social media.  The lyrics of his song "Shoot at Everyone" are full of allusions to violence, racial slurs and stereotypes.
• 
With an unpopular Trump on the way out, and with control over the levers of government, members of the left abruptly settled all their old scores.
• 
Their aim was not just to humiliate opponents but to curtail opponents' ability to organize against them.
• 
This time around there will be no progressive trustbusters or muckrakers.  They are in league with, or bought off by, the new electronic octopus.
• 
And its tentacles are strangling the thoughts and speech of an increasingly unfree America.
      Biden should beware of Nemesis  (JWR 12/17/2020)
• 
Joe Biden will be our next president.  But he will face Nemesis in a way that few other presidents have ever encountered the cruel Greek god.
• 
Biden's hubris and that of the media/Democratic Party fusion almost guarantee such divine retribution.
• 
Once the last of the other Democratic primary candidates dropped out and Biden was nominated, all prior negative media stories about his apparent cognitive decline and his family's financial entanglements disappeared.
• 
From April 2020 on, a virtual news blackout surrounded Biden.  His rare interviews were scripted.  Biden communiques were teleprompted.  Press conferences were either nonexistent or revolved around his favorite milkshake or his socks.
• 
Mentions of Hunter Biden's business dealings in China and Ukraine were taboo.  It was sinful to reference reports of a Hunter Biden email allegedly detailing a 10 percent distribution of such revenue to the "Big Guy" — presumably Joe Biden.
• 
Unlike Donald Trump, Joe Biden never really campaigned.  After the primaries, he outsourced his fall 2020 campaign to subordinates and pet journalists to attack Trump.
• 
So is Biden the centrist old Joe from Scranton, or the recently reinvented hard-left running mate of Kamala Harris?  Both or neither?
• 
A President Biden cannot avoid the press forever.  He will soon face unscripted meetings with foreign leaders.  He will have to meet dozens of movers and shakers each week.
• 
Is he or the nation prepared for the consequences of his return to normality after nearly a year of media fawning and forced isolation?
• 
Given the Democrats' Faustian bargain with their leftmost faction, destructive rumors about Biden's faculties or his family's financial escapades will more likely come from his own party's left wing, eager for a Harris presidency, rather than from the Republican opposition.
• 
Biden will enter office with an ethical cloud hanging over his head — one that could have been vetted and adjudicated rather than blacked out for most of 2020.  His son, brother and perhaps family associates may talk if faced with FBI and IRS probes, if not a special counsel investigation.
• 
It will not help Biden that to defeat Trump, many of our institutions were deformed.  Special counsels usually never receive a blank check — 22 months and $32 million — to assemble a team of partisans to investigate a new president on mostly hearsay evidence and an opposition-concocted dossier.
• 
But that precedent ended with the ill-conceived Robert Muller investigation.  By spring, Biden could have done to him what was done to Trump — and what Biden himself so frequently cheered on.
• 
Should the Republicans hold the Senate and take the House in 2022, they could do what the Democrats did in 2020.  But if they were to impeach Biden as a possible beneficiary of his family's foreign influence-peddling, a Republican-controlled Senate might not so easily acquit him.
• 
Biden variously called Trump supporters "ugly folk" and "chumps." He compared the president to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's Nazi propagandist.  Biden smeared Trump by referring to him as the nation's first racist president.
• 
Half the nation will take some time to forget all that.  The repair of warped protocols will take longer, given that the left forgot the ancient Thucydidean warning to us not to destroy the very institutions whose protections one day we may need.
• 
Biden should hope that a rogue FBI does not conduct freelance investigations of him the way it did to Trump.  Let Biden pray there is not a partisan medical community to diagnose him as impaired and suited for 25th Amendment removal, as was the case with Trump.
• 
Biden should hope that if Republicans hold the Senate in January, they do not mimic the Democratic habit of voting against nearly every Trump nominee.
• 
So let us celebrate Biden's call to unity.
      Will Trump ride off into the sunset?  (JWR 11/12/2020)
• 
I once wrote that whenever Donald Trump exits office, he will likely leave as a "tragic hero."
• 
The outsider deliverers are suspiciously seen as self-absorbed.  Their methods bother an endangered, polite society, even as they begin to bring it results.
• 
A wounded Shane will ride off into the sunset in the snowy Grand Tetons, assured that the danger is past but knowing there is no place in a now-calm range for his six-gun that brought others justice and peace.
• 
Foul-mouthed Patton, with his ivory-handled pistols, is often recalled more as a madman who believed in reincarnation than as a genius who saved thousands of GIs.
• 
A cigar-chomping LeMay, more than anyone, destroyed Imperial Japanese industry and created an effective Cold War deterrent.  He ended up caricatured as a nut in the film "Dr.  Strangelove."
• 
Quietly, many Americans knew that unchecked illegal immigration was undermining the melting pot and eroding the idea of legal immigration.
• 
Some feared it was a matter of when, rather than if, communist China would rule the world.
• 
Many people were tired of "endless" wars in the Middle East, even as America kept getting sucked into them.
• 
Republicans knew that an originalist court was necessary to save the Constitution, but Republican presidents nonetheless often nominated future liberal justices.
• 
Conservatives hammered away at the principle that late-term abortion was wrong but feared that taking on Planned Parenthood was suicidal.
• 
Republicans rightly suspected that they were being typecast as a party of aristocratic golfers but were scared of the changes needed to appeal to the working classes, both black and white.
• 
So in 2016 the peasants sought outside deliverance and so it came — orange skin, dyed hair, Queens accent and all.
• 
The more Trump beat back Robert Mueller's dream team, impeachment efforts and the terrible year 2020, the more his beneficiaries worried about his tweets, his bluster and his self-absorption.
• 
The more the economy boomed, and the more Trump recalibrated foreign policy and changed the status quo with China and the Middle East, the more the public could afford to listen to charges of Trump excess.
• 
So here we are in the wake of the most contested election in memory, and Trump may be officially declared the loser — even after he won his struggle to stop America's leftward drift.
• 
Often, Hollywood epics and even some Sophoclean tragedies have a sequel.  And perhaps Donald Trump will too, even if he is forced to ride off into the 2021 sunset — at least for now.
      Victor Davis Hanson: 2020 election is not really about a choice between Trump vs.  Biden  ()
• 
In traditional presidential campaigns, the two major parties offer contrasting ideas and policies.  The Democratic and Republican candidates barnstorm the nation to make their cases.
• 
Not this year.  Democratic nominee Joe Biden is more or less a virtual candidate, mostly communicating from home via Zoom.  He offers few detailed alternatives to the first four years of the Trump administration.
• 
Instead, Biden is running on the idea that Donald Trump caused the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic recession, and that he's responsible for violence in the streets.
• 
But Biden rarely offers contrasting visions of what he would have done differently than the Trump administration...
• 
Even in the final days of the race, Biden is making far fewer campaign appearances than Trump.
• 
The challenger is outsourcing to the media his defense against allegations that the Biden family has peddled influence to foreign interests for millions of dollars that were routed into family coffers.
• 
An inert Biden is playing the role of good ol' Joe from Scranton, while his supporters hope not to just to change presidency, but to alter the very rules of how America has been governed for decades and even centuries.
• 
Not long ago, the left favored the Electoral College.  California, New York and Illinois gave Democrats more than 100 automatic Electoral College votes.
• 
Now, furious progressives plan to end the constitutionally mandated Electoral College by hook or crook.  They feel it is no longer serves their election purposes.
• 
Ditto the traditional structure of the Supreme Court.  For nearly 60 years, a left-leaning Supreme Court revolutionized American cultural and political life with progressive decisions.
• 
The majority on the court advanced liberal agendas that often found little support in referenda, state legislatures and Congress.
• 
Even Republican-appointed judges often flipped from conservative to liberal in the progressive culture of Washington.  ... Almost no Democratic-appointed justices turned traditional and conservative.
• 
The Supreme Court includes two of Barack Obama's liberal nominees, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
• 
Trump now has appointed three traditionalist (and relatively young) justices to lifetime spots on the Supreme Court.
• 
Ironically, he was empowered to so after Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the Senate rules in 2013, reducing the threshold for approval of executive and judicial nominees from 60 votes to 51 votes.
• 
... Reid ensured that Trump and a Republican-controlled Senate could appoint conservative judges at will under the new rules.
• 
If elected president, Joe Biden would likely "pack" the Supreme Court with additional slots.  That enlargement would ensure new activist left-wing justices.
• 
The left also wants to pack the Senate — and change the rules.  Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., would become new states.  Their admission would end the tradition of 50-state America and would likely mean another four Democratic senators.
• 
A Biden presidency and Democratic-controlled Senate would also quickly kill off what is left of the filibuster.
• 
Democrats wish to ensure that a surviving Republican minority could not impede progressive agendas in the same manner that the Democratic minority has stopped Republican legislation in recent years.
• 
In sum, the 2020 election is not just about Joe Biden sitting on a perceived lead and trying to run out the clock against barnstorming incumbent President Trump.
• 
It is really a choice between changing rules when they are deemed inconvenient and respecting constitutional norms and long-held traditions that have served America well for many years.
      COVID has radically disrupted American habits and behavior.  What's next for us?  (Fox 10/25/2020)
• 
The coronavirus, widespread quarantines, an unprecedented self-induced recession, and unchecked rioting, looting and protesting — all in a presidential election year — are radically disrupting American habits and behavior.
• 
Those more fortunate wonder why they should get bogged down with commutes and urban traffic — or navigate city sidewalks amid homelessness, crime, racial tensions and urban unrest — when they can make as much money while staying distant in quieter landscapes.
• 
Many of the people who have never before owned firearms are no longer clamoring for gun control.  A "man's home" is now becoming his armed castle.
• 
As a general rule, any business or activity that does not bother, judge or lecture Americans and instead allows them to work or relax in peace is preferred.
• 
Why are Amazon and Walmart booming while smaller businesses are going broke?  Largely because home delivery better serves those who are barricaded at home, terrified both of the virus and government reaction to it.
• 
Family businesses are not vertically integrated.  They have few cash reserves and no special insider exemptions from government officials.
• 
How ironic that in our quest to become safe and in control of our own destinies, we empower the anonymity of huge conglomerates and erode the viability of reliable, service-friendly, mom-and-pop stores.
• 
For the first time in their careers, many teachers and professors are careful not to go off-topic and rant to their high school and college students.
• 
Their video streams are not only seen by captive student audiences but occasionally peeked in on by the parents and taxpayers who pay their salaries.
• 
This is the first autumn in memory that a huge percentage of college students are staying home.  And no one is sure of the ensuing consequences.
• 
Will students revolt over borrowing money simply to watch lectures on their basement computers?
• 
Will they be less likely to vote in November when they are isolated at home, rather than congregating on campus near polling places and subject to constant peer pressures to vote — and to do so in predictable ways?
• 
With college revenues dropping, will ambitious promises to hire more diversity administrators, build more self-segregated racial theme houses and increase campus social services be seen as just more costly overhead that shorts classroom teaching?
• 
During the pandemic, government has become more intrusive and yet seemingly more impotent and incompetent.
• 
Pick a month and some government official issues yet more contradictory orders on mask-wearing, social distancing and lockdowns — all to be soon reversed.
• 
Taxes stayed high and yet urban services got worse.  Increasingly, American city dwellers don't always count on the power going on when they flip the switch, or the bus or train always showing up, or the police always answering 911 calls.
• 
We still do not know the full consequences of these radical changes in American life, especially whether they will continue after the COVID-19 virus abates and quarantines end.
• 
The cultural currents are often contradictory.  They defy easy political analysis and seem at times counterintuitive.  But there is one historical constant.
• 
When institutions and politicians cannot accommodate radically changed circumstances, people will no longer value institutions and politicians.
• 
In their place, citizens will seek to ensure their own livelihoods, leisure and safety in ways that are more reliable and affordable — with their circumstances in their own hands rather than in those of distant others.
• 
And their adjustments won't always be calm or polite.
      Victor Davis Hanson: US Constitution and traditions are under attack by Democrats  (Fox 10/19/2020)
• 
Democrats are waging war against traditions and the Constitution.  Several of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates favored the abolishment of the Electoral College.
• 
The Founding Fathers saw a purpose in the Electoral College.  It ensured that small, rural states would retain importance in national elections.
• 
The Electoral College lessens the chance of voting fraud affecting the outcome of a national vote by compartmentalizing the outcome among the various states.
• 
It usually turns the presidential election into a contest between two major parties that alone have the resources to campaign nationwide.
• 
Yet to change the U.S.  Constitution is hard — and by intent.
• 
Historically, a constitutional n amendment has required a two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress and an additional ratification by three-fourths of the states through votes of their legislatures.
• 
But now there is a chance that some states could render void the Electoral College without formally amending the Constitution.
• 
To circumvent the Constitution, Democrats have pushed "The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," an agreement among a group of states that would force state electors to vote in accordance with the national popular vote and ignore their own state tallies.
• 
Already, 15 states that have 73 percent of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency have joined.
• 
Liberal academics are supporting an array of other proposed constitutional changes as well.
• 
They ask: Why do two Wyoming senators each represent about 290,000 voters while each California senator represents 20 million?
• 
Forget that the founders established a constitutional republic, not a radical democracy, in order to check and balance popular and often volatile public opinion.
• 
One way was by creating an upper-house Senate that would slow down the pulse of the more populist House of Representatives.
• 
Nevertheless, there is an ongoing effort to dream up ways to create more, and apparently liberal, senators — to change the rules rather than the hearts and minds of the voters.
• 
Turning to another issue, there is nothing in the Constitution that specifies the exact size and makeup of the Supreme Court.
• 
It only offers guidance on how justices are appointed and confirmed, and that there will be a chief justice.
• 
But since 1869, the Supreme Court has been fixed at eight associate justices and one chief justice.
• 
Democratic presidential primary candidates ... said they would consider ending that 151-year tradition and "pack" the court with additional justices in the fashion of President Franklin D.  Roosevelt's failed 1937 effort.
• 
In his eulogy for Lewis, Obama also called for an end to the Senate filibuster.  He claimed it was a racist relic from the Jim Crow era used to stymie needed social change.
• 
Democrats were perfectly happy with the filibuster — or the mere threat of the filibuster — from 2017 to 2019, when the Democratic Senate minority blocked much of the Trump agenda.
• 
But efforts to change time-honored rules for short-term gain are becoming more common.
• 
Sanctuary cities nullify federal immigration law to empower illegal immigration.  The nonenforcement of laws against rioting and looting has become common in big cities.  The First Amendment is inert on college campuses.
• 
The left should beware.  Politics are volatile and often change.  When Democrats destroy longstanding rules for short-term advantage, they may regret it when they too are in need of sober traditions and the U.S.  Constitution.
      Victor Davis Hanson: Violent rioters and anarchists – here's what they want  (Fox 08/27/2020)
• 
It is hard to tell what the current revolutionary violence in our major cities is all about.
• 
So far, hundreds of police have been injured, dozens of people have been killed, and we have seen billions of dollars in property and collateral damage.
• 
Ostensibly, many of the summer demonstrations were in protest over the gruesome detention and death of George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
• 
Yet three months later, few of those trying to burn down a Portland police precinct – with police barricaded inside – or looting the high-end boutiques of Chicago's Magnificent Mile, or indiscriminately beating up innocent pedestrians, appear to be driven by Floyd's death.
• 
Many simply wanted to vent their rage at the world and almost everything in it.
• 
The media romanticized the "summer of love" unrest and downplayed the violence.
• 
Many in the street seemed as interested in taking selfies as they were in smashing windows.
• 
Some cite furor directed at President Trump, the tensions of an election year and the weaponization of almost every current issue by both political parties.
• 
Still others claim the violence is mostly careerist-driven.  Demands are made to fire ideological enemies and hire partisan friends.
• 
If the old guard is banished, then their lucrative billets can be snapped up by a new woke generation.  Demagogues see political careers birthed with the bullhorn.
• 
None of these explanations are mutually exclusive.  But all reflect confusion over why often senseless vandalism has been directed at statues of Ulysses S.  Grant and Frederick Douglass, and at the World War II Memorial.
• 
Why do liberal authors and artists fear there is a new McCarthyite cancel culture that threatens to take out even progressive sympathizers?
• 
Why do city governments defund police departments at the very moment vulnerable residents are most fearful for their safety?
• 
Note that there are rarely demands from antifa for new statues, given that the protesters' own heroes are often more flawed than the historical figures whose statues they deface and destroy.
• 
What, then, is going on?
• 
As with most cultural revolutions that wish to start things over at "year zero," the violence is aimed at America's past in order to change its present and future.
• 
The targets are not just the old majority culture but also classical statues and buildings, hallowed institutions, religious icons, the renowned names of streets and plazas, and almost every representation of tradition and authority.
• 
For the majority of Americans who do not buy into the revolution, it all seems so surreal – and hypocritical.
• 
Only a despised, dynamic American economy allows millions to divorce from it for a summer of protest.
• 
A ridiculed U.S.  Constitution ensures that looters and arsonists have due process.
• 
The Bill of Rights guarantees peaceful assembly and electrically amplified profanity rarely protected elsewhere.
• 
Affirmative action; federally insured and subsidized college grants and loans; and cheap smartphones, headphones and laptops all give youth choices unimagined in the past.
• 
No matter – cultural revolutions are incoherent and nihilist.
• 
Those who signed up for the Jacobin Reign of Terror wanted violence, not a constitutional republic to replace the French monarchy.
• 
The Bolsheviks were less interested in substituting an elected prime minister for the Russian czar than in grabbling power and murdering millions of their enemies.
• 
Mao Zedong did not just hate the warlords, landlords, Mandarins and Nationalists.
• 
He wished to reinvent 1 billion Chinese in his own narcissistic image by first killing millions.
• 
There is, of course, reason to oversee the police more effectively.
• 
Universities are partly culpable for a collective $1.4 trillion in student loan debt.
• 
Globalization eroded the middle class.
• 
Inner-city America is far too violent – and far too neglected.
• 
But these are not the apparent concerns of those who carry off shoes and phones in U-Hauls, kick the unconscious on the pavement, destroy art and sculpture, or seek to torch public buildings with public servants inside.
• 
The point of the mob is to wipe out what it cannot create.
• 
It topples what it can neither match nor even comprehend.
• 
It would erode the very system that ensures it singular freedom, leisure and historic affluence.
• 
The brand of the anarchist is not logic but envy-driven power: to take it, to keep it and to use it against purported enemies – which would otherwise be impossible in times of calm or through the ballot box.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      Victor Davis Hanson: American soldiers leave Germany — and suddenly Germany is upset  (Fox 08/22/2020)
• 
President Trump recently ordered a 12,000-troop reduction in American military personnel stationed in Germany.  That leaves about 24,000 American soldiers still in the country.
• 
A little more than half of the troops being withdrawn will return home.  The rest will be redeployed to other NATO member nations such as Belgium, Italy, and perhaps Baltic and Eastern European countries.
• 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is said to be furious.  She claims the redeployments will "weaken the (NATO) alliance." German commercial interests chimed in that the troop withdrawals will hurt their decades-old businesses serving U.S.  bases.
• 
Perhaps, but Merkel surely cannot be surprised.  Six years ago, all NATO members pledged to spend 2 percent of their GDP on defense.  Yet only eight of 29 so far have kept their word.
• 
Germany spends only about 1.4 percent of its GDP on defense.  As NATO's largest, wealthiest and most powerful European member, it sets the example for the rest of alliance.
• 
Merkel's reneging on her 2014 pledge helps explain why less wealthy and influential NATO members also see no reason to meet their obligations.
• 
Germany surely knows that 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the World War II, and the 29th year since the fall of the Berlin Wall — the symbolic end of the Cold War.
• 
Will there be any point in the future when Europe is confident enough to be a full defense partner with the U.S.  rather than an eight-decade client?
• 
NATO, of course, still provides a common European defense, but only by habitually relying inordinately on U.S.  military contributions.
• 
That dependence seems increasingly odd when the European Union has an aggregate GDP nearly as large as America's.
• 
More important, NATO's frontline threats are now mostly concerned with rogue member Turkey, especially its bullying of Greece and its increasingly aggressive stance in the Middle East.
• 
Russia always poses a threat to Europe.  But the likely flashpoints are not on the German border, but more likely eastward in the Baltic states or on the Russian frontier with Poland.
• 
Moreover, the Merkel government has concluded, over American objections, a huge natural gas deal with Russia that is currently under some U.S.  sanctions and short of cash.
• 
Merkel likes to lecture the world on moral issues, but what is so noble about empowering Russian President Vladimir Putin, who recently reclaimed Crimea and seems now to be eyeing Belarus?
• 
In recent polling, Germans were more anti-American than any other nation in Europe.  And while about 75 percent of Americans believe the U.S.  still has a good relationship with Germany, only about a third of Germans feel that way about the U.S.
• 
Note that Germany piles up the largest annual trade surplus with the U.S.  of any nation in Europe — roughly $55 billion to $70 billion in most years.
• 
With Germany now united, rich and often angry, and with the Soviet threat largely over, it's Germany, not the U.S., that seems to have altered its view of this once-solid relationship.
• 
Does Merkel really believe that if her nation cuts huge deals with NATO's historically greatest threat, polls as the most anti-American country in Europe and still refuses to honor its promises to increase defense spending, Germany still deserves a large American commitment of 36,000 troops to anchor its defense?
• 
There is one caveat that the Trump administration and other European countries might consider.
• 
According to its founders, NATO was created for three reasons: to keep the always aggressive Russians "out" of Europe, to keep the often isolationist Americans "in" to help protect it, and to keep the supposedly restless Germans "down" in order to avoid a replay of their invasions that ignited both world wars.
• 
In other words, the huge defense commitment to an often ungracious Germany over eight decades was not just envisioned to create a central base from which to protect Europe from ancient Russian ambitions, but also to remind Germany itself of its checkered past.
• 
That third mission seems ossified and silly now.  But it is not entirely forgotten, and it may explain why many in Europe — and some in Germany itself — are worried when any American soldiers leave Germany.
      Hanson: Michelle Obama told Dems to 'go high' after her husband 'tried to destroy a political campaign'  (Fox 08/19/2020)
• 
"When she says 'We go high when they go low,' she's talking right now when her husband's administration has weaponized the IRS, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, and is the subject of a massive investigation by [Connecticut U.S.  Attorney John Durham]."
• 
"It will probably end up, if things happen as many predict, as one of the most corrupt administrations that tried to destroy a political campaign, a president, transition, and a presidency.  and she's saying, 'When they go low, we go high.'"
• 
"Michelle Obama knows that there were over 100 people killed in one month alone in her hometown in Chicago."
• 
"They weren't killed by White people.  They weren't killed by the police.  There's been over 400 ... she knows what the real problem is, but she also knows that she could go to Chicago with Barack ... meet with community leaders and say, 'We have a crisis in Chicago in general and among the African-American community.'"
• 
... "it's very easy to say something from your Washington or Martha's Vineyard $20 million estate and mansion because you're never going to be subject to the ramifications.
• 
"Black Lives Matter's not going to show up outside of her mansion and there's not going to be an inner-city shooting match right outside [in] Martha's Vineyard.  So these all become abstractions."
      Victor Davis Hanson: US Constitution and traditions are under attack by Democrats  (Fox 08/13/2020)
• 
Democrats are waging war against traditions and the Constitution.
• 
Several of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary candidates favored the abolishment of the Electoral College.  ... "I plan to be the last American president to be elected by the Electoral College."
• 
Furor over the Electoral College among the left arose from the 2000 and 2016 elections.  Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, respectively, won the popular votes.  But, like three earlier presidents, they lost the Electoral College voting — and with it the presidency.
• 
The Founding Fathers saw a purpose in the Electoral College.  It ensured that small, rural states would retain importance in national elections.
• 
The Electoral College lessens the chance of voting fraud affecting the outcome of a national vote by compartmentalizing the outcome among the various states.
• 
It usually turns the presidential election into a contest between two major parties that alone have the resources to campaign nationwide.
• 
The college is antithetical to the parliamentary systems of Europe.  There, a multiplicity of small extremist parties form and break coalitions to select heads of state, often without transparency.
• 
Yet to change the U.S.  Constitution is hard — and by intent.
• 
To circumvent the Constitution, Democrats have pushed "The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact," an agreement among a group of states that would force state electors to vote in accordance with the national popular vote and ignore their own state tallies.
• 
Already, 15 states that have 73 percent of the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the presidency have joined.
• 
Liberal academics are supporting an array of other proposed constitutional changes as well.  They ask: Why do two Wyoming senators each represent about 290,000 voters while each California senator represents 20 million?
• 
Forget that the founders established a constitutional republic, not a radical democracy, in order to check and balance popular and often volatile public opinion.
• 
One way was by creating an upper-house Senate that would slow down the pulse of the more populist House of Representatives.
• 
Nevertheless, there is an ongoing effort to dream up ways to create more, and apparently liberal, senators — to change the rules rather than the hearts and minds of the voters.
• 
... former President Barack Obama proposed giving statehood to liberal Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico.  That would instantly give Democrats four additional senators.
• 
Others want senators allotted by population.  ... "The Path to Give California 12 Senators, and Vermont Just One."
• 
Turning to another issue, there is nothing in the Constitution that specifies the exact size and makeup of the Supreme Court.
• 
It only offers guidance on how justices are appointed and confirmed, and that there will be a chief justice.
• 
But since 1869, the Supreme Court has been fixed at eight associate justices and one chief justice.
• 
Democratic presidential primary candidates ... said they would consider ending that 151-year tradition and "pack" the court with additional justices...
• 
The left is apparently afraid of a second Donald Trump presidential term that might allow him four or five Supreme Court picks over eight years in office.
• 
The effect of such appointments could be mitigated by expanding the court to 12 or more justices, along with altering the rules for selecting them.
• 
... Obama also called for an end to the Senate filibuster.  He claimed it was a racist relic from the Jim Crow era used to stymie needed social change.
• 
Given recent polling, Obama now apparently believes Trump will lose the election, and Congress with it.
• 
But he also seems to fear that fundamental progressive transformation could be checked by a filibuster-happy Republican Senate minority.
• 
Democrats were perfectly happy with the filibuster — or the mere threat of the filibuster — from 2017 to 2019, when the Democratic Senate minority blocked much of the Trump agenda.
• 
But efforts to change time-honored rules for short-term gain are becoming more common.
• 
Sanctuary cities nullify federal immigration law to empower illegal immigration.  The nonenforcement of laws against rioting and looting has become common in big cities.  The First Amendment is inert on college campuses.
• 
The left should beware.  Politics are volatile and often change.
• 
When Democrats destroy longstanding rules for short-term advantage, they may regret it when they too are in need of sober traditions and the U.S.  Constitution.
      75 years ago US used atomic bomb in Japan — here are 5 alternatives Truman rejected  (Fox 08/06/2020)
• 
This month marks the 75th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, at Hiroshima on Aug.  6, and Nagasaki on Aug.  9.
• 
Each year, Americans argue about our supposed moral shortcomings for being the only nation to have used an atomic weapon in war.
• 
Given the current cultural revolution that topples statues, renames institutions, cancels out the supposedly politically incorrect and wages war on America's past, we will hear numerous attacks on the decision of Democratic President Harry Truman to use the two terrible weapons.
• 
But what were the alternatives that Truman faced had he not dropped the bombs that precipitated Japan's agreement to surrender less than a week after the bombing of Nagasaki and formally on Sept.  2?
• 
One, Truman could have allowed Japan's wounded military government to stop the killing and stay in power.
• 
Japan's fascist government likely would have regrouped in a few years to try it again on more favorable terms.
• 
Two, Truman could have postponed the use of the new bombs and invaded Japan over the ensuing year.
• 
The fighting in Japan would have made the prior three-month blood bath at Okinawa, which formally ended just six weeks before Hiroshima, seem like child's play.
• 
The disaster at Okinawa cost the U.S.  50,000 casualties and 32 ships — the worst battle losses the American Navy suffered in the war.
• 
More than 250,000 Okinawans and Japanese soldiers were killed as well.
• 
Three, the U.S.  could have held off on using the bomb, postponed the invasion and simply kept firebombing Japan with its huge fleet of B-29 bombers.
• 
The napalming of Tokyo had already taken some 100,000 lives.  With huge new Allied bomber fleets of 5,000 or more planes based on nearby Okinawa, the Japanese death toll would have soared to near a million.
• 
Four, the U.S.  might have played rope-a-dope, stood down and let the Soviet Red Army overrun China, Korea and Japan itself — in the same fashion that the Russians months earlier had absorbed eastern Germany, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
• 
But the Soviet occupation of North Korea alone only led to more war in 1950.
• 
Had the Soviets grabbed more Japanese-occupied territory, more communist totalitarianism and conflict likely would have ensued, with no chance of a free and democratic postwar Japan.
• 
Five, Truman could have dropped a demonstration bomb or two in Tokyo Bay to warn the Japanese government of their country's certain destruction if it continued the war.
• 
But there was no guarantee that the novel weapons, especially the untested plutonium bomb, would work.  A dud bomb or an unimpressive detonation at sea might have only emboldened the Japanese to continue the war.
• 
In the cruel logic of existential war, demonstrating rather than using a new weapon can convey to autocratic belligerents hesitancy seen as weakness to be manipulated rather than as magnanimity to be reciprocated.
• 
By August 1945, six years after the start of World War II in Europe, some 70 million had died, including some 10 million killed by the Japanese military.
• 
To Americans and most of the world 75 years ago, each day in early August 1945 that the Japanese war machine continued its work meant that thousands of Asian civilians and Allied soldiers would die.
• 
In the terrible arithmetic of World War II, the idea that such a nightmare might end in a day or two was seen as saving millions of lives rather than gratuitously incinerating tens of thousands.
• 
It was in that bleak context that Harry Truman dropped the two bombs — opting for a terrible choice among even worse alternatives.
      Our summer of cultural suicide  (JWR 07/30/2020)
• 
Cultural suicide used to be a popular diagnosis of why things suddenly just quit.
• 
Historians such as Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee cited social cannibalism to explain why once-successful states, institutions and cultures simply died off.
• 
Their common explanation was that the arrogance of success ensures lethal consequences.
• 
*Once elites became pampered and arrogant, they feel exempt from their ancestors' respect for moral and spiritual laws like thrift, moderation and transcendence.
• 
At this late date, all that matters is that the country itself learns from these suicidal examples and heals itself.
• 
If the U.S.  is not to become an extinct Easter Island, it must rediscover a respect for its past, honor for the dead who gave us so much, the desire to invest rather than spend, and a need for some sense of transcendence.
• 
If we do not believe that what we do today has consequences for our children after we are gone, there are ancient existential forces in the world that will intervene.
• 
And it won't be nice.
      Not your parents' revolution — how today's anarchists differ from 60s protesters  (Fox 07/23/2020)
• 
In the 1960s and early '70s, the U.S.  was convulsed by massive protests calling for radical changes in the country's attitudes on race, class, gender and sexual orientation.
• 
Sometimes the demonstrations became violent, as with the Watts riots of 1965 and the protests at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.
• 
Terrorists from the Weathermen (later called the Weather Underground) bombed dozens of government buildings.
• 
The '60s revolution introduced to the country everything from hippies, communes, free love, mass tattooing, commonplace profanity, rampant drug use, rock music and high divorce rates to the war on poverty, massive government growth, feminism, affirmative action and race/gender/ethnic college curricula.
• 
The enemies of the '60s counterculture were the "establishment" — politicians, corporations, the military and the "square" generation" in general.
• 
A half-century after the earlier revolution, today's cultural revolution is vastly different — and far more dangerous.
• 
Government and debt have grown.  Social activism is already institutionalized in hundreds of newer federal programs.  The "Great Society" inaugurated a multitrillion-dollar investment in the welfare state.  Divorce rates soared.  The nuclear family waned.  Immigration, both legal and illegal, skyrocketed.
• 
Thus, America is far less resilient, and a far more divided, indebted and vulnerable target than it was in 1965.
• 
The '60s protests were for racial assimilation and integration to reify Martin Luther King Jr.'s agenda of making race incidental, not essential, to the American mindset.
• 
Not so with today's cultural revolution.  It seeks to ensure that racial difference is the foundation of American life, dividing the country between supposed non-white victims and purported white victimizers, past and present.
• 
In the '60s, radicals rebelled against their teachers and professors, who were often highly competent and the products of fact-based and inductive education.  Not so in 2020.
• 
Today's radicals were taught not by traditionalists but by less-educated older radicals.
• 
Another chief difference is debt.  Most public education in the 1960s was bare-bones and relatively inexpensive.  Because there were no plush dorms, latte bars, rock-climbing walls, diversity coordinators and provosts of inclusion, college tuition in real dollars was far cheaper.
• 
Today's angry graduates owe a collective $1.6 trillion in student loan debt — much of it borrowed for mediocre, therapeutic and politicized training that does not impress employers.
• 
... today's radical is far more desperate and angry that his college gambit never paid off.
• 
... the scariest trait of the current revolution is that many of its sympathizers haven't changed much since the 1960s.  They may be rich, powerful, influential and older, but they are just as reckless and see the current chaos as the final victory in their own long march from the '60s.
• 
... the war no longer pits radicals against conservatives, but often socialists and anarchists against both liberals and conservatives.
• 
In the '60s, a huge "silent majority" finally had enough, elected Richard Nixon and slowed down the revolution by jailing its criminals, absorbing and moderating it.
• 
Today, if there is a silent mass of traditionalists and conservatives, they remain in hiding.
• 
If they stay quiet in their veritable mental monasteries and deplore the violence in silence, the revolution will steamroll on.
• 
But as in the past, if they finally snap, decide enough is enough and reclaim their country, then even this cultural revolution will sputter out, too.
      Victor Davis Hanson says Trump must evoke Abraham Lincoln's July 4 address in 1861 amid current unrest  ()
• 
"In 1861, Lincoln gave a Fourth of July address to Congress, and it [the situation in America] was divisive, much more divisive than it is now."
• 
"He wanted unity but it's very hard to have unity when a small proportion of the states don't want unity.  So what Lincoln did was he said, basically, 'I have bent over backwards, I'm going to protect federal property.'"
• 
"'I don't want you to do what you're doing,' [Lincoln said] when he addressed the people who were against unity in the Union, but he reassured the others that he was going to be firm."
• 
"I think Donald Trump has got to say, 'We have 244 links in this chain [of] years.  Our generation is not going to be the first one to break it, I'm sorry,'"
• 
"'People died in Okinawa.  They died at Gettysburg.  They died at Shiloh.  We have an obligation to them to carry on that spirit, and I'm not going to preside over the first generation that says we are going to tear down statues ... we are going to cancel people's lives out with McCarthyite tactics,'"
• 
"We have blue state mayors and governors who deliberately do not enforce the law.  We have corporate CEOs, we have retired generals, we have university presidents, who know better but either out of weakness or timidity or fear, they are allowing people to change our customs, our traditions, our icons, and our reverence.  And somebody has to say, 'We are not going to do that.  We don't want to offend you, we don't want to go to war with you, but we are not going to let you, a minority, dictate to a majority that is trying to keep a wonderful nation.'"
      Seattle's CHOP and the radical left – Here's how cultural revolutions die, or not  (Fox 06/19/2020)
• 
Unlike coups or political revolutions, cultural revolutions don't just change governments or leaders.  Instead, they try to redefine entire societies.  Their leaders call them "holistic" and "systematic."
• 
Cultural revolutionaries attack the very referents of our daily lives.
• 
The Jacobins' so-called Reign of Terror during the French Revolution slaughtered Christian clergy, renamed months and created a new supreme being Reason.
• 
Mao cracked down on supposed Western decadence like the wearing of eyeglasses and made peasants forge pot iron and intellectuals wear dunce caps.
• 
Moammar Gadhafi's Green Book cult wiped out violins and forced Libyans to raise chickens in their apartments.
• 
The current Black Lives Matter revolution has "canceled" certain movies, television shows and cartoons, toppled statues, tried to create new autonomous urban zones, and renamed streets and plazas.
• 
Some fanatics shave their heads.  Others have shamed authorities into washing the feet of their fellow revolutionaries.
• 
But inevitably cultural revolutions die out when they turn cannibalistic.  Once the Red Guard started killing party hacks too close to Mao, it began to wane.
• 
If toppling Confederate statues is required, what then about Nancy Pelosi's own mayor father, who once as Baltimore's mayor dedicated honorific statues to Confederate generals?
• 
If racists understandably do not deserve their names on national shrines, what to do with the iconic liberal graduate program at Princeton, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs?
• 
It was named for a president who did more to further segregation and racial prejudice than any chief executive of the 20th century.
• 
Stanford and Yale, coveted brand names of the progressive professional classes, are named after what protestors now deem racists.
• 
Once a cultural revolution gets going, there can be no contextualization of the past, no allowance for human frailty, no consideration of weighing evil vs.  good.
• 
Eventually, the architects of cultural upheavals always make two miscalculations.
• 
One, they presume that destroying things will never apply to themselves, given their loud virtue signaling.
• 
Two, if they are fingered by the mob, they assume they can somehow use their clout and influence to win exemption.
• 
In other words, once cultural revolutions turn anarchic and eat their own, they lose support.  When quiet sympathizers conclude that they too may targeted, to survive they turn on their former icons.
• 
When a liberal mayor or black police chief or progressive governor or white leftist who diverges from the party line is targeted by the mob, then who really is safe?
• 
Answer?  No one.  And so the cultural revolution sputters to irrelevance.
• 
What deflated the MeToo movement was the high toll that the accusations took among the Hollywood and cultural elite.  Suddenly, progressive celebrities began demanding evidence and insisting on presumed innocence when their careers were destroyed.
• 
What burns out these cultural upheavals is that today's revolutionary can be denounced as tomorrow's sell-out.  No leader wants to share Robespierre's rendezvous with his own guillotine.
• 
There is one caveat.  Sometimes cultural revolutions don't die out – if they are hijacked by a thug or killer.
• 
The National Socialist movement was an irrelevant nihilist mob of crazies until Adolf Hitler turned it into his personal genocidal cult.  A murderous Stalin resuscitated the absurdities of Lenin's failing Bolshevism.
• 
The present madness will wane like a virus, as it eats its own and terrifies its sympathizers that they may be next – unless, of course, a would-be Napoleon uses a "whiff of grapeshot" and turns the mob into his personal cult.
• 
So far, we have seen no Napoleon emerge to claim that he is only the man who can lead today's urban revolutionaries to victory.
• 
A final thought: cultural revolutions not only eventually die without cruel dictators, but they can spawn dramatic pushbacks.  Ronald Reagan was the answer to the radical Sixties. 
• 
Revolutionaries are now sowing the wind, but they have little idea of the reactive whirlwind they may soon reap.
      Victor Davis Hanson: George Floyd unrest – when the revolution doesn't go as planned  (Fox 06/12/2020)
• 
The ancient Greeks created new words like "paradox" and "irony" to describe the wide gap between what people profess and assume, and what they actually do and suffer.
• 
After a catastrophic plague and endless war, ancient democratic Athens was stripped of its majestic pretensions.  Soon it was conducting mass executions – on majority votes of the people.
• 
Throughout history, revolutions often do not end up as their initial architects planned.  The idealists who ended the French monarchy in 1789 thought they could replace it with a constitutional republic.
• 
Instead, they sparked a reign of terror, the guillotine and mass frenzy.  Yet the radicals who hijacked the original revolution and began beheading their enemies soon were themselves guillotined.
• 
It was not democracy but rather the dictator Napoleon who put an end to French domestic unrest.
• 
He assumed more powers than had the executed Bourbon King Louis XVI, who had set off the revolution in the first place.
• 
Social distancing and mandated lockdowns for months have been the source of endless fighting between the people and their governments.
• 
But the massive demonstrations and rioting saw hundreds of thousands of protesters jammed together and often without masks.
• 
That mass disobedience to quarantining will teach us, better than any university modeling, whether the virus spikes or is indifferent to thousands who congregate in the streets.
• 
The lockdowns were politically weaponized during this election year.  Blue states thought the sinking economy would hurt President Trump's reelection bid.  Red states wanted to open up as quickly as possible to get the economy back and running before November.
• 
Yet the mass progressive protests and violence forced an unplanned end to mass quarantining –and thereby inadvertently helped jumpstart the country back to business.  Those who despise Trump may have done the most to help him.
• 
... progressive urban bastions like Los Angeles, New York, Minneapolis and Philadelphia are also the ground zero sites of arson, violence and looting, where racial relations are the worst.
• 
Our recent protests started out idealistically by calling attention to the racism that had led to the death of George Floyd while in police custody.  But that tragic killing sadly became overshadowed by protests and violence where cruel irony abounded.
• 
White Antifa arsonists occasionally helped torch black-owned small businesses – in the name of Black Lives Matter.
• 
Liberal New York Times senior editors were damned as sell-outs and racists for allowing free expression on their editorial pages – by their own younger woke staffers who claimed to be more ethical.
• 
Videos appeared of children screaming in cruel fashion that their own parents were racists.  Professionals took a knee to own up to their supposed racist sins – in Maoist-like mass confessionals.  NPR asked listeners to decolonialize their bookshelves.
• 
Quarterback Drew Brees one day declares that he is disturbed when the American flag is sullied.  On the next, he is shamed into apologizing for his patriotism – as if he was reprogrammed in a reeducation camp.
• 
Zero-bail policies have released violent protesters hours after they were arrested – often to allow them to repeat the violence that got them arrested in the first place.
• 
Women shave their heads to curb their "whiteness," by clipping off their "straight" hair, as if in some fairy tale their self-confessed white privilege disappears with their bangs.
• 
Demands rise that colleges must spend more for racial administrators and programs as they face insolvency and faculty layoffs.
• 
Mayors who did not protect supermarkets and discount warehouse stores from burning and looting now demand that such terrified chains do not abandon their inner cities.
• 
As these natural and mandate catastrophes continue, we see raw human nature stripped of its pretenses.
• 
The result is tragically ironic and often not a pretty sight.
      Victor Davis Hanson warns protest leaders: 'Today's revolutionary becomes tomorrow's counter-...'  (Fox 06/09/2020)
• 
"These revolutionary movements are like a stream.  and then all these other streams combine with these different agendas.  careerist agendas."
• 
"But what happens is.  today's revolutionary becomes tomorrow's counter-revolutionary because you can never satisfy the mob and you have to get more and more extreme."
• 
"There was this motive or this idea that [more] blacks were dying inordinately at the hands of the police than whites.  and yet there was no data to support it.  Then where do you go?"
• 
"Then all of a sudden people were cutting their hair and saying 'I'm not black.' Children were accusing their parents of racism or suddenly it was 'defund the police' or you have to remove books from your bookshelf if they display inordinate attention to white authors."
• 
"You'll never be able to satisfy the iteration as they get more radical, all we're waiting for now is a [French revolutionary Maximilien] Robespierre to come out and say, 'You know, I think we need to rename the months of the year or extend the weeks from seven days to 10 so we don't privilege Sunday, or we should start worshiping a new god'."
• 
"A lot of this is a psychological mechanism of wealthy, privileged — white people, especially, but also wealthy and privileged minorities — of rhetorical penance so they don't have to ... rub shoulders with people they champion.  It's very common in history."
      Victor Davis Hanson: US is in turmoil, Europe is weak and China is now on the move — without apologies  (Fox 06/07/2020)
• 
Once again, protests over police brutality turned violent and rioting ensued.
• 
The U.S.  is torn apart over the national mass quarantine.  Liberal blue states accused red restart states of recklessly endangering national health by allowing their populations to go back to work before the virus has left.
• 
Red states countered that blue states were hypocritical in wanting federal money to subsidize their locked-down residents while expecting other states to generate needed federal revenue.
• 
They also contended that there was no longer scientific evidence to justify the lockdown.
• 
There is mounting evidence that an array of federal officials had plotted to disrupt Donald Trump's 2016 campaign and his presidential transition, leaving Trump supporters furious.
• 
As the U.S.  protested and bickered, China attempted to strangle what was left of Hong Kong's enfeebled democracy.
• 
China's theory seemed to be that if it's going to be blamed for the spreading virus due to its deceit anyway, it might as well not let such a pandemic go to waste.
• 
The Chinese strategy in reaction to disclosures that it hid vital data about the virus and exposed the world to contagion while it quarantined its own cities has devolved from "So what?" to the current "What exactly are you going to do about it?"
• 
China also decided to ramp up its perennial border confrontations with India, as its forces encroached on Indian soil in the Himalayas.
• 
What better way to show the world that a defiant China is dangerous than agitate the world's largest democracy?
• 
Beijing has warned European nations that if their independent media continued to condemn China, there could be commercial retaliation.
• 
A few European journalists still exposed Chinese deceit, even as shaken EU leaders backtracked and tried to contextualize Chinese misbehavior.
• 
Japan and South Korea worried that China might move on Taiwan.  They knew that if China did, only the United States — convulsed by quarantines, riots and a contentious presidential race — could stand up to Beijing.
• 
For years, China has bullied and waged a virtual commercial war against Asian democracies such as Japan, South Korea, India and Australia.  It has subverted almost all international trading norms.
• 
The Chinese government assumed that Western elites would get rich by being complicit in China's cheating and would thus help sell out their own countries.  They were mostly right on both counts.
• 
As China westernized its economy, it conned gullible Western officials that eventually it planned to become a useful member of the family of nations.
• 
In truth, China strategically hoarded cash from its asymmetrical trade surpluses.  It planted its functionaries throughout transnational organizations and subverted them.
• 
It beefed up its military and planted island bases in international waters.  It compromised strategically important nations by investing in their infrastructure through its neo-colonial and imperialist multitrillion-dollar Belt and Road initiative.
• 
... it has insidiously pivoted from global friend to its new role as overt global villain.  If the world had been anxious over the intentions of a suspiciously nice China, it will become downright terrified of an overtly hostile China.
• 
In other words, China is not wasting the disaster of the Wuhan outbreak.  It once gained a lot by faking friendliness, but now it seems to think it has no choice but to get even more by being authentically belligerent.
• 
As part of the about-face, China no longer flatters the West in passive-aggressive fashion, but rather shows its disdain for a weak Europe and an increasingly divided U.S.
• 
While America tears itself apart with endless internal quarreling and media psychodramas, while Europe appeases its enemies, and while the rest of Asia stays mute, waiting to see who wins, China is now on the move — without apologies.
      Victor Davis Hanson: The spreading debt virus — 5 potential cures for $30 trillion problem  (Fox 05/28/2020)
• 
Americans may soon have to service a staggering national debt of about $30 trillion — nearly $100,000 of debt for every American.
• 
Democrats and Republicans can blame each other, either for spending too much or for too little taxation, or both.
• 
But both sides will agree that managing such an astronomical debt requires several frightening choices.
• 
One, Americans would be forced to live with permanent near-zero interest rates, or perhaps even negative interest rates.
• 
Two, Americans, who are already taxed heavily at the local, state and federal levels, would simply have to pay even more.
• 
The problem with constant increases in taxation is the ensuing culture of even greater spending that inevitably follows and the destruction of individual incentive.
• 
Three, the government could make draconian cuts in spending, focusing mostly on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare, along with defense, where the bulk of federal expenditures are found.
• 
Cutting Social Security and Medicare is usually political suicide.  In times of growing tensions with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, it would equally be foolish to slash defense spending.
• 
Four, the government could fall into the bad habits of the 1970s and simply expand the money supply, fuel inflation and pay down the debt with funny money.
• 
Rather than fooling with interest rates and the money supply, a mixture of increased revenue and spending cuts seems wiser.
• 
Five, the government could hope that new deregulation and more tax incentives might spur GDP growth of 3 percent or more per annum and thus "grow" our way out of deficits by radically expanding the economy.
• 
In the first two decades of the 21st century, the United States has faced three existential crises.
• 
The first was the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which prompted a global effort to fight radical Islamic terrorism.
• 
The second occurred in 2008, when the U.S.  financial system and stock market nearly collapsed.
• 
The third began earlier this year with the COVID-19 epidemic and a quarantine that reduced the economy to its most shaky state since the 1930s.
• 
During the first two crises, we snapped back the economy with low interest rates, increased government spending and larger annual deficits — and passed the greater long-term debt to another administration, another Congress and another generation of Americans.
• 
We are postponing another rendezvous with reality.  But as we near $30 trillion in debt, what cannot go on much longer soon probably won't.
      Is America a roaring giant or crying baby?  (JWR 04/08/2020)
• 
As we struggle to defeat the coronavirus, an aroused America is talking grandly of restructuring the U.S.  economy.
• 
Politicians promise that major industries — pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, rare earths, military technologies — will return home to create millions of new jobs and better protect the population in times of crisis.
• 
There are other vows to recalibrate our relationship with China to ensure that when the next successor to SARS and COVID-19 hits, American lives will not be jeopardized by the duplicity of the Chinese government.
• 
At the beginning of the outbreak, Beijing hid the origins, nature and transmissibility of the virus, then lied about its supposedly brilliant control of the epidemic.
• 
The American public is already asking tough questions.
• 
Does the U.S.  really need almost 15,000 people flying in from China each day?
• 
At a time when American students owe $1.5 trillion in student loans, it is smart to have some 360,000 Chinese students enrolled in U.S.  colleges?
• 
Is it safe to fund hundreds of labs on university campuses that conduct joint research with Chinese academics?
• 
Does the United States really wish to curtail fracking, which has made it the largest producer of natural gas in the world and ensured that a quarantined America has plenty of fuel?
• 
Post-virus America can awake from this epidemic and economic shutdown in one of two different ways.
• 
One, we can wake up as we did on December 8, 1941, to ensure that Americans control their own fundamentals of life — food, fuel, medicine and strategic industries — without dependency on illiberal regimes.
• 
The military can refocus our defenses against nuclear missiles, cyberwarfare and biological weapons.
• 
On the home front, diversity is fine, but in a national crisis as serious as this one, the unity that arises from confidence in shared American citizenship saves lives.
• 
Our other choice is to keep bickering and suffering amnesia, remaining as vulnerable as we were in the past.
• 
We can scapegoat and play the blame game.
• 
We can talk not of an America in crisis, but of the virus' effects on particular groups.
• 
We can decide that it is mean or even racist and xenophobic to hold the Chinese government accountable for its swath of viral destruction — and so we will not.
• 
We can ridicule the idea of Americans again making their own things and call it protectionism or economic chauvinism.
• 
We can conduct endless congressional inquiries about who said what and when about the virus, and perhaps reopen impeachment.
• 
Or we can have bipartisan commissions decide how best to return key industries to the U.S., prepare for the next epidemic, and pay down the enormous debt we have incurred to defeat COVID-19.
• 
In other words, the choice is ours whether America awakens as a roaring giant or a crying baby.
      Trump can defeat coronavirus, save economy and turn disaster into an American victory  (Fox 03/26/2020)
• 
The ancient Greeks believed that true leadership in crisis came down to what they called pronoia — the Greek word for "strategic foresight."
• 
Some statesmen, such as Pericles and Themistocles, had it.  Most others, such as the often brilliant and charismatic but impulsive Alcibiades, usually did not.
• 
"Foresight" in crisis means sizing up a nation's assets and debt, then maximizing advantages and minimizing liabilities.
• 
The leader with foresight, especially in times of irrational despair, then charts a rational pathway to victory.
• 
Such crisis leaders do not fall into panic and depression when the media shouts "Catastrophe!" Nor do they preen when the same chorus screams "Genius!" in times of success.
• 
The English poet Rudyard Kipling would have defined such a gift as, "If you can keep your head when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you," or, "If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two impostors just the same."
• 
During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln knew the overwhelming advantages of the Union could eventually defeat the South, but only if he could hold the nation together through disasters...
• 
In World War II, Winston Churchill proved perhaps the most impressive wartime leader in history.
• 
During Britain's darkest hours of nonstop German bombing of London, he knew that declining British assets were still greater than an ascendant Germany's advantages.
• 
Eventually, despite razor-thin margins of error, these assets would ensure victory.
• 
Churchill was assured that Britain had a great navy and Germany did not.
• 
Britain would soon have as allies America and Russia, both far stronger than German partners Italy and Japan.
• 
Churchill foresaw that the economies of those future allies would be far superior to those of the Axis.  And Churchill grasped all this even as defeat loomed and some in his own party were calling for him to negotiate with Adolf Hitler.
• 
Franklin D.  Roosevelt likewise had foresight.  In the nightmarish days after Pearl Harbor, FDR calmly unleashed private enterprise to rearm America at what he knew would be an astonishing rate.
• 
Roosevelt promised victory not because he knew it would be quick, but because he calculated that if he just made the right choices, the ensuing advantages of the U.S.  world surely ensure victory.
• 
Even in the first bleak days of the war, FDR kept reminding the nation why and how America would win.  That confidence was not based on fantasies but on rational calculation and justified optimism.
• 
In the present crisis of the coronavirus, what will determine the effectiveness of President Trump's leadership is not what the media screams today or the polls say tomorrow.
• 
The praise of his supporters or the predictable damnation of his enemies won't matter.
• 
Rather, Trump will win or lose on whether he has strategic foresight.
• 
If he panics and keeps the country locked down for too long, we will enter a depression that will cost more lives than the virus.
• 
But if Trump prematurely declares victory and urges Americans to rush back to normal life, he may reboot the virus and reignite another cycle of panic.
• 
Instead, Trump will have to possess the confidence to see how the world's greatest economy, greatest medical talent, greatest military and greatest energy and food production can all be marshaled in a symphonic fashion.
• 
That correct formula could fend off a potentially biblical plague without destroying the largest economy in history.
• 
If Trump exhibits such cunning and wisdom, then he can balance the consensus of his medical experts that the virus is existentially dangerous with the warnings of his economic advisers that shutting down a multitrillion economy can become even more ruinous — and lethal — for Americans.
• 
Like Churchill, Trump must have the right information but also the instincts to determine which expert advice is suspect and which is inspired, and which orthodox recommendation is wrong and which unorthodox alternative is right.
• 
Do that, and Trump can defeat the virus, save the economy and turn a disaster into a collective American victory over both infection and depression.
• 
Such foresight can also remind the nation never again to outsource key industries to China, and not to listen to those who always predict catastrophe in bleak times, only to later take credit for others' victories.
      Victor Davis Hanson: China’s government is showing us what '1984' looks like  ()
• 
The Chinese communist government increasingly poses an existential threat not just to its own 1.4 billion citizens, but to the world at large.
• 
China is currently in a dangerously chaotic state.
• 
And why not, when a premodern authoritarian society leaps wildly into the brave new world of high-tech science in a single generation?
• 
The Chinese technological revolution is overseen by an Orwellian dictatorship.
• 
Predictably, the Chinese Communist Party has not developed the social, political or cultural infrastructure to ensure that its sophisticated industrial and biological research does not go rogue and become destructive to itself and to the billions of people who are on the importing end of Chinese products and protocols.
• 
Central party officials run the government, military, media and universities collectively in a manner reminiscent of the science-fiction Borg organism of "Star Trek," which was a horde of robot-like entities all under the control of a central mind.
• 
Thirty years ago, American pundits began gushing over China's sudden leap from horse-drawn power to solar, wind and nuclear energy.
• 
The Chinese communist government wowed Westerners.  It created from nothing high-speed rail, solar farms, shiny new airports and gleaming new high-density apartment buildings.
• 
Western-trained Chinese scientists soon were conducting sophisticated medical and scientific research.
• 
And they often did so rapidly, without the prying regulators, nosy elected officials and bothersome citizen lawsuits that often burden American and European scientists.
• 
To make China instantly rich and modern, the communist hierarchy — the same government that once caused the deaths of some 60 million innocents under Mao Zedong — ignored property rights.
• 
It crushed individual freedom.  It embraced secrecy and bulldozed over any who stood in its way.
• 
But the world is learning that China does not just move mountains for new dams or bulldoze ancient neighborhoods that stand in the path of high-speed rail.
• 
It also hid the outbreak and the mysterious origins of the deadly coronavirus from its own people and the rest of the planet as well — a more dangerous replay of its earlier effort to mask the spread of the SARS virus.
• 
The result was that thousands of unknowing carriers spread the viral plague while the government covered up its epidemic proportions.
• 
China, of course, does not wish to have either its products or citizens quarantined from other countries.
• 
But the Chinese government will not allow foreign scientists to enter its country to collaborate on containing the coronavirus and developing a vaccine.
• 
It is hard to believe that in 2020, the world's largest and second-wealthiest county, which boasts of high-tech consumer products and gleaming cities, has imprisoned in "re-education camps" more than 1 million Uighur Muslims in the manner that Hitler, Stalin and Mao once relocated "undesirable" populations.
• 
China seems confident that it will soon rule the world, given its huge population, massive trade surpluses, vast cash reserves and industries that produce so many of the world's electronic devices, pharmaceuticals and consumer goods.
• 
Beijing cynically assumes that Western nations don't care.
• 
Few Western companies complain that Chinese society is surveilled, regulated and controlled in a nightmarish fashion that George Orwell once predicted in his dystopian novel "1984."
• 
All of these recent scandals should remind the world that China got rich by warping trade and stealing technology in much the same way that it deals with epidemics and dissidents.
• 
That is, by simply ignoring legitimate criticism and crushing anyone in its way.
• 
If the Chinese communist Borg is willing to put millions of its own citizens at risk of infection and death, why would it care about foreigners' complaints that China is getting rich and powerful by breaking international trade rules?
• 
The truth about President Trump's decision to call China to account over its systematic abuse of international trade norms is not that Trump's policy is reckless or ill-considered.
• 
It's that at this late date, the reckoning might prove too little, too late.
      Former intelligence chiefs fit perfectly into media advocacy culture  (Fox 12/19/2019)
• 
... all four of these former intelligence chiefs detest the president of the United States.
• 
Comey has compared Trump to a Mafia don and stated that he is morally unfit to be president.
• 
McCabe, who was likewise fired from the FBI, has called Trump's behavior "disgusting."
• 
Clapper said that Trump may be working with Putin as a Russian "asset."
• 
Brennan called Trump a "disgraced demagogue" as well as venal, corrupt and amoral.
• 
... all in their post-Obama administration careers are either paid cable news analysts or frequent guest commentators.
• 
In the most controversial stories, Brennan, Clapper and McCabe are being paid to analyze theories, facts and findings in which they themselves are often central players.
• 
As a guest commentator, Comey has weighed in on these controversies even as he distorts his past role in them.
• 
Yet such abject conflicts of interest are not the only ethical problems posed by these four.
• 
Until recently, all four held federal security clearances.
• 
Comey recently gave his up, apparently so he would not have to give testimony about classified information in the Horowitz investigation.
• 
The former intelligence officials sometimes gave us wink-and-nod suggestions that their television expertise was based on information not available to the general public.
• 
In sum, we are witnessing a surreal collusion between the nation's former top intelligence officials and the progressive media — beyond even the nightmares of so-called conspiracy theorists.
• 
The most powerful intelligence chiefs of the Obama administration — Brennan, Clapper, Comey and McCabe — have routinely offered the nation their own warped theories about wrongdoing in high places that are as self-serving as they are contradicted by facts.
• 
The conclusions of both the Mueller investigation and the Horowitz report are damning to the past analyses of all four.
• 
In the advocacy culture of our new media, ex-government officials such as Brennan, Clapper and McCabe can be paid to appear on news programs to analyze (or vindicate) their own unethical behavior.
• 
As employees of the media, they sell their checkered government service to exonerate themselves while confirming the anti-Trump biases of their paying hosts.
      A frightening, Chinese-dominated future poses a grave danger to world  (Fox 10/17/2019)
• 
A little over 40 years ago, Chinese Communist strongman and reformer Deng Xiaoping began 15 years of sweeping economic reforms.
• 
They were designed to end the disastrous, even murderous planned economy of Mao Zedong, who died in 1976.
• 
In four decades, China went from a backward basket case to the second-largest economy on the planet.
• 
It lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese into the global middle class.
• 
Deng's revolution came at a cost of terrible environmental damage, the rampant destruction of local communities and continued political repression.
• 
A more efficient economy empowered dictatorship.
• 
Abroad, China systematically violated every tenet of international trade and commerce.
• 
It stole copyrights and patents.  It ran up huge trade surpluses.
• 
It dumped products at below the cost of production to hook international customers.
• 
It threatened critics with boycotts, divestments and expulsions.
• 
China manipulated its currency.  It demanded technology transfers from companies doing business in China.
• 
It created a vast espionage network in Western countries to steal technology.
• 
And it increasingly bullied and threatened its Asian neighbors.
• 
Such criminality abroad and such repression at home was contextualized and mostly excused by Western nations.
• 
U.S.  foreign policy toward China seemed to be based on the belief that the more China modernized and the more affluent its citizens became, the more inevitable Chinese political freedom would be.
• 
Supposedly a free-market China would drop its communist past to become a Westernized democracy such as Japan, South Korea or Taiwan.  Once China fully joined the family of successful, law-abiding nations, it would empower Western freedoms and help create a stable international order.
• 
None of that came close to happening.
• 
If in the past Chinese communism impoverished its own citizens but left the world mostly alone, now it has enriched more than a billion people at home and terrified 6 billion abroad.
• 
Westerners, who apologize when Islamists kill cartoonists and journalists for supposedly insulting Islam, do not say a word when China puts a million Muslims into re-education camps, bulldozes Islamic cemeteries and shuts down mosques.
• 
Loud human rights lions in Europe turn into kittens when it is a question of Chinese organ harvesting, forced abortions and sterilizations, and the jailing and execution of dissidents.
• 
American environmentalists demand a radical shutdown of the current fossil-fuel-based U.S.  economy.
• 
They say little about greenhouse gas emissions from China, the biggest polluter in the world by far.
• 
Why are we becoming more like China than China is like us?
• 
China has the world's largest consumer market.
• 
Corporations get rich outsourcing their factories to take advantage of its cheap labor. 
• 
Western intellectuals always romanticize lethal communists as misguided idealists rather than stone-cold authoritarians.
• 
Mao is still a hero to many in the West despite his liquidation of some 50 million people over his violent career.
• 
An appeasing world is terrified about what a huge military and economic colossus of 1.4 billion people will soon be able to do to its critics.
• 
China always channels the victimization myth that supposedly oppressed nonwhite peoples cannot themselves be oppressors.
• 
All these reasons and more explain why there wasn't a single major Western politician who warned the world of a frightening, Chinese-dominated future — one in which the West turned into China rather than China into the West.
• 
The single figure who finally issued such a warning, brash Donald Trump — without prior military or political experience — was as loudly and publicly damned as he was privately and quietly admired for doing so.
• 
See related US-China Maritime Tensions (Dave Granlund, 10/28/2015) cartoon from World picture album
      Members of previous generations now seem like giants — When did we become so small?  (Fox 10/10/2019)
• 
Many of the stories about the gods and heroes of Greek mythology were compiled during Greek Dark Ages.
• 
Dark Age Greeks tried to make sense of the massive ruins of their forgotten forbearers' monumental palaces that were still standing around.
• 
We of the 21st century are beginning to look back at our own lost epic times and wonder about these now-nameless giants who left behind monuments that we cannot replicate, but instead merely use or even mock.
• 
Does anyone believe that contemporary Americans could build another transcontinental railroad in six years?
• 
Who were those giants of the 1960s responsible for building our interstate highway system?
• 
America went to the moon in 1969 with supposedly primitive computers and backward engineering.  Does anyone believe we could launch a similar moonshot today?
• 
No American has set foot on the moon in the last 47 years, and it may not happen in the next 50 years.
• 
Hollywood once gave us blockbuster epics, brilliant Westerns, great film noirs, and classic comedies.
• 
Now it endlessly turns out comic-book superhero films or pathetic remakes of prior classics.
• 
Our writers, directors and actors have lost the skills of their ancestors.
• 
But they are also cowardly, and in regimented fashion they simply parrot boring race, class and gender bromides that are neither interesting nor funny.
• 
We have been fighting in Afghanistan without result for 18 years.  Our forefathers helped to win World War II and defeat the Axis Powers in four years.
• 
In terms of learning, does anyone believe that a college graduate in 2020 will know half the information of a 1950 graduate?
• 
In the 1940s, young people read William Faulkner, F.  Scott Fitzgerald, Pearl Buck and John Steinbeck.  Are our current novelists turning out anything comparable?
• 
True, social media is impressive.  The internet gives us instant access to global knowledge.
• 
We are a more tolerant society, at least in theory.
• 
But Facebook is not the Hoover Dam, and Twitter is not the Panama Canal.
• 
Our ancestors were builders and pioneers and mostly fearless.
• 
We are regulators, auditors, bureaucrats, adjudicators, censors, critics, plaintiffs, defendants, social media junkies and thin-skinned scolds.
• 
A distant generation created; we mostly delay, idle and gripe.
• 
"Who were these people who left these strange monuments that we use but can neither emulate nor understand?"
• 
In comparison to us, they now seem like gods.
      Teachers, your unions might support Trump's impeachment but they've abandoned you  (Fox 10/09/2019)
• 
The leaders of both national teachers' unions used their title and position — representing you!  — to voice support for impeachment efforts against the president of the United States.
• 
"The truth matters ... we support the House's call to initiate an #impeachment inquiry."
• 
"Donald Trump has undermined the rule of law ... and held in contempt the very institutions on which our republic was built."
• 
... also accused a sitting president of "crimes against the country he swore to protect" and conducting a "near-constant assault" on our democracy.
• 
Unions have worked feverishly to overthrow our president since the day he was elected without concern for the resulting national trauma or division caused by subverting an elected leader.
• 
Not to mention, millions of union members voted for the president.
• 
In reality, government unions are the ones waging a constant assault on our institutions, rule of law and free republic.
• 
Union leaders are so bent on destroying our duly elected president, they urged PTA parents to pull their children from school to protest President Trump's inauguration.
• 
... watched as angry union activist "teachers" parade around in #NotMyPresident shirts while flipping off President Trump on camera and encouraging children to flip him off too.
• 
Children as young as kindergarten were indoctrinated to believe our president is a racist for desiring to protect our borders.
• 
The children created posters during class which depicted President Trump as the devil.
• 
They wrote things like "suck" and included pictures of poop to describe their feelings about our president.
• 
Then while union drums were beating, the kids abandoned learning to fill picket lines while yelling: "Who do we hate?  Donald Trump!" and, "You build the wall.  We tear it down!"
• 
Teaching children these behaviors is profoundly immoral and a dereliction of duty.
• 
My teacher colleagues and I hold dear the virtues we teach our students: to respect authority, to be gracious and kind and to live by the Golden Rule.
• 
We don't believe in teaching children to "hate," to defy authority, or to tear things down in willful defiance.
• 
Those behaviors are destructive, lead to anarchy, and are antithetical to learning and a free republic.
• 
So, fellow teachers, have you ever questioned why the unions undermine our authority and the virtues we cherish?
• 
Ever considered why unions promote crass disobedience in children?
• 
Their intrusions into our classrooms and use of our money for any political agenda is 100 percent out of their jurisdiction, so why do we keep allowing them to "represent" us?
• 
Labor unions should stick to their mission and butt out of our classrooms!
• 
Our schools are not for brainwashing children to march under the banner of one political agenda.
• 
Teachers aim to unleash children's ability to think critically and live responsibly.
• 
... why does it defeat teacher-inspired ideas while adopting hundreds of business items promoting things like lenient discipline policies which bring danger to classrooms, and the boycotting of businesses that refuse to kowtow to leftist ideology?
• 
Why are unions even speaking into politics at all?
• 
Because the unions are really the funding and organizing arm of a radical socialist infiltration of our republic.
• 
Unions are the wizard behind the curtain of the dangerous leftist assault on our values and rule of law.
• 
As long as unions are permitted to exist in our schools and public institutions, our children will be pawns for that socialist agenda, and every freedom-loving American will be vulnerable to attack.
• 
This is the real "existential threat" to our country.
• 
I'm deeply grieved that labor unions have degraded my beloved profession and are indoctrinating children in crass behaviors, disrespect toward authority, and the systematic dismantling of our hard-fought freedoms.
• 
"Truth and transparency are the strongest disinfectants of all."
• 
That's why we teachers are pulling back the curtains on socialist infiltrators masquerading as "unions" and "educators."
• 
We're praying the light we shine will fully expose their deceitful practices.
      We’re finally discovering the ugly truth about China and the harm it has caused  (Fox 10/03/2019)
• 
In these times of near civil war, Americans agree on almost nothing.  Yet sometime in 2019, almost all of America finally got "woke" on China.
• 
For years, our leaders had yawned about Silk Road neo-imperialism in Africa and Asia, and gross abuses of human rights against Chinese religious minorities and political dissidents.
• 
Almost every assumption Washington made, both by Democratic and Republican administrations, was logically flawed at best.
• 
And at worst, these calculations were a weird mix of conservative commercial greed, liberal political correctness and shared screwball naivete.
• 
American trade and political appeasement were never interpreted by Beijing as magnanimity to be reciprocated, but always as weakness to be exploited.
• 
It was always ludicrous to think that the more concessions on trade and human rights the United States gave, the more China would Westernize and begin to resemble America or a European Union nation.
• 
... the ability to buy a new cellphone never ensures the right to vote for a candidate of one's choice.
• 
Instead, all China did was auction off large sections of its new and more efficient economy to crony communist pseudo-capitalists and corrupt provincial officials in order to modernize the country, beef up the military, warp the international trading system — and make itself very rich.
• 
Why did America act in such a suicidal way on China?
• 
Cheap Chinese labor and lax American laws motivated hundreds of U.S.  corporations to shut down their domestic assembly plants and relocate to China.
• 
Once American businesses got hooked on mega-profits, the Chinese government slowly started stealing their technology, infringing on copyrights and patents, dumping their own merchandise on the world market at prices below production costs, running up huge trade surpluses and manipulating their currency.
• 
But by then, American corporations were so addicted to laissez-faire profitmaking that they turned a blind eye and paid their hush money.
• 
Universities cashed in too, both by setting up lucrative satellite campuses in China and admitting tens of thousands of Chinese citizens.
• 
Most college deans and presidents simply ignored the dreadful human rights record of China, not to mention occasional expatriate espionage rings designed to steal engineering and high-tech research.
• 
... If profits had blinded corporations to exploitive Chinese partnerships, political correctness conveniently offered academia and the media political cover...
• 
The result was that everyone profited and all remained willfully blind to the ascendant cutthroat and dictatorial colossus.
• 
The domestic winners in the appeasement of Communist China were the two American coasts...
• 
Suddenly, the intellectual and informational classes could sell their wares in a new global market, and they profited enormously.
• 
Few cared about the "losers" in the now-hollowed-out Midwest and in rural America.
• 
For corporate America, domestic muscular labor could be easily and cheaply replaced by millions of Chinese workers.
• 
Outsourcing and offshoring pulled investment capital out of America and put it overseas, as Chinese-assembled products brought far greater profits.
• 
Academics could not have cared less that the Deplorables and the working classes were being wiped out, given their politically incorrect social and cultural views.
• 
What finally woke America up were two unforeseen developments.
• 
First, the Chinese overreached and systematically began militarizing neutral islands in the South China Sea.  They derided international commercial treaties.
• 
In racist fashion, they treated Asian and African countries as if they were 19th-century colonies.
• 
And they unapologetically lifted technology from America's biggest and most powerful corporations to turn China into something akin to George Orwell's "1984."
• 
Second, Donald Trump got elected president, all the while screaming that the Chinese emperor had no clothes.
• 
The cheerleaders finally listened and admitted that China had been buck naked after all.
• 
Now we will learn whether America woke up just in time or too late.
• 
Either way, no one will credit the loud Trump for warning that China was threatening not just the U.S.  but the world as we have known it.
      Our rights are threatened by an unelected, politically correct, morally righteous elite  (Fox 09/28/2019)
• 
The American founders institutionalized the best of a long Western tradition of representative government with the U.S.  Constitution and Bill of Rights.
• 
These contracts outlined the rare privileges and responsibilities of new American citizens.
• 
Yet the concept of citizenship is being assaulted on the premodern side by the legal blending of mere residency with citizenship.
• 
The undocumented are becoming legally indistinguishable from citizens and enjoy exemption from federal immigration law in some 500 sanctuary jurisdictions.
• 
Multiculturalism has reduced the idea of e pluribus unum to a regressive tribalism.
• 
Citizens cannot even agree over once-hallowed and shared national holidays such as Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.
• 
It is eerie how such current American retribalization resembles the collapse of Rome, as Goths, Huns and Vandals all squabbled among one another for what was left of 1,200 years of Roman citizenship — eager to destroy what they could neither create nor emulate.
• 
Citizenship has always been protected by the middle classes — on the idea that they are more independent and self-reliant than the poor, but can stand up to the influence and power of the elite.
• 
Yet until recently, we had seen a decade of stagnant wages and entire regions ossified by outsourcing, offshoring and unfair global trade.
• 
Historically, with the demise of the middle class so follows the end of constitutional government.
• 
But citizenship also faces a quite different and even greater postmodern threat.
• 
Many of our coastal elites see nothing much exceptional in America, past and present.
• 
They prefer the culture and values of the European Union without worrying that the EU's progressive utopian promises have been wrecked by open borders, economically stultifying regulations, and unapologetic and anti-democratic efforts to curb free expression and local autonomy.
• 
Often, such "citizen of the world" mentalities fuel shame over the origins and traditions of America.
• 
Does voting — the bedrock right of the democratic citizen — matter that much anymore?
• 
Lone activist federal judges frequently overturn legislation and referenda they find contrary to their own political take on legal theory — without worry that the votes of millions are canceled in a nanosecond.
• 
Meanwhile, the proverbial "swamp" of the bureaucratic, administrative and regulatory state is so vast and unaccountable that a few clerks can harass entrepreneurs, issue edicts with the force of legislation that ruins lives, or indict, regulate or audit a targeted individual into legal bankruptcy.
• 
We still have a Bill of Rights, but many of our constitutional protections are being rendered impotent.
• 
We are unwinding at both ends.
• 
Tribalism, the erosion of the middle class and de facto open borders are turning Americans into mere residents of a particular North American region between Mexico and Canada.
• 
Yet even more dangerously, thanks to the fiats of unelected bureaucrats and officials, along with the social media lynch mobs who boycott, harass and shame us, our constitutional rights are now increasingly optional.
• 
They mostly hinge on whether we are judged worthy by an unelected, politically correct and morally righteous elite.
• 
In theory, American citizenship remains the same.
• 
In reality, it is disappearing fast.
      Trump wages war on progressive culture – Dems respond with Trump Derangement Syndrome  (Fox 09/19/2019)
• 
President Trump is waging a nonstop, all-encompassing war against progressive culture...
• 
As a result, not even former President George W.  Bush has incurred the degree of hatred from the left that is now directed at Trump.
• 
For most of his time in office, Trump, his family, his friends and his businesses have been investigated, probed, dissected and constantly attacked.
• 
In 2016 and early 2017, President Barack Obama's appointees in the FBI, CIA and Department of Justice tried to subvert the Trump campaign, interfere with his transition and, ultimately, abort his presidency.
• 
Now, congressional Democrats promise impeachment before the 2020 election.
• 
The usual reason for such hatred is said to be Trump's unorthodox and combative take-no-prisoners style.
• 
Critics detest his crude and unfettered assertions, his lack of prior military or political experience, his attacks on the so-called bipartisan administrative state, and his intent to roll back the entire Obama-era effort of "fundamentally transforming" the country leftward.
• 
Certainly, Trump's agenda of closing the border, using tariffs to overturn a half-century of Chinese mercantilism, and pulling back from optional overseas military interventions variously offends both Democrats and establishment Republicans.
• 
Trump periodically and mercurially fires his top officials.
• 
He apparently does not care whether the departed write damning memoirs or join his opposition. 
• 
To make things worse for his critics, Trump's economy is booming as never before in the new 21st century: near-record-low unemployment, a record number of Americans working, increases in workers' wages and family incomes, low interest rates, low inflation, steady GDP growth and a strong stock market.
• 
Yet the real source of Trump Derangement Syndrome is his desire to wage a multifront pushback — politically, socially, economically and culturally — against what might be called the elite postmodern progressive world.
• 
Contemporary elites increasingly see nationalism and patriotism as passe.  Borders are 19th-century holdovers.
• 
The European Union, not the U.S.  Constitution, is seen as the preferable model to run a nation.
• 
Transnational and global organizations are wiser on environmental and diplomatic matters than is the U.S.  government.
• 
The media can no longer afford to be nonpartisan and impartial in their effort to rid America of a reactionary such as Trump, given his danger to the progressive future.
• 
America's ancient sins can never really be forgiven.  In a new spirit of iconoclasm, thousands of buildings, monuments and statues dedicated to American sinners of the past must be destroyed, removed or renamed.
• 
A new America supposedly is marching forward under the banner of ending fossil fuels, curbing the Second Amendment, redistributing income, promoting identity politics and open borders, and providing free college, free health care and abortion on demand.
• 
An insomniac Trump fights all of the above nonstop and everywhere.  ... No slugfest is too off-topic or trivial for Trump.
• 
Trump variously goes after antifa, political correctness on campus, the NATO hierarchy, the radical green movement, Planned Parenthood, American universities and, above all, the media — especially CNN, The Washington Post and The New York Times.
• 
For all the acrimony and chaos — and prognostications of Trump's certain failure — a bloodied Trump wins more than he loses.
• 
NATO members may hate Trump, but more are finally paying their promised defense contributions.
• 
In retrospect, many Americans concede that the Iran deal was flawed and that the Paris climate accord mere virtue signaling.  China was long due for a reckoning.
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation proved fruitless and was further diminished by Mueller's bizarrely incoherent congressional testimony.
• 
Trump has so enraged his Democratic adversaries that the candidates to replace him have moved farther to the left than any primary field in memory.
• 
They loathe Trump, but in their abject hatred he has goaded the various Democratic candidates into revealing their support for the crazy Green New Deal, reparations for slavery, relaxed immigration policies and trillions of dollars in new free stuff.
• 
In a way, the left-wing Democratic presidential candidates understand Trump best.
• 
If he wins his one-man crusade to stop the progressive project, they are finished, and their own party will make the necessary adjustments and then sheepishly drift back toward the center.
      Victor Davis Hanson: Why are so many young people calling themselves socialists?  (Fox 08/29/2019)
• 
"Socialist!" is no longer a McCarthyite slur.
• 
A recent Harris poll showed that about half of so-called millennials would like to live in a socialist country.
• 
Five years ago, septuagenarian Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was considered an irrelevant lone socialist in the U.S.  Senate – Vermont's trademark contribution to cranky quirkiness.
• 
But in 2016 Sanders' improbable Democratic primary run almost knocked off front-runner Hillary Clinton, even as socialist governments were either imploding or stagnating the world over.
• 
After Clinton's loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election, Sanders is back, running as a socialist warhorse, promising endless amounts of free stuff, with those promises suddenly being taken seriously.
• 
Note the shock over Clinton's 2016 defeat, the furor directed at a take-no-prisoners Trump, and sudden progressive criticism of the Obama presidency as too temporizing, weak and ineffectual.
• 
College-educated Americans collectively owe an estimated $1.5 trillion in unpaid student loans.
• 
Many of these debtors despair of ever paying the huge sums back.
• 
Canceling debt is an ancient socialist rallying cry.  Starting over with a clean slate appeals to those "oppressed" with college loans.
• 
A force multiplier of debt is the realization that many students borrowed to focus on mostly irrelevant college majors.
• 
Such degrees usually offer few opportunities to find jobs high-paying enough to pay back staggering obligations.
• 
Asymmetrical globalization over the last 30 years has created levels of wealth among the elite never envisioned in the history of civilization.
• 
In addition to these disparities, "free" but unfair trade – especially with China and to a lesser extent with the European Union, Japan and South Korea – hollowed out the interior of the United States, impoverishing and diluting the once-solid middle class.
• 
Warped free trade and Chinese buccaneerism, not free-market capitalism per se, impoverished millions of Americans.
• 
Lots of young people claim to be socialists but are instead simply angry because they cannot afford a home, a new car or nice things in their "woke" urban neighborhoods.
• 
Usually, Americans become more traditional, self-reliant and suspicious of big government as they age.
• 
Reasons for such conservatism have often included early marriage, child-raising, homeownership and residence in a suburb, small town or rural area.
• 
Today's youth are generally marrying later.  Most have few if any children.
• 
They are concentrating in the urban centers of big- and medium-sized coastal blue cities, such as Boston, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle – but often at dead-end jobs that pay them just enough to get by and enjoy the appetites and perks of cool life in the big city.
• 
These are the ingredients for a culture that emphasizes the self, blames others for a sense of personal failure, and wants instant social justice.
• 
Finally, schools and colleges have replaced the empirical study of economics, history and politics with race, class and gender indoctrination.
• 
Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, Soviet Union strongman Josef Stalin and Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong each killed millions of their own people.
• 
Today's students romanticize Che Guevara and Fidel Castro because they are clueless about their bloody careers.
• 
Few learn why naturally rich nations such as Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela ... have traditionally lagged far behind due to years of destructive central planning, socialist economics and coerced communist government.
• 
The handmaiden of failed socialist regimes has always been ignorance of the past and present.
• 
And that is never truer than among today's American college-degreed (but otherwise economically and historically illiterate) youth.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Can’t We All Just Get Along?  (AG 07/22/2019)
• 
Apparently no — at least until after 2020.  Two examples summarize why.
• 
"We don't need any more brown faces that don't want to be a brown voice," said U.S.  Representative Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), one-quarter of "the squad" sowing havoc among Democrats in the House.
• 
"We don't need black faces that don't want to be a black voice.  We don't need Muslims that don't want to be a Muslim voice.  We don't need queers that don't want to be a queer voice."
• 
Of the Republican Party, MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes said the other day: "It must be peacefully, nonviolently, politically destroyed with love, compassion and determination, but utterly confronted and destroyed.  That is the only way to break the coalition apart... Not by prying off this or that interest.  They are in too deep.  They have shamed themselves too much.  The heart of the thing must be ripped out.  The darkness must be banished."
• 
In other words, the new progressive message is that we all must vote monolithically and predicated on our superficial appearance, religion, or sexual orientation.
• 
And the Trump base must be destroyed, though annihilated with "love" and "compassion."
• 
All are presently shocked that Donald Trump would dare suggest that if anyone did not like the United States, then perhaps he or she might, of their own volition, consider leaving the country.
• 
Perhaps no politician should ever advise American citizens with whom he disagrees to leave the country.
• 
But Trump did not suggest mandatory departures — in the manner that Rep.  Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) had wanted Trump supporter and immigrant Sebastian Gorka deported.
• 
Trump was not talking of some grand swap in the explicit fashion that NeverTrumpers have variously wished for the Trump Republican and/or white working-class base to be forcibly exported and replaced by Latin American border crossers.
• 
"If only we could keep the hard-working Latin American newcomers and deport the contemptible Republican cowards — that would truly enhance America's greatness."
• 
... Trump's larger point was exasperation that he was tired of being constantly smeared as a racist and fascist.
• 
He was especially piqued at U.S.  congressional representatives and the Left at large, who transfer their current unhappiness with America back to its very founding and innate nature — and the accompanying monotonous baggage of name-changing, statue-toppling, and nonstop censuring and boycotting.
• 
Certainly, then, it was logical that anyone who harbored such existential animus toward the United States might take Trump's advice, end their current torment, and thus gladly and voluntarily free themselves from an oppressive land.
• 
... gross ingratitude when Southern California-residing Mexican immigrants, legal or otherwise, a few years ago booed the American soccer team of the country they most desperately sought to enter and cheered the Mexican team, whose country they had done all they could to leave.
• 
... I never quite figured out why one of my students, here illegally from Mexico, waved the Mexican flag while participating in a ritual, free-speech area burning of the U.S.  flag — all to showcase his anger at being exposed to deportation to Mexico.
• 
I suggested at the time he instead just carry a handwritten placard, "Please, I will do all I can from now on legally to stay in your wonderful country."
• 
Ilhan Omar presents a most exasperating case because on the one hand she poses as an avatar of the successful immigrant, while on the other she neurotically whines that America has failed utterly to meet her expectations when she fled a Kenyan refugee camp to enter the United States.
• 
Her fervent anti-Israelism is fueled by an equally despicable and loud anti-Semitism.
• 
And she rarely seems to acknowledge that a foreign country welcomed her in extremis, subsidized her upbringing and education, and, quite unlike her tribalist, racist, and anti-Semitic native Somalia, relegated matters of race, gender, class, and religion to insignificant status or indeed saw them as advantages to be rewarded in electing her to Congress.
• 
So, the larger landscape of the new age of acrimony is not a sudden loss of manners, but rather a complete progressive meltdown at the election of Donald J.  Trump.
• 
We now forget that half the country was quite upset by the 2008 election of Barack Obama, not because of his race, but out of concern that he had been the most partisan voting senator of the era in the entire U.S.  Senate.
• 
Opponents were taken aback when he boasted, shortly before his victory, about fundamentally "transforming" the country.
• 
During the campaign he had urged his supporters to take a gun to a knife fight and to "get in their faces" (which targets did he signify by "their"?), as well as writing off the Pennsylvania working class as backward gun and bible clingers, and his own grandmother as a "typical white person" (what did he mean by "typical" and did it apply to 230 million Americans?).
• 
Obama mocked charges that Trinity Unity Church of Christ of Chicago was fueled by racism, by swearing he could no more disown Rev.  Jerimiah Wright — his anti-Semitic, racist, and anti-American personal pastor, whose kindergarten banal sermons on the "audacity of hope" became the inspiration for Obama's second book — than the grandmother who raised and nurtured him.
• 
What did Obama mean when he weighed in during the Trayvon Martin affair by remarking that Martin might have resembled the son he never had?
• 
What exactly were Obama's own injunctions about knowing when to quit making lots of money, or to acknowledge that one does not build his own business, or to realize that it is not a time to profit ever to apply to his post-presidential, lucrative self — or was all that just transitory boilerplate demagoguery aimed at a particular class of which he had not quite yet joined?
• 
Obama's minions were pilloried as Orwellian figures who monitored the communications of Associated Press reporters and James Rosen of Fox News, who jailed a minor videomaker to scapegoat him for the Benghazi mess, and who went after journalist critic Sharyl Attkisson.
• 
Obama likely knew that his own FBI and CIA were in violation of federal law in their zeal to ensure a Hillary Clinton continuum and the destruction of the Trump candidacy.
• 
Republicans lost no time in blasting Obama...  After all, that is what American politics has at times always been — a rough and mean-spirited brawl to discredit your vulnerable enemies and thereby reacquire power by winning elections.
• 
Yet there was never a sustained and collective Republican effort to enlist the media to remove Obama from office by means other than an election.
• 
Republicans during the transformative Obama era were content to chalk up huge wins in the 2010 and 2014 midterms, to go to court in hopes of stopping Obama's executive orders, to shut down the government if need be to stop excessive spending, to investigate scandals such as "Fast and Furious" and Benghazi, and to censure Attorney General Eric Holder.
• 
But what they did not do was immediately declare Obama an illegitimate president or a president so foreign to their own liking that they forthwith sued in three states to overturn the election.
• 
They did not stage a campaign to subvert the voting of the Electoral College, or introduce articles of impeachment right after his inauguration.
• 
In efforts to impeach, they did not turn loose a special counsel and over a dozen right-wing government lawyers for 22 months and $35 million worth of harassment, or obsess over their president's long (and often checkered history), as they wheeled out each week of his presidency an assortment of stale crooks, terrorists, and racists from his past ... or go after the Obama children, all to force him from office.
• 
When Obama essentially got caught on a hot microphone promising Russian President Medvedev that he would be flexible after his reelection on the implementation of long-planned Eastern European missile defense if Vladimir Putin would give him a little room, Republicans did not introduce articles of impeachment on grounds he was "colluding" with a foreign power...
• 
Even if conservative forbearance derived only from pragmatic lessons from their own past ill-fated impeachment of Bill Clinton, they still did not seek to impeach Obama.
• 
I don't remember the conservative movement labeling the majority of Americans who voted for Obama as deplorable people, as irredeemables, as the dregs of society, as Neanderthal clingers to their Bibles and guns...
• 
Much less was there a "NeverObama" left-wing movement that repeatedly dreamed out loud of deporting the rival but hated hard-left Obama base and swapping them with illegal aliens.
• 
Mitt Romney did not go on a year-long crusade blaming dozens of things and people for his own poorly conducted 2012 presidential campaign and claiming he was "robbed."
• 
Again, by all means his opponents can, if they so wish, ridicule, caricature, and blast Trump and hope he fails.
• 
But after trying for nearly three years to destroy the president and prematurely remove him by any means necessary before a scheduled election, please do not appeal to the better angels of our nature — while deploring the new "unpresidential" behavior of Donald J.  Trump for lashing out at those who sought to reduce him to a common criminal, pervert, traitor, dunce, and Satanic figure.
• 
... Donald Trump sensed that half the country had had enough and he would return slur for slur — and so may the best brawler win.
• 
After all, in 2019, this 243rd year of our illustrious nation, most Americans are not simply going to curl up in a fetal position, apologize for the greatest nation in the history of civilization, and say, "Ah, you're right, Representatives Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Pressley, and Tlaib.  It is an awful country after all — and always was."
• 
While one may always wish that the president and his critics tone down their venom ... it is hard for half the country to feel much sympathy for the Left that sowed the wind and are reaping an ever growing whirlwind.
      The ‘Squad’ aims to guillotine the Democratic old guard  (NYP 07/16/2022)
• 
The socialist party has absorbed what is left of the old Democrats.
• 
At first, the progressive old guard in Congress, like good Girondists, found the revolutionary carnivores useful in reducing the ranks of the Trumpians, the Tea Party, Reagan Democrats, old Perot voters and the white working class to the inanimate status of "deplorables," "irredeemables," "clingers" and "dregs" — and with them, the bigoted, racist, sexist, nativist, classist, homophobic and xenophobic GOP.
• 
Certainly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and a few geriatric sympathizers such as Sens.  Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin enjoyed the progressive feasting on the ancien regime — especially the unity offered by shared hatred of the obviously soon-to-be-impeached, deposed, exiled and discredited President Trump.
• 
But revolutionary carnivores are rarely sated.  Once they run out of easy hostile targets, they get hungry and as cannibals start to eye their own.
• 
We have already seen that autophagy in the initial primary debates in which all the major Democratic presidential candidates shouted out the most outlandish agendas possible in a desperate effort to ensure that no rival could possibly pose more to their left.
• 
All the while, Pelosi, Schumer and a host of old Democrats enjoyed the new energy that was directed against the evil Trump.
• 
To revolutionary cheers, 1 million illegal aliens crossed the border in the first six months of 2019.
• 
The media-left-wing-celebrity nexus sought to devour Trump by myriad means.
• 
Once all these efforts to destroy Trump failed, so too waned ­superficial revolutionary solidarity.  In the manner that Robespierre and his Committee of Public Safety guillotined naive Girondists, so, too, "the Squad" of Reps.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib are now damning Pelosi as a racist.
• 
What were the Pelosi generation, the left-wing journalist crowd and the professoriate thinking when they harangued nonstop about the forthcoming irrelevancy of supposed old, white dinosaurs?
• 
That thereby, such woke white liberals somehow had purchased exemptions from the very executioners whom they had helped create?
• 
What is the next wrinkle in this revolutionary trajectory to the guillotine?
• 
Just as the Jacobin agenda was nihilistic, so are the fantasies of the adolescent Squad.
• 
No sane American would ever willingly embrace the ludicrous Green New Deal, the abolition of the Electoral College, the end of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, extending the franchise to 16-year-olds, cancellation of college debt, free tuition, reparations, a wealth tax or legal infanticide.
• 
Mostly, the Jacobins frighten the old progressives.  They empower Trump.  They make what is left of the Never Trump Republicans look even more ridiculous.
• 
Ultimately, they are racists, who self-define by their appearance and their ethnic backgrounds in an ever more integrated, multiracial country in which the effort to transcend those Neanderthal considerations was largely the story of the last century.
• 
Where will it all lead?  To the metaphorical collective Democratic guillotine unless some sane Democrat stands up and says no more — and learns that the revolutionary mob might prefer to guillotine the guillotiners.
      US holds all the cards in showdown with Iran  (JWR 06/20/2019)
• 
The Iranian theocrats despise the Trump administration.
• 
They yearn for the good old days of the Obama administration, when the U.S.  agreed to a nuclear deal that all but guaranteed future Iranian nuclear proliferation, ignored Iranian terrorism and sent hundreds of millions of dollars in shakedown payments to the Iranian regime.
• 
Iran believed that the Obama administration saw it as a valuable Shiite counterweight to Israel and the traditionally American-allied Sunni monarchies in the Gulf region.
• 
Teheran assumes that an even more left-wing American administration would also endorse Iran-friendly policies, and so it is fishing for ways to see that happen in 2020 with a Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden presidency.
• 
Desperate Iranian officials have already met secretly with former Secretary of State John Kerry and openly with Sen.  Diane Feinstein, likely to commiserate over Trump's cancellation of the nuclear deal and to find ways to revive the Obama-era agreement after Trump leaves office.
• 
To that end, the Iranians wish to disrupt world oil traffic while persuading China, Russia and the European Union to pressure the U.S.  to back off sanctions.
• 
Iran hopes to provoke and embarrass its nemesis into overreacting — or not reacting at all.
• 
If Trump does nothing, he looks weak to this Jacksonian base of supporters.
• 
But do too much, and he appears a neoconservative, globalist nation-builder.
• 
Either way, the Iranians think Trump loses.
• 
Accordingly, Iran hopes to embarrass or bog down the U.S.  before the 2020 elections.
• 
In Teheran's view, the challenge is to provoke Trump into a shooting war that it can survive and that will prove unpopular in the United States, thus losing him the election.
• 
It harkens back to its role in the 2003-2011 Iraq War, a conflict that proved that U.S.  efforts could be subverted, hundreds of American soldiers could be killed, public support for war could be eroded, and a more malleable American government could be transitioned in.
• 
But what worked then may not work now.
• 
The U.S.  is not only the world's largest producer of oil and natural gas, but soon to become the largest exporter of energy — and without getting near the Iranian coast.
• 
Likewise, American allies in the Middle East such as Israel are energy independent.
• 
America's Arab friends enjoy seeing competing Iranian oil all but off the market.
• 
Time, then, is on the Americans' side.
• 
But it is certainly not on the side of a bankrupt and impoverished Iran that either must escalate or face ruin.
• 
If Iran starts sinking ships or attacking U.S.  assets, Trump can simply replay the ISIS strategy of selective off-and-on bombing.  The U.S.  did not lose a single pilot to enemy action.
• 
Translated, that would mean disproportionately replying to each Iranian attack on a U.S.  asset with a far more punishing air response against an Iranian base or port.
• 
The key would be to avoid the use of ground troops and yet not unleash a full-fledged air war.
• 
Rather, the U.S.  would demonstrate to the world that Iranian aggression determines the degree to which Iran suffers blows from the U.S.
• 
... the truth is that America has all the cards and Iran none in its game of chicken.
• 
Because Iran is losing friends and money, it will have to escalate.
• 
But the U.S.  can respond without looking weak and without going to war — and without ensuring the return to power of the political party responsible for giving us the disastrous nuclear deal that had so empowered Iran in the first place.
      Colluders, Obstructionists, Leakers, and Other Projectionists  (05/26/2019)
• 
"There is no serious person out there who would suggest that you could even rig America's elections," Obama said in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election.
• 
Obama was anxious that the sure-to-be-sore-loser Trump would not blame his defeat on voting impropriety in a fashion that might call into question Clinton's victory.
• 
How ironic that Russian "collusion" was used as a preemptive charge from those who actually had colluded with Russians for all sorts for financial and careerist advantages.
• 
The entire so-called Uranium One caper had hinged on ex-President Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and their Clinton Foundation uniting with Russian or Russian-affiliated oligarchs to ease restrictions on the sale of North American uranium reserves to a Russian company with close ties to Vladimir Putin.
• 
Coincidentally what followed were massive donations from concerned Russian parties to the foundation, as well as a $500,000 honorarium to Bill Clinton for a brief Moscow speech.
• 
Had Donald Trump been caught, as President Obama was in Seoul in March 2012, on a hot mic assuring the Russians that he would be more flexible with Russia after the 2012 election ("On all these issues, but particularly missile defense, this, this can be solved — but it's important for him [Putin] to give me space") he would likely now be facing real impeachment charges.
• 
Imagine the cries of outrage ... had Trump inadvertently blurted out to the world that he was willing to warp U.S.  security interests to fit his own reelection agenda.
• 
(Remember: "This is my last election ... After my election, I have more flexibility.")
• 
The locus classicus of Russian collusion, however, is Hillary Clinton's effort in 2016.
• 
The facts are not in dispute.  Using the three firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS, the Clinton campaign paid a foreign national, British subject Christopher Steele, to compile a smear dossier against Clinton's then-opponent, Donald J.  Trump.
• 
Steele then bought Russian and Russian-related sources to produce supposed dirt on Trump.
• 
None of these Russian-generated smears would ever be verified.
• 
In fact, almost immediately most slurs proved to be outright lies and completely made up in their details — if not the stuff of a Russian disinformation campaign.
• 
Nonetheless, Steele seeded his contracted dirt during the 2016 election, and later during the Trump transition and presidency, among the highest Obama Administration officials at the Justice Department, FBI, and CIA.
• 
... we now know Clinton used Russian fake sources both to generate damaging anti-Trump media stories and to prompt government investigations designed to hamstring his governance.
• 
Again, if there is such a thing as "Russian collusion," then Hillary Clinton is its font.
• 
Mueller spent more than $34 million and wrote over 440 pages to inform the American people that Trump could not realistically be indicted for obstructing justice, mostly because the underlying crime — "collusion" — never existed in the first place.
• 
Moreover, Mueller and other officials were never actually hampered in their investigations.
• 
No matter: "obstruction" was supposedly the key to destroying the Trump Administration after collusion imploded.
• 
But what exactly would real obstruction of justice look like it?
• 
It might be a deliberate effort by government officials to mislead and impede the proper conduct of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, in an effort to spy on an American citizen deemed useful in proving "collusion."
• 
... top FBI and Justice Department officials deliberately obstructed and essentially destroyed the normal protocols necessary to protect the sanctity of legal surveillance, during the election, the Trump transition, and the early Trump presidency.
• 
Or maybe obstruction would be defined as the efforts of a recused attorney general like Loretta Lynch, who had stepped aside from the FBI probe of Hillary Clinton's emails, to have met secretly on an airport tarmac with the spouse of the target of her department's investigation.
• 
Or would obstruction be classified as Lynch supposedly ordering the FBI not even to use the word "investigation" when it was investigating Clinton?
• 
Or would obstruction constitute deliberately destroying more than 30,000 emails under subpoena, in the fashion that Clinton ordered her aides to "bleach bit" her correspondence and destroy mobile communication devices?
• 
Or would obstruction be classified as deleting emails germane to an investigation of the collusion scam in the fashion of Nellie Ohr erasing emails received from her husband's government email account, or perhaps in the manner of Mueller team staffers who wiped clean the mobile phones of the fired Lisa Page and Peter Strzok?
• 
Or would obstruction characterize the brag of the anonymous New York Times guest editorialist?
• 
He preened in a ... column that he was an unnamed high administration official and NeverTrump Republican who, along with like-minded "resistance" leaders, was trying his best to disrupt his own president's governance.
• 
What would anonymous's obstruction entail — deliberately ignoring legal mandates?
• 
Failing to follow new federal guidelines?  Trying to subvert nominations?  Illegally leaking to the press?
• 
Obstructing anything he did not like, whether in legal or illegal fashion?
• 
What then would be a classical definition of a Logan Act violation?
• 
Perhaps the ongoing efforts of former Secretary of State John Kerry fit the bill.
• 
During the lead-up to the Trump's Administration's cancelation of the Iran deal and in its aftermath, private citizen Kerry met with high Iranian officials and purportedly advised them how to obstruct or at least survive the ramifications of Trump's new Iranian policies.
• 
In other words, the ex-secretary of state and, again, now private citizen Kerry met secretly with an Iranian foreign minister to brainstorm about how the elements of their deal might survive his own country's current policies.
• 
Thornton seems to be advising the likely veneer of the Chinese apparat and government to stall out the Trump Administration and thus wait to find a more familiar and compliant America that would follow past protocols.
• 
... Brooks would reassure her foreign friends and kindred Democrats at home that Trump most certainly could be stopped after just a few days in office — if only the right people began the right adoption of her tripartite strategy of either impeachment, removal under the 25th Amendment, or an outright military coup (e.g., "The fourth possibility is one that until recently I would have said was unthinkable in the United States of America: a military coup, or at least a refusal by military leaders to obey certain orders.")
• 
"For the first time in my life, I can imagine plausible scenarios in which senior military officials might simply tell the president: ‘No, sir.  We're not doing that,' to thunderous applause from the New York Times editorial board."
• 
... what would dangerous and illegal leaking consist of?
• 
James Comey leaking to media conduits classified, private-one-on-one presidential conversations to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor?
• 
Andrew McCabe feeding the media self-serving hoaxes about collusion?
• 
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper seeding to CNN the private Comey briefing with President Trump — and then deploring such illegal leaks, as he leveraged that scoop to land himself a future CNN analyst billet?
• 
FBI sources planting stories of pre-election "collusion" with Yahoo and Mother Jones?
• 
Or how about leaks to tip off the media about the timing Roger Stone arrest?
• 
Or periodic Mueller team "walls are closing in" and "noose is tightening" leak-lies to the obsequious media?
• 
#The zeal to remove Trump by any means necessary justified colluding with Russians, obstructing justice, undermining his administration abroad, and chronic leaking.
• 
... these deep-state and media elites are narcissistically delusional.  So inured are they to deference that they really believed they should have the power, indeed the right, to subvert democracy, to overturn a U.S.  election on the justification that the wrong voters had voted for the incorrect candidate and both needed to be corrected by the right people.
• 
Real coups against democracies rarely are pulled off by jack-booted thugs in sunglasses or fanatical mobs storming the presidential palace.
• 
More often, they are the insidious work of supercilious bureaucrats, bought intellectuals, toady journalists, and political activists who falsely project that their target might at some future date do precisely what they are currently planning and doing — and that they are noble patriots, risking their lives, careers, and reputations for all of us, and thus must strike first.
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      Schumer's Ugly 'Voting Rights' Gamble  (JWR 01/07/2022)
• 
"As former Senator Robert Byrd famously said, Senate Rules 'must be changed to reflect changed circumstances,'" Schumer argued.
• 
"Put more plainly by Senator Byrd, 'Congress is not obliged to be bound by the dead hand of the past.'"...
• 
And by the "past," Schumer means only a couple of years ago, when he led a record 300-plus filibusters during Donald Trump's presidency.  In 2005, when Republican George W.  Bush was president, Schumer, coincidentally, also warned that eliminating the legislative filibuster was a "doomsday" for democracy.
• 
"The checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option," Schumer said.
• 
"The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time."
• 
Indeed.  And to avoid looking like a conniving, power-hungry, partisan hypocrite with absolutely no respect for the institution he serves, Schumer rationalizes his assaults on norms by pretending the nation faces an existential threat to "democracy."
• 
And so, Schumer has fused together two of the contemporary left's most cynical and pernicious projects.
• 
First, the trashing of the filibuster, part of a broader effort to create a more direct democracy to ram through massive, unalterable policy changes with the slimmest of majorities in the shortest of windows.
• 
Now, Schumer proposes nationalizing elections by overturning the will of voters and compelling states to adopt chaotic voting regulations that he believes will favor Democrats in the long run.
• 
But no one has a "right" to vote without an ID.  No one has a "right" to ballot-harvest.  And many Democrats' proposals, as in empowering the federal government to mandate gerrymandering and forcing taxpayers to finance congressional campaigns, have absolutely nothing to do with voting rights — nor do proposals meant to dismantle First Amendment protections.
• 
On the voting front, House Democrats have passed a bill that would compel states to count mail-in votes that arrive up to 10 days after Election Day, require states to allow ballot-harvesting, coerce states to ban voter ID laws, induce states to allow felons to vote and mandate 15 days of early voting, automatic voter registration and online voter registration.
• 
Most of the state regulations that Democrats claim are Jim Crow 2.0 simply undo some of the anarchic COVID-era rules and reinstate standards that exist in many blue states and basically all Western nations.
• 
... is there any doubt Schumer would do it if he could?  Is there any doubt he's continuing to normalize un-American majoritarianism?  Is there any doubt he is willing to destroy the Senate?
• 
... Democrats will have to do more corroding of trust in elections by leaning into the notion that supporting basic voter integrity is racist.
• 
In his letter, Schumer compared Republicans who believe Americans should provide photo IDs to vote to "violent insurrectionists."
• 
In truth, Schumer, because of his power, is a bigger threat to the constitutional order than any rando who showed up to riot on Jan.  6.  Unlike their actions, his attacks on the system would live on in perpetuity.
• 
      Against 'Unity'  (JWR 11/13/2020)
• 
Political unity is an ugly, authoritarian idea.  No free place has domestic political unity, nor should it aspire to it.
• 
What "unity" really means, of course, is capitulation.  America is once again being subjected to the inane brand of pseudo-patriotic sloganeering we saw during President Barack Obama's tenure.
• 
Now, as then, the media will pretend that the moral fabric of the nation must be mended after Republican rule.  It's pretty transparent.
• 
When Democrats win the presidency, we are treated to solemn calls for national restoration and political harmony, and to the expectation that, for the good of the nation, the opposition will embrace decorum and pass legislation they oppose.
• 
When Republicans win elections, grown women put on knitted hats depicting their reproductive organs and stomp around Washington protesting, all to a hero's welcome.
• 
Time magazine, the same publication that helped erode trust in our electoral system with conspiratorial covers of the White House morphing into the Kremlin, now offers a commemorative cover featuring Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with the words, "A time to heal."
• 
My favorite post-election headline came from the social scientists at Pew Research Center, who informed us that the "2020 election reveals two broad voting coalitions fundamentally at odds."
• 
Michelle Obama says we can overcome our divisions, but that Democrats must first remember "that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division."
• 
Anyhow, I reject this false choice in the name of patriotic disunity.
• 
Not one of those 72 million agents of chaos lied to millions of Americans to strip us of our health care insurance plans.
• 
Not one of those voters has attempted to force nuns to buy contraception — or sued them when they refused.
• 
One day, I hope Michelle will stop defending the lies, hate and division that her husband inflicted on this great nation.
• 
Until then, though, we'll have to agree to disagree.
• 
The liberal pivot from "resistance" to "unity" is as swift as it is dishonest.
• 
After four years of treating every unexceptional conservative policy victory as one of the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse, Washington Post columnists are already dusting off their columns about "obstructionism" and "minority rule."
• 
After years of blanket opposition to Trump, we are being told that Joe Biden has a national "mandate."
• 
He does not.  God willing, Washington is headed for more "gridlock" — a completely healthy, organic reflection of the geographical, ideological and theological differences of real people in contemporary America.
• 
Congress makes laws, and right now that institution is narrowly divided and unlikely to be able to come together on any of the big-ticket items Biden promised.  This is why federalism exists.
• 
Unity is found in comity with your neighbors, in your churches and schools, in your everyday interactions with your community.
• 
Politics is not a place for unity.  It is a place for airing grievances.  And we've got plenty.
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      How Democratic presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden caused the crisis in Ukraine  (Fox 02/25/2022)
• 
Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, U.S.  presidents of both major political parties have had their fair share of setbacks, failures, and outright disasters in foreign policy.  But few, if any, have been quite as stark as Democrats' mishandling of the situation in Ukraine.
• 
After decades of abuse at the hands of brutal Soviet regimes, Ukraine now stands on the brink of war with Russia, and for the time being, it seems no one is coming to its rescue.
• 
Although the relationship and history between Russia and Ukraine are complex, the failure of Democratic presidents' leadership, as well as their contributions to the current crisis, couldn't be clearer.
• 
Clinton's Nuclear-Sized Mistake
• 
First, there's President Bill Clinton's disastrous decision to support the nuclear disarmament of Ukraine, a choice supported by numerous congressional Democrats then and since.
• 
At the time of the fall of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had the third-largest nuclear arsenal in the world.  Ukraine controlled some 5,000 nuclear weapons, including ... "long-range missiles that carried up to 10 thermonuclear warheads, each far stronger than the bomb that leveled Hiroshima."
• 
In 1992, Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol, agreeing to return the nuclear weapons it had inherited from the Soviet government back to Russia.
• 
But members of the Ukrainian parliament soon thereafter increasingly voiced serious concerns over total nuclear disarmament, in large part due to fears of a future conflict with Russia.
• 
Throughout 1992 and 1993, Russia and the Clinton White House worked furiously to convince Ukraine to give up all of its nuclear weapons.
• 
After substantial political pressure, Ukraine caved in 1994, but only after the United States, Russia, and the United Kingdom agreed to protect Ukraine in the event of a future attack on the nation's sovereignty, as well as financial support and a number of other assurances.
• 
Ukraine dismantled and relinquished its nuclear weapons, giving President Clinton and the Russians a diplomatic victory.  The decision has haunted Ukraine ever since.
• 
Had Ukraine maintained at least part of its nuclear arsenal, it is highly unlikely Russia would be considering an invasion today.
• 
Broken Promises
• 
The most critical part of Ukraine's 1994 agreement to disarm was the pledge by the United States, Russia, and United Kingdom to protect Ukraine against unwarranted aggression.
• 
The initial agreement, the so-called Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, was later reaffirmed in 2009 by President Barack Obama.
• 
However, in 2014, Obama watched as Russian-backed rebels, with support from Russian troops, seized control of Crimea, a region belonging to Ukraine.  The rebel-backed government then seceded from Ukraine and annexed it to Vladimir Putin's government in Russia.
• 
The Obama administration, working alongside officials from the European Union, responded by issuing sanctions and freezing Russian assets.  They also imposed travel restrictions.
• 
Obama did not, though, keep the promise the United States made in 1994 and 2009 to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine.
• 
The Big ‘Green' Power Vacuum
• 
President Obama and his then-vice president, Joe Biden, were fierce opponents of the fossil-fuel industry for both of Obama's terms.
• 
In addition to having a negative impact on U.S.  economic growth, these policies caused numerous nations to turn to Russia for low-cost energy.
• 
Instead of importing fossil fuels from American companies, the European Union has become dependent on Russia, which is now the number-one source of natural gas in Europe, supplying about 41% of the region's supply.  Russia is also the largest supplier of crude oil and coal.
• 
Because much of Europe now depends on Russian energy, it can't afford to stand up to Russia's hostilities in Ukraine — or anywhere else, for that matter.
• 
The Trump administration attempted to convince European nations to depend on the United States' vast natural gas production instead, but such appeals largely failed because European leaders knew Donald Trump wouldn't be president forever, and that a Democratic administration would swiftly attempt to scale back fossil-fuel development.
• 
Afghanistan
• 
... no list of Democratic presidents' policy failures would be complete without mentioning Biden's disastrous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan in 2021.
• 
"The Biden Administration squandered precious time, ignored intelligence and recommendations from people on the ground, and refused bipartisan support to give them the resources to succeed.  In the process, the botched withdrawal has tarnished America's reputation and credibility."
• 
Due to the Biden administration's failure in leadership, the United States has never looked weaker.  Putin knows this, of course, and he is using the opportunity to expand his legacy, along with Russia's borders.
• 
Republicans have undoubtedly made some foreign policy mistakes in recent decades.  But when it comes to the chaos we're seeing in Ukraine today, Democrats, especially presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden, deserve the lion's share of the blame.  The people of Ukraine are suffering as a result of their failures.
      Justin Haskins: If you believe Black lives matter, support more funding for police — not less  (Fox 07/10/2020)
• 
... demands by some to defund or disband police departments around the nation will only lead to increased crime and the loss of more innocent lives, including Black lives.
• 
Already, serious crime is skyrocketing in a number of cities, as criminals take advantage of attacks on police to step up their activity.
• 
From June 29 to July 5, there were 85 shooting incidents and 27 murders in Chicago alone.
• 
Over the July Fourth holiday weekend, 44 people were shot in New York City and at least eight were killed.
• 
In Atlanta, there were 31 confirmed shooting victims and five deaths over the holiday weekend, including an 8-year-old girl...
• 
Many of the victims of these and other shootings are Black.  Every day, police officers in communities across America willingly risk their lives to prevent such crimes, without regard to the race or ethnicity of crime victims.
• 
Far-left politicians have also joined the effort, including self-described socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who complained in late June that action by New York City to cut its police budget by $1 billion — one-sixth of the total — didn't go nearly far enough.
• 
... radical Black Lives Matter groups — many of which have explicitly endorsed socialism — and socialist politicians like AOC are doing the exact opposite of what needs to be done to protect Black lives.
• 
If they really believe Black lives matter, they would be seeking increased funding to put more police on the street.
• 
Reforming and improving the police is a laudable goal.  But defunding and dismantling police departments will only make things worse and result in the deaths of more crime victims.
• 
Should we defund schools because some teachers have raped and assaulted their students?
• 
Should we defund hospitals because some doctors have killed patients through medical malpractice?
• 
Should we shut down churches because there are documented cases of pedophile priests and other clergy members attacking children?
• 
Of course not.  Defunding police makes no more sense.
• 
Why don't the Black lives lost to gangs and other criminals matter as much as the Black lives lost to the relatively rare cases of unjustified killings by police?
• 
... sending out unarmed social workers and psychologists to deal with rapidly unfolding and potentially dangerous situations won't work.  Armed robbers, rapists, violent gangs and other gunmen sometimes need to be confronted by armed police officers.
• 
In many cases, the deterrent effect or presence of police is enough to prevent violence.  But sometimes force becomes unavoidably necessary to save the lives of innocent crime victims.
• 
Imagine if your own child were in school and a gunman broke in and started shooting, killing children and teachers.  Would you want a social worker or armed officers to respond?
• 
Calls to defund police departments so that activists can expand failing welfare programs and hire an army of social workers aren't just foolish.
• 
Such calls are incredibly dangerous and disrespectful to the families who have lost loved ones at the hands of criminals.
• 
... it would be insane to slash police budgets to the bone prior to poverty rates falling, and even more insane to think — as Black Lives Matters claims — that simply increasing funding for welfare programs would magically reduce poverty.
• 
Since the start of President Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" more than $20 trillion has been spent on a long list of welfare programs, but poverty rates have hardly improved at all.
• 
Of course Black lives matter.  The best thing we can do to show that is to focus on alleviating poverty through proven reforms like enhancing school choice, investing in job training, reforming welfare programs and helping police departments become more effective while also holding them accountable when they violate Americans' rights.
• 
But none of these policies would move our country closer to socialism, so the Black Lives Matter leadership team — which is composed of numerous "trained Marxists" — isn't interested.
• 
Instead, BLM leaders argue it would be better to tear down as many existing American institutions as possible, the police first among them, regardless of the consequences to Black families.
      Justin Haskins: Nationwide chaos – Radical left took over this and we're all paying the price  (Fox 07/06/2020)
• 
... Boston city officials voted to remove its Emancipation Memorial from public land.  The statue, which depicts Abraham Lincoln and a kneeling freed slave, has been situated in a popular park near Boston Common since 1879.
• 
Since the tragic death of George Floyd, far-left activists across the country have been demanding cities, states, universities and private property owners strip their land and institutions of all statues and other honors that allegedly depict racism or celebrate people who held views considered to be racist, even the "Great Emancipator" himself, Lincoln.
• 
Although some of these protesters say their motivation is racial justice and equality under the law – goals everyone should embrace – the reality is that many of the leaders calling for the destruction of statues like the Emancipation Memorial are motivated by Marxist and socialist ideology, not by a well-meaning pursuit of racial harmony.
• 
... the Movement for Black Lives, a well-funded Black Lives Matter organization, bluntly states on its website, "We are anti-capitalist.  We believe and understand that Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system."
• 
It's Marxists' desire to overthrow capitalism and paint America – along with all of its founding principles and beliefs – as hateful and racist that is really motivating so many of the most radical rioters across the country.  Racial justice is merely the facade behind which Marxists are hiding.
• 
The Boston statue is a copy of the famed Emancipation Memorial in Washington, D.C., which protesters are also attempting to tear down.
• 
Incredibly, freed slaves paid for the Washington statue, and Frederick Douglass, one of the most important black civil rights leaders in American history, delivered a speech at the memorial's dedication in 1876, during which he said the memorial was a "good work for our race" because, in part, building the statue was "doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator."
• 
He also said the statue would provide the "highest honors to ourselves and those who come after us."
• 
How can a statue celebrating the emancipation of slavery, paid for by former slaves and dedicated by one of the most important black leaders in history – himself a former slave – ever be considered racist against blacks?
• 
Vandalizing and beheading statues of George Washington, burning down police stations, looting department stores and removing memorials built by former slaves serve no purpose for those who truly care about racism and seek racial equality.
• 
They are, however, quite useful actions for those who wish to foment a socialist revolution.
• 
The real cause for concern here isn't that there are radical leftists who want to destroy the American way of life.  They have had a presence in the United States for more than a century.
• 
The most disturbing aspect of these events is that so many well-meaning people have been duped into joining them and have been convinced that our country has never been anything other than a bastion of hate, racism and greed, and that the only way to right those wrongs is to eliminate capitalism.
• 
The most obvious explanation for the growing socialist movement in the United States is that, for decades, socialists and progressives have been in charge of America's public schools and colleges.
• 
They have taught historical revisionism, rejected the value of free-market capitalism and done everything in their power to indoctrinate a whole generation of young people into believing our nation's founding principles are rotten to the core.
• 
With these biases in mind, it's no wonder that America has been slowly transformed into a nation that would tolerate the desecration of its greatest heroes, most of whom would be classified as conservative by today's standards.
• 
Nor should it be surprising that about half of all young people now say they have a favorable view of socialism, despite its long and tragic history of failure, starvation, oppression and bloodshed.
• 
What is truly mystifying, though, is that Republicans have known about this problem for a half-century and have done virtually nothing to fix it.
• 
Curriculum standards and college faculty are still controlled by leftists, even in the most conservative states.
• 
The overwhelming majority of parents say they support school choice programs, whether they identify as Republican, Democrat or independent, and across all racial groups.
• 
The Republican Party has failed conservatives, libertarians and, most importantly, America's children.  And the worst part is, we're just starting to see the greatest effects of that failure.
• 
Unless our education system is completely overhauled, the problem is only going to get worse, a truly terrifying thought, indeed.
• 
How much more chaos do Republican politicians need to see before they finally take action?
      Al Gore, UN Secretary-General, others now demanding 'Great Reset' of global capitalism  (Fox 06/25/2020)
• 
The economic, social and political chaos caused by the COVID-19 outbreak and Black Lives Matter protests have for months captured the attention of virtually every American — and for good reason.
• 
These are incredibly important issues worthy of significant and thoughtful debate.
• 
But while most Americans have been preoccupied with protests and pandemics, a potentially bigger story has managed to slip beneath the radar: a growing movement among the world's most powerful leaders to call for a "reset" of the entire global economy.
• 
The purpose of the Great Reset isn't merely to enact policies that would lead to additional wealth redistribution, but rather to completely overhaul the world's existing structures and institutions.
• 
Among other things ... "the world must act jointly and swiftly to revamp all aspects of our societies and economies, from education to social contracts and working conditions."
• 
How, exactly, are these leaders planning on convincing Americans and citizens of every other industrialized nation to abandon modern capitalism?
• 
By scaring people into believing that these changes are essential for stopping the next great "crisis" the world will face when the COVID-19 pandemic finally subsides: climate change.
• 
"The Great Reset is a welcome recognition that this human tragedy must be a wake-up call."
• 
"We must build more equal, inclusive and sustainable economies and societies that are more resilient in the face of pandemics, climate change and the many other global changes we face."
• 
"So, I think this is a time for a ‘Great Reset,'" Gore said.
• 
"We've got to fix a lot of these problems that have been allowed to fester for way too long.  And the climate crisis is an opportunity to create tens of millions of new jobs, clean up the air, and reduce the death rate from pandemics, by the way, because the air pollution from burning fossil fuels heightens the death rates from coronavirus.  So, this is a time for a reset to fix a bunch of challenges, first among them the climate crisis."
• 
If these quotes don't terrify you, they should.  Here we have some of the world's most influential people calling for the destruction of global capitalism, all while American cities burn, statues of founding fathers are torn down and the world economy struggles to recover from its worst collapse in a century.
• 
Revolutionary changes are always more likely to occur in the midst of chaos.
• 
These are truly dangerous times for those who support individual liberty and free markets.
      Millionaire Hollywood leftists use coronavirus as excuse to justify socialist policies  (Fox 05/10/2020)
• 
What, exactly, do these Hollywood sages contend can save humanity from destruction?  They don't spell out the details, but it sure sounds an awful lot like socialism to me.
• 
For example, in order to avoid the "existential threat" of a "massive extinction of life on Earth," the signatories say we must give up the "pursuit of consumerism and an obsession with productivity" and instead embrace a "politics of social equity" – a strategy that would require a "radical transformation."
• 
With Marxist phrases like "obsession with productivity" and "radical transformation," the letter sounds like something you might hear listening to one of Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's riveting Instagram rants, or perhaps a call for a revolution at a Bernie Sanders campaign rally – before the millionaire socialist senator from Vermont was forced out of the presidential race by the Democratic Party establishment.
• 
What makes socialist propaganda like the Le Monde letter so frustrating is that it's absolutely oozing with hypocrisy.
• 
Elite leftists love to lecture the rest of us about the dangers of the "pursuit of consumerism" and cry about the alleged harm climate change imposes on humpback whales – or whatever the cause of the moment is.
• 
But at the same time, they fly around the world in private jets and bask in luxury in their multimillion-dollar mansions while being pampered by low-wage servants.
• 
When you are swimming in cash and aren't required to stand in line for 40 minutes just to enter the local grocery store – or at risk of joining the 33.5 million Americans who have filed for unemployment over the past seven weeks as a result of government-imposed economic shutdowns – it's easy to say that the world shouldn't "go back to normal."
• 
After all, there aren't any Hollywood celebrities who are forced to spend their Saturday afternoons battling neighbors at Costco over the last pack of toilet paper.
• 
The stars can send their servants shopping for everything they need and don't worry about having enough money to pay their grocery bills.
• 
... the wealthiest elites on the left have no problem with using this tragic pandemic to force the rest of the world to live under Orwellian conditions in order to "save the planet" and promote economic "equity" among everyone except themselves.
• 
As is always the case, society's most glamorous and powerful socialists are much too important to be subjected to the rules they have imposed on the "little people" who can't afford the lifestyles of the rich and famous.
• 
However, what you won't hear from Madonna – or anyone else on the far left – is that history has proven repeatedly that the radical policies they have deemed to be vital to saving the planet and humanity have been nothing short of disastrous.
• 
Nor will they tell you that it was free-market, pro-liberty policies – not collectivism – that built America into the most advanced economy in the history of human civilization, allowing people to become so wealthy that they could actually afford to strengthen environmental protection policies.
• 
The key to improving human welfare and the environment isn't to force 99 percent of the world to live in ever poorer conditions while people like Madonna instruct the rest of us from her Lisbon palace about proper living standards.
• 
The blueprint for healthier, wealthier societies was discovered long ago, and begins and ends with empowering individuals with property rights and civil liberties.
• 
No other strategy can better repair our broken world following the COVID-19 era.
      Justin Haskins: Coronavirus and socialism – AOC and friends peddling false cure for what ails US  (Fox 04/12/2020)
• 
After complaining that America's "systemic priorities" are all wrong, AOC said, "We have to start demanding and organizing from the bottom up – from grassroots movements, from nurses to warehouse workers to grocery store employees to the halls of Congress, demanding that we strip profit motive out of our decisions and reprioritize for the public good and the health of everyday people."
• 
Demanding that the country "strip profit motive out of our decisions and reprioritize for the public good" is a not-so-subtle way of saying that we should significantly reduce markets and individual property ownership (capitalism) and put the government in charge of much of the economic and social decision-making (socialism).
• 
History has proven the socialist utopia AOC is constantly screeching about will never come.
• 
But whenever it's attempted, destruction, economic chaos and misery inevitably follow.
• 
(Just ask survivors of the Soviet Union how that socialist experiment turned out.)
• 
Conversely, societies that have embraced private property ownership and management – like the United States – have become the wealthiest, safest nations the world has ever seen.
• 
This isn't a coincidence.  Freedom works because when there is a profit motive, people behave much more efficiently and cautiously than when they are spending and controlling the wealth that other people produce.
• 
Just ask any parent with a teenager whether people who don't have to work spend money as wisely as those who must earn it for themselves!
• 
"And so, it is important for us to nationalize the supply chain, it's important for us to take action in nationalizing our health care system," Omar said.
• 
Omar's tactics are familiar and dangerous.  Historically, socialism has thrived in the midst of chaos.  When people are feeling desperate and afraid, they are more willing to trade their freedom for the alleged security offered by a massive, all-powerful government than when times are good...
• 
But Americans should know that they'll find little comfort or security in the warm embrace of the national government, which is so dysfunctional that it can't even manage to run the Postal Service or Amtrak without losing dump trucks full of cash every year.
• 
Government has an important role to play in dealing with natural disasters and sudden health care crises like the present one, but that role shouldn't include eliminating economic freedom – the reason America has been so successful throughout its history – by destroying markets, reducing private property ownership or "nationalizing the supply chain."
• 
Of course, AOC and Omar know none of their proposals would be seriously considered under stable economic conditions.
• 
They're hoping to take advantage of the suffering many Americans are now experiencing due to truly extraordinary circumstances by using this crisis as a tool to expand the power of the federal government.
• 
And if they're successful, you can bet many of the government's new powers won't go away anytime soon – or perhaps at all.
• 
Beware of socialist snake oil salesmen promising to cure our economic problems by moving America closer to socialism.
• 
As bad as COVID-19 has been for millions of Americans, embracing socialism would, over the long run, be much, much worse.
• 
See related Socialism (Antonio Branco, 07/10/2018) cartoon from General picture album
      Justin Haskins: Socialist Sanders is most dangerous major party presidential contender in US history  (Fox 02/29/2020)
• 
Sen.  Bernie Sanders, the improbable current front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, is lying to the American people when he tell us that "democratic socialism" simply means he wants to give the vast majority of Americans new opportunities to succeed and wants millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes.
• 
... comments Sanders has made going back decades shows he has warmly embraced not just socialism but communism, and praised tyrannical dictatorships that have trashed the freedoms Americans enjoy under the Bill of Rights that are part of our Constitution.
• 
Sanders is not just another liberal Democrat who wants to expand social programs, in the tradition of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson.
• 
He is the most radical candidate in American history with a real shot at winning the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties.
• 
While candidates have run for president in the past on radical platforms under the banners of socialist, communist and other fringe political parties, they have drawn only tiny percentages of the vote.
• 
Sanders, elected in Vermont as an independent and not as a Democrat, is trying to convince the American people that policies implemented around the world by socialist and communist regimes that have resulted in death, destruction and economic mayhem are in our best interest.
• 
... Sanders tries to disguise socialism.  The socialist senator wants us to believe socialism is a kind and caring philosophy that is the embodiment of justice and equality for all.
• 
Sanders thinks that by sticking the word "democratic" in front of the word "socialism" he can trick millions of Americans into supporting the horrific philosophy he espouses.
• 
As the old saying goes, "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
• 
Communism and socialism give government far more power than our capitalist system does, enabling leaders to become tyrants.
• 
This has been proven the case again and again in dozens of nations that have abandoned capitalism for communism and socialism.
• 
The truth is that more than 167 million people were exiled, imprisoned, or killed by socialist and communist parties in the 20th century.
• 
And, contrary to claims made by Sanders, his talking points about socialism's successes in countries such as Sweden, Norway and Denmark are completely false.
• 
Those countries are not socialist nations and their citizens are, in many ways, not better off than most Americans.
• 
Yet despite these well-documented facts, Sanders has managed to sell his socialist snake oil to many well-meaning, kind-hearted Americans who think that the only way to solve the world's problems is to give government far more power over their lives.
• 
The following quotes from Sanders illustrate just how truly radical and disturbing his ideology is.
• 
In a "special interview" in 1981 with a communist newspaper called The Militant, Sanders, who had just become mayor of Burlington, Vt., claimed there are American police departments "dominated by fascists and Nazis."
• 
The attack Sanders made on police is not only outrageous, it's also incredibly ironic.
• 
The Nazis were, in fact, socialists who believed in collectively managing property and most of the German economy.
• 
Further, some of the most ruthless, murderous regimes to exist during the past 100 years were led by committed Marxists – not free-market capitalists devoted to defending individual rights.
• 
Sanders has a long track record of supporting communist and socialist organizations.
• 
For example, in 1980 and 1984, he endorsed Socialist Workers Party presidential candidates, and he even agreed to be an elector for the party.
• 
In the 1980s, the Socialist Workers Party was mostly devoted to espousing radical Marxist and communist ideas, and it was widely known as being largely Trotskyite – an ideology made famous by Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who promoted the necessity of global communism.
• 
At the time Sanders lauded the "Cuban revolution," the ruthless dictator Fidel Castro had been in power for two decades.
• 
During that period Castro stripped Cubans of their basic political and individual rights, murdered and imprisoned dissenters and welcomed Soviet missiles to his island nation.
• 
That action led to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, which brought the U.S.  and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war.
• 
... in a speech Sanders delivered in May 1981 while introducing the head of the Socialist Workers Party, he explained that the "real debate of our time" and the "debate of our century" is "socialism versus capitalism."
• 
Based on his own words, it is clear that the "revolution" Sanders is always talking about staging would spell the end of capitalism and economic freedom in the United States that made us the richest, most prosperous and most powerful nation on Earth.
• 
And once economic freedom goes, history has shown that political freedom and many of our human rights go as well.
• 
My question to each of you reading these words is simple: Do you really want to see America turned into a "workers' paradise" like China, Russia, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela and so many other failed communist and socialist nations?
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Sanders, AOC and other socialists are wrong – Socialism is a cause of poverty, not the cure  (Fox 02/08/2020)
• 
... say the only way to end poverty in America is to destroy the economic system that made the U.S.  the most powerful and prosperous country on Earth and the land of opportunity.
• 
The claim by the senator from Vermont and the congresswoman from New York is a dangerous lie that ignores economics, history and reality.
• 
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez have become the most prominent faces of a radicalized Democratic Party that has moved further left than any time in American history.
• 
Not long ago they would have been considered fringe extremists with no chance of winning election to a federal office.
• 
AOC, a 30-year-old who worked as a bartender before being elected to the Congress in 2018, recently complained in a widely publicized interview that too many of her Democratic colleagues in Congress believe "we can capitalism our way out of poverty."
• 
Instead, AOC, Sanders and other radical Democrats (some of whom deny they are socialists but really are) argue that they need to supersize government, send tax rates skyrocketing, and fundamentally transform America into a socialist state to enable people be able to escape poverty.
• 
... that argument has been proven false on numerous occasions over the past 100 years.
• 
Just look at world history since the Russian Revolution of 1917, almost 70 years after a compassionate-sounding theory of economic justice and equality was laid out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848.
• 
When communism and socialism jumped from the pages of "The Communist Manifesto" to become the basis of government in Russia and elsewhere, tyranny and economic ruin followed.
• 
In fact, Marx gave the world the most economically destructive, toxic, blood-soaked idea of the 20th century.
• 
That idea was the Marxist belief that important economic decisions should be made by the collective, rather than by individuals.
• 
While one socialist society after another collapsed in the post-World War II years, capitalist economies thrived and their people became healthier, wealthier, and happier than ever before.
• 
This was true not just in the United States, but around the world.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and all of the Democrats now running for president – including those who don't identify as full-blown socialists – say that the best way to fix America's poverty problem is to confiscate wealth from business owners who create jobs, as well as other wealthy individuals.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and all of the Democrats now running for president ... say that the best way to fix America's poverty problem is to confiscate wealth from business owners who create jobs, as well as other wealthy individuals.
• 
They sell themselves as modern-day Robin Hoods who supposedly want to rob from the rich to give to the poor – but this time via massive new government programs that would employ legions of taxpayer-paid bureaucrats to do the "robbing."
• 
We know from experience that this doesn't work.
• 
As the old saying goes, the best anti-poverty program is a job.
• 
And as another old saying goes, you can't have employees without employers.
• 
One of the keys to tackling poverty is improving education.
• 
Study after study shows that young people who receive a high-quality education are far more likely to rise out of poverty than those who are trapped in failing schools.
• 
The best and quickest way to improve the U.S.  educational system ... would be to provide all children in the nation with the freedom to attend the school they and their parents choose.
• 
The essence of the capitalist system that made America the great nation it is today is the belief that competition stimulates improved quality and lower prices.
• 
If schools had to compete for students, they would have to offer improved educational opportunities – and those that failed to do so would close.
• 
One of the biggest problems with government poverty programs is that they don't provide a way for people to escape poverty.
• 
Instead, they often trap people in welfare systems by making it difficult or even impossible to stop receiving government aid without losing access to essential services, such as health coverage.
• 
The way to lower the poverty rate in the United States isn't to embrace principles that have destroyed nations and led to economic turmoil, but rather to embrace the same ideals that made America the economic powerhouse it is today: free markets and individual liberty.
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Tax (Taylor Jones, 01/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Bernie Sanders & AOC seek disastrous socialist revolution that would devastate America  (Fox 02/01/2020)
• 
They want to launch a second American Revolution run by a gigantic government bureaucracy, supported by enormous tax increases, and featuring a massive number of intrusive new government regulations.
• 
These revolutionary comrades would have you believe they would turn America into a utopian paradise where poverty would disappear, everyone could get "free stuff" including college degrees and health care, climate change would be halted, and on and on and on.
• 
And they claim the only Americans who would suffer would be the super-rich – greedy capitalists whose pockets could be picked to get trillions of dollars every year to pay for all the free goodies for the rest of us.
• 
"Workers of the world unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains," Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in "The Communist Manifesto" in 1848.
• 
Sanders, AOC and some other far-left Democratic candidates would have you believe the vast majority of Americans are suffering today and in dire straits because of evil, exploitative capitalism.
• 
But by any objective measure, that claim is delusional.
• 
The U.S.  is experiencing the longest period of economic growth in decades.
• 
And we enjoy a standard of living that is the envy of billions of people struggling just to get by around the world.
• 
At the same time, beginning just over 100 years ago with the Russian Revolution, communism and socialism have brought other nations dictatorships that took away the freedom of citizens, crippling poverty and food shortages that caused millions of people to die of starvation, and economic catastrophes.
• 
It wasn't long ago that calling a political candidate in America a socialist or communist was the worst thing you could say about them – and would draw heated denials and even threats of lawsuits.
• 
Yet incredibly today, Marx's disastrous philosophy is in vogue and popular with millions of Americans – particularly young people of my own generation.
• 
Ocasio-Cortez once called capitalism "irredeemable," and recently lamented in an interview that too many people in Congress – including in the Democratic Party – believe "we can capitalism our way out of poverty."
• 
(She also apparently wants to revolutionize the English language.)
• 
Despite only being in Washington for a year after giving up her career as a bartender, AOC's ideology has already caused significant damage.
• 
For example, her war to keep Amazon from building a second headquarters in the district she represents in New York City caused the city to lose as many as 40,000 jobs with an average annual salary of $150,000.
• 
Gloating over her victory, Ocasio-Cortez boasted that she and her allies had "defeated Amazon's corporate greed and worker exploitation."
• 
By this definition, everyone with a job is being exploited to benefit corporate greed, and we'd all be better off jobless and living off government handouts.
• 
How to pay for all those handouts?  Even if we literally took every penny from millionaires and billionaires we couldn't do it.
• 
But please don't bother the congresswoman with little technicalities.  She's a famous celebrity, after all.
• 
If the 20th century has taught us anything, it's that socialist and communist policies – regardless of how well-intentioned their supporters are – don't fix poverty and, in fact, often make the problem much worse.
• 
... consider the tens of millions of people who starved to death or were imprisoned by socialist and communist governments in the Soviet Union and China.
• 
As tempting as it is to say the best way to resolve poverty is to steal money from the wealthy and middle class to build yet another massive government program, this strategy has proven to be a massive failure around the world and in the United States, especially over the past half-century.
• 
In truth, relying on free-market capitalism, shrinking government, reducing regulations and cutting taxes will do far more to help people climb out of poverty and achieve the American Dream than socialism ever will.
• 
See related In the Red (Antonio Branco, 02/19/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Radical plans by Democratic presidential candidates would destroy our economy and freedom  (Fox 12/28/2019)
• 
In the last century, the Democratic Party was known as the party of liberals – but a staunch opponent of socialists and communists.
• 
No more.  Radicals have taken over the party and called for policies that would make Karl Marx smile.
• 
Socialists are clever marketers.  They pitch their proposals as necessary to advance justice, equality, prosperity and the very survival of life on Earth in the face of impending environmental disaster.
• 
None of these things are true, but they sound good and have a certain appeal.
• 
The following are the three most potentially destructive proposals promoted by many of the leading Democrats – as well as important information you need to know about the dangers of these policies.
• 
The Green New Deal
• 
The Green New Deal is the most dangerous and socialistic policy ever embraced by a major political party in American history.
• 
The Green New Deal would also impose a long list of socialist programs that have nothing to do with the alleged purpose of the plan – stopping climate change.  These include creating a "free" college program, a federal jobs guarantee, a program providing universal access to "healthy foods," and a whole new system of publicly-owned banks, among many other provisions.
• 
The American Action Forum estimates these policies could cost more than $90 trillion over their first 10 years – about four times the current national debt.
• 
If you asked our foreign enemies to come up with a plan to destroy the American economy and plunge our country into another Great Depression, they couldn't come up with anything that would do the job as well as the Green New Deal.
• 
In addition, the Green New Deal would directly or indirectly put the federal government in charge of virtually every aspect of our lives.
• 
... even if you believe humans are entirely responsible for climate change – and there are many scientists who say we aren't – nothing we do in the United States will stop global carbon dioxide emissions from rising in the coming decades.
• 
If Americans were to do exactly what Green New Deal supporters have called for – committing economic suicide in the process – increased carbon dioxide emissions in growing countries like China and India will push total emissions well beyond their current levels.
• 
This is because less than 5 percent of the world's population lives in the United States. 
• 
A Just Society
• 
The Just Society is a package of radical bills that have been endorsed by many of the leaders of the Democratic Party.
• 
Among other things, it would prevent government agencies from denying access to any federal program on the basis of a prior criminal conviction or immigration status.
• 
This means that millions of people now in America illegally would be eligible for countless social welfare programs and government aid – costing untold billions of dollars every year.
• 
"Medicare-for-all"
• 
There's no denying that the current health insurance system is a mess.
• 
But putting government in charge of Americans' health care would be catastrophic.
• 
... Democrats have absolutely no plans for expanding the supply of doctors, hospitals and other health care professionals – all while calling for providing tens of millions of additional Americans with access to specialty health care services.
• 
Of course, Democrats have absolutely no way to pay for "Medicare-for-all" – at least not without huge tax increases on the middle class and far more rationing.
• 
And they have no way to pay for their Just Society or Green New Deal proposals, either.
• 
This is an especially important point considering the United States is already running trillion-dollar deficits.
• 
If socialists and progressives have it their way, the 2020 elections will force America down the road to economic and societal ruin.
• 
Our children and grandchildren would be saddled with tens of trillions of dollars of debt they won't be able to pay back.
• 
And our highly dysfunctional federal government would be granted the authority to control our lives, from the womb to the tomb.
• 
The stakes couldn't be higher.
• 
See related Green New Deal (Gary Varvel, 03/16/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism Time! (Mike Shelton, 03/15/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Hawley  (01/04/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/25/2022) | Next sect (01/18/2022) | List bot 
      Democrats brought us a year of fear in 2021.  In 2022, let us be not afraid and reclaim our American spirit  (Fox 01/04/2022)
• 
The fear campaign started on January 6, following the demonstration in Washington that turned violent after some demonstrators breached the Capitol.
• 
But that was only the second most surprising thing about that day.  The most surprising outcome — and the day's true legacy — was the Left's attempt to use the Capitol unrest to foster a permanent climate of fear and repression.
• 
In the months that followed, they targeted conservatives, silenced parents, and suppressed speech by ordinary people online, all in the name of public safety.
• 
Taken together, it's been the most concerted effort to shut down free speech in this country since the Federalist Party tried to criminalize opposing viewpoints in the late 1790s.
• 
Like today's Biden administration, the Federalists were deeply unpopular and desperate to retain power.  They portrayed their opponents, Thomas Jefferson's Republicans, as dangerous and unruly.  So the Federalists tried to outlaw criticism of the government and silence popular discontent.
• 
They failed.  And the Left's present efforts at repression will too.  Americans have shown this past year that they won't be denied the right to speak and be heard — whether at school board meetings or city councils or worship services.
• 
They won't stand by as Biden's Justice Department treats them as "domestic terrorists." And they are right not to.  It's time for the Left's campaign of fear to end.
• 
Let me say again that those who committed crimes on January 6 should be prosecuted, just as those who rioted and burned and looted in cities around the nation in the name of "social justice" should be as well.
• 
But let me be equally clear that gathering for a political demonstration is not a crime.  On the contrary, it is a right expressly protected by the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
And when it comes to violence, I notice that the Left hasn't seemed much interested in the violence and mob activity that has plagued the nation in the last three years.
• 
When rioters tried to storm the White House and attacked Secret Service agents in the summer of 2020, when they attempted to breach the Supreme Court building to prevent Justice Kavanaugh from taking his oath in 2018, when radicals laid siege to the federal building in Portland and assaulted scores of law enforcement officers, the Left hardly said a word.
• 
Instead, many defended these and other acts of violence as somehow deserved.  Nancy Pelosi infamously wondered why there weren't "uprisings around the country."
• 
What interested the Left about the riot on January 6 was that it could be connected to Trump supporters, conservatives.
• 
They proclaimed conservatives a threat to public safety and marshaled their institutional power to drive political opposition into silence.
• 
A year later, we know all too well what this looks like.  It looks like the president of the United States brazenly lying about election integrity laws in Georgia and coordinating with Major League Baseball to kill thousands of jobs in that state to the tune of $100 million.
• 
It looks like the Attorney General deploying the National Security Division of the Justice Department against parents who speak out at school board meetings, all while lying about it to Congress.
• 
It looks like government lawyers drawing up lists of federal crimes for which these same parents could be prosecuted should they dare raise their voices about their children's education.
• 
It looks like Big Tech relentlessly censoring citizens' questions about election integrity, and then about the origins of COVID, and then about the assault on women's sports, enforcing the Left's party line.
• 
In sum, it looks like the most powerful members of our government and society deploying their authority against ordinary people exercising ordinary rights, with the purpose of intimidating them into silence.
• 
The mask is off now.  We know where the Left stands, and what they want: a one-party state with no real dissent and no opposition.
• 
Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson beat the Federalists in the election of 1800 by refusing to bow to their climate of fear.  He called out their efforts at repression for what they were: blatantly un-American and a danger to democracy.  The same is true of Joe Biden's campaign of fear, and conservatives should say so.
• 
Jefferson argued then that the true strength of democracy lies not in uniformity of opinion, but in the protection of individual liberties — like the liberty to worship, to speak, and to assemble.
• 
These are the very rights the Left has tried systematically to undermine this past year.  In 1800, Jefferson promised to protect them anew.  mericans deserve the same today.
• 
The Constitution doesn't promise unpopular politicians the power to silence criticism they don't like.  It promises Americans the right to run their own lives and control their own government.
• 
2022 can be a new chapter if we take a stand against those who would use their power to terrorize and intimidate.
• 
This year, don't give into fear.  Don't be shouted down.  Don't be intimidated.  This year, let's live instead by this maxim: We will not be afraid, because we are Americans.
      With Twitter's Jack Dorsey gone, now is the time for Americans to take back control of their communication  (Fox 12/01/2021)
• 
Twitter has repeatedly attempted, with the help of partisan political groups, to suppress conservative speech that they mislabel as "misleading," while ignoring blatant falsehoods peddled on the left or by China.
• 
This problem was at its apex last year when Twitter deliberately suppressed the distribution of an unflattering Hunter Biden story in the New York Post, describing the report as "potentially spammy or unsafe."
• 
That was a lie, and the Post was eventually vindicated on the facts.  But the damage was done.
• 
In a 2018 Wired interview, Dorsey outlined his general philosophy of Twitter's role in supporting free expression.  Twitter would enthusiastically support free speech, he said, because Twitter "looks like a public square" and people "have the same sort of expectations of a public square."
• 
Under Dorsey's leadership, Twitter regularly failed to meet that standard.  But Dorsey at least paid lip service to a defensible ideal, one that reflected the reality that dominant social media platforms have become fixtures in civic life — and so should be held to the free speech standards appropriate to civic life.
• 
Yet Dorsey's replacement, Parag Agrawal, offers a different vision, an authoritarian vision.  In a 2020 interview with the MIT Technology Review, Agrawal rejected Dorsey's view that traditional "public square" standards should apply on the platform.
• 
Instead, he said the role should be "reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation."
• 
In other words, Twitter should "focus less on thinking about free speech" and more "about how the times have changed."
• 
Let's be clear about what this means: Agrawal is saying that going forward, Twitter will openly shape the user experience according to its own value judgments about what counts as "healthy" public engagement.
• 
Even the fig leaf of neutrality is now gone.  It certainly seems to me that in the months and years to come, we can expect a lot more crackdowns on user speech, and a lot more shamelessness about it.
• 
All of this, though, bespeaks a larger problem.  Free speech-loving Americans shouldn't need to pay attention to who's running Twitter in the first place.  They shouldn't be this beholden to a handful of ideologically-driven private companies at all.
• 
Our laws must change to accommodate the new reality of Big Tech dominance.  Fortunately, Congress has a wide range of options if it finally chooses to act.
• 
For one thing, it can reform Section 230: if dominant platforms want to act like publishers, they need to be held liable like publishers when they editorialize.
• 
For another, it's time for policymakers to rethink moderation itself.  Users, rather than unaccountable Twitter bureaucrats, should be able to decide what algorithms are used to moderate their content feeds.
• 
With Agrawal at the helm of Twitter, sorry times lie ahead for free expression.  But maybe this new turn will finally galvanize the long-overdue policy reforms that will pare back Twitter's power
• 
That's how Americans will really take back control of their communication — and their lives.
• 
See related Jack (Gary Varvel, 10/19/2020) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related Unabomber II (Mike Shelton, 01/19/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
See related Twitter Evolution (Gary Varvel, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Josh Hawley: It’s time to stand up against the muzzling of America  (Fox 01/25/2021)
• 
Have you checked your social credit score lately?  You might want to.  Mine seems to have taken a nosedive this month.  You might want to see how yours is doing.
• 
Everyone knows what a credit score is.  But social credit scores are new.  They're the latest corporate import from Communist China, where government and big business monitor every citizen's social views and statements.
• 
And they're the latest form of cancel culture in this country, as corporate monopolies and the left team up to shut down speech they don't like and force their political agenda on America.
• 
For those who still believe in free speech and the First Amendment, this is the time to take a stand.
• 
Like the old-fashioned kind of credit score, your social credit requires a lot of maintenance.  You'll need to get good grades in school and stay out of trouble with the law.  But that's just the start — you have to earn your right to live in polite society these days.
• 
So if you want to get a good job, stay at hotels and be served at restaurants, you will need to do a few other things.
• 
You will need to voice the right opinions.  You will need to endorse the right ideas.  You will need to conform.  That's what the corporate chieftains tell us, anyway.
• 
They tried to reprimand me this month because I didn't.  On behalf of the voters of my state, I raised a challenge to the presidential electors from Pennsylvania after that state conducted the election in violation of the state constitution.
• 
Maybe you agree with me.  Maybe you don't.  But whatever your view, corporate America's rush to cancel those it dislikes should trouble you.
• 
In my case, it started with leftist politicians demanding I resign from office for representing the views of my constituents and leading a democratic debate on the floor of the Senate.
• 
Taking that cue, a corporate publishing house then canceled a book it had asked me to write.  Ironically enough, the book is about political censorship by the most powerful corporations in America.  (And will be published by an independent publishing house.)
• 
Now corporate America is cancelling my political events, because two parties are apparently one too many for their taste.
• 
It will get worse.  The tech titans have already booted dozens of conservatives off social media, and if they have their way half the House Republican conference will be expelled from Congress.
• 
The corporate titans seem to believe that the only way to get a democracy to their liking is to eliminate all threats to the Democratic Party's unified control of government.
• 
The alliance of leftists and woke capitalists hopes to regulate the innermost thoughts of every American, from school age to retirement.  And they've trained enforcers of the woke orthodoxy to monitor dissent or misbehavior.
• 
A "Karen" who cuts the wrong person off in traffic gets followed home on a livestream and shamed into crying for mercy as her license plate is broadcast to an online hoard eager to hound her out of a job.
• 
Everyone knows it can happen to them, so everyone shuts down.  The circle of trust narrows.  Conversations — too easily recorded — shift to encrypted messaging apps.  For now.  Until those get banned too for interfering in efficient social credit markets.
• 
For some time, conservatives, recognizing that we're now the counterculture, indulged in the delusion that we could opt out of all this.
• 
We'd send our kids to schools that don't teach all the woke stuff.  We'd make our friends at church, not at work, and take comfort that trust and openness were still possible in communities of shared purpose.  We'd vote our conscience, because the ballot box was something no election could take from us.
• 
And if ever our political organizing were impeded by censorship — say, by the big tech giants — we could build our own platforms.
• 
But the left and the corporations are challenging all of this now.  Your "conservative" social platform isn't worth much when Amazon can shut it down.  Your vote may still be yours, but if your party is denied the means to effectively organize by corporate monopolies, it's not going to win.  Your church, well, you can still attend for now, but go to the wrong church and you may not have a job in a few years.
• 
Here's the good news.  The cancel culture agenda will only succeed if we let it.  We need live in fear only if we choose to say nothing.
• 
In this time of testing, conservatives must not shrink back.  We need to stand up for the right of every American to be heard.
• 
We need to stand up for the basic principles that join all Americans together — the right to speak freely, to debate openly, and to address our differences graciously without fear of being silenced or punished for dissenting views.
• 
The powerful see in the present moment an opportunity to consolidate their control over society and to squelch dissent.
• 
That means those who believe in the First Amendment and the fundamental principles of American liberty must now take a stand, while we still can.
• 
See related Resist! (Antonio Branco, 07/09/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
• 
See related Torquemada (Antonio Branco, 01/21/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
 Hegseth  (01/18/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/04/2022) | Next sect (10/12/2021) | List bot 
      The MisEducation of America  (Fox 01/18/2022)
• 
Seemingly out of nowhere — accelerated after the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020 — concepts like "white privilege" and "systemic racism" and even a new founding date for America, the year 1619, were splashed across computer screens across America.
• 
Critical Race Theory had fully arrived (often masked as "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion"), along with a full-on attempt to redefine gender, infuse climate fatalism, and turn our children into activists.
• 
... with parents finally questioning what was happening in their kids' classrooms, certain quarters of the news media, like FOX News, took notice in a substantial way.
• 
The question is — what happens next?  How can parents and patriots reassert control over curriculums and classrooms full of poisonous indoctrination?
• 
The key to answering these questions is getting to the bottom of how progressives — and now cultural Marxists — targeted and then transformed our schools over the past 100 years.
• 
What we see today in our classrooms is not an aberration born of the 1960s; but instead, the end state of a progressive project to control what every American student learns.
• 
... before there was "Critical Race Theory" there was "Critical Theory" – a Marxist philosophy that landed at our shores in the 1940s, and quickly took root in our most prominent teachers' colleges.
• 
Before there was a formal high school system in the United States, there was the "Gary Plan." A planned school system, started in Gary, Indiana, devoted specifically to removing God from the classroom and training kids only for a vocation – instead of critical thinking.
• 
Before there were "social studies" and "political science" – all inventions of the progressives – American students learned Latin, read the Bible, studied the Great Books, and received a real liberal arts education – "liberating" their minds to be free thinkers.
• 
The public school system (better known as "government schools") we have in America – in nearly every way – has been crafted over 100 years ago to be fully progressive.
• 
... Abraham Lincoln once said, that "the philosophy of the school room in one generation becomes the philosophy of government in the next."
• 
Socialist Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., used to be the exception, now Marxist Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is the rule.
• 
If we hope to save America, it starts first with God, then with the family, and finally — in the classroom.
      Pete Hegseth: I’m with the warfighters — Count me out of second-guessing our heroes  (Fox 05/23/2019)
• 
Modern war is defined by ambiguity.  The enemy never wears uniforms.  And those wearing uniforms could be friend or foe.
• 
The enemy uses women and children as shields — daily.  And decisions of life and death are made at a moment's notice — impacting lives forever.
• 
We send men to fight on our behalf, and too often second guess the manner in which they fight.
• 
I've been on the battlefield and that's why I feel so passionately about this issue.
• 
I'm not talking about massacres or sheer recklessness.
• 
None of us ever contemplated the killing of women and children for sport.  We didn't shoot innocent civilians for fun.
• 
There may be a few deranged combat troops, and they will get their due.
• 
Yet, too often, when warfighters come home they are second-guessed.
• 
Prosecuted by lawyers who never left their air-conditioned offices or politicians with ulterior motives.
• 
Lives ruined, reputations destroyed, families broken — all because they were willing to do things other Americans can barely fathom.
• 
They are heroes, every one of them.
• 
If any of us had been captured, our heads would be chopped off.
• 
We play fair, they play dirty.
• 
We safeguard life, they expend it.
• 
We tell the truth, they lie.
• 
We play by old, conventional rules — and they exploit them.
• 
And then we wonder why wars take decades, ISIS re-emerges, and we end up negotiating with the Taliban.
• 
From Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher to Green Beret Matt Golstyen to 1st Lieutenant Clint Lorrence.
• 
We presume these men guilty before trial, or lock them up and throw away the key.
• 
Since my tours, I've thought a great deal about rules of engagement, "war crimes," and the way we fight wars.
• 
My experience is that — if we want to win this long war — we need to back our warfighters, to include rewriting our rules.
• 
The enemy laughs at us when we trade killers for traitors, release the "American Taliban" early, and lock up our own.
• 
Our boys did their job, it's time for us to have their backs.
      Pete Hegseth: Graduates, it's time to unlearn college  (Fox 05/17/2019)
• 
‘Tis the season of commencement addresses.
• 
You know, those lengthy, vapid, and self-important speeches that conclude the collegiate experience.
• 
The vast majority of graduation speakers are leftists and Democrats, predictably extolling diversity, globalism, identity politics, gender empowerment and – of course – climate change.
• 
Most graduates hungover and bored, absorb the platitudes.
• 
After the speech, a degree in hand, the indoctrination is complete.
• 
I simply want to highlight three stark realities that students and parents should know, rather than accept the onslaught of advice from liberals, leftists, and Democrats.
• 
First, you just wasted a lot of time and money.
• 
Plenty of students drift through four-year colleges because, well, that's what you do.
• 
Now you have a degree you didn't really need, and mountains of debt to boot.
• 
A better option for many students is a non-ideological, private-sector vocational or trade school.
• 
Predictably, Democrats want to destroy private-sector higher education in favor of their existing network of cash-machine indoctrination camps.
• 
The mafia of higher education – just like government-run public high schools – seeks to demagogue and destroy all competing educational opportunities and choices.
• 
Even the "good schools" with shiny new buildings and small classroom sizes are infected with liberal indoctrination.
• 
Assume nothing.  Watchdog everything.
• 
Public, government-run institutions are P.C.  indoctrination camps.
• 
Our only hope is private sector schools and vigilant private citizens.
• 
Second, most of what you just learned is garbage.
• 
How much time during your education did you study civics, U.S.  history, or the Constitution?
• 
Did you learn about how our founding generation viewed human nature and government, or just that they were slave owners?
• 
Did you ever study the Bible (the textbook of Western Civilization) – or just deconstruct academic skepticism about the life of Jesus?
• 
Or, instead, were you required to take courses on gender studies, ethnic studies, and the lost art of underwater basket weaving?
• 
The problem is that most students leave college (and middle school!) with a strong sense of America's sins, and very little idea of why America is the freest, most fair, most tolerant, most just, most prosperous, and most powerful country in human history.
• 
The American "experiment" has worked... if we teach it.
• 
The perfect example of the listlessness of higher education today comes from Harvard Law School – the so-called gold-standard of law schools.
• 
Law students who matriculate there are not required to take a class on... wait for it... the U.S.  Constitution.
• 
We are now looking at a generation of high-powered lawyers who may or may not understand the greatest political document in human history.
• 
It's lunacy, and very dangerous.
• 
Finally, your real education starts now.
• 
No more safe spaces or trigger warnings.
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Your debt needs to be paid off, the world doesn't care about your feelings, and your parents' basement is embarrassing.
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You have your life in front of you – and a country that needs you.
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Get to work, follow your passions, and – if necessary – get the skills somewhere else that you actually need to achieve the American dream.
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You may have wasted a lot of time and money in college, but so did everyone else.
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Now is the time to open up your Bible, pick up a history book, and get a job.
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History is not over, and you can choose to be a part of it.
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We're hiring: Patriots wanted!
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See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
 Hemingway  (10/12/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/18/2022) | Next sect (03/21/2021) | List bot 
      Mollie Hemingway: What happened during the 2020 election must be investigated and discussed  (Fox 10/12/2021)
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If questioning the results of a presidential election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath, then much of the Democratic Party and media establishment should have been indicted for their behavior following the 2016 election.
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In fact, the last time Democrats fully accepted the legitimacy of a presidential election they lost was in 1988.
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After the 2000 election, which hinged on the results of a recount in Florida, Democrats smeared President George W.  Bush as "selected, not elected."
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When Bush won re-election against then senator John Kerry in 2004, many on the left claimed that voting machines in Ohio had been rigged to deliver fraudulent votes to Bush.
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HBO even produced and aired the Emmy-nominated "Hacking Democracy," a documentary claiming to show that "votes can be stolen without a trace," adding fuel to the conspiracy theory fire that the results of the 2004 election were illegitimate.
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But nothing holds a candle to what happened in 2016 after Donald Trump's surprising defeat of former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.
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Rather than accept that Trump won and Clinton lost fair and square, the political and media establishments desperately sought to explain away Trump's victory.
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They settled on a destructive conspiracy theory that crippled the government, empowered America's adversaries, and illegally targeted innocent private citizens whose only crime was not supporting Hillary Clinton.
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The Russia collusion hoax had all the elements of an election conspiracy theory, including baseless claims of hacked voting totals, illegal voter suppression, and treasonous collaboration with a foreign power.
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Pundits and officials speculated openly that President Trump was a foreign asset and that members of his circle were under the thumb of the Kremlin.
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But despite the patent absurdity of these claims, the belief that Trump stole the 2016 election had the support of the most powerful institutions, individuals, and even government agencies in the country.
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To question the legitimacy of the 2016 election wasn't to undermine our democracy; it was considered by some of our most elevated public figures a patriotic duty.
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"You can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you," Clinton told her followers in 2019.  "I know he's an illegitimate president," Clinton claimed of Trump a few months later.
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Former president Jimmy Carter agreed.  "[Trump] lost the election and was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.  Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016."
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Their view was shared by most prominent Democrats in Congress.  ... one out of three Democrats in the U.S.  House of Representatives boycotted Trump's inauguration.  Many said they refused to take part in the installation of an "illegitimate" president.
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The corporate media didn't condemn leading Democrats' refusal to accept the results of the 2016 election.
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In fact, the media amplified the most speculative claims of how Trump and Russia had colluded to steal the election from Clinton.
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They dutifully regurgitated inaccurate leaks from corrupt intelligence officials suggesting Trump and his staff had committed treason.
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They ran stories arguing that Republicans who didn't support their conspiracy theory were insufficiently loyal to the country or somehow compromised themselves.
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It was all nonsense.  Even Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who ran a multi-year and multi-million-dollar government investigation into claims that Trump personally colluded with Russian president Vladimir Putin to steal the election from Clinton, found no evidence to support the fevered accusations.
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The reporters who pushed this conspiracy theory were never held accountable by their peers for peddling leaks and lies.
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They received raises and promotions, honors and awards, and the applause of their colleagues.  Some were given Pulitzer Prizes for "reporting" that was closer to fan fiction than an accurate description of events.
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From 2016 through 2020, the easiest way to achieve stardom on the political left was to loudly proclaim one's belief that the 2016 election was illegitimate — stolen by the Russians on behalf of a corrupt traitor.
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Conspiracy-mongering, up to and including the assertion that the president of the United States was a secret Russian spy, was the highest form of patriotism.
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And then 2020 happened.  At the drop of a hat, America's electoral system went from irredeemably corrupt and broken in 2016 to unquestionably safe in 2020.
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Voting methods that were allegedly used to steal elections in 2004 and 2016 suddenly became sacrosanct and unquestionable in 2020.
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Whereas so-called election experts repeatedly warned pre-2020 about the pitfalls of electronic voting and widespread mail-in balloting, by November 2020 any discussion about the vulnerabilities of those methods was written off as the stuff of right-wing cranks and conspiracy-mongers.
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If concerns about election integrity were valid from at least 1960 through 2016, then surely those concerns were even more valid in 2020, an election year unlike any other in American history.
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In the lead-up to the election, thanks in part to the coronavirus pandemic that gripped the world, wide-ranging electoral reforms were implemented.  ... Many changes, allegedly justified by the global pandemic, were broad reforms that Democrats had long desired.  The crisis was their chance to sneak in contentious policies through the back door.
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The bedrock of the American republic is that elections must be free, fair, accurate, and trusted.
• 
Election lawyers will tell you that fraud is almost impossible to conclusively find after the fact, and that to fight it, strong rules and regulations are needed on the front end.
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What happened during the 2020 election must be investigated and discussed, not in spite of media and political opposition to an open inquiry, but because of that opposition.  The American people deserve to know what happened.
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They deserve answers, even if those answers are inconvenient.  They deserve to know the effect flooding the system with tens of millions of mail-in ballots had on their vote.
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They deserve to know how and why Big Tech and the corporate political media manipulated the news to support certain political narratives while censoring stories they now admit were true.
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They deserve to know why courts were allowed to unilaterally rewrite the rules in the middle of the contest, often without the consent of the legislative bodies charged with writing election laws.
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See related What Makes You Think... (Chip Bok, 12/03/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
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• 
See related Election Fraud (Mike Shelton, 11/24/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Herman  (03/21/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/12/2021) | Next sect (04/24/2020) | List bot 
      Message to DeSantis – civics important but here's what we really need to teach our kids  (Fox 03/21/2021)
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"A high-quality education begins with a high-quality curriculum," the governor said, adding that his $16 million civics curriculum initiative will not be "teaching kids to hate their country and to hate each other."
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I have a message for Gov.  DeSantis: Right problem, wrong solution.
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The real solution isn't boring and bloodless civics courses, which all too often provide cover for the left to sneak in their agenda under the guise of promoting "good citizenship," but teaching American history: the real American history, full of drama, pageantry, struggle and heartbreak, but also triumph and greatness; and all built around the theme of the constant striving to secure and protect the freedom of the individual.
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It's the pursuit of liberty that has united Americans from the beginning and remains our most precious legacy to the future – and defines the epic of American exceptionalism.
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The course would start with the settlement of North America, first from Asia then from Europe; followed by the struggle of the original British colonies to free themselves from foreign domination, first from the French and then from the government in London.
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Then it would trace the trials and struggles of the new republic from revolution in 1776 to civil war in 1861-65, showing how the experience of that conflict has shaped the character of America ever since.
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Next, it would cover the changes that occurred in America after 1865 to World War II, including the massive influx of immigrants from Europe and from the Jim Crow South into northern cities and into the heartland and West Coast.
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After that, it would explore America's role in the world after World War II through today, from the Cold War to the technological revolutions of Silicon Valley.
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From start to finish, however, the epic story would center on how individuals, rich and poor, great and small, from every race and sex and creed, have discovered and used their freedom in America to advance the freedom of others: as politicians, thinkers and activists, religious and business leaders, and above all as immigrants to a land and country that gave them the freedom they yearned for and could not find anywhere else.
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In fact, it's the story critical race theorists don't want our children to learn about: America as the transformative nation that banishes the dismal legacies of the past, whether it's slavery or religious bigotry or structural poverty and ignorance, and has built instead a unique national character based on common political ideals and shared experiences.
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It's the story of a nation dedicated from its start to a single powerful proposition, that all human beings are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and the institutions that govern our society – including our three branches of government and our federal system – were built to secure and protect those rights, and still do today.
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It's also about the real America race theorists can't explain: the one that has been a magnet for immigrants from around the world from its very beginning.
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If America were such a racist cesspool, then why would any non-White person risk everything to come here; and why would the descendants of the enslaved and dispossessed Native Americans want to stay?  Our history explains why far better than any civics course could.
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Children also need to learn from this history that no nation is perfect, not even their own.  They will learn that America's struggle to free its peoples from the burdens of the past has not always been successful, whether that burden is slavery, poverty, racism or toxic ideologies like fascism in the 20th century and Marxism today.
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The point is, it always has been a struggle, conscious and deliberate; and while America's history is populated by villains as well as heroes and heroines, all of them are part of a single great dramatic story, the story of America's pursuit of liberty; the pursuit that ultimately makes us all one.
• 
In the end, critical race theory is about stealing away our children's freedom.  The study of history is about restoring it, by giving it a basis in truth and fact rather than ideology.
• 
It's time to turn our study of the past into a tool to set our future free.
      Twitter, Facebook and Amazon censorship of conservatives harms social media giants  (Fox 10/21/2020)
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It's rare for two social media giants to make such a blatant and coordinated move against their own self-interest.
• 
Their actions directly undermine the rationale for Facebook's and Twitter's exemption under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields them from any liability for content that appears on their sites.
• 
The exemption is built on the assumption — fiercely defended by Facebook and Twitter — that the sites serve as neutral platforms and are not editors of content like the publishers of books, magazines and newspapers.  Such publications are not exempt from liability for what they publish.
• 
Now many people refuse to believe the claim of the social media companies that is the basis for their exemption.
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As a result, we should expect efforts in Congress to redraw the Section 230 rules to allow parties to sue the social media giants when posts the sites publish are libelous or personally damaging.  Starting this week, Twitter and Facebook will need to put a lot more lawyers on their payrolls.
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The second blunder was Amazon's decision not to release the documentary "What Killed Michael Brown," written and narrated by the noted African American scholar Shelby Steele.
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The documentary consists largely of interviews with African Americans.  It casts a very different light on fatal police shooting of Brown...  Steele examined the misconceptions and outright untruths surrounding the shooting of Brown.
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Amazon clearly decided that a look at American race relations that defied the usual Groupthink was too hot to handle, and so refused to release the documentary on its streaming service.
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With breathtaking hubris, Amazon informed Steele and his filmmaker son that "this decision may not be appealed."
• 
It's not hard to read into Amazon's action a desire to suppress an unwelcome message — and the brandishing of a political bias that be very costly to Amazon in the future.
• 
Sen.  Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has been the main congressional point person pushing for a breakup of Big Tech — including Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.
• 
If Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is elected president, Warren will no doubt try to legislate her wish.
• 
If leaders of the social media giants think Republicans or free-market conservatives will charge to their rescue, they might want to think again.
• 
There is a powerful double-shame hovering over the events of last week.
• 
The first is that the case for exempting the social media platforms from Section 230 is strong.  Under ideal circumstances the exemption serves to further the free exchange of expression and discourse as public goods in a free and open society.  But by acting as they did, these companies have put their defenders — including me — on the defensive.
• 
The second cause for shame is that these companies — and all of Big Tech — command huge resources of capital, data, innovative energy, and individual talent that could be supporting open and honest public debate of important issues, not undermining or suppressing debate.
      Arthur Herman: Don't underestimate Trump – here's how voters will judge this historic presidency  (Fox 06/29/2020)
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... will have to recognize that Trump has been engaged in a one-man balancing act unprecedented in American history, and all without a net.
• 
It's hardly been a perfect performance and definitely not pretty to watch.  But in fact, Trump has been doing the jobs that FDR, Ronald Reagan and Harry Truman each had to do, all at once.
• 
Like FDR, Trump has had to deal with an unprecedented domestic crisis with global implications, one that has shattered people's confidence and certainty about the future.
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In Roosevelt's case, the Great Depression; in Trump's, COVID-19 and the Great Confinement.
• 
Like FDR, Trump has learned that the advice of so-called "experts" on dealing with the crisis has been largely worthless; while the opposition party has made every wild accusation (remember that FDR was denounced as both a Communist and a fascist dictator) and thrown every obstacle in his way, hoping that he would fail.
• 
Like Truman, Trump has had to alert Americans to a growing threat from abroad, when most Americans are weary of global commitments and only want some peace and stability.
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In Truman's case, it was the growing Soviet threat after World War II; in Trump's, it's China.
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Trump's had to make us all aware that Beijing is not only responsible for the spread and severity of the COVID pandemic but uses every opportunity, including the pandemic, to displace America as the world's superpower and impose tyranny over freedom.
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Finally, like Reagan Trump came into office determined to restore American pride and economic growth after a predecessor who discounted both.
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In Reagan's case, it was the malaise of the Jimmy Carter years; in Trump's, it was the Obama administration's self-imposed mission of "managing American decline" and presiding over the slowest recovery from an economic recession in U.S.  history.
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Democrats and the media threw every possible scandal at Reagan in order to bring him down (remember Iran-Contra?).
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They've done the same with Trump, while he took on the double burden of having to restore the American economy not once but now a second time after the COVID-19 lockdown – even as rioters and demonstrators bring our urban centers to the brink of anarchy.
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Imagine a president confronting the Great Depression, the Cold War and the riots of 1968 in one fell swoop, and you have some idea of what Trump is dealing with in the run-up to the election in November.
• 
How has Trump done?  Certainly, Trump's bedside manner is not as reassuring as FDR's or Reagan's, but the challenges have been bigger.
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Everyone, even Republicans, wanted to recover from the Great Depression.  However, as the recent (and deleted) tweets of Rep.  Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., reveal, Trump's blue state opponents are willing to break the economy if that's what it would take to stop his reelection.
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And unlike Truman, Trump doesn't have a Deep State cadre who loyally served his predecessor (in Truman's case, FDR) to depend on.
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Just the opposite: he's had to build a reliable team from scratch, through a trial-and-error process that's hurt his image and slowed his agenda.
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... when voters wake up in October, they'll see a president who has managed not one, not two, but three heavy lifts, however imperfectly — while Democrats did their best to shutter the economy and let their radical offspring run wild in the streets.
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The choice will look stark.  Do you want Trump or Seattle?  Voters may find the answer isn't so complicated, after all.
      Arthur Herman: Riots, looting and America burning — the end of the progressive dream  (Fox 06/03/2020)
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There is a big debate about designating Antifa a terrorist group and what if any steps the federal government can take to stop the rioting.
• 
But we all know who the real culprits are for turning America's streets into a war zone: progressives and liberals.
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They have filled the mind of America's youth with ideological nitroglycerine that is now exploding in our streets, while also setting the conditions that make it almost impossible to stop it.
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... we have too many progressive mayors and governors who can't and won't protect their own citizens and their property and businesses — or in the case of Mayor Bill De Blasio whose own children join in the rioting.
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... since the 1960s, progressives have foisted on us a series of social policies that they promised would give us utopia but which have turned into a perpetual nightmare for America's inner-city residents and poorest and most vulnerable.
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From welfare and community policing to abortion rights and racial preferences, these policies were supposed to bring a new America based on racial harmony and equality.
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When that failed, progressives blamed capitalism and white privilege instead of their own incompetence and malfeasance.
• 
These progressive social experiments have been especially bad for black America.  Ironically, it turns out Donald Trump has been the best friend African-Americans have had in a generation.
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The third failure has been the constant vilification of our police and law enforcement, to the point that they became targets for assassination.
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Worse, progressive policies have neutered urban police departments to the point they have been rendered impotent just when they are most needed.
• 
... progressives in Hollywood and the liberal media have portrayed cops as corrupt, racist and sexist brutal thugs.  So the public sees incidents like the death of George Floyd as characteristic of police tactics instead of an aberration.
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No society can survive when its defenders are attacked as the villains and its violent enemies are treated as heroes and victims.
• 
Progressives may look at the broken glass, burning businesses and desecrated churches with a desperate satisfaction.
• 
They think this will finally spell the end of Trump.  History shows they're wrong.
• 
The radicals and progressives who sparked the riots in 1968 also thought runaway violence would topple the establishment and sweep them into power.
• 
Instead, America defended itself from anarchy by giving its vote to the declared law and order candidates in the 1968 presidential election.
• 
America doesn't commit suicide so easily, then or now.
• 
Our progressive politicians and ideologues have sowed the seeds of what's happening in our streets.
• 
If they aren't willing to help solve the problem, then they must reap the whirlwind.
      Arthur Herman: Romney's Trump impeachment vote - why Republicans should thank the Senator  (Fox 02/06/2020)
• 
His vote has demonstrated for all to see that the effort to remove Trump from office springs not from an aversion to what he does but to who he is and what he represents in the course of recent American history.
• 
Romney's personal animus toward Trump is well known and documented, just as the illogic of Romney's pro-impeachment vote is obvious.
• 
After all, if Romney really believed that Trump's phone call with the president of Ukraine was so egregious an abuse of power then why did he feel he had to vote to hear more witnesses unless it was a way to further embarrass and humiliate an embattled president?
• 
But it is important to note that this anti-Trump animus which Romney shares with so many others in Washington runs much deeper than just a personal dislike of the man.
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It springs from the fact that Trump has challenged, and largely disproved, a long-standing assumption in politics that dates back at least to John Adams.
• 
It is that American democracy can't function without a ruling elite, a "natural aristocracy" in Adams's words, who would come from the right background and the right schools and provide leadership and continuity on policy while also riding herd over the American masses who can be, as Adams put it, "unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel" unless the self-ordained best and brightest lead the way.
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Trump has shown that's not true by a long shot.
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In fairness, the Bush and Obama years seemed to demonstrate to most Americans that the more policy was left to the professional Washington elite class the more they mess it up whether it's triggering endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing nothing about illegal immigration or kowtowing to China and secretly shipping cash to the Iranian mullahs so they can fund their terrorist efforts.
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But Trump's successful handling of U.S.  domestic, as well as foreign policy, has been in defiance of that elite.
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It has shattered forever their claims that without their constant guidance the result could only be chaos.
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Even more important, Trump has also proved that when the elite are challenged they will band together to remove a president by any means fair or foul who has proved them to be impotent and wrong.
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By his vote, and the media furor swirling around it, Romney has made this clash between Trump and our self-ordained elite more evident than ever.
• 
We can see that Romney's strategy for his political future is, ironically, to join up with the very same people and media who wrecked his reputation and presidential campaign in 2012.
• 
It demonstrates that whether they are Democrats or Republicans, liberals or conservatives, their claims to being an American aristocracy without whom the country cannot survive binds them together closer than any other loyalty — even a loyalty to the truth.
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As for his future, voters in Utah may have different plans for Mitt.
• 
But for now, he can enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame and adulation by the media.
• 
Meanwhile, thanks to him the rest of us can see the present more clearly and the future with more insight and growing optimism about what comes next.
 Hill  (04/24/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/21/2021) | Next sect (06/29/2020) | List bot 
      Curtis Hill: Coronavirus and inmates — ACLU's bad idea ignores these realities about crime  (Fox 04/24/2020)
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In a perfect world, no one would ever get locked up in a jail or prison, because in a perfect world, no one would ever commit a crime deserving of such punishment.
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... in America, most people locked up in jails or prisons are there for good reason.
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Quite apart from the current health crisis, however, let's remember that the ACLU has long implored government at all levels to release as many inmates as possible back onto our streets.
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... the organization complains that "despite making up close to 5 percent of the global population, the U.S.  has nearly 25 percent of the world's prison population ... Our prison system costs taxpayers $80 billion per year.  This money should be spent building up, not further harming, communities.  Investment, not incarceration, is how we improve safety."
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... ignores the reason the United States locks up so many people.  Quite simply, too many people commit serious crimes.
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Even the alarming and disproportionate number of blacks in prison arises directly from the disproportionate amount of violent crime committed in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods — a pattern that also produces a disproportionate number of black victims.
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It's the crime itself — not holding offenders accountable — that is harming our communities.
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You think most people serving time are locked up for nonviolent offenses such as drug possession or dealing?  If so, think again.
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... most state inmates are incarcerated for the crimes of murder (14 percent); rape or sexual assault (13 percent); robbery (13 percent); aggravated or simple assault (11 percent); and burglary (9 percent).
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According to the U.S.  Bureau of Justice Statistics, almost 40 percent of released state prisoners served less than a year in prison.
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Approximately 20 percent of murderers and 60 percent of rapists/sexual assaulters serve fewer than five years in prison.
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Such statistics hardly paint a picture of a society that keeps too many people locked up.
• 
... also rightly highlights the significant role of plea bargaining in cases where offenders appear to be serving time for relatively low-level offenses.
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The most serious charges are often dropped in exchange for guilty pleas to less serious crimes — so conviction records often understate the seriousness of crimes committed by offenders.
• 
Certainly, we all grieve to see people locked away in prison rather than leading productive lives.  Rightfully so.  But we grieve even more for the innocent victims of their crimes.
• 
We must recognize that a very small percentage of people commits the large majority of crime in any particular community.
• 
On average, someone arrested for a homicide or shooting in Chicago had nearly 12 prior arrests.  And almost 20 percent of those arrested for these crimes had more than 20 prior arrests.
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And these criminals typically operate in hardscrabble, low-income neighborhoods.  So if we allow persistent lawbreakers to freely roam the streets, we are hurting those families and individuals already facing the steepest challenges.  We are causing damage to the very people we should be trying our hardest to help.
• 
Where is the compassion in that?
• 
The best correctional models are those that hold offenders accountable for their crimes but that also help improve their character by addressing social, emotional, spiritual, educational and familial issues through targeted services.
• 
... the ACLU's claim that the United States incarcerates too many people remains an exercise in delusion.
• 
All those who believe in the rule of law must remain as vigilant in refuting the ACLU's argument with facts as the ACLU is persistent in propping it up with fallacies.
• 
See related Stop Committing Crime (Michael Ramirez, 09/04/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Curtis Hill: Trump impeachment not justified – He hasn’t committed any crime  (Fox 01/15/2020)
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The cornerstone of the American criminal justice system is "innocent until proven guilty."
• 
It's the difference between being prosecuted and being persecuted.
• 
I fear the process that has been followed to impeach President Trump is yet another sign that our collective sense of justice is fragile.
• 
To be clear: I'm not here to defend Trump.
• 
... something far more fundamental to the welfare of our nation is at stake.  I'm here to defend fairness.
• 
Fundamental basic fairness is at the very core of who we are, or at least who we are supposed to be, as a nation.
• 
While we Americans have certainly fallen short of our ideals throughout our history, we have generally coalesced around constitutional rights such as the right to face your accuser; the right to know the charges and the evidence against you; the right to trial by jury; and the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
• 
In court, we call this due process.  To the average everyday American, it's just plain fairness.
• 
As a criminal prosecutor for most of my career, I have known the search for truth to be grounded in the legal axiom of "innocent until proven guilty."
• 
We may investigate a suspect of a crime and gather evidence of guilt to be presented at trial, but we do so in a manner that safeguards the presumption of innocence.
• 
Without that presumption, we lose fairness.
• 
The overtly partisan nature of the impeachment process thus far would suggest that fairness has not been a priority.
• 
From the moment the Democrats took control of the House of Representatives, impeachment of the president has been a constant drumbeat — even without any clarity over what specific crime might have been committed.
• 
There is no doubt that Congress has the constitutional authority to impeach the president.
• 
But it requires an articulable crime — "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," to quote the Constitution.
• 
When the long-anticipated Mueller report fizzled into nothing that contained evidence of a crime, however, Democrats kept the impeachment engine running while looking for another vehicle to drive their desired outcome.
• 
Some might consider unwise the statements made by President Trump to Ukraine's president about investigations, former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, and military aid.
• 
Others say the statements represent typical behind-the-scenes banter among world leaders.  In any case, they hardly qualify as high crimes or misdemeanors.
• 
Congress ultimately reduced their investigation of the president to two articles of impeachment — 1) "abuse of power" and 2) "obstruction of Congress."
• 
Neither of these vague "charges" is a crime.
• 
While abuse of power is a serious allegation that can be considered at the ballot box, it is not defined as an actual crime.
• 
Now some will say: "But this is not a criminal proceeding.  The president is not entitled to due process as if he were in a court of law."
• 
Where did I hear that before?  Oh yes, the Senate hearings to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S.  Supreme Court.
• 
There, we heard liberal senators and law professors alike claim that Kavanaugh was not entitled to due process because the Senate hearings were not a criminal trial.  Suddenly, new standards of fair play were being applied.
• 
No longer was Kavanaugh innocent until proven guilty.  Rather, an accusation by someone deemed (by somebody) a credible witness was "enough" — whatever "enough" meant.
• 
In those hearings, we saw the same slippery slope that we see today.
• 
The process for considering accusations against public officials has turned into a political contest.
• 
Those who didn't like his ideological bent considered the accusations to be "enough," and to hell with being fair.
• 
These individuals would argue the ends justify the means, but I believe that how we do things still matters in America.
• 
I support the president because of the results he has delivered.
• 
He has unleashed a booming U.S.  economy.  He has appointed nearly 200 federal judges who respect the Constitution.  He has implemented a foreign policy that puts American interests first.
• 
I realize he is also a colorful character with a distinct way of communicating.
• 
If others want to question his style and/or substance, then let's have that debate before we go to the polls in November.
• 
But let's also repudiate the unwise rush to impeachment that has damaged our political discourse.
• 
The principle of fairness is that the law applies equally to everyone, no matter who they are or what they are accused of doing.
• 
Love him or hate him, President Trump has the same right to fairness as anyone else.
 Hilton  (06/29/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/24/2020) | Next sect (08/10/2020) | List bot 
      Bolton's book reminds us what the 2020 election is really about - Trump versus the establishment  (Fox 06/29/2020)
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Do not underestimate the significance of the Bolton effect.  This is not just a short-term swamp story that will soon be replaced by another.
• 
From the start, the Republican establishment has been trying to take Trump down.
• 
Their chosen tactic — put their own establishment stooges into key positions.
• 
Once there, these self-appointed guardians of the national interest would inform, educate and guide President Trump away from the policies the American people actually voted for and towards the establishment ideology the voters rejected in the election — open borders, globalism and endless war.
• 
There's a kind of breathtaking arrogance to it if you think about it.  These establishment megalomaniacs genuinely believe they should be in power, regardless of actual elections.  And they call Trump an authoritarian.
• 
The president brought them in precisely because, as he put it in a tweet last week, he likes hearing differing points of view.  But these establishment stooges aren't satisfied just giving their opinion.
• 
These smug self-righteous elitists think they were defending America when they duplicitously took senior jobs for a president they despised and opposed.
• 
But they weren't defending America or Americans.  They were defending their own class and their own interests.
• 
The globalist elite, the military-industrial complex — in a word, the "Swamp." That's what all of them — Bolton, Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis — really are — agents of the Swamp.
• 
The establishment Republicans, the Never Trumpers — they are desperate to get power back so they can get back to doing what they love, exploiting American workers.
• 
Now, they've jumped to Biden, where they will find a willing host for their destructive ideas.
• 
Because Biden himself is the Swamp.  He is the very figurehead of the failed ruling class that Bolton, Tillerson, Kelly, Mattis, and all the rest of them are members of.
• 
The establishment wants cheap labor, open borders, a sellout to China.  The unions want higher taxes, pension protection, more regulation.  The loony left wants their cultural revolution — abolish the police, crush free speech, rule of the mob.
• 
They don't just want to beat Trump; they want to crush the Populist Revolution.
• 
... the election is a choice about the future.  People power or the Swamp.  Trump or the mob.  American workers first or open borders forever.  A growing free enterprise economy or stagnation, sclerosis and slump.
      Trump's gains with African-Americans will be lost if he does not lead on police reform  (Fox 06/08/2020)
• 
"We're now supposed to hate cops.  No.  Hate bad cops, help good ones.  A great cop does as much to help society as a great doctor or nurse and it's in the line of fire."
• 
Across the media, people are telling you this is either/or — law and order or justice.
• 
But it's not either-or.  It is first-then — first you have to restore order, then you have to bring justice.  There was no progress with chaos.
• 
Yes, of course, they've got that toughest job in our society.  They're the ones who put their lives on the line every day to protect us.  If someone breaks into your house, if someone assaults you, if someone is brandishing a weapon, you call them, and they're there.
• 
But we need to be fair and balanced.  There's been too much casual brutality by the police.
• 
Unprovoked violence like that is not just morally unacceptable.  It's stupid because it gives people the chance to be anti-police.
• 
Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed — a Democratic mayor for 46 years.  Not a single Republican on the city council this century.
• 
Minneapolis Democrats have been in charge of budgets, hiring, policies, practices.  They could have done anything they wanted to reform policing.
• 
Who was stopping them?  The governor — a Democrat for a decade.  The state attorney general — a Democrat since 1971.
• 
Around the country, California was the state with the most black residents killed by police in 2019.  Who is their governor?  Democrat Gavin Newsom.  Who is their attorney general?  Democrat Xavier Becerra.  It is practically a one-party state.
• 
And what about New York in 2019?  The most black residents in the northeast killed by police.  Democratic Gov.  Andrew Cuomo, Democratic Attorney General Letitia James.
• 
We keep talking about a small number of bad cops — rotten apples that spoil the barrel.  Well, actually, we have the data on that.  A study found that in Chicago, the worst 5 percent of officers account for a third of all civilian complaints.
• 
Sir Robert Peel in known as "the father of modern policing" ... Nine Principles of Policing from the early 1800s.
• 
I'm going to read to you the three most important ones.  If every officer and every police force in America adhere to these principles, we will never again witness the scenes of the last few days.
• 
Number six: "Police use physical force to the extent necessary to secure observance of the law or to restore order only when the exercise of persuasion, advice and warning is found to be insufficient."
• 
Number seven: "Police at all times should maintain the relationship with the public that gives reality to the historic tradition that the police are the public and the public are the police.  The police being only members of the public, who are paid to give full time attention to duties which are incumbent on every citizen in the interest of community welfare and existence."
• 
Number nine: "The test of police efficiency is the absence of crime and disorder, not the visible evidence of police action in dealing with it."
• 
President Trump is rightly proud of what he did for African-Americans — the lowest unemployment in history, opportunity zones to revitalize urban neighborhoods and long overdue criminal justice reform with the First Step Act.
• 
All those gains will be lost, politically speaking, at least, unless he now takes the next step — police reform.
• 
The president should lead this, a federal mandate to limit use of force, to bring policies, procedures and training in line with those principles Bill Bratton called his Bible.
• 
And to bring accountability by making sure every American has access to a serious independent police complaints commission, so we can use transparency to weed out the bad cops while supporting the good ones.
• 
Yes, the system is stacked against African-Americans, but who has been in charge of the system?  Who runs the schools?  Who runs the housing?  Who runs the police in the places African-Americans most suffer poverty and injustice?
• 
Not the racist Republicans.  Not the fascist Trump.  But you, the Democrats.  You're the ones doing this to black America.
• 
The answers to these problems are what Republicans and especially President Trump are all about — people power.
• 
African-American students at all levels do better in charter schools.  ... In housing, transfer the assets to people.  Give them ownership, a stake in society.
• 
Trump took on the establishment on China, on trade, on immigration.  He freed up the economy like never before.
• 
All that's at risk, unless he steps up to this moment with a bold new plan to fight the education establishment, the housing establishment and yes, the policing establishment, to put real power in people's hands, especially African-Americans.
• 
Many this week are recalling the Civil Rights fights in the 1960s.  JFK made the nice speeches, but it was LBJ who got it done.
      Technocrat establishment is all for democracy as long as it gives them more power  (Fox 05/18/2020)
• 
One of the most frightening things about the Russia revelations of the last few days is how the establishment and their media lackeys dismissed them.
• 
They pushed the Russia conspiracy theory for years.  And now we have actual evidence that the Russia collusion story was fantasy, that the Mueller investigation was an illegitimate fiasco, that leading Democrats like Adam Schiff, deliberately lied for years to the American people, that the fearsome apparatus of law enforcement was deployed by the state to take down political enemies on phony pretext.
• 
That instead of upholding the centuries' long tradition of peaceful transition of power, the losing side in the last presidential election tried to cripple its successor, that the permanent Washington establishment aided and abetted by shameless propaganda arm, the establishment media, colluded in this orgy of norm-destroying and rule-breaking driven by condescending contempt for Donald Trump and his supporters.
• 
Obama, Biden, Brennan, Clapper, Comey, Holder — all of them used law enforcement against their political rivals.
• 
This is the behavior of a police state.  Sure they're all for democracy and the Constitution as long as it delivers the right result, more power to them.
• 
It's not democracy.  It's the tyranny of the technocrats — regardless of actual election results, power in the hands of a ruling elite who think they're smarter and better than you, but they're not.
• 
Their ideology — globalism, open borders, endless war — it failed.  That's why people voted for Trump in 2016.
• 
Ever since then, the technocrats have been plotting to get their power back, first, with Russia, then with Mueller.  After that, impeachment.
• 
... look what actually happened.  The reason we have a pandemic in the first place is because the outbreak was covered up by the authoritarian dictatorship in China.
• 
Who spent the last 50 years sucking up to them?  Not Trump, but the technocrats.
• 
The reason we couldn't contain the outbreak and had to shut down our economy was because we didn't have tests that worked right at the start.  Who screwed that up?
• 
No, not the evil Trump, but the saintly public sector, CDC — the technocrats again.
• 
Of course, for them, the 37 percent work-from-home elite, the economy isn't really shut down anyway.  But for the majority of Americans who can't earn a living from their laptop, this is a disaster.
• 
Here's an idea: No federal money for any state unless every public official who keeps the shutdown going agrees to have their pay stopped and given to local food banks for the duration of their shutdown.
• 
They can apply for unemployment along with the rest of their victims.  It's called "skin in the game."
• 
We must fight back.  Curb their power.  Cut their pay.  Kick them out.  Beat them in November.  That's the next revolution we need.
      What do we have to do to get our leaders to follow the coronavirus data and science and end the...  (Fox 04/28/2020)
• 
As the coronavirus shutdown drags on, backed by the work-from-home elitists on TV, the majority of Americans who can't make a living from their laptop are screaming, "What do we have to do to get our leaders to follow the data and the science?"
• 
The fatality rate, therefore, is not the 3.4 percent or 2 percent or 1 percent we were told.  It's closer to 0.01 percent.  Yes, seasonal flu is just more contagious.
• 
Viruses don't disappear because we stay at home.  They keep going until there's not enough people left to infect.
• 
A vaccine is over a year away, they say, but millions of Americans have already had the virus.
• 
Most didn't know they had it.  Eighty percent have mild or zero symptoms.
• 
Here's what else causes death: Millions of medical procedures cancelled because of wildly inaccurate coronavirus projections.
• 
Twenty percent of U.S.  coronavirus deaths are in nursing homes.  In some states, it's over half.
• 
We know who's at risk and how to protect them.  Why aren't our leaders surging medical capacity and equipment to our nursing homes and care facilities, where the greatest generation is so obviously vulnerable?
• 
I'll tell you why.  Because they're too busy putting sand in skate parks, flying creepy surveillance drones, and worst of all, hiring armies of busybody contact traitors to implement this idiotic, unscientific reckless establishment groupthink that the only way we can open up is widespread testing, contact tracing and isolating.
• 
Testing, contact tracing and isolating are great if you're trying to contain an outbreak at the start, where you have hundreds of cases.
• 
It is totally absurd after a pandemic with millions infected, where you'll miss most of them anyway because they have no symptoms.
• 
I beg you, Dr.  Fauci, tell the governors, tell the mayors, how to protect the vulnerable in our nursing homes who are dying in droves because of inadequate infection control.
• 
Tell them that if we properly protect the vulnerable, we don't need the costly, complicated, technocratic nightmare of testing and contact tracing.
• 
And tell the American people so terrified by months of misinformation that many are scared to go out even if states do reopen.
• 
Tell them that most Americans, according to the data, have nothing to fear from coronavirus.
• 
Tell them that there is no scientific basis — as long as we properly protect the vulnerable — for this shutdown.
      Steve Hilton: How to reopen America safely, but soon  (Fox 04/13/2020)
• 
More than 1 in 10 Americans thrown out of work, higher taxes to come, businesses collapsing, mental health declining, poverty rising and with it, life expectancy falling.
• 
President Trump's instincts on this have been right all along.  He's the one that has to consider all the implications of any decision, including the social, economic, and yes, public health devastation of a shutdown.
• 
As the shutdown toll grows, so has the demand for a better, more sustainable antivirus plan.
• 
... the cure is worse than the disease.  This cure is not even a cure.
• 
The minute you lift the lockdowns, the virus starts spreading again, whether that's May, June, July, August or Christmas.
• 
Anyone pushing the recurring shutdown idea has no clue about how the economy actually works.  Uncertainty is a killer for business, for consumers and for workers.  We need to reopen and stay open.
• 
Another terrible idea is the one we told you about last week.  Governments in Europe are looking at immunity passports or certificates for those who've had coronavirus.
• 
Our own Dr.  Fauci said on Friday that immunity certificates, "might actually have some merit under certain circumstances."
• 
Again, no.  This has no merit under any circumstances.  Of course, we respect Dr.  Fauci's medical expertise, but this is a policy idea that would be an Orwellian nightmare, like the past laws they had in South Africa at the height of apartheid.
• 
Government antibody surveillance, leading to antibody passes would create a class of zero positive elites, and an incentive for people desperate for work to get infected.
• 
I hope no one in the White House is wasting one second on such a monstrous inhuman scheme.
• 
It would be totally unacceptable to the American people, let alone Trump supporters.
• 
... the latest data tells us that many millions of Americans have or will get the virus.  The idea that the government can identify each of them, isolate them somewhere for weeks, trace all their contacts — it's insane.
• 
And now we know that Apple and Google are right behind it, ready to build their surveillance empires on the back of this crisis.
• 
To be effective, to bring certainty to business, to maximize our chances of getting that big bounce-back recovery working Americans so desperately need, the right plan to reopen America has to be safe, of course, based on science, but also simple.
• 
Step one: Get accurate data about how widespread and how deadly coronavirus really is.  The statistics we're seeing right now are totally wrong.  They reflect the number of tests, not the real number of infections.
• 
So, here's recommendation one: Instead of pursuing government antibody surveillance for every American, the White House should immediately commission continuous community antibody sampling nationwide, so we get a true picture of the spread of this virus.
• 
Second step: Get accurate data about who is most vulnerable.  Just saying the elderly and those with underlying health conditions is too vague.  How old?  Which health conditions?  How severe?  How much virus were they exposed to?
• 
Don't waste time identifying, isolating and contact tracing everyone who has got the virus.
• 
The latest data shows there are multiple millions of them, and the vast majority will be fine.
• 
Instead, put the effort into tracing the medical histories of the people who so tragically died.
• 
Unbelievably, our hospitals are not collecting that data.  So, there's the second recommendation: The White House should mandate the collection and publication of what's known as, "morbidity data" — detailed information about the health conditions of coronavirus fatalities.  This is especially important.
• 
... it's likely that the shutdowns actually hurt the most vulnerable, infected, but asymptomatic people were sent back to multigenerational homes into close quarters with their elderly family members.  We need better data on infection rates, better data on risk factors.  That's what the next few weeks should be about.
• 
Then we go to step three in this science-based plan: Reopen America all at once, not bit by bit.  Quarantine and protect the truly vulnerable.
• 
If we know that millions more Americans than we thought have already had coronavirus, we don't need to shut down the economy just for a lack of ventilators to take care of the truly vulnerable.
• 
Quarantine the most vulnerable — not everyone, not even everyone over 65, just those with the specific health risks that have tragically killed thousands already.
• 
Keep them inside, give them N-95 masks and make sure no one comes within six feet of them.
• 
Make sure local health services contact and support them, mobilize food banks to help them.
• 
Impose much tighter controls in nursing homes and continue to build our reserves of ventilators and PPE to make sure we can cope with anything that comes down the line.
• 
... it might be a while before we can fill up a football stadium, but the science-based plan we've outlined for you is simple, it is practical and it is the best way to reopen America safely, but soon.
      Steve Hilton: Don't believe the pundits - Bernie Sanders is not a populist like Trump  (Fox 02/24/2020)
• 
I do admire the way he has pushed himself to the position he is in today, through sheer force of character and ideas.
• 
I agree with many of the things he says are wrong with the country - the corruption of the establishment, the way working people lost power.
• 
I used to agree with him on immigration until he totally changed his position.
• 
No one should buy the pundits' lazy consensus that Bernie is a populist, like Trump.  He is not.
• 
First, Trump was an outsider.  Bernie is actually an insider.
• 
Before entering the presidential race, Donald Trump never ran for anything.
• 
He was never in politics before and approached it like a problem-solving businessman.
• 
He combined traditional conservative ideas with new, more populist ones.
• 
Pro-business on tax and regulation, but pro-worker on trade and immigration; pro-America on defense; pro-family on paid leave and child tax credits; conservative judges and criminal justice reform.
• 
And perhaps in the long term, his most significant policy shift of all — upending the establishment consensus on China.
• 
Trump's original innovative policy mix is something only an outsider could have put together.
• 
By contrast, Bernie has been a political insider all his life.
• 
For almost four decades, he has collected taxpayer-funded paychecks as a mayor, a congressman and now senator.
• 
But he's not even an effective insider.  He has introduced 239 bills while in the Senate.  Guess how many became law?  Two.
• 
Maybe for once, Hillary got it right when she said nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.
• 
Here's the second reason it's wrong to say Bernie is just a Trump of the left: Donald Trump's policies are mainstream, Bernie's are extreme.
• 
The policy agenda President Trump ran on in 2016 that he has been implementing since is based on mainstream positions with majority support, whether that's strong borders, renegotiating trade deals, cutting taxes, or school choice.
• 
But Bernie's positions, they are wildly out of the mainstream.  They are extreme and have only minority support.
• 
Here's the third big difference between Bernie and Trump: The president stands up to the establishment.  ... That is a huge contrast with Bernie.
• 
But here's the fourth and most important difference between Trump and Bernie and the thing that the pundits most infuriatingly get wrong.
• 
They call them both populist — Bernie a populist of the left; Trump on the right.
• 
No.  Populism means taking power out of the hands of the elite and the establishment and putting it in the hands of the people.  That's what Trump is doing.
• 
Bernie wants to redistribute power alright, but he wants to take power from the private sector elite and give it to a new public sector elite — a new army of bureaucrats and busybodies running around telling you what to do once Bernie has told them what to do.
• 
Populism is all about decentralizing power.  Bernie is the direct opposite.  He is for centralizing power.
• 
He is not a populist; he is a socialist.
• 
And by the way, don't believe the spin that socialism is nothing unusual, that it's normal in places like the U.K.  or Sweden or Denmark.
• 
That is rubbish.  I know those countries.  What they have is not Bernie's democratic socialism.
• 
It is social democracy, and it is totally different.
• 
Bernie is a Washington insider with extreme socialist positions who panders to the establishment when it suits his own political purposes.
• 
See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Steve Hilton: Why is Trump hounded while Biden's alleged corruption gets a pass?  The 'Swamp' knows  (Fox 02/03/2020)
• 
What we saw during the Senate trial confirmed what we've known for months: impeachment wasn't about the Constitution.  It wasn't about abuse of power.
• 
It was about the Democrats and the fact that they hate President Trump, are furious he won in 2016, and fear he'll win again this year.
• 
Now, finally, this impeachment farce looks like it's coming to an end.
• 
But it would be a massive injustice if we let things lie as they are.
• 
For years, the alleged corruption and abuse of power by President Trump has been investigated over and over and over again.
• 
But what about the alleged Biden corruption?  Nothing.  Not a single investigation.  Why does he get a pass?
• 
Why does President Trump have his administration blocked, probed and hounded for three years but nothing on the other side?
• 
That is not fair.  That is not justice.  That is not the rule of law, but the law of the "Swamp" — and the king of the Swamp is Joe Biden.
• 
So as impeachment comes to an end, let the investigation of Biden begin.
• 
Are you listening, Senate Republicans?  You and only you can do this.
• 
We now need to hear from Joe Biden.  How much U.S.  taxpayer money went to Ukrainian gas company Burisma while your son Hunter was on the board of directors, and you sent billions of dollars to Ukraine's energy industry?
• 
You said you didn't know about your son's ties to Burisma, but last year, he said he told you.  So who's lying?  You or your son?
• 
And yes, let's call him, too.  Hunter Biden, please summarize your expertise in energy matters in 2014 when you were hired by Burisma.
• 
When you were wandering around a crack den in Los Angeles in late 2016 while on the Burisma board, was that on behalf of Burisma?
• 
Let's call Burisma founder, Mykola Zlochevsky.  Why did you hire Hunter Biden?
• 
Was it his connections?  Which connections?  With strippers or crack dealers?
• 
As a corrupt oligarch, perhaps you thought Hunter Biden might bring you judicial immunity.
• 
Let's get the senators to testify.  Senator Markey, Senator Shaheen — was it a coincidence that shortly after Ukraine energy sector lobbyist, David Leiter, gave you thousands of dollars in donations, you wrote to President Obama urging him to send more aid to the Ukraine energy sector?
• 
And Sen.  Blumenthal, was your decision to sponsor legislation alongside Sen.  Markey that pushed more money towards Ukraine's gas sector influenced by Ukraine gas lobbyist David Leiter's donations to your campaign committee?
• 
Let's call John Kerry.  As you pushed for taxpayer cash to support the Ukrainian gas industry, your former chief of staff lobbied for a Ukrainian gas company, and your stepson's friend and business partner joined its board.
• 
Is that not a blatant and corrupt conflict of interest?
• 
Talking of corruption, let's call the whistleblower who started this all.
• 
How many times have you met Joe Biden?  Would you describe yourself as nonpartisan?
• 
Why did you hire a lawyer who said right after President Trump's inauguration that a coup had started against him?
• 
Please describe all contact you've had with Rep.  Adam Schiff and anyone on his staff.
• 
Let's call DNC operative Alexandra Chalupa.  You were paid over $400,000 by the DNC.  between 2004 and 2016.  Please describe the work you carried out for them?
• 
Did you seek information about Donald Trump from Ukraine, as asserted by the Ukrainian government?
• 
And let's end, for now, with this one: If it's wrong for Republicans to solicit foreign dirt on Democrats, why is it okay for Democrats to solicit foreign dirt on Republicans?
• 
Yes, there are a lot of questions.  And the biggest one of all — the one we started with — why does every allegation against Donald Trump get endlessly investigated while Joe Biden's corruption, John Kerry's corruption, Ed Markey's corruption, Jeanne Shaheen's corruption, Richard Blumenthal's corruption — all of that outrageous and obvious Democratic corruption in the Ukraine cash for gas scandal — is completely ignored?
• 
You know why.  Because the Swamp looks after its own.
      Democrats' case for Trump's impeachment is so thin, it can be rebutted in under 4 minutes  (Fox 01/27/2020)
• 
On their first article, abuse of power.  They say President Trump asked a foreign country to interfere in our election.
• 
No.  If it's an American who is asking, that's not foreign interference; it is opposition research, like when President Bush asked the Brits for dirt on Bill Clinton or when Hillary paid for Russian dirt on Trump.  How about that, Democrats?
• 
In any case, of course Joe Biden should be investigated by Ukraine.  He controlled billions of dollars of U.S.  aid to the Ukraine energy industry while his son was on the board of a Ukraine energy company.
• 
We need to get to the bottom of that obvious corruption, and only the Ukraine government can do it.
• 
They say Trump abused power because he put his personal political interest over national security.
• 
That is total BS.  The Javelin anti-tank missiles the Ukrainians needed to fight the Russians were never part of the delayed security assistance.  Trump sent those weapons; Obama blocked them.
• 
But you don't even need to make these arguments on the substance.
• 
If you look closely at the Democrats' case, they're not actually saying that the president should be removed from office for delaying foreign aid or calling for investigations.
• 
They're saying he needs to be removed from office because of his motive — not because of what he did but why he did it.
• 
His motive, they say, is the impeachable abuse of power because it was self-serving, putting his personal political interest ahead of the national interest.
• 
But on that basis, every U.S.  president in history would be impeached.  There is always self-interest in any political action or decision.
• 
To pick a random example, like President Obama with the Russians over arms control in 2012.
• 
It's hard to imagine a more ludicrous basis for impeachment than the wrong motive argument in the Democrats' first article.
• 
But somehow they've pulled off that feat with their second article, obstruction of Congress.
• 
They're saying Trump should be removed from office for not handing over information, including witnesses.
• 
But that's literally part of checks and balances that is laid out in the Constitution.
• 
Congress asks, the executive branch says no, the courts decide.  It happens the whole time and has throughout our history.
• 
You don't go straight for impeachment to shortcut the process.  The obstruction of Congress Article is so obviously made up and stupid, it's barely worth discussing.
• 
One more thing, the question of whether the president committed a crime.  First, they said, you don't need a crime.
• 
Now, they say they've got one because the Government Accountability Office says the delay on aid was illegal.
• 
A) That's rubbish because the aid was paid in the specified accounting period, so no law was broken.
• 
B) That same outfit said Obama broke the law seven times.  I don't remember anyone wanting to impeach him over that.
• 
C) Yes, you do need a crime because the actual Constitution says treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
• 
It's kind of important, and also kind of inconvenient for the Democrats and their impeachment lapdogs on ruling class state TV.
• 
So there's your rebuttal.  It wasn't abuse of power; it was normal politics.
• 
It wasn't obstruction of Congress; it was normal checks and balances haggling.
• 
And yes, you do need to crime.  But no, you haven't got one, Democrats.
• 
That's it.  We're done.  Acquit the president.  End this fast.
• 
And for the love of God, spend your time working on real issues that affect the real lives of the actual people you're supposed to represent — like President Trump is doing every day, showing that giant contrast between Trump results and Democrat stunts.
      Democrats know Trump impeachment is a bust – But they should pay a price for what they've done  (Fox 12/16/2019)
• 
Rep.  Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., House Judiciary Committee chairman: "President Trump asked for a favor.  He wanted Ukraine to announce two bogus investigations: One into former Vice President Biden, his leading opponent in the 2020 election and another to advance a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked our elections in 2016."
• 
No, they just keep making it up.  No one's saying Ukraine and not Russia interfered in 2016.
• 
The question is did Ukraine meddle as well as Russia?
• 
Don't you love how the Democrats are obsessed about "getting to the bottom" of election meddling except when it's done on their behalf?
• 
The IG report literally just confirmed that Hillary Clinton didn't just invite foreign meddling in the 2016 elections; she paid for it.
• 
Then her team pushed Russian lies to the FBI.
• 
And stand by for the Democrats to totally blow off the anti-Trump meddling by China in 2020 — there is no doubt that's in the works right now.
• 
As for the Biden thing, the Democrats talk as if the only possible description of Joe Biden is "Donald Trump's political rival."
• 
How about this description: Former vice president who controlled U.S.- Ukraine policy while billions of taxpayer dollars went to the Ukraine energy industry, which was paying his son at the time?_
• 
Yeah, I think most Americans would agree that's worth investigating.
• 
But according to nincompoop Nadler: "The evidence proves that these requests were not related to any real interest in rooting out corruption.  President Trump eagerly does business with corrupt governments every day."
• 
Pardon me while I laugh.  Doing business with corrupt governments is now grounds for impeachment?
• 
So why didn't you impeach Obama, who did business with Russia?
• 
What about Nancy Pelosi, who did business with Ukraine, for Christ's sake?
• 
Or Hakeem Jeffries, who did business with China?
• 
Or Nadler himself?  He did business with Somalia.  He's such a preposterous figure.
• 
Nadler: "There can be no serious debate about what President Trump did."
• 
Have you noticed that they keep talking like this?  "It's uncontested.  There can be no serious debate."
• 
Even the Democrats' own witnesses couldn't agree about the president's phone call.
• 
Republicans totally disagree with the Democrats' interpretation of it.
• 
Who writes this stuff for Nadler and Pelosi and Schiff and all the rest of them?
• 
Do they even realize how arrogant it makes them sound?
• 
Bribery — gone.  Extortion — gone.  Obstruction of justice — gone.  This whole impeachment is a bust.
• 
The country is turning against them, and they know it. 
• 
Make them pay for what they've done to this president and this country.
• 
Make it hurt by making it last.  So once this gets to the Senate, let's get their dirty secrets out there.
• 
Call Joe Biden, call Hunter Biden, call the whistleblower.
• 
And while we're at it, call ex-Secretary of State John Kerry and the Democratic senators who are up to their necks in the Ukraine cash-for-gas corruption scandal, too.
• 
"Get to the bottom of it," as the Democrats constantly say.
• 
For the last three years in England, the establishment tried to overturn the 2016 Brexit vote.
• 
And last week the people told them to get lost.  They meant it the first time and they voted for it a second time.
• 
... in this country, unbelievably, while all this has been going on — the obstruction, the resistance, the impeachment, Russia, Ukraine, whatever — through it all, President Trump has managed to deliver not just his promises, but a record which on policy substance surely adds up to one of the most successful presidencies in history.
• 
Over the last three years, you have unemployment falling, earnings rising, criminal justice reform, the heartland revived.
• 
Energy independence; manufacturing resilience; illegal immigration coming down, the wall going up; China confronted; the caliphate defeated; NAFTA renegotiated; our military rebuilt.
• 
NATO paying more; regulations and costing less; conservative judges appointed; campus free speech defended; drug prices down; family leave up; training places for 14 million; child tax credits for 40 million; tax cuts for 100 million; a booming economy for everyone.
• 
In the end, this is why they're impeaching him.  They hate the president.  They hate his supporters.*
• 
They hate how they think, they hate what they do.  They hate their faith, they even hate their food.
• 
But above all, they hate the fact that this president is delivering concrete and substantial policy results for the working Americans who put him in the White House.
• 
And they're terrified that they can't beat him in a fair fight next year.
      How Trump will be remembered in history [and what the 2020 election will be really about]  (Fox 12/02/2019)
• 
Trump wanted to actually change the direction of the country.  ... Very few presidents actually do that.
• 
But on the defining issue of our time, President Trump has done it already.
• 
Not with the economy, vital though that is, where, as promised, the Trump pro-enterprise agenda of deregulation and tax cuts has delivered historically low unemployment.
• 
Not with immigration, vital though that is, where, as promised, the border wall is going up and the numbers of illegal crossings are coming down.
• 
But the big one, is the truly historic shift on China and the associated issues of trade and manufacturing.
• 
For 50 years, China was barreling towards its stated goal of toppling America as the world's economic and military superpower by 2049, not least by cheating on trade rules and stealing technology.
• 
President Trump, almost literally single-handed, challenged the conventional wisdom that China's rise was inevitable.
• 
As a direct result of the Trump tariffs, manufacturers are moving out of China, and many more have signaled they'll be looking to do the same soon.
• 
And the foundation of China's power is crumbling before our eyes.
• 
They're desperate for a trade deal.  And they're even saying they'll finally act on intellectual property theft.
• 
For 50 years, we lived under an elitist ideology that was pro-China and pro-globalism, regardless of the impact on manufacturing, on agriculture, on rural areas.
• 
President Trump has turned that around.  That's what they'll be talking about 100 years from now, not his tweets or TV habits.
• 
And that's why people who care about substance, about results — about the real world — should support him.
• 
His enemies — insufferable, pompous, sanctimonious, superficial — couldn't care less about substance.  It's all just infantile insults.
• 
Worse still, Trump's critics are completely oblivious, not just to Trump's substantive record, but to the damage they themselves did to this country with their elitist policy agenda.
• 
They crashed the economy and crushed the working class.
• 
They enriched the coasts and impoverished the heartland — and not a word of apology for any of it.
• 
So, of course, Trump supporters are not going to sit there meekly as the ruling class tries to cut short his term with this partisan farce of an impeachment which, let me remind you, has been in the works since practically the day he was inaugurated.
• 
If anything, Trump supporters think that far from being removed a year early, he should get an extra couple of years to make up for all the time that's been wasted on these endless investigations and obstructions simply because Trump's decadent enemies can't face the fact that they lost in 2016.
• 
Well, the election next year is an opportunity for the populist revolution to be reaffirmed.  And my God, it needs to be after what we're seeing with this impeachment.
• 
It's precisely because President Trump is delivering historic change that the ruling class is so violently, dementedly, against him.
• 
The Democrats, and the civil service, and MSNBC, and CNN have become an anti-Trump cult.
• 
Here's what they're saying to you, the American people: You can vote for a different China policy to the one the establishment wants, but you can't get it.  You can vote for a different trade policy to the one that Wall Street wants, but you can't get it.  You can vote for a different immigration policy to the one that global corporations want, but you can't get that.
• 
In 2016, you told them you wanted a change from establishment policies.  Trump has delivered, and they can't stand it.
• 
So, in 2020, tell them again.
      Trump impeachment inquiry, 'bribery' and the laughable hypocrisy of Democrats' desperate gambit  (Fox 11/18/2019)
• 
Apparently, it's about bribery, now.  Nancy Pelosi said so, and they all fell in line like sheep, replacing "quid pro quo" as the leading impeachment talking point against President Trump.
• 
"The bribe is to grant or withhold military assistance in return for a public statement of a fake investigation into the elections.  That's bribery."
• 
Bribery?  Are they kidding?  In the swamp, bribery is their business model.
• 
What do you think a political donation from a business or a lobbyist or a corporate PAC is?
• 
It's money in exchange for a political favor.  It's a bribe.
• 
Oh, look, Adam Schiff.  He took over $350,000 in bribes from the defense sector and — surprise, surprise — pushed for military action overseas.
• 
Schiff took over $100,000 from AT&T.  When it was reported that President Trump wanted to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger, guess who piped up on AT&T's behalf?  "Shifty Schiff," of course.
• 
How about Jerry Nadler?  He was bribed by lobbyists for Somalia and a motley assortment of other foreign governments.
• 
He took over $80,000 from teachers' unions and, in exchange, voted against charter schools and a voucher program.
• 
And then, the queen of bribery, Nancy Pelosi.  She boasts about her fundraising prowess.
• 
Raising money is the way she clings to power.  Her office proudly told The New York Times earlier this year that she's raised over $700 million since 2002.
• 
Does anyone think that money is anything other than bribes?
• 
And then there's the foreign bribes, including, unbelievably, the fact that Pelosi has taken money from lobbyists representing shady companies in Ukraine.
• 
It actually hurt the ruling class and the establishment, who have declared war on President Trump, because it exposed, for all to see, their snooty arrogance and contempt for democracy.
• 
This is not about Republican versus Democrat; this is insiders versus the outsider.
• 
That's why they're so obsessed with whether things are "irregular."
• 
Trump wants a State Department that stands up for America in the world.  The system wants to keep it standing up for the world in America.
• 
Trump thinks promises made before an election should be implemented after an election.  They want to ignore those promises as if the election never happened.
• 
Trump wanted to govern; they chose to obstruct.  Trump wants reelection; they won't take the risk.
• 
But does the Trump-hating ruling class even understand how much long-term damage it's doing to America's fabric with its reckless, demented drive to remove Donald Trump by non-democratic means because they're worried he'll win an actual election?
• 
They destroyed trust in the media long ago.  But now they've destroyed trust in the civil service, too; in the foreign service, in the FBI, the CIA, the whole system.
• 
They've made sure future presidents can't have confidential conversations with foreign leaders.
• 
They've distracted and divided the country, and they've guaranteed that the next Democratic president will also be impeached.
• 
I hear people all the time saying, "How can you support Trump?  Look at his behavior; look at his tweets." I say, "Look at his results."
• 
America's No.  1 enemy, China, finally confronted after decades of sucking up by the same establishment geniuses now plotting to kick Trump out.
• 
And then look at Trump's enemies.  However bad some people think Trump may be, his enemies are worse.
• 
They are completely insufferable, pompous, sanctimonious, self-righteous.  They're decadent, doing just fine in their coastal enclaves, so screw everyone else.
• 
They're superficial, always putting style over substance.  And they are oblivious to the damage they themselves did to this country with their elitist policy agenda and the damage they're doing now with their divisive impeachment agenda.
• 
The Democrats talk about justice.  I'll tell you what justice looks like: These crazed, partisan Democrats sent to the political wilderness, their candidates defeated at every level — the White House, Congress, state and local government — until they return, finally, to their senses.
      Dems have lost touch with working Americans [and hold the real extremist views on immigration]  (Fox 09/16/2019)
• 
I think the vast majority of Americans are pro-immigration, as long as it is properly controlled.
• 
And I think the vast majority of Americans are compassionate people who want to give sanctuary to refugees fleeing persecution, as long as it is authentic.
• 
"Folks, I voted for a fence," Biden said in 2006.  "I voted, and unlike most Democrats — some of you won't like this, but I voted for 700 miles."
• 
In 2009, Schumer said the following: "Illegal immigration is wrong – plain and simple.  Until the American people are convinced that we will stop future flows of illegal immigration, we will make no progress in dealing with the millions of illegal immigrants who are here now and on rationalizing our system of legal immigration – that's plain and simple and unavoidable."
• 
Who could possibly disagree with that?
• 
In 2016, Biden said, "We can't wall ourselves off from the problems that are not bound by borders — the threat of communicable diseases like Zika, drug trafficking, climate change.  No wall can be built."
• 
In 2018, Schumer said, "It is a shame that this president, who's plunging the nation into chaos, is throwing another temper tantrum and gonna hurt lots of innocent people.  The Trump temper tantrum may produce a government shutdown.  It will not get him his wall."
• 
Whatever the issue, whatever the facts, if Trump's for it, they're against it, regardless of their previous views.
• 
What a bunch of total charlatans these Democrats are!
• 
It's the same idiocy with asylum.  ... the Democrats lost their minds.
• 
Nancy Pelosi released a totally deranged and factually inaccurate statement, including this: "The Supreme Court's decision to allow the Trump administration to inflict its cruel new asylum policy on the world's most vulnerable populations at the southern border is deeply disappointing, profoundly dangerous and a clear departure from both U.S.  and international law."
• 
These people are so ridiculous.  It's not a departure from international law; it brings us in line with international law.
• 
Do they even know that this new Trump asylum policy is basically the same as the European Union's?
• 
Look, there's a difference between asylum and migration.
• 
Of course, people want to come to America.  It's the greatest place in the world.
• 
But you've got to have an orderly process.  Public consent for immigration depends on government control of immigration.
• 
The asylum seekers are fleeing crime and gang violence, we're told.
• 
Yes, they are.  But guess what?  Those same gangs are here.
• 
The Democrats and the establishment state media have totally lost the plot on immigration.
• 
That's because they've lost touch with working Americans.
• 
It's not their jobs being lost; it's not their incomes going down.  It's not their kids' schools being overwhelmed.
• 
By contrast, the Trump administration is finally putting together the reasonable, coherent immigration policy this country has been crying out for, for nearly 50 years.
• 
We see it with the wall going up, but it's much more than that.  In many ways, it's five walls.
• 
The physical one, but also the legal one with the asylum change, a technology wall, an entitlement reform wall to help reduce incentives, and a foreign policy wall to encourage other countries to do more, as we saw with immediate results with Mexico and the tariffs threat.
• 
On top of all that — and totally contradicting the establishment lie that this is a xenophobic, restrictionist approach — these are walls, as the saying goes, with a door.
• 
Months ago, the president announced a plan not to cut legal immigration but to keep it at present levels, opting instead to reform it to become a merit-based system.
• 
All of this is utterly reasonable and in line with mainstream opinion in this country.
• 
See related Make no Apologies (Michael Ramirez, 06/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Steve Hilton: Trump is more pro-worker than any previous Republican president.  Here's why  (Fox 09/03/2019)
• 
"Our economic policy can be summed up in three simple, but beautiful words: jobs, jobs, jobs."
• 
"We've created six million new jobs since Election Day.  If I would've said that, no one would have believed it.  If I would've said that, fake news would have said, ‘He's exaggerating.'"
• 
The first step in bringing jobs back was to get the economy moving after the years of stagnation under the anti-business policies of President Obama and the Democrats.
• 
Almost immediately after President Trump was elected, his pro-enterprise agenda led to confidence rising, investments booming, and growth returning to levels that the experts said we'd never see again.
• 
Now that formula - lower taxes and less regulation - is pretty standard conservative policy.
• 
What's different about President Trump is that he is a populist.  He is pro-worker in a way that we haven't seen before from a Republican president.
• 
Establishment Republicans became slaves to a laissez-faire ideology that favored the financial sector and the coastal knowledge economy over manufacturing and the heartland.
• 
They adopted a pro-donor agenda of open borders and free trade at any price.
• 
They worshipped the Wall Street wheeler-dealers who said making things in America didn't matter.
• 
Let's import cheap labor.  Who cares what happens to American workers and their communities when manufacturing moves to Mexico and China?
• 
Well, President Trump does care.
• 
He said no to the one-sided trade deals ... ripping them up or renegotiating them.
• 
He said no to open borders, building the wall, enforcing immigration laws, and pushing for a merit-based system.
• 
He prioritized manufacturing after years of neglect, even intervening with individual companies, to the pearl-clutching horror of the free-market zealots.
• 
With President Trump, we've seen the lowest unemployment in 50 years and the lowest on record for African-American and Hispanic workers.
• 
The president promised "jobs jobs jobs" — and that is exactly what he is delivering.
• 
See related Immigration Politics (Sean Delonas, 01/12/2018) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump is the real populist.  Those are the facts.  Democrats are not even close  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
Let's start with the big argument at the heart of positive populism. 
• 
"After years and years of building up other countries we are finally building up our country, standing up for our jobs, our workers, and standing up for our dignity."
• 
"The forgotten men and women of America will never ever be forgotten again.  You were forgotten."
• 
This is the Democrats' central claim: Donald Trump has broken his promise to help working Americans.  He's not a real populist; his policies have only helped the rich.
• 
Honestly, these are lies, lies, lies.  Here are the facts, the facts, the facts.
• 
Between 2016 and 2018, corporate profits rose by $220 billion while workers' earnings went up by almost $1 trillion — four times more.
• 
The Democrats also say Trump is just continuing what Obama started.  But the facts show this is a complete lie, too.
• 
Workers' earnings increased by 42 percent more during President Trump's first two years in office than Obama's last two.
• 
There was a massive and almost instant jump - a turnaround that has destroyed the left's economic argument because it's a perfect test case of what pro-growth pro-enterprise economics can do.
• 
Yes, it's true that corporate tax cuts and deregulation helped businesses.
• 
But who do you think actually creates jobs and pays wages?
• 
Helping business is the way you help workers.
• 
Let me explain how it works for the economically-illiterate Democrats and their idiotic stooges in the establishment state media: Lower taxes and less regulation give businesses the confidence to invest.
• 
That means more innovation and higher worker productivity.
• 
That means more jobs are created, and workers are paid more because they're producing more.
• 
On jobs, the latest report showed 164,000 jobs were added, bringing the labor force to almost 163 million - a new, all-time record.  With President Trump, we've seen the lowest unemployment in 50 years, and the lowest on record for African-American and Hispanic workers.
• 
On workers' pay, the latest data on employee compensation showed that earnings rose 4.5 percent in 2017 and 5 percent in 2018.
• 
President Trump is specifically delivering on the promises he made to the forgotten men and women, who in 2016 revolted against an establishment that punished them for decades in the name of elitist dogma, like open borders, free trade, and globalization.
• 
In the Trump economy, incomes are rising fastest for the lowest-paid.
• 
Hourly pay growth for the bottom 25 percent has outpaced that of higher earners every month of the Trump presidency.
• 
The facts demonstrate conclusively that working Americans are the winners in the Trump economy.
• 
Yes, he is the real populist and it's the Democrats who are fake.
• 
Populism is about power to the people.
• 
The left is about taking power away from people and giving it to the government.
• 
"Well, Donald Trump may have a good economy, but that's just because of traditional conservative policy.  Where he's moved away from Republican orthodoxy, like on trade and China, it's been a disaster."
• 
... tariffs work.  They worked on the border with Mexico and are working with China.
      The way the critics talk, you'd think our entire economy was dependent on  ()
• 
But remember, in 2018 imports from China were just 2.7 percent of our economy and exports to China just 0.9 percent.
• 
... the Wall Street wheeler-dealers in the capital market system who for decades have screwed the American worker to make themselves rich, especially over China.
• 
So it is highly revealing that these elitist globalization ideologues are dumping on Trump just at the moment when his populist trade policies are starting to work.
• 
For 50 years, China was moving inexorably towards its stated aim of toppling America as the world's economic and military superpower by 2049, not least by cheating on trade rules and stealing technology.
• 
Now, thanks to President Trump, China is reeling.
• 
As a direct result of the Trump tariffs, manufacturers are moving supply chains out of China.
• 
This was the foundation of China's rise — and it's crumbling before our eyes.
• 
The establishment loves to regurgitate their tired talking points about consumers paying for the trade war.
• 
But they are idiotically short-sighted.
• 
They don't take into account the costs to our society - and our economy - of shipping jobs to China so they can ship cheap products back here.
• 
That would be my policy: If you want to sell it in America, you can damn well make it in America.
• 
The establishment just doesn't get the historic geo-strategic turnaround that Trump tariffs are delivering.
• 
Here's what to ask the Never Trumpers and the conservative ideologues and the establishment: If you don't like what President Trump is doing on trade, what's your alternative?  What's your plan to stop China from cheating us?  What's your plan to stop China from beating us?
• 
These Trump tariffs are the first thing in 50 years that have gotten China's attention, and they are reshaping the global economy to America's advantage.
• 
In 2016 ... we saw once again the true genius of this country.
• 
America elected as president the only person who was prepared to confront its greatest challenge.
• 
President Trump is not just the real populist — he's the really successful populist.
• 
Where he's followed traditional conservative economics — tax cuts and deregulation — the results have been great, especially for working Americans.
• 
But where the president has followed his own instincts — on trade and China — the results have been transformational and historic.
• 
That is positive populism in action.
      Steve Hilton: Proud Americans - That's not who today's Democrats are  (Fox 07/08/2019)
• 
There was a time when being pro-America was a given for politicians in both main parties.
• 
Of course, President Reagan put it beautifully when he talked of a "shining city on a hill."
• 
But I also loved Bill Clinton's great line, "There's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed by what's right with America"
• 
But this past week, this July 4, we saw that those days are gone.
• 
Yes, we still have a Republican president who, like Ronald Reagan, is obviously proud of America and happy to say it, to celebrate it.
• 
But today's Democrats?  No.  They're embarrassed by America, far from celebrating America.
• 
They want to tear it down and turn it into something else.
• 
"Donald Trump, I believe, is incapable of celebrating what makes America great because I don't think he gets it," former Vice President Joe Biden said.
• 
Okay.  Here's some of what the president actually said:
• 
"Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told: The story of America ... It is the spirit, daring and defiance, excellence and adventure, courage and confidence, loyalty and love that built this country into the most exceptional nation in the history of the world, and our nation is stronger today than it ever was before."
• 
I think you'll find, Joe China, that President Trump "gets" what makes America great better than a knackered old swamp creature who took billions of dollars in bribes in the form of payments to his family businesses from America's No.  1 enemy.
• 
But it wasn't just Biden.  It was all of them.  "How dare you celebrate America" cried the left.  "It's not who we are."
• 
... the big point is captured in that smug platitude trotted out there by the ridiculous Eric Swalwell and the rest of the left these days: "It's not who we are."
• 
For once, that phrase told us something useful about the Democrats, just not in the way they intended.
• 
The Democrats won't celebrate America because their new ideology demands that they denigrate America, not least with their reckless, divisive lies about concentration camps at the border, collusion with Russia, and "Hitler" in the White House.
• 
Today's Democrats are engaged in a concerted effort to smear this country at home and in the eyes of the world.
• 
When they tell you they don't want to celebrate America because "it's not who we are," believe them.
• 
President Trump, by contrast, laid out exactly why we should celebrate.
• 
The American spirit he talked about on Independence Day has driven some of the most profound human achievements in history, from medical breakthroughs to artistic glories to engineering and technological marvels.
• 
American ingenuity has continually confounded what the world thinks is possible.
• 
It is America's greatest achievement that has made all the others possible.
• 
And that is the genius framework constructed by the Founders and expressed in the founding documents, all in service of that simple, but revolutionary idea — liberty under the law.
• 
It is the guarantee of individual liberty that gave the pioneers the confidence to set out into the unknown, that gave the entrepreneurs the belief they could build something better, that convinced communities they could govern themselves.
• 
Power to the people.  Decentralized and limited government.  The rule of law.
• 
These are the foundation of the American spirit, and they have paved the way, not only for America's long-lasting democracy but also our world-beating economic system, in which investment, innovation, and above all, success, are rewarded, not punished.
• 
The Democrats don't want limited government; they want endless, relentless, extravagant intervention by an all-knowing all-seeing all-powerful state.
• 
Today's Democrats don't even want the most vital element of the American inheritance: The rule of law.
• 
The Democrats point to the Statue of Liberty and say that immigration control is un-American.
• 
But they forget one vital thing.  It's not just liberty.  It's liberty under the law.
• 
And it is their blatant, thuggish assault on the rule of law that is truly un-American.
      Steve Hilton: Trump proves that tariffs work.  Here are the lessons we should learn  (Fox 06/10/2019)
• 
Last week we saw proof that tariffs work.  President Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico.  Their leaders came to negoitiate, and we got concrete results.
• 
"In the course of a week, Mr.  Trump managed to get Mexico to agree to two things that months ago would have seemed unlikely: Militarizing Mexico's crackdown on migrants by deploying National Guard troops and expanding the ‘remain in Mexico' plan for asylum seekers."
• 
Everyone agrees we have a crisis at the southern border.  Two weeks ago, 1,000 illegal immigrants literally just walked into the country, in El Paso, Texas.
• 
Our immigration system is not just broken; for all practical purposes, it doesn't exist.
• 
But there is one person, it seems, who is actually trying to fix it: President Trump.  That's why he resorted to his tariff threat.
• 
It was a new approach, so of course, the establishment lost their minds.  And the Republican establishment hated it, too.
• 
... the way they were talking, tariffs on Mexico would be the end of our economy.  They let ideology get in the way of the facts.
• 
Even though Mexico is our biggest trading partner, it's still a tiny part of our economy.  Imports from Mexico make up just 1.8 percent of our economy.  And exports to Mexico are only 1.4 percent.
• 
It's like the critics didn't even look at it as a practical policy question.  For them it was an article of faith — tariffs are bad.
• 
It was the same thing with all the nodding dogs on TV, spouting the same line about American consumers.  "Tariffs are a tax." "It will overwhelm the consumer."
• 
Companies don't just sit there and take it when tariffs are imposed, they respond.
• 
"The people aren't going to have to worry about paying the tax because the companies are going to move back into the United States.  There won't be any tariff."
• 
Companies are moving away from countries hit by the Trump tariffs.  Especially China – and in a big way.
• 
Just think about that for a moment.  There is a massive policy lesson here.
• 
For decades the establishment looked on impotently as American manufacturing went to China.
• 
President Trump comes in, imposes tariffs, and you see an immediate private sector response: "We'll design China out."
• 
Trump's tariffs, derided by the snooty know-alls in the establishment, are turning out to be the most consequential - and positive - economic policy mechanism we've seen in decades.
• 
And it's not just companies moving out of China.  We're seeing them move back to America, just as the president said.
• 
President Trump's use of tariffs is an example of creative, entrepreneurial and above all, successful policy making.
• 
This was the whole point of Trump — to do things differently.
• 
To stand up to all the useless bureaucrats and naysayers bogged down in the status quo.
• 
The establishment idiots who condemn him for it care about style, not substance.
• 
As long as you behave the right way, say the right things, do it the way it's always been done, they think you're great, regardless of your actual results.
• 
That's why they all loved Obama.  He went along with it.  He behaved the way the establishment expects.
• 
Trump doesn't.  That doesn't make him bad; it makes him good.
• 
It's the status quo that's bad.  The establishment is obsessed with Trump and his tweets, but he's obsessed with you and your life.
• 
The final big lesson of this week is, of course, what's not happening.  The president shouldn't be having to pressure Mexico the way he did.
• 
It should be our own government, not a foreign government, that fixes our immigration crisis.
• 
And here we turn to the Democrats.  Isn't it sickening to see them on their high horse about the moral stain of Trump's border policy?
• 
Nancy Pelosi has said, "A wall is an immorality.  It's not who we are as a nation."
• 
Not who we are?  Well, who are you then, Nancy?  You're actually the one standing in the way of the changes that would help prevent the exact things you complain about.
• 
The Democrats are blocking common-sense immigration reform purely to score political points.
• 
It's you, Nancy Pelosi, who's exploiting desperate migrants for political gain.
• 
You are the person who is actually standing in the way of solving this problem.
• 
See related Dreamer (Glenn McCoy, 09/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Steve Hilton: Democrats and the establishment media will never stop trying to crush Trump  (Fox 04/22/2019)
• 
The Democrats, the establishment media, the Never-Trumpers - all of them are dividing America.  They will never stop.
• 
They care only about themselves and their power.
• 
All of them — Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler — and their establishment media allies, Rachel Maddow, Chris Cuomo, Chuck Todd, Nicolle Wallace — they're prepared to do anything - divide america, undermine faith in democracy and the rule of law - anything, if it helps take down President Trump, the insurgent populist they despise.
• 
They are a modern aristocracy.  They think they are born to rule.
• 
They consider it the most appalling impertinence that the American people kicked them out in 2016 and installed an outsider in the Oval Office.
• 
They see it as a peasant's revolt, and they've been trying to overturn it ever since.
• 
That's what this is about, all of it — whether it is demands for more information, or more testimony, or the underlying evidence for impeachment or whatever the hell is the latest thing is.
• 
It's all about one thing really - the establishment's fury at the populist revolution and their implacable determination to crush it.
• 
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      Adonis Hoffman: Cancel culture is techno tyranny – it gives everyone the power to do this  (Fox 08/10/2020)
• 
Hyper partisan politics and our divided nation make it easier than ever to vilify anyone, any time in any way.
• 
While cancellation may seek to stifle speech, it causes social and economic destruction as well.
• 
It projects permanence and public shame for its targets whether deserved or not.  And it promotes a kind of techno tyranny against which we all should be vigilant.
• 
Cancel culture is not new.  So let's call it what it is: a coeval form of character assassination that has gone way too far.
• 
Technology today empowers anyone – everyone – to become their own media outlet.
• 
It has liberated our ability to publish widely and without reserve and has allowed opinions themselves to be bountiful, ubiquitous and cheap.
• 
Given such a surfeit, measuring the value of a voice has been reduced to a simple integer: the number of viewers that can be engaged.
• 
Validation does not depend upon principle or prescience and neither vision nor veracity seems to count for much anymore.  It's all about the looks and the likes of those who follow.
• 
Consider the litany of celebrities who endorse, promote and recommend products, services and viewpoints via social media.
• 
And countless others who aspire to be influencers by being louder, lewder or loftier than anyone else in the Twittersphere or on Facebook.
• 
What trades for value today in the marketplace of ideas is a counterfeit notion of public discourse.  But free expression of ideas is the standard currency.
• 
Freedom of speech, without threat of government regulation, is a defining feature of American democracy – firmly enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution.
• 
With very few exceptions, government restraint is not what most Americans fear.  We are free to write, speak, protest against – or in favor of – just about anything or anyone in our society.
• 
Our Constitution, as viewed through decades of Supreme Court jurisprudence, permits us to burn the flag, kneel at the national anthem, or call the president anything but a child of God – all with the right to bear arms at the same time.
• 
It protects us when we disagree with Supreme Court decisions, a controversial war or legislation that cuts to our very core.
• 
Say what you want in America, just don't yell "fire" in a crowded theater and the First Amendment will protect your speech.
• 
Indeed, the true power of censorship rests with the people not the government.  So we should not be surprised that, today, private actors are empowered to enforce censorship – or cancellation – over those who express unpopular opinions.
• 
As such, we have come to fear those who trade in hate speech and hanging by hashtag to silence and destroy the lives and livelihoods of others.  Whether Left, Right, Black or White it makes no difference.
• 
Because all it takes is access to social media and you, too, can cancel your enemies of choice with impunity – whether they be caustics, cynics or merely clumsy communicators.
• 
In a bygone era, we watched similar word-of-mouth campaigns conducted under the guise of "boycotts" and "blacklists." Both practices could be sinister assassins of brand and character, indelibly bruising a reputation and good name.
• 
Products, events and programs were boycotted to publicly convey moral opposition to anything that was not "correct."
• 
Blacklists, conversely, were among several tools used by the entrenched establishment to arrest the momentum of people with contrary views.
• 
Restraint is the best way to vitiate the vitriol of cancel culture.
• 
And like free expression, that is a matter of individual liberty, violently protected by our Constitution.
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      Drew Holden: Fighting cancel culture – here are the cases we should worry about the most  (Fox 03/07/2021)
• 
The definition of cancel culture is tough to nail down but, fundamentally, it's about punishing someone for something they've said or done in the past that is deemed unacceptable.
• 
This judgement is often a result of changing cultural norms and mores by a subgroup of people who are often unaccountable to the broader public.
• 
The punishments vary but usually involve a loss of money or status – ensuring someone is fired or de-platformed, blackballing a company or product, invalidating awards or honors.
• 
Much of the recent coverage around cancel culture has been focused on high-profile cases of people in the public eye...
• 
But our concerns should be less about whether a celebrity gets booted from a show or a senator has to change book publishers – since there's only so much capacity for outrage and discussions around the chilling of free speech – and focus our attention on the many real crises happening below our collective radar.
• 
Perhaps the most acute crisis is on college campuses across the country.  College professors and administrators are increasingly losing their livelihoods and reputations as a result of transgressions that often border on the ridiculous.
• 
... receiving about 50 messages a week from academics fearful that their (predominantly liberal) beliefs would run afoul of the progressive orthodoxy in a way that could imperil their career...
• 
Numerous educators have lost their jobs in high schools and middle schools across the country for not supporting Black Lives Matter and other protests.
• 
Concerns go beyond education.  In workplaces across the country, everyday Americans fear they could be next.
• 
The last few years have seen numerous people lose their jobs for everything from misunderstood comments to unintentional hand gestures.
• 
... upending someone's life because you don't agree with all of their political views – past and present – isn't something a healthy society does.
• 
A country that walks on eggshells around the slightest transgression, that lives in fear of the most innocuous of comments, that is unwilling to speak and act in a way consistent with their conscious because of reprisals, is untenable.
• 
Cheapening the definition or focusing just on the flashiest celebrity cases undermines this threat that greets countless everyday Americans when they walk through the door of their job, their parent-teacher association, or a local school board.
• 
It can be easy to write off these concerns as isolated incidents – a journalist loses a job over seemingly mundane comments here, a university professor facing a boycott for so much as attending a pro-police protest there.
• 
A well-informed resistance to cancel culture should be concerned with protecting the little guy, ensuring that unfashionable views aren't shouted out of the public square.
• 
That requires an active stance against the phenomenon, a position that's constantly at-the-ready to reject attacks on both the letter and the spirit of the freedoms that all Americans hold dear.
• 
And opposing cancel culture is important not just where fairness is concerned.  It's also the best way to kill bad ideas.
• 
Human history has shown that reason is a powerful antiseptic; bad ideas die faster in the light of better ideas than in the darkness of banishment, where they're often left to fester.
• 
The American experiment requires that each and every one of us tolerates certain opinions and beliefs that don't share and may even revile.
• 
Maintaining that experiment will require that we start living up to our responsibilities.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Gone with the Wind (Chip Bok, 06/12/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Resist! (Antonio Branco, 07/09/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
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      Socialism Doesn't Work [And You Shouldn't Support It]  (JWR 12/16/2021)
• 
Here's the truth: Trump didn't create anything.  He didn't cause anything.
• 
Trump only tapped the public sentiment that had preexisted his entry into the political sphere for years.
• 
Americans — Black, white, Hispanic, native-born and immigrant, working class and wealthy, business owners, farmers and the military — were sick to death of being ignored, insulted and lied to by D.C.  swamp dwellers (of both parties), the news media and other self-appointed elites.
• 
They supported Trump because he amplified their voices; he understood their concerns.  Those newly unified voices are not going away; in fact, they are growing in number.
• 
The 74 million people who voted for Trump in 2020 have had their worst fears confirmed with each passing day of Biden's dementia-addled administration.
• 
Millions more who actually voted for Biden realize they were sold a bill of goods, whether they admit it publicly or not.
• 
Democrats must know this.  The party has been yanked so far to the left that their policies don't even appeal to a majority of the American public.  That's why they lie.
• 
The real "coup" isn't conservatives' efforts to preserve election integrity; it's the left's attempt to overthrow the truth in their quest for power.  They must be defeated.
• 
See related Resist! (Antonio Branco, 07/09/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      What Kind of Country Are We, Really?  (JWR 10/08/2021)
• 
Our ruling classes are infected with arrogance, egotism and condescension.  So convinced are they of their inherent superiority that their desires, whether motivated by purported altruism or blunt self-interest, are subordinated to nothing; not even the most fundamental principles of American society, such as truth and due process.
• 
The Biden administration, its puppet masters behind the scenes, and its willing warriors in Congress and the press are all engaged in a full-blown propaganda war against ordinary Americans.
• 
This started with absurd accusations against former President Donald Trump, but quickly expanded to include anyone who voted for or supported him.
• 
Nonviolent Trump supporters are imprisoned in solitary for months, while antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters who lobbed explosives, looted, burned and destroyed throughout 2020 have their bail paid (if they are arrested at all) and charges dropped against them.
• 
... President Joe Biden's Justice Department is now going after parents and families who object to the imposition of racist, Marxist, anti-American indoctrination such as critical race theory into public school curricula.
• 
If walking around the U.S.  Capitol unarmed is an "insurrection," one can anticipate that vehement, vocal disagreement at a school board meeting can easily be characterized as "harassment" or "intimidation."
• 
This administration, aided and abetted by a politicized Justice Department, out of control FBI and unaccountable federal agencies, is now criminalizing political disagreement.
• 
I will say this as often as I must: The horrific human rights abuses that have taken place in other countries can happen here.
• 
If we permit the erosion of every principle upon which America was founded, we will suffer consequences every bit as atrocious as those we've seen elsewhere.
• 
Those of us who love America are facing powerful headwinds in our efforts to engage in serious inquiry and communicate facts.
• 
But we must make a choice.  Are we willing to watch the continued attack on America's most fundamental principles?  Or are we going to fight to defend them?
      Two Visions of America  (JWR 08/27/2020)
• 
We're told by Democrats that the United States is an irredeemably racist country, and that "systemic racism" keeps Blacks and other Americans of color from achieving what they otherwise could.
• 
But Democrats don't explain Americans like Oprah Winfrey, former President Barack Obama, Sen.  Kamala Harris, Colin Kaepernick, Kobe Bryant, Rep.  Maxine Waters, LeBron James, Sydney Poitier and countless other Black activists, actors, athletes, teachers, firefighters, politicians, police officers and business owners who have, despite facing discrimination, uphill battles and more difficult odds, achieved incredible success.
• 
Either the "system" that was allegedly set up to keep those individuals from succeeding does a remarkably lousy job of it or there's more to the story.
• 
We're told that it's Democrats who truly care for women, minorities, immigrants and children, but it's the left that insults first lady Melania Trump for her status as an immigrant and her accent.
• 
It's the left that calls Black and Hispanic conservatives the worst racial slurs.
• 
It's the left that mocks and pooh-poohs the accounts of immigrants like Maximo Alvarez who escaped communist Cuba.
• 
And it was the left that misjudged pro-life teenager Nick Sandmann, called him a racist with a "punchable face" and sicced the social media mobs on him.
• 
We're told that President Donald Trump and Republicans are fascists, but it's Democratic governors, mayors and prosecutors who have shut down small businesses; who have sent coronavirus patients to be housed among the most vulnerable populations in nursing homes and long-term care facilities; who have released convicted felons from prison but ordered the arrest of religious observers, moms at parks and surfers; and who have allowed rioters and looters to escape scot-free but charged homeowners for defending their home.
• 
We're told that Republicans and conservatives are racists, but it's progressive whites who are screaming racial epithets at minority police and other first responders.
• 
We're told that it's Democrats who can best lead our cities.  But Democratic-led cities like New York, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, Atlanta and even tiny Kenosha, Wisconsin, have seen unprecedented rioting, looting, arson, destruction, vandalism, theft and physical violence — including murder — at the hands of criminal mobs of rioters, while the state and local political "leadership" does virtually nothing.
• 
Democratic mayors tell the police to stand down.  Democratic governors hesitate to call in the National Guard to protect people and property.  And Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden barely addresses the violence.
• 
The riots and destruction that Democratic political leaders have allowed to explode and spread in cities across the country make clear that a lot of people in America don't matter.
• 
Homeowners don't matter, as they can be screamed at and threatened all hours of the day and night.
• 
Business owners — even and especially minority business owners in the cities ravaged by riots — don't matter, as their buildings and property are destroyed with impunity.
• 
Law-abiding and peace-loving citizens don't matter, as riotous mobs are permitted to burn, vandalize and destroy property; assault people; and even kill people.
• 
Law enforcement doesn't matter, as Democratic activists and politicians call for defunding and even abolishing the police.
• 
Meanwhile, what do we see at the Republican convention?
• 
Minorities such as Sen.  Tim Scott and football great Herschel Walker, women such as former U.S.  Ambassador and South Carolina Gov.
• 
Nikki Haley, and immigrants such as Maximo Alvarez speaking up for the unparalleled opportunities that the United States offers because of liberty and individual rights, notwithstanding our failings.
• 
Alvarez, who escaped communist Cuba, warns us about going down the primrose path to collectivism.  Activists like Abby Johnson speaks up for the lives of unborn children.
• 
Republicans are pitching optimism, opportunity and the limitless possibilities of the individual in America, regardless of background, religion, race, ethnicity or the obstacles that have existed and continue to exist.
• 
Democrats are pitching anger, hatred, victimhood, resentment, class and racial warfare, and self-loathing.  If there is any hope, it lies solely in the hands of an ever-larger government — led, it must be noted, by the same people who have presided over the devastation and catastrophic failures noted above.
• 
This is what the Democratic National Committee expects Americans to support?  This is what it thinks people — regardless of party affiliation — want more of?
• 
... at this juncture, it's hard to see how a majority of the American electorate is going to vote for what the Democrats are selling as their vision of America.
• 
In truth, it's not even a "vision." It's more like a nightmarish hallucination.  Except that it's all too real.
      Collective Guilt Is a Catastrophic Mistake  (JWR 06/04/2020)
• 
During my lifetime, the national conversation about race has gradually moved from culpability for individual behavior to culpability for ideology to collective culpability without regard to behavior or ideology.
• 
This transition is significant.  It is deliberate.  And it is dangerous.
• 
Focusing on "discrimination," as our laws have done for decades, places the emphasis on conduct, which can be clearly identified and prohibited.
• 
Punishing an attitude of racism, however, is more problematic.  It is one thing to condemn it.  But how do you penalize or sanction it, apart from the conduct that reflects it?
• 
Contemporary race theorists and activists have chosen to expand their definitions even further to encompass what they now call "systemic racism" and "white privilege."
• 
According to these theories, one is culpable simply for having "benefitted" from a system in which blacks and other minorities were — and are — discriminated against.
• 
... the current calls for "honest conversations" entail members of the "privileged" classes admitting to collective culpability.  This is cast as a precursor to "healing," and many well-intentioned people are more than willing to do it.
• 
I have read tweets and emails, and watched videos in which white Americans kneel, bow their heads in supplication, beg for forgiveness for the wrongs committed by other people or refer to themselves as "recovering racists" simply because they are white.
• 
This is insulting, offensive and dangerous.
• 
First, it runs completely counter to one of the most fundamental tenets of the American legal tradition: We do not punish people for the crimes or wrongdoing of others.
• 
Second, there is no natural place where one can logically stop with the collective culpability racket.
• 
Third, there is plenty of modern precedent to show us what happens when a country incorporates a system of collective culpability purportedly to remediate oppression.
• 
The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution sent tens of thousands of innocent people to the guillotine.
• 
Tens of millions were killed during Russia's and China's revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century, condemned as "bourgeois" or "running-dog capitalists."
• 
Even in tiny Cambodia, nearly 3 million people — a fifth of the population — were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge regime, which condemned anyone who was educated as an "enemy of the poor."
• 
Fourth, a system that blames classes of people for things they have not individually done also exonerates classes of people for things they have individually done.
• 
We need look no further back than the events of the past few days, as mobs of violent individuals have used justifiable outrage and lawful protests as a cover for vandalism, arson, looting, theft, destruction, brutal assault and even murder.
• 
And yet there are voices in our "national conversations" that would excuse this behavior as an understandable response by the oppressed in a system that is rigged against them.
• 
As we watch our cities burn, we cannot fool ourselves by thinking that what happened in France in the 1790s, in Russia in the 1930s, in China in the 1960s and in Cambodia in the 1970s cannot happen here.
• 
We owe it to ourselves and our children to make sure that it doesn't happen here.
• 
We can punish police brutality without smearing all police officers.
• 
We can acknowledge destructive policies and practices of the past and present; work together to eliminate them; and improve conditions for those who have been most negatively affected.
• 
But a move from individual responsibility to collective culpability will destroy our nation.
• 
History has proven — amply — that a political system founded upon class resentment, blame, hatred and violence destroys everything and helps no one.
      They're looking forward to America's next trauma  (JWR 04/30/2020)
• 
This country — like most — was formed by risk: the risks of separating from what was then the most powerful empire on the planet; the risks of instituting a form of government and an economy that depended upon the virtue, decisions and self-interest of free people; the risks of carving a nation out of a wilderness and climate that could be brutal and deadly; the risks of accepting from all over the world people who had neither language nor culture nor history in common but who sought the opportunity to fashion their own lives; the risks of new inventions; the risks of taking the human impulse to explore beyond the planet.
• 
It isn't that our history is one of unvarnished success; many risks we have taken have failed — most notably (though not exclusively) our inclinations to meddle in the complicated affairs of other nations.
• 
And some of our "successes" have come at great human cost, or with trade-offs we could not have foreseen at the time.
• 
... the biggest risk, in my view, is gradually capitulating to a small class of people who don't know how to run a country any more than the rest of us do but who ask us now to trust them to run things until everything is safe again.  Which will be never.
• 
To be quite clear, that they don't know how to run this country is not a criticism; to the contrary, our country runs as well as it does precisely because no one person or handful of people run it.
• 
If we lose sight of that fundamental, structural reality, we risk destroying the very things we seek to protect.
• 
Even assuming (and I don't) that all those clamoring for the power to "protect" us have beneficent motives, those motives are irrelevant.
• 
For good or for ill, to retreat to our beds and blankets and wait for "smart people" to "fix things" will inevitably result in disaster.
• 
Even the smartest, kindest and wisest people make mistakes.  They don't know everything.  They're not God.
• 
Being wrong is far less problematic when thousands, hundreds of thousands or millions of people are working at the same time on their own theories, ideas, projects, products and services.
• 
That's what makes medicine work.  That's what makes science work.  That's what makes business work.  That's what makes an economy work.
• 
Some ideas will be wrong, and some people will fail.  But as a country, we can survive those failures because so many others are taking different approaches, and succeeding.
• 
It's different when a small group of people has disproportionate power and control.  When they make a mistake — and they will — the failure is catastrophic, systemic.  At that point, it is no consolation that their intentions were good.
• 
The impulse to defer to "experts" — especially in a climate of uncertainty — is understandable.
• 
We should listen, of course.  We should insist upon facts and evidence, where it's possible to get them.  We should make prudent decisions and protect the weakest among us where we can.
• 
But we cannot just crawl into our hobbit holes under the misimpression that it's possible to make life perfectly safe.
• 
We must not hand control of our lives, our businesses, our larger economy or our political systems over to "experts" just because they promise to keep us safe.
• 
Some of these people are poseurs, truly interested only in personal power.  They must never be allowed to get it.
• 
Others — most, I believe — are well-intentioned.  But they, too, will be wrong at some point.
• 
Either way, the risks of what people with too much power will destroy with their inevitable errors are far greater than the risks we face by allowing all Americans — flawed though we are — to run our own lives.
      Media Is a Threat to the Country  (JWR 04/17/2020)
• 
And the national press wonders why it is mistrusted, and even despised?
• 
Sen.  Tom Cotton was among the first to suggest that the information China was releasing regarding the novel coronavirus emerging from Wuhan might be inaccurate.
• 
Cotton raised the specter that the Chinese national virology laboratory in Wuhan could have played a role — even if inadvertent.  For that, he was ridiculed.
• 
Cotton is a Republican, so his statement was the press's cue to trot out the tropes: This was just some wacky conspiracy theory.
• 
His accusations have already been "debunked." He's a war hawk pitching a "fringe theory" bought into by all the other right-wing kooks who also suspect foul play or grievous error in China.
• 
None of that was journalism.  That was just repeating Democratic National Committee talking points and dutifully disseminating the propaganda of the communist Chinese government.
• 
Journalism would have been doing what National Review's Jim Geraghty, YouTuber Matthew Tye and Scientific American's Jane Qiu have done: digging through news reports from online Chinese news agency Caixin Global; going through scholarly journals to find papers on viruses in bats being studied at the Wuhan virology laboratory; discovering advertisements for research positions at that same laboratory that require expertise in coronavirus strains in bats; interviewing scientist Shi Zhengli (called "bat woman" or the "bat lady" ), who actually went into the caves in the Yunnan province (hundreds of miles from Wuhan, in the Hubei province) where the horseshoe bats that likely carry this virus live — a different type of bat than those sold in the Wuhan wet market, by the way.
• 
All of that was discoverable through research.  Discovering it would have been journalism.  But actual journalism would have proven Sen.  Cotton correct.  And we can't have that.
• 
It's so much easier to simply repeat what you've been told to say, and what all your politically simpatico friends in the business are saying.
• 
And it's much more fun to nudge-nudge-wink-wink and laugh with one another at how morally and intellectually superior you are to the average American than it is TO JUST DO YOUR JOB.
• 
The press is disbelieved — and even loathed — because it has lost its credibility.  This has happened by virtue of its own actions.
• 
Members of the press blame Trump for the public's antipathy toward them (big shock — they blame Trump for everything), but like most modern unpleasant political phenomena, this didn't start with Trump.
• 
He simply made visible that which has been going on, largely unacknowledged, for decades.
• 
The national press is pushing back.  We should appreciate the press, it claims, because Trump is an aspiring fascist, and that's why it "covers" him like a swarm of hornets.
• 
Dearest media: It's not that we don't want you to aggressively challenge the people in power.  To the contrary, we'd like some equal opportunity aggression.
• 
... the people you all like will skate.  And they know it.  ... No matter who they are or what they've done, as long as they're reliably leftist, they'll be held to a different standard.
• 
You want to know why Americans don't trust you?  Because you're arrogant.  You're condescending.  You're corrupt.  You're hypocritical.  You're shockingly ignorant.
• 
You're pawns in a much bigger game, and your refusal to hold ALL powerful people to account is malfeasance that puts the country at risk.  And not just from coronavirus.
• 
Do you want to earn back the public's trust?  Stop playing political favorites.  Stop trying to shape the news instead of report the news.
• 
Stop seeing everything through the lens of your personal politics.
• 
Do your job.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      American Socialists Don't Understand American Business  (JWR 02/27/2020)
• 
At the heart of the rapidly spreading support for "socialism" in the United States is some pretty profound ignorance about business in the country.
• 
The excerpt is riddled with tired and outdated Marxist tropes about the "class struggle" between the "working class" and the "capitalist class" (the workers' enemy class ...); the need to pit "workers against bosses"; and, of course, the imminent "revolution" — which the authors insist could be bloodless, except that the "capitalists" will put up resistance to any efforts to eliminate capitalism.
• 
That resistance "will turn violent," Day and Uetricht warn, in which case socialists will be justified in using self-defense.
• 
The writers are stuck on the wrong continent and in the wrong century.
• 
In true "Bernie Bro" fashion, they speak in broad, sweeping gestures about the presumed failures of democracy and capitalism in the U.S., and look back wistfully at the efforts of the Russian Revolution.
• 
"This is a tricky situation to navigate.  If the democratic capitalist state were less developed, it might be possible to convince people to simply storm the gates, tear up the old rules, and start fresh in a socialist society.  This is what socialists tried to do in Russia in 1917: the state was weak and after centuries of autocratic rule it didn't have much legitimacy in the eyes of most Russians, so revolutionaries could get popular support for scrapping it and starting over."
• 
Ah, yes, the glorious Soviet revolution, which enjoyed so much "popular support," reflected by widespread imprisonment and executions on a then-unprecedented scale.
• 
"(T)here is very little in the record of human experience to match the violence unleashed between 1917, when the Bolsheviks took power, and 1953, when Joseph Stalin died and the Soviet Union moved to adopt a more restrained and largely non-murderous domestic policy."
• 
Estimates of deaths caused by Soviet communists between 1917 and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 range anywhere from 15 million to over 60 million.
• 
Several million of these deaths took place in the gulags — Soviet prison camps for dissidents, the Orthodox religious, counterrevolutionaries and anyone condemned as "bourgeois" or an "enemy of the state."
• 
It is bad enough to be willfully ignorant about the economic devastation and political oppression that characterized life in the former Soviet Union.
• 
But all this talk of "workers versus owners" and a "capitalist class" betrays embarrassing — and dangerous — ignorance of real facts right here in these authors' own country.
• 
To hear Day and Uetricht (and Sen.  Bernie Sanders) talk, a handful of robber barons owns all the means of production — the land, the factories, the industries — while everyone else — tens of millions of the slaving, underpaid proletariat — struggles in Dickensian conditions.
• 
This may have been true in Russia at the end of the 19th century.
• 
It is most certainly not true of America in the 21st.
• 
The "abolish capitalism" crowd uses the terms "business" and "business owner" as epithets — accusations, as if every business were Enron.
• 
They aren't.
• 
According to recent U.S.
• 
census data, there are approximately 30.4 million firms — businesses of any sort — in the U.S.
• 
Of that number, fully 81% — 24.8 million firms — employ only their owners.
• 
But even if we look at the 5.6 million firms that have other employees, almost 90% employ fewer than 20 people.
• 
And by the way, this same structure holds true if we look only at businesses that are incorporated.
• 
Almost 90% of all corporations in the U.S. employ only the owners, or a small handful of employees. 
• 
In other words, huge numbers of Americans own their own companies.
• 
Millions more work for very small companies.
• 
And even when one looks at the relatively small number of large corporations that are publicly traded (fewer than 4,000), millions of their shares are held by small investors; 55% of Americans own stock individually or through participation in mutual funds or pensions.
• 
What has made America so prosperous is the ease with which anyone can start a business.
• 
In a country where over 600,000 new businesses launch every year, the everyman (and everywoman) entrepreneurs are the "capitalists."
• 
The "bosses" are the "working class." The owners are the employees.
• 
American business is an extraordinarily egalitarian enterprise, creating and distributing wealth.
• 
Socialism only destroys it.
• 
See related Senator Bernie Sanders (Sean Delonas, 04/25/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Homan  (09/16/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/16/2021) | Next sect (09/03/2020) | List bot 
      Attacks on police must end — they are America’s heroes and protect us all, regardless of race  (Fox 09/16/2020)
• 
Law enforcement officers protect and serve people they don't know and may never meet — including people who despise them.  If there was a day with no cops, everyone would realize what they do.
• 
I respect our police, and I believe police officers are generally decent and honorable men and women who are doing a difficult, dangerous and often thankless job.
• 
They risk their lives every time they go to work and they bear the added burden of listening to insults shouted at them by ungrateful people and those who think they are entitled or who will say they are "offended."
• 
The truth is that today there are those who live to be offended.  They call themselves progressives.
• 
They will always be offended until we give them what they think they are entitled to, such as free college, free housing and no police.
• 
They also want no bail, no courts and no system of consequence for bad behavior.
• 
As I said when I recently testified before Congress, "you work for me!" We are taxpayers and these politicians are accountable to us.  Not the other way around.
• 
The politicians are accountable to us for the violence in their cities and their failure to act and allow the police to do the job they are trained for.  They are accountable for the failure to accept help from President Trump.
• 
Hold them accountable.  And finally, vote in the upcoming elections.  Not just the presidential election but for races for state and local elected offices as well.
• 
Take our country back step by step.  Don't just watch TV and remain angry.  Take action and live in the country that you want.
• 
We have a free country and you can decide on how it is run.
• 
In fact, our country is so free that people like democratic socialist Sen.  Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Democratic Reps.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan can badmouth it every day and get away with it.
• 
Time for us to be just as loud.
      Trump right to send fed law officers to Chicago and other cities to fight crime and save lives  (Fox 07/23/2020)
• 
Contrary to the claims of his left-wing critics, President Trump does not want to prevent lawful peaceful protests, which are protected by our Constitution.
• 
The president wants to stop lawbreakers who violently attack and sometimes kill people, burn buildings, loot stores, and commit other crimes.  These actions are not a form of protest.
• 
It is heartbreaking to see so many innocent people — including children — lose their lives to dangerous criminals in communities across our nation.
• 
By deploying additional federal agents and other resources to communities under attack by violent criminals, the president is carrying out his duty to keep the American people safe.
• 
Note that I said federal agents.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other far-left politicians and media outlets call these federal law enforcements officers "troops" or even "storm troopers," an insulting name that recalls the forces of Nazi Germany.
• 
The president is sending in highly trained federal law enforcement officers from the FBI; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; Drug Enforcement Administration; U.S.  Marshals Service; and Department of Homeland Security.
• 
These federal officers are trained to enforce the law.  They are trained in the Constitution, especially the Fourth Amendment.
• 
This amendment provides that the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures.
• 
I am grateful that President Trump is committed to restoring public safety and bringing criminals to justice.
• 
The only people who should be upset by the president's actions are the criminals he wants to stop from victimizing innocent men, women and children.
• 
... the recent surge in violence is the result of poor leadership from far-left politicians who have failed to protect their communities and who now endorse defunding the police.  They have failed on their No.  1 responsibility and duty — to protect lives and property.
• 
Violent crime has drastically increased in major cities led by Democratic officials.  That is a fact, not an opinion.
• 
Instead of condemning the onslaught of violent crime destroying our cities, Democrats choose to ignore, justify, or condone it.
• 
While the radical left wants to defund our police, President Trump wants to give them the support they need to keep our communities safe.
• 
That action is in our national interest and will benefit every law-abiding American.
      Tom Homan: A nation without police — If Dems get their way, this is how our communities will suffer  (Fox 06/10/2020)
• 
It is ridiculous to suggest we don't need law enforcement.  A nation without law and order isn't a nation at all.
• 
The United States is a nation of laws and those laws are useless if there is not someone willing to enforce them.  Enforcement stands between a moral society and anarchy.
• 
People need a system of consequences and deterrents and need to be held accountable when they intentionally violate the laws that this country has created to protect its citizenry and property.
• 
The Minneapolis city council is hell-bent on dismantling its police department after four of the city's officers were charged in the death of George Floyd.
• 
But have they even asked the taxpaying homeowners of their community about this move?  What will happen to home values there if they actually disband the police?  How many people will buy a home where there is no police protection?  Will more homeowners arm themselves?
• 
To give you an idea of what our country would look like without law enforcement, I took the yearly stats from the FBI 2019 Uniformed Crime Report and simply divided by 365 days.
• 
On average, every day the people in this country are victims of 47 murders, 372 rapes, 875 robberies, 2,221 aggravated assaults 1,154 child abductions, 3,561 home invasions, 3,836 DUIs and 6,849 burglaries.
• 
That's just one day.
• 
Those numbers are staggering, and they are happening WITH a system of consequences, deterrents and punishments.  Those numbers are happening even with an abundance of professional law enforcement.
• 
My question to those calling to abolish or defund the police is simple: What would these numbers look like after defunding or abolishment?  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize the numbers would vastly increase.
• 
For instance, how many people don't have that last drink because they fear a DUI?  If they knew there was no enforcement, would more of them take the chance?  More than 10,000 people die each year in a DUI accident.  How many more are we willing to accept?  For me, none.
• 
We've seen our country turned upside down the past two weeks.  Besides the peaceful protests, which are one of the things that make this country great, we've also gotten a crash course in what happens when police don't respond in a timely manner or are held back by politicians.  Violent rioters felt free to commit robbery, loot, assault, murder and commit arson.
• 
Most people will do the right thing, the morally correct thing, in situations but for the others, knowing there are consequences for bad behavior is a deterrent to criminal activity.
• 
Professional law enforcement systems and response capabilities prevent crime and save lives.
• 
Bad police need to be held accountable, no question.  But punishing all law enforcement officers for the acts of a few is an overreaction.  It would increase crime and make our communities less safe.
• 
If you were unfortunate enough to have to call 911 and seek police assistance at some point, you get it.
• 
If you were the victim of a serious crime and the police either protected you or arrested the perpetrator, you get it.
• 
If you were alone on a stretch of highway in the middle of nowhere and the police stood by you until a tow truck arrived to ensure your safety, you get it.
• 
The vast majority of cops are the good guys.  In my 34 years as a law enforcement officer, I have worked with and dealt with thousands of cops.
• 
Were there some bad ones?  Yes, and they were dealt with.
• 
... we can hold officers accountable without tearing down the entire system.  We don't have to put our communities at risk.
• 
Many people are quick to opine on the police and they have that right.  I can assure you, though, that many of those same people will call the police when they need help.  And when they do, the help will come.
• 
How many of those who attack our officers would step up and put themselves in harm's way to protect people they don't know and property that isn't theirs?  Not many.
• 
But the police will.  The police are there, for people they don't know or will never meet, and even for those who despise them.
      Tom Homan: Message to all the good cops out there – Americans stand with you  (Fox 06/03/2020)
• 
Like the rest of the nation, I was deeply disturbed by the video that captured George Floyd's final moments.  It was a terrible thing that happened.
• 
Those responsible will be held accountable based on the facts presented through a criminal justice system that is one of the best in the world.
• 
Like the rest of the nation, I have been watching television and seeing what this country is going through since that day in Minneapolis.
• 
Many people in America are making their voices heard by peaceful protests and demanding attention and change.  That is just one of the things that make this country one of the greatest in the world.
• 
However, when peaceful protests turn violent the message is lost.  When protesters turn into criminals or are overshadowed by the rampant criminal activity of rioters, it is just plain wrong.
• 
I once had about 80 protesters at my home on a Sunday morning, yelling and chanting what a terrible person I was and calling for ICE and Customs and Border Protection to be abolished.
• 
I was being called a Nazi, a racist and a bigot.  Of course, I was offended because I am not any of these things, but I knew they had the right to their opinion and a right to protest.
• 
I also thought they were directing their protest at the wrong person and institutions.  If they didn't like the fact that CBP and ICE were enforcing the laws enacted by Congress, they should have been on Capitol Hill urging their elected representatives to change the laws.
• 
I have had similar feelings over the past week.  Americans have the right to protest but the hate they are showing to the law enforcement officers monitoring the protests is uncalled for.
• 
Spitting on them, calling them names, shoving them, or worse, is not peaceful protest and detracts from any meaning the protest may have had.
• 
These officers were not involved in the incident in Minneapolis.  They are standing there trying to keep the peace and do their jobs.
• 
Those who are using this tragedy to riot are not protesters, they are criminals.
• 
They are assaulting people, destroying property, stealing merchandise by looting and ruining the lives of innocent business owners who are trying to recover and survive after COVID-19 lockdowns pretty much devastated their businesses.
• 
There is absolutely NO JUSTIFICATION for rioting and these criminals need to be held accountable.
• 
They need to be arrested and charged.  There should be zero tolerance for rioting.
• 
I agree with President Trump that we must restore law and order now with all legal means available.
• 
There may be thousands of rioters out there but there are millions of Americans who are disgusted by that behavior.
• 
Too many politicians are tying the hands of law enforcement, and not providing the resources these patriots need to do the job they have sworn to do.
• 
Some remained silent during the rioting and only spoke out when the president walked across the street from the White House to a church, which had been burned by rioters.
• 
Where is their leadership on this issue?  They seem to want chaos because they think it hurts our president.
• 
I have said it many times and I will continue to say it: They hate this president more than they love this country.
 Huckabee  (09/03/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (09/16/2020) | Next sect (02/26/2022) | List bot 
      Mike Huckabee: Judge Trump and Biden by their actions on law and order — not their words  (Fox 09/03/2020)
• 
Any high-profile politician worth his or her salt is capable and well-versed in the art of selling a utopian vision to the voting public.
• 
Meaningless platitudes and vague promises of a better future are hallmarks of American politics, and that has contributed to immense distrust of the political elite in Washington, especially in recent years.
• 
That cynical impression is reinforced by the fact that very few elected officials actually follow through on their grandiose promises.  In fact, they far too often end up doing exactly the opposite of what they said they would do.
• 
For the past four months, Democrats and the liberal media have fully embraced and energetically promoted the radical Black Lives Matter organization, refusing to condemn the violent riots that have plagued many of America's largest cities.
• 
Determined to protect the most visible activists from scrutiny, left-leaning media outlets have absurdly described the widespread rioting and looting as "mostly peaceful" protests.
• 
However, recent polls showing the rioting is unpopular have managed to pressure the Democrats to change their tune.
• 
They now want the American public to believe they will keep our communities safe from lawlessness if we hand them the White House this November.
• 
Let's be clear about something important: If the Democrats truly want to repudiate their anti-American alliance with the far left, I would be the first to praise their newfound patriotism.
• 
... the Democrats' last-minute pivot on law and order is merely intended to change optics and poll results, not deliver results.
• 
Not a single Democratic politician has offered tangible solutions to the ongoing wave of violence in Democratic-run cities, or even urged state and local officials to accept assistance from the federal government.
• 
Luckily, President Trump is a proven leader who does whatever it takes to keep his promises — and his stance on law and order is no different.
• 
"If a city or state refuses to take the actions that are necessary to defend the life and property of their residents, then I will deploy the United States military and quickly solve the problem for them," the commander in chief said in June, just days after the first eruptions of violence in cities across the country.
• 
... he continued to implore local authorities to take control of their streets, and has repeatedly deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement assets to restore order.
• 
President Trump did more than just condemn the rioters and offer condolences to the victims — he took decisive action to put an end to the orgy of destruction.
• 
"My administration coordinated with the state and local authorities, to very, very swiftly deploy the National Guard ... to Kenosha and stop the violence."
• 
Meanwhile, neither Biden nor his running mate — Sen.
• 
Kamala Harris, D-Calif.  – have disavowed the members of his campaign staff who donated to a fund created to bail out rioters arrested in Minneapolis at the start of this summer's unrest.
• 
Actions speak louder than words — and Biden's feeble and fearful condemnation of leftist violence is no substitute for offering real solutions to restore the rule of law in our neighborhoods.
      In responding to mass murders, thoughts and prayers are incredibly important  (Fox 08/10/2019)
• 
Some in America have tried to blame President Trump for these tragedies, which is ridiculous.
• 
The El Paso shooter reportedly wrote a deranged "manifesto" in which he predicted the media would blame his actions on Trump, but he said he'd been angry over illegal immigration for years before Trump ran for office.
• 
The El Paso gunman said he thought illegal immigrants were using up resources that should be spent on universal health care and a guaranteed income – hardly issues favored by Trump supporters.
• 
As for the Dayton shooter, he reportedly described himself on Twitter as a far-left Democrat and supporter of Sen.  Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination – and praised Satan.
• 
He was reportedly upset by Trump's election, and was impatient for socialism to come.
• 
Classmates described the Dayton gunman as a bully who liked to threaten women.  One of his deceased victims was his own sister. 
• 
In Chicago, the tragedy that's being overlooked by the media is that over 59 people were shot – seven fatally – last weekend.
• 
Much of the violence in that city is attributed to gang crimes – hardly anything the president instigates.
• 
The El Paso shooter was a radical segregationist and the Dayton shooter a democratic socialist.
• 
Racism wasn't the common denominator either.
• 
The El Paso shooter was targeting Mexicans, the Dayton shooter targeted his sister and people at random, and the violence in Chicago was largely black-on-black gang violence. 
• 
The bottom line is this: you can pass laws, blame the weapons, ban free speech and argue politics from now until doomsday.
• 
But you'll never legislate the evil out of people's hearts.
• 
This is never going to end until we have a reawakening of morality and values and invite God back into the public square, the public schools and the public discourse.
• 
Kids must be reared to practice the Golden Rule, observe the Ten Commandments and believe that we are all made in the image of God.
• 
We must once again value mutual respect and common decency.
• 
We must learn to care for each other and watch out for each other so that when one is bullied, alienated or starts down the wrong road, someone else is there to notice and do something about it.
• 
We must cherish life as sacred and believe that superficial differences like skin color are meaningless.
• 
Until then, passing more laws and pointing more fingers is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
• 
So I hope you'll join me, ignore the scoffers, and keep saying prayers.
• 
It's not a meaningless gesture.  It's the only thing that's ever really going to help.
 Ingraham  (02/26/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (09/03/2020) | Next sect (11/08/2021) | List bot 
      Ingraham: Russia's war on Ukraine 'was made in China'  (Fox 02/26/2022)
• 
"This invasion, in many ways, was made in China.  And the goal is to test the waters for an attack on Taiwan.  And once [President] Xi [Jinping] thinks that he can invade Taiwan, he will.  But right now, there are steps that we could and should immediately take to stop that from becoming an inevitability, and make Xi just maybe realize that he's underestimated the resolve and the strength of America."
• 
"The very idea that the administration thought that they could get the CCP to act in our interest is delusional, that's the thinking of someone who knows literally nothing about the way our biggest adversary operates."
• 
"Yet that's been the exact mindset of Biden's China point man [John Kerry] for over a year now."
• 
... suggested raising tariffs to make products in America, "delinking our manufacturing on key technologies" and canceling the student visas of the 340,000 Chinese students studying stateside.
• 
"Why are we training China's next generation, all of whom are approved to be here by the CCP?"
• 
"Why are we training them in STEM fields?  And at some point down the road, we know they're just going to turn around and use what they've learned here against us, or our allies."
• 
... dubbed both Xi and Putin as "unfailingly ruthless and supremely nationalistic," saying "they exploit weakness wherever they see it, whether it's financial or cultural."
• 
"So Russia and China respect only strength, and this administration has shown them only weakness from day one."
      Ingraham: Biden and media seek Russia conflict to cover for failing presidency  (Fox 01/25/2022)
• 
"More than a month ago, President Biden assured a very war-weary nation that putting troops in or around Ukraine was not on the table.  Well, now it looks like that's right up there with the other promises he made, like if you get vaxxed, you can go back to normal and just 100 days of masking."
• 
"Anyone paying attention to Biden's presser last week heard the sounds of the war-drums beating [as] the media desperately wants to get off the raging crime, raging COVID, raging inflation story that's driven Biden to another new low in the polls today."
• 
... some of Biden's media allies couldn't do a better job of trashing and undermining the United States if it were Vladimir Putin himself.
• 
"Putin doesn't even need to spend money crippling Washington, D.C.  when our own press corps does it for free."
• 
"The media has helped Putin by supporting policies to increase the price of oil and gas.  Now, most Americans understand that cheap energy is bad for Russia.  But the media doesn't want Americans to have cheap energy.  They've done everything possible to stop drilling and to smear the fracking revolution that promises energy independence."
• 
"Soaring energy prices are helping Putin buy more weapons.  The media have undermined our military readiness now for years, we suffered disaster after disaster in Afghanistan, capped by the utter failure to successfully end that war."
• 
"America cannot and must not dilute the strength she has left on another hopeless crusade urged on by the same people who screwed up in Afghanistan."
• 
"Our real threat militarily and economically is the [Chinese Communist Party], which loves it when we squander our resources on pointless foreign ventures and quagmires – it makes them thrilled."
• 
"Of course, the CCP can always count on the America haters, though, to downplay the threat they pose.  Two days ago, the New York Times published what can only be described as a fawning personal tribute to President Xi."
• 
"We have enough failed war baggage in the GOP.  And for the rest of us, we have to focus on finding leaders in both parties who can build this country up instead of always tearing her down."
      Ingraham: Where have all the men gone?  (Fox 10/30/2021)
• 
The radical left's goal ... is to "destroy the underpinnings of the nuclear family" by launching attacks against the traditional roles played by mothers and fathers.
• 
"Somehow this idea of traditional roles is threatening to the radicals who see the traditional family — especially traditional men — as an impediment to socialism and a rewriting of American history."
• 
... decried that the "natural instinct of men to protect women" has been slowly destroyed, and seems to have become evident in urban areas.
• 
In one case, a woman told a man to take a "chill pill" only to be viciously punched in the face — yet not a single man intervened.
• 
Another, more shocking attack, took place in Philadelphia where a man brutally raped a woman on a train as passengers looked on — again not one stepped in to help her.
• 
Ingraham noted that in San Francisco this week, it was a woman who chased down a man after he attacked an elderly woman — yet when the woman confronted the attacker she was stabbed three times.
• 
... the "mass feminization of men should trouble women the most" because women were indeed the victims of these heinous attacks.
• 
"Because the cultural elites and institutions have spent years villainizing masculinity, there were no good men willing to step in and save them.
      Ingraham: America 'won't be fooled again' as Bush 'speaks for Biden' in political remarks  (Fox 09/14/2021)
• 
"We have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can do not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within.  There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home.  But there is disdainful pluralism in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols.  They are children of the same foul spirit and it is our continuing duty to confront them," Bush said Saturday.
• 
... the 43rd president wasn't speaking about actual extremists like Antifa or Black Lives Matter, "whose rampages and riots caused death and destruction coast to coast."
• 
... Bush never once spoke out during the mass violence and rank criminal activity in places like Portland, Philadelphia, Washington and New York last year.
• 
"Do you remember seeing him speak out about any of that?  When they screamed that America is "inherently racist" did he raise an objection?  When they tried to burn down Saint John's Church across from the White House did President Bush decry the defiling of "national symbols"?  No and No."
• 
"Bush and Obama have coordinated before in hitting Trump.  One day in October 2017, both men in separate speeches hit Trump without mentioning him by name of course."
• 
"When Benghazi went down and four Americans died, Bush didn't speak out.  When Obamacare was rammed through without a single Republican vote, Bush didn't speak out.  When Biden created a humanitarian, national security, and economic nightmare at the border, Bush didn't speak out."
• 
"But when Donald Trump began to slowly but surely call out and dismantle Bush's globalist legacy, he couldn't stop himself.  It was personal."
• 
"Let's not kid ourselves, the Bushes helped raise 150 million dollars for Jeb's 2016 run, and in the end, Jeb dropped out before getting to his own home state primary.  And they still don't get it.  They're not mad at the people who called him a war criminal or Hitler or who ridiculed him every week on Saturday Night Live.  They're mad at the Republicans who rejected their policies."
• 
"They all claimed that Trump was the devil incarnate for demanding loyalty of the people who worked for him, but the truth is, the Bushes were the ones who demanded personal loyalty regardless of how their policies affected the country."
• 
"So the Old Bush Guard has declared an unwinnable war again, and this time it's against the 74-million-plus Republicans who voted for Trump in 2020, and who didn't vote for Jeb in 2016."
• 
"The fact is, most conservatives long ago shook off the allure of the Bushes.  We found new leaders – including exciting young governors — who will fight for us instead of against us, and we won't be fooled again."
      Ingraham: Biden administration can't govern a nation they hate, they can only occupy it  (Fox 09/11/2021)
• 
"You can't govern a country you essentially hate.  You can only occupy it, rule over it."
• 
"When Biden announced a federal vaccine mandate yesterday, his intention was not to promote more trust or to appeal to our patriotic spirit.  This wasn't about COVID, following the science, or implementing sound policy."
• 
"The White House fight is not against COVID, but against the inevitable collapse of Biden's presidency."
• 
"He's drowning in bad poll numbers and Democrats are bracing for a bloodbath in the mid-terms.  Biden's angry, creepy speech was designed to do one thing — pick a fight with Republican governors in a lame attempt to turn his presidency around and change the topic from weeks of humiliation in Afghanistan.
• 
... called Biden's media cheerleaders "sick" but "gleeful because Biden is about to make life miserable for millions of Americans."
• 
"They hate you, they hate what you stand for and they really hate the fact you won't just shut up and obey."
• 
"They want to strip you of your independence so that you can be dependent on the government."
      Laura Ingraham: Left's indoctrination tactics have parental rights, Judeo-Christian values under siege  (Fox 07/09/2021)
• 
"Forces are working overtime to undermine parental rights and their Judeo-Christian values." "It's often said that the children are our future, and of course that's exactly why the Left wants to take them from parents who don't buy into their twisted agenda."
• 
"From teachers unions to gender activists, to Biden's vaccine pushers," a joint effort is actively being pursued to indoctrinate children into a "dark mindset of anti-Americanism."
• 
"This new normal requires the undermining of American history...  it involves teaching concepts directly at odds with the ideal of the nuclear family."
• 
... slammed left-wing "educrats" whom she said "relish pushing the sexual envelope and redefining gender." The host insisted these liberals have no regard for "parental boundaries."
• 
"Totalitarian societies depend on propagandizing – and their leaders ruthlessly enforce its dissemination.  We can't afford to give our would-be cultural totalitarians four more weeks with our kids, let alone four more years."
• 
... quoted Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, who once declared, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted."
      Leftists are teaching our kids to be 'uneducated, militant, angry, entitled and totally ungrateful'  (Fox 04/17/2021)
• 
Leftists exploited the tragic death of George Floyd and pressured institutions at all levels of society to check boxes on diversity, equity and inclusion, and if they didn't, well, they risked being smeared as racist.
• 
But schools are where the future really begins for the neo-Marxists because they want to completely reorder American society, and they need a lot of recruits to do it.
• 
They know that to really end the old normal, with its objective standards and the primacy of the nuclear family, focus on Western civilization, they have to indoctrinate our kids to hate traditional American institutions — and also hate history — as much as they do.
• 
That means kids need to be saturated with books about police brutality, and they'll provide a handy anti-racist reading list for grades three to five.
• 
And of course, no curriculum would be complete if it didn't teach kids how to become professional social justice agitators.
• 
The sad fact is, all this critical race theory nonsense, it's not going to do a darn thing to help kids live better, more productive, more harmonious lives.
• 
American education, run by mostly progressive nightmares and the unions, it's been on a slow downward slide for decades.
• 
We all know that compared to other countries, we're getting our butts kicked in key areas.
• 
... this simply cannot continue unless we want our kids to grow up to be uneducated, militant, angry, entitled and totally ungrateful kids and as adults.
• 
What's being done to our children, from the absurd COVID school closures to this, is just its own form of child abuse and those responsible for those policies and those getting rich off this hateful propaganda, they should be run out of the schools by parents who know better.
      Laura Ingraham blasts leftists for 'race-baiting' over Boulder shooting, warns against gun control push  (Fox 03/24/2021)
• 
"Every single one of those people chose to inflame an already horrific situation with the kind of race-baiting that sadly a lot of Americans have gotten used to."
• 
"[Alissa] seemingly disliked President Trump, referring to him as 'the D-word' over his handling of immigration refugees, A former teammate in high school told the Denver Post that Alissa had an explosive temper, saying he yelled out in the wrestling room that he was going to kill everybody.  My question: Why didn't anyone report him?"
• 
"The left likes to use the phrase 'angry White male' to denigrate millions of American men, whether they have committed wrongdoing or not, Today we heard no 'angry Middle Eastern man'."
• 
Instead, the host noted, the president's handlers "shuffled Biden to the camera to push for immediate gun control."
• 
"You will hear that a lot over the next few weeks, the phrase 'common sense gun laws'.  The Democrats want you to think that they really truly care about violence in America and saving lives."
• 
"We know the real truth.  The fact is their real priority is taking guns from law-abiding Americans, not stopping future violence."
• 
"If they cared so much about violence, they would demand more, not less immigration enforcement when illegal immigrants are released into America unchecked.  We have no idea what their real background is.  In some cases they are going to rob, murder and rape."
• 
"If Democrats cared about violence they would've demanded last summer that Antifa be called a domestic terror group."
• 
"The ultimate inconvenient truth is that our government doesn't like many of us.  They believe that about half of America is racist, maybe more [and] that our movement should be severely restricted."
• 
"They vet our National Guard and military for extremism when a few veterans turned up at the Capitol on January 6, but these same Democrats drawn no conclusions and take no meaningful action about crime committed by their own supporters or special interests."
      Ingraham: 'Sanctimonious snitches' turning Americans against each other in age of COVID, Biden  (Fox 02/10/2021)
• 
The coronavirus pandemic and the election of Joe Biden as president has given rise to a "busybody phenomenon" across America, "courtesy of unhinged progressives who are happiest when they're ordering someone else around."
• 
"Now, this is funny in one way, but it's pernicious stuff and it's infected every level of our society, 90% of the sanctimonious snitches are just frustrated, bitter lefties with too much time on their hands."
• 
... went on to proclaim that "these seething snitches have more in common with the old-fashioned Soviet thought police than they have with the free speech liberals of the 1970s" and noted that the left is using what she called the "snitch and ditch culture" to divide families.
• 
She referenced the case of a Massachusetts teen who called out her mother for being present at the Jan.  6 Capitol riot and "has since raised $74,000 for college on a GoFundMe page since tweeting about Mommy.  I guess it beats babysitting or waiting tables to pay for tuition."
• 
"Liberal busybodies claim that they're just trying to save lives with their snitching, but we know that's not true."
• 
"They're silent when blue state mayors and governors are caught violating their own COVID dictates, and they made excuses when entire city blocks were in flames last summer because of the BLM riots.  They're complete frauds."
• 
"This is not about standing on principle.  Snitches want riches and of course, they want power.  Their political overlords and the Biden administration themselves are masters of snitching ... That's an entire job description for Anthony Fauci, shaming America for wanting to go back to normal, but it's time to shame them right back for turning Americans against Americans."
      Biden is 'figurehead' of left-wing insurrection against America in 'deepest depths' of 'DC swamp'  (Fox 02/09/2021)
• 
"The Democrats and the media that serve them are like addicts looking for their next fix, and their drug of choice over the past five years has been Donald Trump."
• 
"If you're conservative and you voted for Trump, they want you demoralized by the impeachment proceedings and the January 6th riot and they want you to believe things will never get better."
• 
"...  if you keep your eye on what's really happening out there, you're going to realize Biden isn't running anything.  He's barely awake."
• 
... the 46th president's administration is "populated by snotty, entitled, overeducated, underperforming goofballs" who "are slowly but surely dismantling our economy, attacking our prosperity and opening the door to an endless stream of illegal aliens and gang members."
• 
"If we had a Congress that was focused on protecting American jobs, safety, healthcare, and education, they would immediately tighten the asylum laws."
• 
"At a time when we're seeing more crime, fewer jobs, and millions of kids stuck in Zoom hell and not in school, Biden's team is focusing on shielding illegals from deportation because he doesn't want to put them through too much stress..."
• 
"Biden's open-borders zealots have what they want.  Big business, they get their slave labor, and the social justice warriors, the far-left 'Squad' types, they have their new population that can be molded and formed into socialist party faithful."
• 
"There is an insurrection taking place against America, all right, It's been going on for years in the deepest depths of the D.C.  swamp.  And now its figurehead resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue."
• 
See related Sold! (Mike Shelton, 01/20/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Biden Executive Orders (Gary McCoy, 01/26/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Head Honcho (Antonio Branco, 09/01/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Ingraham: Big Tech, Big Business and BLM exposed as 'unholy trinity' behind Biden win  (Fox 02/06/2021)
• 
A bombshell report by Time magazine Friday proves the existence of "a real and vast conspiracy to unseat" former President Donald Trump...
• 
... an "unholy trinity" of anti-Trump forces.  "First is Big Tech, It's no secret that Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter's Jack Dorsey are rabid leftists and supported Biden."
• 
That support ... was most obvious when Facebook and Twitter limited circulation of the New York Post's reporting on documents detailing Hunter Biden's overseas business interests that were recovered from a misplaced laptop.
• 
"A poll from November found that 4.6% of Biden voters would not have voted for him had they been aware of the Hunter Biden scandal, Biden only beat Trump by 4.4% of the vote."
• 
"Of course, we can't leave out the fact that Zuckerberg was key to realizing mass mail-in balloting.  He donated $300 million to local election offices and the liberal activists masquerading as nonpartisan voter educators.  They expanded vote by mail and enrolled millions of voters."
• 
The second part of the trinity ... was Black Lives Matter, who Ingraham described as "loyal Biden foot soldiers."
• 
The third anti-Trump force in the trinity, is Big Business...  "They began to discuss a joint statement pledging the organization's shared commitment to a fair and peaceful election."
• 
However, the real reason for the meeting ... was to ensure "access to cheap foreign labor and endless streams of people coming across the border."
• 
"Trump kept labor markets tight by clamping down on work visas and securing our border, That was great for American workers.  The Chamber of Commerce hated it."
• 
"Democrats have control [of Washington] at least two more years, The more we learn about how they got there and the more we see the disastrous results of their policies in this collaboration, the easier it will be to end that control and give it back to those of us that want to empower Americans; not just manipulate them."
• 
See related Steal Team Six (Antonio Branco, 10/20/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Helping Biden (Gary Varvel, 11/08/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Ingraham: Biden's 'twisted and poisonous claims' about US take 'wrecking ball to his unity goal'  (Fox 01/27/2021)
• 
President Biden "continued taking a wrecking ball to his unity goal" Tuesday by stating "that America, at her core, is racist."
• 
"Does Biden now renounce his own Catholic education?  His teachers?  His professors, who celebrated, for instance, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as well as the men who sent them?"
• 
"The 1776 Commission understood that America is a great nation that nevertheless made some grave errors."
• 
"Today's left inverts that belief, insisting that we are a gravely evil nation that only occasionally does some good things, like elect Obama and Biden."
• 
"For decades, radical academics have been teaching students to believe that White privilege is a greater threat to us than the CCP, Islamic terror, the former Soviet Union, unemployment, and certainly any viruses."
• 
"They believe that dangling the prospect of reparations, will obscure the fact that their policies ... will make impoverished and working-class Americans of all races poorer and less safe."
• 
... Democrats "know all too well that Trump grew his political support among all minorities, especially Latinos and Asians.  Why did he do this?  His policies delivered record low unemployment for Blacks and Hispanics.  Household incomes grew for all races and ethnicities."
• 
"Biden's handlers think they can still keep minority voters on the hook with identity politics, virtue signaling, diversity quotas, and the pipe dream of reparations, It's so cynical, and more than that, it's so insulting."
• 
See related Flies Democrats (Sean Delonas, 04/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Biden immigration order shows new administration wants America 'united behind lawlessness'  (Fox 01/22/2021)
• 
"In an executive order Biden thought was so important he had to issue it on day one, the administration purports to have the authority to halt all deportations in the U.S., even those that have been fully adjudicated."
• 
"This is both profoundly dangerous and profoundly revealing, Dangerous for all the obvious reasons, Biden's move will cause an explosion in violent crime and COVID.  Tens of thousands of migrant criminals and traffickers are already rushing the border right now.  They clearly got the amnesty memo."
• 
"In part, he's doing it to satisfy his party's radical open-border caucus.  AOC and the gang are eager to replace native-born Americans and lawful immigrants with foreigners who came here illegally."
• 
"This, they hope, will hasten the cleansing of the country which they believe is systemically racist.  A crush of new illegal immigrants fully programmed by BLM-approved curriculum and far-left influence."
• 
"This is about cutting labor costs and giving them more power over workers, This is not about helping Hispanic voters or atoning for American sins, it is about putting money in the pockets of Biden donors."
• 
"They care about law and order when the angry mob sends them scurrying for cover, but when some poor Hispanic-American family is trying to save their son from MS-13 ... Pelosi and the gang, they look the other way."
• 
"When a landscaper or a construction worker can no longer support his family ... because wages have been driven down due to the flood of illegal workers, Team Biden doesn't care."
• 
"The American people are collateral damage on the road to their open borders nirvana."
      Leftist figures calling for Trump supporters to be 'deprogrammed' like Chinese dissidents  (Fox 01/13/2021)
• 
Democrats and their mainstream media allies are hell-bent on suppressing dissenting voices as the Biden administration takes office...
• 
... called out Washington Post associate editor Eugene Robinson, who said during an appearance on MSNBC earlier Tuesday that "there are millions of Americans, almost all White, almost all Republicans, who somehow need to be deprogrammed." "It is as though they are members of a cult, the Trumpist cult," added Robinson.
• 
"In their continued effort to use the Capitol incursion for political gain, Democrats feel emboldened to smear tens of millions of Trump supporters."
• 
"They feel no need to debate issues or policies, not when they can treat their political opponents the way the Chinese treat its dissidents."
• 
"Apparently, they are now in favor of separating families," ... referring to a since-fired PBS lawyer caught in a Project Veritas sting saying Trump is "close to Hitler" and that the Department of Homeland Security should set up "reeducation camps".
• 
However, ... these same figures were silent as Black Lives Matter and other leftist groups tore through urban areas last summer, looting big-box retailers, setting fires and at times blowing up automated teller machines.
• 
"We heard no talk of manhunts or big pushes for facial recognition technology or adding supportive politicians to no-fly lists."
• 
"Where were the cries for swift justice back then?  Remember, a lot of the same people attacked state and federal institutions.  And by the way, where are the cries for justice today as thugs continue to target federal courthouses in places like Portland and Philadelphia?"
• 
"Condemning violence shouldn't be related to one's ideology [or] the ideology of the perpetrator, and neither should the call for justice, ever."
      Ingraham: Too-powerful tech oligarchs silence GOP while giving full reign to China, radical Islamists  (Fox 01/12/2021)
• 
The uproar over Big Tech's crackdown on social media users like President Trump and upstart platforms like Parler has little to do with the First Amendment...
• 
"We obviously know that Facebook, Apple, Twitter, etc.  are private companies.  We know that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to private companies and when we use the terms 'free speech' and 'free expression,' we are speaking metaphorically, not literally."
• 
The real issue ... is that many private companies like Twitter have "too much power," and often have market caps "larger than the GDP of our closest allies."
• 
"If Big Tech was truly worried about speech that incites harm and violence, well, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, they would have removed all the content from Antifa and radical Islamists years ago."
• 
"There's always a risk that in a system like ours, a small group of rich people will end up having outsized influence, too much power, And that's where we are right now.  So instead of talking about rights, it's time to start talking about power."
• 
"We cannot allow a situation where the [Chinese Communist Party] has unlimited access, unlimited ability to spout dangerous propaganda while the GOP is effectively silenced.  And that means we must ensure that this tech oligarchy never amasses that type of power, that much power again."
• 
According to Ingraham, the real purpose of Big Tech's "war on conservate thought" is twofold: Halting what she called "Trump's digital momentum" while ensuring conservatives are "vanished altogether from the public square."
• 
"I still remember when liberals were liberals, when they distrusted big corporations had they supported debate and dialogue, But long before Trump, they gave up on trying to persuade political foes and they decided instead to persecute them.  Silence them.  Demonize them."
      Laura Ingraham: Biden more afraid of upsetting far left than alienating Trump supporters  (Fox 12/08/2020)
• 
... argued that if the president-elect "had any real interest in cooling off rather than igniting the culture wars, there are things he could do that don't conflict with true liberal thought.
• 
"He could take a principled stand against the cancel culture, maybe go to Harvard [and] push for more intellectual diversity on campus."
• 
"He could go to El Paso, Texas, and talk about the rule of law and why it's the responsibility of the executive branch to enforce all immigration laws currently on the books."
• 
Biden could, she added, give a substantive address about the importance of the Constitution and Bill of Rights and come out strongly against undemocratic ideas from like packing the Supreme Court or expanding the Senate.
• 
"He could pledge to oppose an effort ... to quash the free speech of his political opponents, or do anything that would undermine our traditional rights as Americans"...
• 
"Biden could make clear that he generally opposes lockdowns and understands that they infringe on our constitutional rights.  ... At a minimum, he could demand that all schools be open to in-person learning, period — no exception — because teachers are essential workers and have to show or find a new job."
• 
The president-elect could also remind Americans ... "that pro-life Americans aren't anti-women and that Antifa and other violent street movements have no place in this nation."
• 
But none of those statements will be made ... because Biden "is tiptoeing right now around the far left.  He is more afraid of upsetting them then alienating the more than 74 million Americans who turned out for President Trump.'
• 
"As long as conservative Americans believe that President Trump is the only person standing between them and tyranny, they will remain fiercely loyal to him."
• 
"They believe he is one of the few who actually fights for their values and for their families, and in watching everything that's going on right now, who could blame them?"
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Laura Ingraham urges voters to 'teach the elites and their lackeys a message' by reelecting Trump  (Fox 10/24/2020)
• 
"If you love America, if you think our experiment in democracy is one of the greatest triumphs of the human spirit and you reject this pay-to-play government symbolized by Biden, you must stand with President Trump."
• 
"This is our chance.  Never before in my lifetime have the elites gathered in such numbers or have spent such money to stop a political movement."
• 
... Biden's alliance of Democrats and establishment figures controlled the levers of power in America for many decades, but failed their constituents as time went on.
• 
"They used to mock us, but now they fear us.  They are right.  They had their chance to govern this country for decades and they blew it."
• 
"Let them spend billions on propaganda, let them spread their lies, let them quiver with threats and rage.  We will defy them."
• 
... although Biden has Hollywood, Big Tech and the Beltway insider class behind him, the man himself inspires little excitement among the public apart from his status as the "un-Trumpian necessity of the moment."
• 
"On Election Day let's teach the elites and their lackeys a message they will never forget."
• 
"In America, power belongs to the people — all of the people, not just an elite few who write the checks every four years."
      Laura Ingraham: Biden's 'nice guy' image is the 'Trojan horse' the far left needs  (Fox 10/20/2020)
• 
Democrats are banking on Joe Biden's reputation as a "nice guy" to hide their true intentions of extremism and political retribution should they win the White House next month...
• 
"Do they think that you are stupid or what?  It's all being ... framed this way to throw you off the scent of what's really to come: Punishment."
• 
"Those running the Joe show has always hated Middle America.  That's why he is their perfect candidate; kind of a Trojan horse from the old, slightly more moderate party to push their new, far more radical policies."
• 
... "the marketing of Biden as this nice, normal guy was funded and promoted by some of the most ruthless, the richest people in business, the media, and entertainment — and once they get past the election it is payback time."
• 
"They want us to embrace, in the end, a false sense of decency with Biden, a fake dignity being peddled by a man who, despite his Grandpa Joe act, is still just Nasty Joe from Scranton when he's exposed."
• 
"Total fraud.  The normalcy the left craves ... I will tell you what normal is to them.  It's when you're under their heel, you're taxed to death, you are told where you're going to get your health care and your speech is stifled along with your religious practice."
      Ingraham tells voters to 'learn to spot lies' from Democrats, prevent 'Orwellian chasm' of Biden...  (Fox 07/17/2020)
• 
... quoting George Orwell's classic 1946 essay, "Politics and the English Language", in which he wrote that "political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."
• 
"At the time, George Orwell was writing about the rise of communism and far-left thought."
• 
"Today with the rise of the hard left in America, we should keep Orwell's warnings in mind and learn to spot lies that are made to sound truthful during this pivotal time."
• 
... Democratic governors and other politics accusing Trump of lacking a "national strategy" to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.  "When they say 'national strategy', they mean 'national lockdown.'"
• 
... Democrats have made it clear through their actions that they want a full economic lockdown until coronavirus "magically disappears" or until an "effective, safe vaccine" is found.
• 
... Biden himself has promised "racial justice" measures before translating the term to mean "empowering groups that pretend to care about minorities but actually just end up profiting themselves by stoking racial animosity."
• 
"Under a Biden administration, decisions will be made largely based on race, not on merit or hard work or achievement ... Get ready for massive discrimination against more than 100 million Americans [while] special privileges, accommodations and money are doled out to certain politically preferred groups."
• 
"Get ready for another apology tour.  Biden is going to go around the world begging America's pardon.  After all, having a president who actually fights for American workers and is tough on trade [and] not giving away the store like Obama did — you think the Europeans like that?"
• 
"Wouldn't you rather be decoding and exposing the radical agenda than actually living under it?"
      Laura Ingraham: Activists are in our schools and they're numbing Generation E to socialism  (Fox 03/19/2019)
• 
What do carbon, ice and an egg all have in common?
• 
They're all connected to recent stories involving "Generation E" - the Entitlement Generation. 
• 
... many of you were wondering how these kids were permitted to just blow off school, shut down entire city streets, and inconvenience other students who actually want to do this thing called study. 
• 
Was it easier hanging out with your friends and emoting about saving the planet and chanting really badly than studying, let's say, the Federalist papers or doing your physics lab?
• 
Well, come on, that's an easy answer, especially when schools excuse the absences, teachers themselves are encouraging the protests or the overwhelmingly left-wing and college admissions undoubtedly count activism as a legitimate extracurricular activity. 
• 
And naturally, members of Generation E believe they should get into the best colleges, even if they do not have the best grades or the best course.
• 
And they develop, by the way, this warped view of their own self-importance because Mommy and Daddy raised them to believe that they were special, really special.  Special in every extra special way.
• 
I think it's important to ask this: What's the end result here?
• 
Well, many of these young people — and it's not just the wealthy kids — grow up to be demanding entitled adults, and even ingrates.
• 
And at a time when American students are falling behind in science and math and reading, more and more kids at the same time here are indulged and even encouraged to become political activists before they've even earned their first paycheck.
• 
forget about mastering things like math or science or life skills, such as manners or self-reliance, or speaking and writing ability.
• 
And why bother with all that, when society celebrates you for being a punk with a political point of view. 
• 
... grad students are now demanding that the school remove ICE and border patrol job listings from their career services platform.
• 
Why?  Because the university should not "allow racist and abusive organization like this to recruit students."
• 
My friends, it's not just on American shores.  Take this example from Australia.
• 
A 17-year old cracked an egg on the head of a right-wing politician.
• 
The politician stupidly took a swipe or swing at the kid and the video of the incident went viral.
• 
Well, that's when the praise from celebs starts coming in.  ... "I love that guy.  I hope he inspires copycats.  Everyone should be like Egg Boy.  Everyone."
• 
So if the target is someone not telling the social justice line, it's okay to assault him, even have copycats. 
• 
...  Generation E activists have their own set of demands - free college, free health care, a guaranteed standard of living and a free pass if they're living in the country illegally.
• 
They also would require that you accept their views on everything from climate change to immigration to economic policy because they're entitled.
• 
Republicans should take heed of these trends and movements and offer a better alternative for the next generation.
• 
These are smart kids.  Republicans must offer a future where they don't have to wait on the government to give them what they can earn for themselves and where they'll feel better about it — and they'll feel better about themselves.
• 
Activists, though, are in our schools and they're aggressively propagandizing, Hollywood, and even churches, do as well and what they're selling is a political world view that numbs the young to socialism.
• 
That's the endgame. 
• 
It's an exercise in wealth confiscation that will leave us less free, less prosperous and less tied to that age-old American value that hard work makes the man.
• 
Oh, well, though, if you feel offended that I just said "man," then you are an honorary member of Generation E. 
• 
You're entitled to your opinion, but I'm not entitled or required to celebrate it.
      Ocasio-Cortez must be taken seriously.  Is America ready to be ruled by these new progressives?  (Fox 01/18/2019)
• 
... it's a mistake for conservatives not to take her seriously, to brush her off as kind of a flash in the pan or an upstart.
• 
She's as close to a thought leader that the Democratic Party has today, and she has a massive social media following.
• 
She's both charismatic, and she's committed to transforming both our economic system and our culture.
• 
First, she aims to create a socialist economic system with sky high marginal tax rates.
• 
And it doesn't stop there.  On the cultural side, she and others like her intend to use the government and their positions of influence now to mandate campus-style political correctness.
• 
... anyone who dares question this progressive agenda is not just wrong, but they're downright evil.  So, there's no room for debate, only demonization.
• 
... this isn't your daddy's liberalism, where it was all about love and peace and live and let live.
• 
They're going to whip up their followers to try to intimidate and silence anyone who gets in their way. 
• 
Now she's only been on the job for, like, six days, but Ocasio-Cortez already practicing Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals."
• 
Rule 13: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.  Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy.  Go after people, and not institutions.  People hurt faster than institutions.
• 
So, rather than debating the merits of policies, these new left-wing progressive Puritans aim to shame.  A wall is racist, so people who want a wall are racist.  End of story.
• 
Now, all of you are doing better in the Trump economy, you should know this: They plan to take your money away and redistribute it to you know, wherever their pet causes are.
• 
And to all of our libertarian friends who believe that Trump is the big threat to the free market because of tariffs and so forth, open your eyes.
• 
These people, including Nancy Pelosi, who herself has moved left, are going to take it all away.  Freedom of speech, freedom of contract, freedom of religion or conscience.
• 
... when you say the wrong thing in Ocasio-Cortez world, they put you in detention hall and you never get out.
• 
Remember, they believe that they are right and you're evil.
• 
And moderates even seem petrified of taking on these new progressives.
• 
And Republicans ought to take the progressive takeover of the Democratic Party very seriously and offer a strong counter narrative.
• 
If you want to know what it looks like to be a conservative and perpetually in the fetal position, worried about being branded racist or evil, well, look no further than Theresa May, okay?
• 
Now Trump is the opposite.  He fights.  He fights for law and order.  He fights for sovereignty.
• 
He fights for judges who apply the law and don't rewrite it.  And he fights for a stronger economy.
• 
After two years of President Trump, we have higher wages, we have 500,000 new manufacturing jobs, we have the strongest GDP growth among all the G7 nations.
• 
But the progressives, they don't care.  ... These people are fanatics.  And they're running for president.
• 
Americans are fleeing the most progressive states in America due to high costs and high taxes.
• 
No wonder they're welcoming illegal immigrants in New York and California.
• 
Are Americans really ready to be ruled by the values and policies of progressives in New York and California?
• 
Let's hope not. 
• 
See related Democrat Platform (Sean Delonas, 07/04/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What Do We Want? (Sean Delonas, 07/12/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Leading the Caravan (Sean Delonas, 10/22/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      New York Times' op-ed and the unrelenting vendetta against Trump – RIP journalism  (Fox 09/06/2018)
• 
The senior Trump staffer, under the cloak of anonymity, spins a wildly unflattering tale of a president supposedly unhinged from reality, making impulsive decisions that supposedly blindside and frustrate top officials who are in perpetual damage control.
• 
The gist of the piece, by the way is that you, the people, are lucky that Trump is checked by a noble band of staffers, the writer included of course.
• 
They refer to themselves as part of the "resistance."
• 
The column further alleges that the root of the problem is the president's amorality.  He is not moored to any discernible first principles.
• 
Well, America First is either too difficult a concept for the columnist to understand or he just disagrees with altogether.
• 
The president's agenda was clearly laid out in the campaign and pursued aggressively in his first 20 months in office: Lower taxes, less regulation, stronger border enforcement, less military interventionism and fairer trade deals.
• 
Oh, and let's not forget his pledge to appoint judges who are faithful to their Article III duties under the constitution.
• 
If Mr.  or Ms.  Anonymous loathes the Trump agenda so much, well he or she has no business being in the White House. 
• 
This is not a loyal public servant.  This is a disgruntled employee — part of the failed GOP establishment that lost power and now want it back — by any means necessary.
• 
Anonymous is a mole and a fraud. 
• 
You know, this has the feel of the flimflammery of the Steele dossier, doesn't it?  Constructed in advance by Trump's vicious political opponents.
• 
And as with the dossier, the American people have no way of judging the veracity of its outlandish and defamatory claims.
• 
So we are supposed to just take the word of Trump's adversaries, no questions asked.  How convenient.
• 
The column is rife with all these dramatic flourishes intended to titillate and feed the media beast, like this line: "the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic."
• 
How about his actions?
• 
Policies that have improved the lives of millions of Americans, including African-Americans, Latino-Americans, women, small business owners, et cetera, et cetera.
• 
Is all that detrimental to the republic?
• 
Anonymous claims he wants the president to be successful and does admit some of these accomplishments, but he insists that these successes have come despite, not because of, the president's leadership style which is impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective.
• 
OK, sure, you know, Trump can be impatient and loses his cool.  You know, and he can be frustrated as all of us are with the pace of Washington.  And of course also with the media.  Big whoop.
• 
Two words: Man up.  If you think so highly of yourself and really stand by your claims, step forward and identify yourself.
• 
Well, make no mistake, this is part of a persistent drumbeat.  It started in the wake of the election, the deep state with its faceless nameless sources launched their own internal campaign against Trump.
• 
Then, the beat was taken up by everyone from Michael Wolfe to even the esteemed Bob Woodward.
• 
The president should be judged by his policies and the results that he delivers for the American people, not by the embittered tales of a would-be whistle-blower hiding behind the skirts of the Grey Lady.
 Jacoby  (11/08/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/26/2022) | Next sect (04/19/2020) | List bot 
      F-bombing the president  (JWR 11/08/2021)
• 
Pro-Trump Republicans have been deploying the F-word to convey their dislike for the president of the United States, and The Washington Post is appalled.
• 
The Post ... claimed: "The current eruption of anti-Biden signs and chants ... is on another level, far more vulgar and widespread." Seriously?
• 
Anyone who didn't spend the last several years in a sensory deprivation tank knows that Trump inspired such loathing that many of his opponents could scarcely mention his name without attaching it to the F-word.
• 
When Robert De Niro strode onto the stage at the 2018 Tony Awards, his opening words — on live television — were: "I'm gonna say one thing.  F** Trump!" The celebrity-filled crowd erupted in a standing ovation.
• 
Online you can find a seemingly endless array of vendors selling gear emblazoned with the same words De Niro used.
• 
Rapper Nipsey Hussle's F-drenched anti-Trump song "FDT" has been viewed 32 million times on YouTube and was extolled by the Los Angeles Times as "the most prophetic, wrathful, and unifying protest song of 2016."
• 
Unhinged rhetoric and foul incivility didn't begin with the current attacks on Joe Biden.
• 
The First Amendment protects your freedom to vent the crudest insults you can think of and to drench politicians (or anyone else you despise) with noisome, potty-mouthed contempt.
• 
But freedom of expression isn't the only value a healthy civic environment requires.  Tolerance, courtesy, and temperate standards of public conduct — in a word, civility — matter too.  They matter a lot.
• 
Yet civility has been stripped away from vast swaths of our social and political culture, with the result that everything has become a battlefield.
• 
For adherents of clashing world views and partisan loyalties, finding common ground has grown nearly impossible.
• 
Divergent opinions are treated as deadly threats that must be opposed not with grace and a willingness to hear each other out, but with uncompromising rhetorical ferocity.
      The unbroken history of socialist failure  (JWR 08/17/2021)
• 
Championed by people who are repelled by economic inequality, socialism invariably worsens those disparities by combining them with political inequality.  Thus a system rooted in idealism leads, always, to corruption and cynicism.
• 
Under every one of the socialist regimes of the past 100-plus years, from the Soviet Union to Cuba to Cambodia to North Korea to Venezuela, the gap separating the rich and powerful from the poor and impotent grew wider.
• 
And who were the rich and powerful?  Those who controlled the government.  More socialism = more tyranny.
• 
In all of recorded history, there is no example of a society that became happier, wealthier, fairer, or freer by moving from a market economy to a socialist one.
• 
"Born of a commitment to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism," wrote Heilbroner, the lifelong socialist who belatedly saw the light, socialism "has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty."
• 
Those of us who lived through the fall of the Iron Curtain naively imagined that that lesson had been learned once and for all.
• 
Alas, no.  Barely a generation later, 59 percent of Democratic voters say they have a positive view of socialism.
• 
Making the case for economic liberty remains as necessary as ever.  The intellectual work isn't finished, and probably never will be.
      A student debt bailout would be unjust  (JWR 11/23/2020)
• 
"My daughter's getting out of school.  I saved all my money [so] she doesn't have any student loans," the man said.  "Am I going to get my money back?"
• 
"Of course not," Warren answered.
• 
"So you're going to pay for people who didn't save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed," said the father, visibly upset.
• 
"My buddy had fun, bought a car, went on vacations.  I saved my money.  He made more than I did, but I worked a double shift, worked extra.  My daughter's worked since she was 10."
• 
That exchange vividly illustrates the injustice of student-debt proposals that would, in effect, punish those who saved and worked more to pay for college, those who deferred higher education until they could afford it, and those who responsibly repaid their loans — by forcing them to pay for those who didn't.
• 
Even more outrageous, it would compel the two-thirds of Americans who didn't earn a college degree to help pick up the tab for many of those who did.
• 
Since higher education correlates strongly with higher earnings, these college loans are concentrated among the relatively well-to-do.  So an immense government program to forgive outstanding student debt would disproportionately benefit high-income people at the expense of those less fortunate.
• 
Yet leading Democrats and progressives are doubling down.  "Biden-Harris can cancel billions of dollars in student loan debt," Warren tweeted recently.
• 
Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, claims that any college graduate's "first $50,000 of debt [can] be vanquished" through an executive order by the next president.
• 
... a coalition of 236 liberal organizations called upon Biden to issue that order upon taking office.
• 
It is far from clear that billions of dollars of debt can be simply written off via presidential decree.  But set aside the procedural question.  A huge new student loan forgiveness scheme is indefensible as a matter of policy.
• 
Of course, there are borrowers who find themselves struggling to make their payments.  But those borrowers can avail themselves of existing means to have their debt deferred, reduced, or even canceled.  By one count, there are 13 major student loan forgiveness programs.
• 
Bottom line: The overwhelming majority of college loans are paid off, and help is available for debtors who get in over their heads.
• 
What it would provide is an unstoppable demand for the government to wipe out other kinds of personal obligations.  "Cancel rent.  Cancel mortgage.  Cancel student debt."
• 
Children send Santa Claus lists of things they want for free, but adults know that Santa isn't real.  Santa isn't the federal government, either.
• 
Washington cannot magically make people's debts disappear; it can only compel other people to pay them.
• 
That may or may not be good politics, but it is certainly terrible economics.
      A plea for humility from America's first superstar  (JWR 09/14/2020)
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Many Americans have heard the story of the woman who approached Benjamin Franklin as the delegates emerged from their proceedings in Independence Hall, which had been conducted in secret.
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"Well, doctor," she asked, "what have we got — a republic or a monarchy?" Franklin famously replied: "A republic, if you can keep it."
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Far more profound than that tossed-off rejoinder, however, were the less well-known words spoken earlier that day, in Franklin's extraordinary closing address to the convention.
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His message of political compromise and intellectual modesty is one our society, so angrily uncompromising and immodest, badly needs to hear.
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At 81, Franklin was by a considerable margin the oldest delegate to the convention.
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He was the only man present who had signed both the Declaration of Independence and the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War.
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As a statesman, a scientist, and an intellectual, he was the most famous American in the world, and, with the possible exception of George Washington, the most respected member of the convention.
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The Constitution incorporated provisions that Franklin had opposed.  He had strongly favored a plural executive, for example.  He had advocated for the direct election of judges, and argued that federal officials should serve without pay.
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The final document by no means represented what he considered ideal.  The same was likely true for every other delegate.  Indeed, some members of the convention regarded the new system's shortcomings as so wrongheaded that they had walked out before the final vote.
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But Franklin thought nothing could be worse than for the new Constitution to make its appearance amid open dissension among its drafters.
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Drawing on his skill as a diplomat, he urged his colleagues to set their differences aside and accept the document in a spirit of cooperation.
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"I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them," Franklin began.
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"For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects.  .  .  .  [T]he older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others."
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People have a bad habit of falling in love with their own opinions, said Franklin, and of sneering at the unsoundness of other people's views — a phenomenon even truer in the 21st century than it was in the 18th.
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He implored the delegates to resist that temptation and to support the Constitution despite their misgivings
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"I agree to this Constitution with all its faults.  I doubt too whether any other convention we can obtain may be able to make a better Constitution.  For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views.  From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected?  .  .  .  I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best.  The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good.  I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad.  Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die."
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Franklin moved that a line be added to the final document, declaring that it had been accepted "by the unanimous consent of the States present" — a formulation that would allow even the minority of delegates who had voted No to sign.
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It was his wish, he said, "that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would, with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and .  .  .  put his name to this instrument."
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The stakes in 1787 were no less grave than those Americans fight about today.  Then as now, disunity and polarization threatened to tear the nation apart.
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The difference is that those men in Philadelphia agreed to work through their ideological differences, while our ability to do so seems to diminish by the day.
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More than ever, we are in need of leaders like Franklin, and of lessons like the one he conveyed so effectively 233 years ago next Thursday: that we strive to be less hostile to the views of others, and learn to doubt a little of our own infallibility.
 James  (04/19/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (11/08/2021) | Next sect (02/15/2022) | List bot 
      John James: Coronavirus and China – US must make these critical items here at home  (Fox 04/19/2020)
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Americans are dying from COVID-19 and hospitals are struggling to provide health care because they lack necessary equipment like masks and ventilators.
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At the same time, U.S.  companies in China have warehouses overflowing with the necessary equipment, but Chinese restrictions disrupt the supply chain and prevent that essential equipment from coming back to the U.S.
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This is not the last crisis America will face.  We cannot allow any nation to disrupt our supply chain on critical goods.
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We need to ensure we have the manufacturing capabilities to deal with the next crisis.  We need to repatriate the American dream.
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The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the danger of America's supply chain being reliant upon other nations, notably communist China, for the critical goods and services we need.
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Masks and ventilators are just one example.  Pharmaceuticals are another.
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We cannot allow other nations to impede our ability to identify vaccines and cures, as well as have access to necessary medical treatments.
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As ours is the most prosperous, innovative economy in human history, it is both possible and advisable that our nation becomes more economically self-sufficient to prevent these obstacles from dealing with COVID-19 and disasters in the future.
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No longer can we dangerously permit communist China's – or any country's – predatory trade practices, currency manipulation, dumping, intellectual property theft, espionage, cyber and information warfare and worse to continue their assault on our national prosperity and, yes, security.
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This is not a call for protectionism or isolation.  It is a call for independence and patriotism.
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We must repatriate the American dream from overseas and restore hope around the hearth of home for our working families.
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At least, American companies should be able to supply essential goods to Americans without fear of foreign governments disrupting our supply chain.
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That disruption can't happen if Americans are manufacturing in America.
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First, buy American.  The American consumer is the most powerful in the world.  Entire markets bend because of them.
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Next, like President Trump's recent landmark tax reform package, Congress must pass legislation to keep "in-sourcing" jobs back to our shores.
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Continuing tax, tort and regulatory reforms are vital to incentivizing the repatriation and retention of America's "production independence" in manufacturing, energy, agricultural, pharmaceutical and every sector of our economy.
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In the area of medicine, particularly, it is insane to rely upon communist China or any other bad international actors for pharmaceuticals.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic grimly demonstrates, Americans' pharmaceutical self-sufficiency is necessary not only for our economic but for our physical health, as well.
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In the wake of this pandemic, our nation was compelled to take unprecedented public health measures to protect people's lives.  Tragically, this has led to record levels of unemployment.
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These workers won't be getting jobs in communist China.  They need American jobs – now.
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American citizens deserve to have access to American personal protection equipment and American medicine.
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What we need is for our nation to repatriate the American dream.
 Jarrett  (02/15/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/19/2020) | Next sect (02/07/2021) | List bot 
      Hillary Clinton was the mastermind behind the Trump-Russia collusion hoax and may never face justice  (Fox 02/15/2022)
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The stunning revelation that lawyers for the Hillary Clinton campaign paid a computer technology company to surveil a sitting president, Donald Trump, shows that more than half a dozen crimes may have been committed to advance the false accusation that he colluded with Russia.
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Some background is in order.  After a 22-month probe, Special Counsel Robert Mueller found no evidence of a criminal collusion conspiracy because none ever existed.
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U.S.  Attorney John Durham was then tasked to investigate how the odious lie arose and whether crimes were perpetrated to accomplish it.
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Later elevated to special counsel status, Durham has indicted three people so far as he continues to doggedly pursue his investigation of wrongdoing by others.
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In a recent federal court filing, he disclosed that Clinton campaign lawyers hired a tech company to "infiltrate" computer servers housed in Trump Tower, and later, the White House.
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... the goal was to generate an "inference" or "narrative" that Trump was colluding with Russia and then feed the phony information to the FBI to trigger an investigation of him.
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The methods behind the brazen smear were remarkably devious.  The tech outfit exploited its access to non-public and proprietary internet data on servers at Trump Tower and the White House...
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It was equivalent of breaking into a computer except the technicians had special access since the company was performing what's called "resolution services" on those highly sensitive accounts.
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The cyber sleuths then covertly penetrated the servers without authorization.  Once inside, they commandeered innocuous information and peddled it as nefarious back-channel communications between Trump and a Kremlin-linked financial institution called Alfa Bank.
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It was insinuated that Trump and his associates were secretly communicating with Russia.  Naturally, the media was tipped off and went full-throttle with wild claims that Trump was a Russian asset.
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In reality, much of the tech company's pilfered information turned out to be routine Internet traffic such as computer-generated and automated advertising that came from a mass marketing email company that located its server in Trump Tower.
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Shockingly, the surreptitious intrusions continued when the new president moved into the White House.
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But no evidence of Russian collusion was discovered because it was, after all, a cunning hoax conjured up by Hillary and her acolytes.
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This brings us to the present.  Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman has been criminally charged with lying to the FBI about the Alfa Bank fiction.
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... Durham offered the appalling new details of how Trump was the victim of an insidious secret surveillance operation at the hands of his political opponent in the 2016 presidential election.
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The Clinton secret surveillance ring sounds very much like a criminal enterprise engaged in an illegal scheme involving fraud and obstruction of justice.
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As with any well organized criminal exercise, it is exceedingly difficult to nab the person at the top.  Hillary Clinton is no different.  She carried out her machinations in smart and clever ways.
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She had others do her dirty work for her and maintained a distance separated through an elaborate chain of people.  It was akin to a money laundering scheme, except dirty information was being washed.
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Unless people in the chain break their silence and implicate Hillary, she will likely escape culpability.
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Evidence of her role has slowly emerged from declassified records.  It was July 26, 2016, when Clinton personally approved the plot to vilify Trump with the bogus collusion claims, according to CIA documents.  The genesis of the smear came from Hillary herself as a strategy to distract from her own email scandal.
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Two days later, President Obama was alerted but appears to have done nothing except keep the matter concealed.
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Intelligence officials then sent an investigative referral on Clinton to then-FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Peter Strzok.  Predictably, it was buried.
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Make no mistake — it was Clinton who invented the elaborate collusion hoax, financed it, and directed the process by which it was circulated to the media and the FBI.
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Her false claims were then disseminated by a cadre of cronies and dirty-tricksters working secretly in the shadows.
      Jussie Smollett's guilt was never in doubt, his testimony only made it obvious  (Fox 12/11/2021)
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The evidence of guilt was overwhelming.  There was no doubt that actor Jussie Smollett staged a hate crime and then lied to police to gain publicity.
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The two Nigerian brothers he hired to fake the attack against him took the witness stand and told the truth.  They proved to be compelling witnesses who presented a coherent and credible story that Smollett had perpetrated a racist hoax.  Every aspect of their story was corroborated by police and the evidence collected.
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By contrast, Smollett's story that he was the victim of a hate crime made no sense.  For example, he claimed that his attackers yelled, "This is MAGA country!" Really?  Chicago?
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The fabric of lies that he peddled were easily shredded by police.  Text messages and surveillance tape undermined his credibility.  His statements to police were dramatically different than his public statements.  He couldn't seem to get his story straight.
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Smollett's decision to take the witness stand to perpetuate his charade was a foolish maneuver made in desperation.  The defense must have known that it was losing the case badly.  But the defendant's testimony only made matters worse.
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The actor did not hold up well under a vigorous cross-examination.  When confronted with incriminating evidence, his explanations seemed utterly contrived and defied common sense.  None of it added up.
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Perhaps the actor thought he was so skilled as a thespian that he could snooker the jurors.  Or maybe he was really asking them to discard the damning evidence and find him not guilty because they should loath our justice system and despise police.
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In the end, the jury didn't fall for the con.  They faithfully followed the law and emphatically rejected Smollett's fable.  They knew it was an insidious and despicable lie designed to inflame racial tension.
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Indeed, it did.  His tall tale tore apart the city of Chicago and further incited racial animus throughout the nation.
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At sentencing, all the damage that Smollett wrought will pose a serious problem for him, as it should.  If the judge decides that he deliberately lied in his testimony, he could elevate the punishment and impose a harsher sentence.
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Moreover, the extraordinary amount of money and manpower that was devoted to uncovering the hoax demands full restitution to the taxpayers.
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It is shameful, but predictable, that Smollett's false accusations were accepted as gospel by prominent politicians and others without ever waiting for the facts to unfold.
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In a classic rush to judgment, then-Sen.  Kamala Harris called it "a modern-day lynching." Joe Biden repeated the canard that Smollett was the victim of a racist attack and stated, "We are with you, Jussie." When the fraud unraveled, it was nothing but crickets from both.
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It says something about the quality of leadership in the White House when neither the president nor vice president have the common decency to apologize for their role in blindly supporting a phony hate crime.
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Ginning up racial division with arrant falsehoods is their reliable strategy.
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See related One of His Better Performances (Tom Stiglich, 02/18/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: The arrest of the man behind the phony dossier underscores the many lies of the Russia hoax  (Fox 11/04/2021)
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It has been a long time coming.  But that is how reckonings sometimes happen.
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The fabulist behind the discredited anti-Trump dossier was taken into custody by federal authorities Thursday as Special Counsel John Durham continues to build his case against those who manufactured and propagated the phony Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
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Igor Danchenko was charged in a criminal indictment with five counts of lying to the FBI about the sources he used for the bogus information he delivered to former British spy Christopher Steele that comprised the bulk of his dossier.
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Danchenko was not some mysterious Russian agent operating in the bowels of the Kremlin.  He is a Ukrainian-born resident of the United States who worked as a senior research analyst for the Washington, D.C.  liberal think tank, Brookings Institution.
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When the dossier was concocted in 2016, the president of Brookings was Strobe Talbott, a longtime friend and ally of Hillary Clinton.  This was hardly a coincidence.
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It was Clinton and her confederates who invented the Russia hoax to frame her opponent with the most noxious offense in America: a treasonous conspiracy with the Kremlin to steal a presidential election.
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The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) financed their illicit scheme by secretly funneling money to Steele, who hired Danchenko as his primary source for the dossier.
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Declassified documents show that the CIA knew as early as July of 2016 that Clinton had personally approved the devious operation.
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Shortly thereafter the FBI tracked down Danchenko, who admitted his role and debunked the dossier as little more than a fairy tale.
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But John Brennan and James Comey, the respective directors of the CIA and FBI at the time, kept the truth hidden from Congress, President Trump, and the American people.
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Their insipid deception allowed the collusion lie to gain traction in the mainstream media.
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The FBI exploited the dossier as a pretext to investigate Trump.  Their misbegotten probe should have been shut down in its infancy.
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Beginning a mere four days after Trump was inaugurated in January of 2017, FBI agents interviewed Danchenko during three successive sessions and on multiple occasions after that.
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Danchenko admitted to the FBI that Steele paid him to dig up dirt on Trump.  The Brookings researcher/analyst seemed desperate for money.
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He told agents that he "felt like he had to report something back to Steele" to justify the monthly salary he was receiving.  So, he decided to traffic in gossip to keep the paychecks coming.  Facts and truth were irrelevant.
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In telephone calls and voice communications through Skype, Danchenko spoke with a handful of people he knew in Russia and others he described as "random associates." Some were barroom buddies with whom he would "drink heavily."
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They traded yarns and tall stories about Trump.  It was nothing more than prattle and drivel — a guy told a guy who told me that someone connected to Trump might have done thus-and-such.  You get the picture.
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It's wasn't plausible intelligence; it was scandalous junk derived from "speculation and open secrets."
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Danchenko insisted during his FBI interviews that he had repeatedly cautioned Steele that the information he was feeding the ex-spook was just "rumor and speculation and that he had not been able to confirm" any of the dubious stories about Trump-Russia collusion.
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Danchenko confessed that Steele had "misstated or exaggerated" the hearsay that he furnished.
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The mainstream media, riven with bias and easily exploited, helped fuel the collusion fable.  Reporters were more than happy to appropriate the Steele-Danchenko garbage, treating it as gospel without ever attempting to confirm the accuracy or veracity of any of its ludicrous allegations.  Journalists became witting accessories to the witch hunt.
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Comey and his FBI knew all of this but continued to misappropriate the dossier as the basis for the four successive warrants to spy on Trump campaign associate, Carter Page.
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The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) was consistently told that Steele was a credible source even though the agency had fired him for lying.
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The FBI defrauded the FISC judges by insisting that the dossier was credible, even though they possessed incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
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The bureau scrupulously guarded their secret knowing full well that disclosure would ruin the public's trust in the FBI.  And so it has.
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Durham should be commended for having the courage and persistence to uncover the incessant lies and bring criminal charges against those whose malevolence drove the dirtiest political trick ever perpetrated in American politics.
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The Danchenko indictment should have been brought years ago.  But the FBI's complicity and coverup of its own malfeasance necessitated the work of a skilled special counsel to unravel the tangled web of deceit that enabled the Russia hoax to survive and flourish.
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See related Trump Collusion Charges (Glenn McCoy, 10/30/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Biden sics Garland's Justice Department on parents to bully them over free speech  (Fox 10/06/2021)
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Garland's ruse is not thinly disguised; it is plain to see.  He intends to silence mothers and fathers who vigorously oppose their students being indoctrinated with critical race theory and other socialist or Marxist dogma.
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To accomplish it, Garland plans to weaponize the immense powers of the FBI and the Department of Justice to bully parents into submission.
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Under the guise of combating what he refers to as "intimidation," he is exerting more intimidation with superior force.  He aspires to criminalize contentiousness.
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These are menacing and unconscionable tactics by him designed to abolish free speech rights under threat of federal investigation, arrest and prosecution.
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In essence, Garland has ordered you to shut up or else.  You won't just be canceled, you'll be sporting some new cuffs.
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The leftist group demanded that the DOJ use "domestic terrorism" laws against parents who attend school board meetings to vocalize their opposition to the inclusion of "critical race theory within classroom instruction," as well as mask mandates for children.
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Right on cue, Garland capitulated on Monday by threatening to investigate and prosecute parents who dare to protest against the teaching of what they regard as "woke" propaganda and radical racist brainwashing in classrooms.
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Biden's attorney general made it abundantly clear: no political or academic opposition to the progressive agenda will be tolerated.
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Even more embarrassing was Garland's misstatement of constitutional law.  He claimed that the First Amendment does not protect "efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views." What?  Where is that written anywhere in the myriad of U.S.  Supreme Court decisions involving free speech cases?
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... political intimidation is not uncommon during heated civic debates or legislative discourse.  It's often calculated to influence policy action.  Unless it is accompanied by what the high court justices have consistently defined as a "true threat" of imminent violence, it is fully protected speech.  A first-year law student knows better than Garland.
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Even more confounding was the attorney general's assertion that he possesses some imagined jurisdiction over local school boards and any potential crimes arising from their public meetings.
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Those are issues solely within the province of local police and their enforcement of state laws.  There is no valid federal authority over such matters.  Yet, Garland asserts it without the power to do so.
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Political activity in petitioning our government – whether it be Congress in Washington or a school board in Wichita – for a redress of grievances is a cherished right of every American and vital to democracy.  It is embedded in the Bill of Rights.  Garland seems oblivious to this sacred principle.
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Beyond his lack of authority, what is also conspicuously missing from Garland's order are any credible threats or acts of violence that might justify his actions.  Nowhere does he identify specifically the kind of lawlessness that he pretends to prevent.
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He twice cites the broad claim of "harassment" but offers no support.  It is a wonderfully fungible term, but not necessarily criminal in nature.
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The prerogative to protest insensible curricula is an inviolable right of any parent.  One can even argue that there is a duty to object.  The idea that irate mothers and fathers should be equated with domestic terrorists is repugnant.
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Acrimonious disagreement is not terrorism, nor is acerbic argument a crime.  But if you fail to comply with the new imperious dictates of Biden's Justice Department, you will be subjected to the full fury of government retaliation.  What's next – a Ministry of Political Control?
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Garland's threat to punish parents for their sometimes vituperative views is an egregious abuse of power.  This is nothing more than a corrupt attempt by the attorney general to target political opposition.
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He wants to repress speech and discourage any resistance.  To carry out his wishes, Garland has deputized the FBI and unleashed what one mom decried as the "politics police."
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If you're not careful with the words you choose, they may come banging at your door sooner than you think.  That is precisely what Biden and Garland want – to chill free speech and extinguish any dissent.
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See related Alligator in the Pool (Dick Wright, 07/08/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related You Better Shut up! (Mike Shelton, 06/28/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Enemies List (Antonio Branco, 06/17/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Gen.  Milley's alleged treachery and betrayal merit a court-martial  (Fox 09/15/2021)
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According to the book, Milley usurped the authority of the president as the elected civilian leader of the United States, sought to defy any order with which he disagreed, and inserted himself into a chain of command where he did not belong in order to arrogate power over the nation's military operations and nuclear codes.
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The authors contend that Milley secretly informed China that he would warn them in advance of any attack by U.S.  military forces.
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Given the gravity of these accusations and the corresponding national security threat they posed, Milley should be immediately suspended from all military duty — including his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — pending a thorough investigation.
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If there exists credible evidence to support the claims against him, he must face a court-martial by military tribunal to answer for his perfidy.
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Two days after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, Milley spoke by telephone with House Speaker Pelosi.
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In a transcript of the call obtained by the authors, Pelosi demanded that the general wrest control of the nuclear codes from Trump by instituting precautions and otherwise prevent him from taking any adverse military action.  Milley offered his resolute assurances to the speaker.
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Shortly thereafter, Milley convened a covert meeting with senior Pentagon officials, including the chain of command for the nation's nuclear arsenal.
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Asserting unfettered power that he did not have, the general instructed them that no one was to act on any orders for military strikes — even from President Trump — unless he, Milley, was personally involved and approved.  He insisted that everyone in the room verbally commit to effectively place him in charge.
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As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Milley serves only as an adviser to the president.  That is all.  His position is not within the chain of command overseeing the codes that control U.S.  nuclear weapons.
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Indeed, by law he is prohibited by from having any operational command authority over America's armed forces.  As such, his actions as described in the book were both treacherous and lawless.
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Under Article 94 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a person is guilty of sedition if he acts "with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of lawful civil authority."
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Usurping the power of the president as commander-in-chief and undermining his constitutional authority are grounds for a court-martial.
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Actively subverting or defying the elected, civilian control of the military is nothing more than a hijacking of our government by an advisor who thinks he can do so because he happens to have four stars resting on his shoulders.
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After ordering Pentagon officials to bypass President Trump and undertake no military incursions without first seeking his assent, Milley telephoned his counterpart in China.
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... he reassured Gen Li Zuocheng that the U.S.  would not initiate any type of attack amid American military exercises in the South China Sea.
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... allege that Milley promised he would warn the Chinese Communist Party in advance if the president were to launch an attack against the country.
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"We are not going to attack or conduct any kinetic operations against you.  General Li, you and I have known each other for five years.  If we're going to attack, I'm going to call you ahead of time.  It's not going to be a surprise."
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Bear in mind that there is no evidence that Trump ever contemplated such an attack, and he has said as much.
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Regardless, tipping off an enemy about a planned strike would not only allow opposing forces to prepare a potent defense but it would also enable them to mount a devastating preemptive attack against the U.S.
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Under Article 103b of the UCMJ, a person is guilty of aiding the enemy by providing intelligence or military information to the enemy without authority.
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Milley's communications with Li were allegedly made in secret and without President Trump's knowledge or consent.
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Conveying highly privileged military information, vital intelligence, or war plans to a foreign adversary might also constitute the crime of espionage under Article 103a of the UCMJ.
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No amount of rationalization can possibly justify an advisory general's seizure of the reins of power from an elected president so that he could wield it himself as he saw fit.
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It doesn't matter whether he had convinced himself that he was acting in the best interest of the American people.  It was not his judgment to make.  In a word, it's irrelevant.
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Under our system of military justice, Milley must be held accountable.  If the evidence merits a court-martial, he should be tried.  If crimes were committed, he will be convicted and sentenced.
      Gregg Jarrett: Pelosi's Jan.  6 committee is a charade that smacks of a cover-up.  What was her role?  (07/28/2021)
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Mark Twain once mused that if you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
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Pelosi's Democratic Party is the majority in the House of Representatives, albeit narrowly.  As speaker, she rules like a tyrant.
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She abides no dissent, tolerates no differing opinion, and is contemptuous of the truth.  Only her truth is indulged.  Any contrary evidence will be suppressed or covered up.
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Pelosi has no interest in the full story of what actually happened on Jan.  6.  She blames the great villain Donald Trump for everything and will countenance no other inquiry or outcome.  You must believe her or else.
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For Pelosi, it is not enough that the rioters who committed crimes are being prosecuted.  Nor that Trump was impeached (and acquitted) after he left office.  No, Pelosi demands more.
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Under threat of losing the majority in the midterm elections next year, she engineered a purely biased committee to do her bidding.  Its conclusions are pre-ordained, likely written by Pelosi herself.
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Ruthless Nancy is nothing if not obvious in her motives.  With her stranglehold on power in serious jeopardy, she is determined to keep battering Trump as her party's political pinata, hoping that votes will drop out like candies.
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But her more pressing objective is to deflect responsibility for her own suspected malfeasance.
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A fair, objective, and truth-seeking committee would surely investigate why our nation's Capitol was significantly unprotected on Jan.  6, notwithstanding advance intelligence warnings from the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and the Capitol Police itself that events could spiral out of control with violence.
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As speaker of the House, Pelosi plays a vital role in overseeing the Capitol Police and is partially responsible for maintaining adequate security.
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A comprehensive review by the Capitol Police's inspector general found that officers were hindered by poor leadership decisions and deficiencies in equipment, leaving them ill-prepared to respond to protestors who breached barricades and invaded the Capitol building.
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It is both natural and logical to ask, where was Pelosi in all of this?  Was she aware of the alarming threat assessments that painted a dire picture of rampant violence without a substantial back-up force from the D.C.  Metropolitan Police and/or the National Guard?
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Even worse, did she ignore the threat analysis and actively discourage a larger protection force?  Who initiated the order for officers not to employ more aggressive tactics to hold off the mob?
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... she has worked sedulously to avoid any inconvenient questions bearing on her own responsibility.  The prospect of being called as a witness to answer for her own conduct must have given her night terrors.
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This is precisely why Pelosi rejected a truly bipartisan committee and stacked the panel with inveterate Trump-haters.
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This was on full display during the opening session as the speaker's sycophants condemned Trump and conspicuously avoided any line of inquiry that might tarnish their boss...
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The inspector general has all but begged Congress to investigate the abysmal security failures, but Pelosi won't stand for it.  Perhaps she fears that her own incompetence (or malevolence) might be exposed for all to see.
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I suspect most Americans will see through Pelosi's charade.  There are vast swaths of information surrounding the terrible events of Jan.  6 that will never be examined thanks to her leadership.
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I would encourage all Americans to channel their inner Mark Twain to pause and reflect on that...
      Gregg Jarrett: Rep.  Adam Schiff's fury and outrage over seized phone records is a perverse irony  (Fox 06/16/2021)
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Rep.  Adam Schiff, D-Calif., threw an apoplectic fit the other day when he learned that what he did to others was done to him.  There is some perverse irony in all of this.  But, of course, Schiff neglected to mention his own hypocrisy.
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When Schiff learned last Thursday that his phone records had been collected he predictably accused Trump of using the DOJ as a "cudgel against his political opponents and members of the media." The House Democrat called it "a blatant attack on our democracy." Cue the feigned outrage and sanctimony.
• 
The insufferably self-righteous Schiff didn't bother to note that he was guilty of engaging in the exact same tactics.  Moreover, he was counting on the mainstream media to conceal it.  Naturally, they complied.
• 
Here's a quick refresher on Schiff's duplicity.  During the Trump impeachment proceedings in 2019, he secretly subpoenaed the phone records of ranking Intelligence Republican Devin Nunes of California, Trump attorneys Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow, attorney Victoria Toensing, journalist John Solomon, Fox News host Sean Hannity and others.
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Schiff then compounded the injustice by publishing the call records and some telephone numbers of those he had targeted.
• 
All the while, he refused to turn over any of his own electronic communications with the impeachment press and the so-called "whistleblower."
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It is equally troubling (but not surprising) that so many in the liberal media never considered it important –much less relevant– to inform their readers or viewers that Schiff's outrage over having his phone records subpoenaed must have been the same outrage that others felt when he did the identical thing to them.
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There is no balance or equivalency in today's press; there is only a shameless double standard.  The media yawned when Schiff covertly collected phone records of journalists and lawyers.  But now they're seething with anger that Trump's DOJ did it.
• 
Schiff has always been the beneficiary of media fawning because of his self-appointed role as Trump's chief antagonist in Congress.
• 
Documents made public last year show that Schiff knew all along that there was no credible evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.
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But that never stopped him from stoking incendiary rhetoric that his nemesis conspired with the Kremlin.  He claimed to have secret evidence (which never existed).  And the gullible media lapped it up.
      Gregg Jarrett: Dr.  Anthony Fauci should be criminally investigated  (Fox 06/11/2021)
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A criminal investigation should be opened into whether Dr.  Anthony Fauci lied to Congress when he denied that his agency helped fund dangerous experiments in a Wuhan laboratory that might have caused the COVID-19 pandemic that killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide.
• 
The newly unearthed emails show that Fauci was warned at the outset of the pandemic in late January of 2020 that the COVID-19 virus contained "unusual features" that "(potentially) look engineered" inside a laboratory.
• 
Unique genetic sequences not found in nature indicated that scientists might have manipulated cells to make the virus more virulent and contagious.
• 
Such gain-of-function experiments could have transformed the virus into a lethal "superbug" that then escaped from the lab and ravaged the world.
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Instead of disclosing that critical information to the public, Fauci did the opposite.  He trashed the idea as a crazy conspiracy, even as his own emails suggest that he seemed worried about a deadly man-made pandemic that leaked from the lab.  One pivotal message is inexplicably redacted.  Why?
• 
Fauci's determination to downplay this credible lab leak theory smacks of a cover-up designed to hide incriminating evidence of his agency's complicity in financing the Wuhan project.  But the emails are not the only damning evidence against Fauci.
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At a conference as far back as 2012, Fauci described gain-of-function as "reverse genetics," which he had energetically endorsed despite its known hazards.  Indeed, the NIH money that made its way to the Wuhan lab was specifically designated for "reverse genetics," according to the written grant.
• 
There is more than sufficient evidence to justify an investigation by the Department of Justice into whether Fauci gave deliberately deceptive or false testimony when he appeared before a Senate committee.
• 
Beyond Fauci's potential criminal culpability, there are civil actions at law that come into play.  His suspected conduct and the decisions by the NIH could precipitate an explosion of litigation involving wrongful death lawsuits, negligence cases for pain and suffering, and a myriad of claims over financial losses when global economies ground to a halt.
• 
Given the disastrous nature of the pandemic, damages would amount to trillions of dollars.  Is it any wonder that Fauci worked furiously to tamp down any talk of the lab leak theory and, instead, sought to blame the contagion on a natural transmission in the environment?
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Perhaps he feared he would be directly implicated in what could turn out to be the worse man-made catastrophe in world history.  Lives and livelihoods everywhere were ruined.
• 
At the very moment Fauci was being given persuasive genetic information that lab experiments in Wuhan appeared to have gone horribly wrong, he publicly derided the idea.
• 
Thousands of tests have failed to locate the infected bat population or identify an animal host.  It seems increasingly likely that no genesis transmission in nature has been located because none ever existed.
• 
What did exist was a controversial laboratory in Wuhan known for its shoddy safety protocols conducting risky experiments designed to genetically supercharge viruses to attack humans.  The first reported cases happened in or around the lab itself.
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Although scientific evidence seems to support the hypothesis that the virus was hatched in a laboratory, the origin of the outbreak is not known for sure.  Hence, it is imperative that an independent commission be established by Congress to investigate what happened...
• 
Fauci's dubious role in all of this should be included in the investigation.  If he sought to manipulate public opinion to undermine the truth and lied to or misled Congress in the process, he should be held legally accountable.
• 
There is growing suspicion that Fauci is not at all the saintly figure portrayed by the biased and gullible mainstream media.  Some now wonder whether he is mendacious or incompetent. 
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I'm betting he is both.
      NY's AG Letitia James' behavior is an affront to justice.  She is neither fair nor impartial  (Fox 05/20/2021)
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Before Democrat Letitia James was ever elected Attorney General of New York in 2018, she vowed to exploit the immense powers of that high office to investigate and prosecute then-President Donald Trump for his business transactions.
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Never mind that James was not privy to any evidence or documents that the then-president had ever violated state laws as a real estate developer.
• 
Being bereft of facts did not deter her from accusing Trump of everything from "money laundering" to "defrauding Americans."
• 
She publicly denounced him as an "illegitimate president" and constantly repeated her campaign pledge to take him down.
• 
Her bitter crusade was always an investigation in search of a crime.  She prejudged the merits of a case she had yet to bring and promised an outcome that was preordained.
• 
James is the kind of bete noire prosecutor who sullies the good name and reputation of honorable prosecutors everywhere.
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... the New York attorney general is under the mistaken impression that her prosecutorial power is an omnipotent weapon that can be used to selectively punish a political nemesis and to advance her own career in public office.  Her malign behavior is an affront to justice because it is so profoundly unethical.
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Under the code of conduct that governs prosecutors in New York, James is duty-bound to be fair and impartial.  She must refrain from methods that are calculated to produce prejudice.  Her decisions cannot be driven by political bias.  Her neutrality must be beyond question such that even the appearance of a conflict of interest is grounds for disqualification.
• 
James seems to have forgotten one of the most sacred cannons of professional ethics: the primary duty of a lawyer engaged in public prosecution is not to convict, but to see that justice is done.
• 
Yet, throughout her campaign speeches and post-election remarks, James committed herself to a legal course of action against Trump regardless of whether it was warranted and well before she gained access to any relevant evidence or facts.
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She accused him of conspiring with foreign governments, obstruction of justice, and a "pattern and practice of money laundering." She informed her supporters and the media that she was running for attorney general because "the man in the White House can't go a day without threatening our fundamental rights." ... James vowed to relentlessly pursue Trump, his organization, his family, and anyone in his orbit.
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Compare these remarks to the American Bar Association's ethical standard 2.1 which reads: "When deciding whether to initiate or continue an investigation, the prosecutor should not be influenced by partisan or other improper political considerations...or hostility or personal animus toward a potential subject."
• 
No reasonable person can believe sincerely that James did not breach her ethical duty under this strict professional standard.  To the contrary, she obliterated any semblance of fairness and impartiality with a pernicious investigation driven by prejudice.
• 
Her hatred of Trump is palpable and laid bare for all to see in her many chronic condemnations of him before she ever opened her investigation.
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Unwittingly, James has delivered to Trump a jurisprudential gift and self-sabotaged her own ability to prosecute.  Beyond recusal, he could demand that any criminal charges filed must be dismissed due to overwhelming evidence of bias.
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In other words, James has been chasing Trump, not crimes.  This is a flagrant violation of his due process rights which are designed to protect citizens from abusive prosecutions.  Her own incriminating words would be used against her.
• 
If a motion to dismiss fails, Trump could argue what's known as "selective prosecution" as a procedural defense.  That is, he was singled out by James for political and personal reasons, thus violating the guarantee of equal protection under the law.
• 
In several cases, the U.S.  Supreme Court has reminded prosecutors that they are constitutionally forbidden to bring criminal charges "that have a discriminatory effect and are motivated by a discriminatory purpose."
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Bear in mind that any criminal case brought by James would be exceedingly difficult to prove.  In valuing his holdings, seeking loans, and filing taxes, Trump has always relied scrupulously on the judgment and advice of real estate experts, lawyers, and tax accountants.
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Proving that he "intended" to violate the law by following the counsel of experienced professionals would be a tremendously high burden for any prosecutor to achieve.
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None of this seems to have occurred to Attorney General James.  For nearly three years, she has been waging an implacable political and personal vendetta against the 45th president. 
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In so doing, she has undermined herself, corrupted her high office, and debased the rule of law that was founded on the principle of fundamental fairness.  The words "Equal Justice" are not a mere nuisance engraved on the pediment of the Supreme Court.  They are a necessity in our constitutional republic. 
• 
Letitia James is the one who should be investigated for her malicious actions.
      It's time to crush Big Tech censorship before Facebook, Twitter and others crush us  (Fox 05/12/2021)
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Never before has so much power been held by so few.  And never before has that power been so egregiously abused.
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The censorship applied to American news consumers by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google, and Apple must be broken up.
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They have evolved into massive monopolies that pose a grave danger to democracy by suppressing speech with which they disagree.
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The staggering wealth and unbridled power of these tech giants allow them to punish political adversaries and protect partisan allies.  They do so with impunity and no regard for the public interest.
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In October of 2020, Facebook and Twitter shut down the spread of a New York Post story revealing the incriminating content of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden.  They blocked millions of voters from reading an accurate story of vital public interest.
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The move was instrumental in containing damage to Joe Biden's campaign just weeks before the presidential election.
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Since then, former president Donald Trump has been banned from Facebook indefinitely and banished from Twitter permanently.
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Parler, a social network favored by conservatives, was cut off completely when Amazon removed the site from its server, while Google and Apple deleted Parler's app from their app stores.
• 
Digital platforms increasingly dominate public discourse in today's social media environment.  The dissemination of speech and information is concentrated in the hands of a few private parties that control online content and platforms.  Today's oligarchs enforce their vast and influential dominion with an iron grip.
• 
They argue that as private companies they are not required to respect free speech rights and may act as they please.  In this they are correct inasmuch as the First Amendment protects against government interference, not private action.
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Therein rests the dilemma of what to do when private-sector behemoths repress speech and thought in the era of the commanding internet.
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The first option is for the government to recognize that these companies constitute clear monopolies in their respective markets — social networking, mobile content and apps, search and advertising, and e-commerce.
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Their sheer size, the tyranny they exert, and their anti-competitive conduct makes this obvious under any antitrust analysis.
• 
As such, a bold move must be made to treat them as public utilities that are strictly regulated such as electric, water, gas and telecommunications companies.  This will protect the public from tech abuses and free speech repression.
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In an honest world, the Biden administration would initiate and lead such action.  But it won't since Democrats, and Biden in particular, have been the great beneficiaries of tech censorship.
• 
Their progressive views align perfectly with the liberal establishment that operate today's technology companies.  Both have a common interest in maintaining the status quo of exploiting unchecked power over public discourse.  Manipulating the narrative is their objective.  And they're good at it.
• 
It is therefore most likely up to the federal courts and, in the end, the U.S.  Supreme Court to rectify the wrong.
• 
In an opinion last month involving Trump and Twitter that was dismissed as moot, Justice Clarence Thomas laid out a compelling argument that could be used in a future case before the high court to rein in social media companies by treating them as "common carriers" akin to utilities.  A platform's right to exclude users or censor content would be restricted or halted altogether.  They would be held accountable.
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"If the aim is to ensure that speech is not smothered, then the more glaring concern must perforce be the dominant digital platforms themselves," wrote Thomas.
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He cited historical precedence in the transportation and communications industries that would easily justify such pragmatic regulations to safeguard the public's greater interest in the free exchange of ideas and information.
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The second option is to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that gives unfettered legal protections to social media companies.  In essence, they are immune from liability in censoring material that they deem "objectionable".  This amorphous language allows them to do whatever they want without constraints.
• 
While Section 230 may have been a rational idea when the internet was a nascent endeavor and needed protection in order to grow, the anomalous exemption has long outlived its purpose.
• 
Today's tech giants hold unfathomable wealth derived from their unprecedented market power.  They are answerable to no one.
• 
This must change.  They should be subject to lawsuits and damages over unfair censorship, as well as their punitive actions in banning users based on mercurial (and politically driven) standards.
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It is abundantly clear that the current Congress controlled by Democrats won't act because it is against their self-interest to do so.  But if their majority is lost in next year's mid-term elections, Republicans must seize the moment to eliminate the now-ludicrous legal shield that has enabled companies like Facebook and Twitter to rage out of control.
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The third option is tied to the first.  It is a given that the above-named tech goliaths constitute unlawful digital monopolies that have emerged as instruments of suppression and coercive thought.
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The corporate overlords who run them have become, in many ways, more powerful than our own government.  This is anathema to the public's interest in a constitutional republic that has always been dependent on the principles of free expression.
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Hence, breaking up Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Google and Apple may represent the only logical choice if all else fails.  This will require time-consuming antitrust litigation that could stretch out over several years.
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These companies are a collective colossus with unlimited resources.  Like the railroad barons and oil tycoons before them, they will spare no amount of money to battle dissolution every step of the way.
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But if these corrective measures fail, America may cease being a beacon of freedom.  Corporate authoritarians will demand conformity.
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You'll be dispossessed on social media if you dare to offer a contrary view.  Just as they cornered their markets and crushed competition, they'll crush you.
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See related Election Interference (Antonio Branco, 10/16/2020) cartoon from Media picture album
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See related Out of Books (Mike Lester, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
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See related Marching (Mike Shelton, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Cuomo's nursing home scandal — what are the crimes that may have been committed?  (Fox 02/21/2021)
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News that the FBI and federal prosecutors are investigating New York Gov.  Andrew Cuomo's coronavirus task force in the deaths of thousands of nursing home patients and a suspected cover-up of the truth, invites the question: what crimes might have been committed?
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Let's begin with the obvious — obstruction of justice.
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If it is true that Cuomo's top aide Melissa DeRosa admitted to lawmakers that the state misrepresented the number of deaths in nursing homes to avoid having the data "used against us" in a Department of Justice probe, then DeRosa appears to have confessed to a potential obstruction charge.
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If there were others, including Cuomo, who knowingly participated in concealing the truth this could constitute a conspiracy to obstruct.
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Under the federal statute, a person can be found guilty of obstructing a "potential or pending investigation."
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In other words, if a government official falsifies or hides evidence to avoid triggering an investigation (or acts out of fear that such a probe may occur) that official is still culpable under the law of obstruction.
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What about the crime of defrauding the government?  In plain language, this means cheating the government.  But fraud is not limited to causing monetary loss or property damage.  The U.S.  Supreme Court has ruled that defrauding the government is also the act of interfering with "a lawful government function" such as investigations and the duty of a legislature to report truthful information to the public.
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If Cuomo or anyone in his administration provided false information to the New York State legislature or to any agency of the federal government by deceitful and dishonest means, then the government has been defrauded.
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Once again, the involvement of others in such a scheme or artifice would constitute a conspiracy to defraud the government.
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Does the evidence discovered thus far support such charges?  It seems so.
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... the stunning admission by DeRosa in a private phone call with Democrat lawmakers that the numbers were doctored to shield against a federal investigation.
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But what about the deaths themselves?  Could Cuomo be criminally charged for causing more than a thousand deaths when he issued an order on March 25, 2020, to send infected patients into nursing homes where elderly and infirm residents were most at risk of dying?
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If Cuomo's name was Trump, you can bet there would be a cacophony of calls for his criminal indictment for murder.
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In reality, murder is a stretch.  Standard definitions involve the intent to kill.  Being arrogant, uncaring, and making dumb decisions are not enough under the law and do not rise to the legal requirement of intent.
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Nevertheless, there is a provision in New York law whereby second-degree murder is defined as reckless conduct "which creates a grave risk of death to another person and thereby causes the death of another person."
• 
Involuntary manslaughter carries a similar reckless standard but with a lesser level of proof in its language.
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Was Cuomo's decision so wanton and reckless that it was foreseeable that vulnerable nursing home residents exposed to COVID patients would die by the thousands?  In retrospect, perhaps.  But it would be an exceedingly difficult case to make to a jury.
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The offense of reckless endangerment is more relevant.  In New York, a person can be charged under this statute for "recklessly engaging in conduct which creates a substantial risk of serious physical injury to another person."
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This is something that an aggressive prosecutor might consider, but it is doubtful that even this lower charge would ever be leveled against Cuomo in the liberal state of New York.
• 
It was obvious from the outset that the New York governor's order was causing an appalling spike in nursing home deaths.  Under pressure, he reversed himself and rescinded his directive on May 10, 2020.
• 
But it was too late.  Thousands of patients had been exposed and died.  Cuomo's malfeasance killed those who needed his help the most.  They can now be counted as his victims.
• 
Cuomo has never accepted responsibility for his poor decision-making nor apologized to the families that lost loved ones who should never have died.
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Instead, he has blamed nursing home staff, visitors, other agencies, conservatives in the media, and of course Donald Trump.
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The governor's persistent and most vacuous excuse is that his decision was based on "President Trump's CDC guidance." This is both absurd and demonstrably false.
• 
Before Cuomo issued his fateful order, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a stern advisory that virus-infected patients must be isolated.  "It is critical that long-term care facilities implement active measures to prevent introduction of COVID-19," it read.
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Yet, Cuomo pressured nursing homes to accept patients who were infected and insisted that they "must comply." Parents, grandparents, and others died as a direct consequence.
• 
It is too early to know whether federal prosecutors will bring criminal charges against Cuomo and/or his confederates for obstruction of justice, fraud, and conspiracy.
• 
But his attempt to cover-up his wrongful actions shows no signs of abating.  His propensity for bullying people who dare to disagree with him is in full swing.
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As the pandemic raged, Cuomo somehow found the time to pen a nauseatingly self-righteous book titled, "American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic."
• 
The sequel should be called, "American Failure: How My Arrogance Killed Thousands."
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See related The Joker (Gary Varvel, 05/19/2020) cartoon from Government picture album
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See related Flattened the Curve... (Mike Shelton, 09/11/2020) cartoon from Government picture album
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See related For Leadership... (Mike Shelton, 11/23/2020) cartoon from Government picture album
      Trump impeachment trial — defense skillfully destroys Dems' case against former president  (Fox 02/12/2021)
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In the course of one extraordinary hour, the defense team for former President Donald Trump thoroughly demolished the impeachment case against him that House Managers spent two days alleging. 
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It was a resounding and humiliating defeat.  The defense could have rested its case after the first 60 minutes.  It was over.  They won hands down.  In the end, Trump's lawyers used less than three hours of their allotted 16 hours before resting.
• 
The brilliance of the defense was the use of videotape to exonerate Trump.  They beat prosecutors at their own game.
• 
The clips showed the shameful hypocrisy of both the managers and Democrats who have absurdly accused Trump of inciting an insurrection by using the terms "fight" and "fight like hell" when he spoke to a crowd of supporters on January 6, 2021.
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The damning video presented by the defense showed each and every House Manager voicing the identical words (and in the same context) that Trump had used — as a political metaphor.
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Democratic Senators were also seen repeatedly using "fight" and "fight like hell." Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) uttered it more than 50 times.  Vice President Kamala Harris invoked the words close to 70 times.
• 
But it didn't stop there.  President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Rep.  Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and scores of other prominent Democrats were heard hurling rhetoric that was far uglier than anything Trump said on January 6th.
• 
Some even wished aloud that they could punch Trump in the face.  Biden envisioned beating him up.
• 
By their own twisted incitement standard, all those Democrats would be evicted from office.
• 
Another series of video clips showed Democrats seeming to tolerate, condone, and encourage the violence that consumed American cities last summer.  This was juxtaposed with the hideous scenes of the violence itself — assaults, batteries, looting, vandalism, arson, and wholesale destruction of property.  There were murders, too, but this was not shown.
• 
The defense team handily destroyed the House Managers' ancillary argument that Trump should be convicted because he ginned up emotion by wrongfully telling his supporters that the election result was rigged or stolen.
• 
On the television screens Senators took a trip down memory lane as numerous Democrats, including Pelosi and former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, claimed the same thing in a past election result they didn't like.
• 
The most devastating moment came when Schoen accused his counterparts of unconscionable dishonesty and duplicity.  "House managers manipulated evidence, deceptively edited videos, and falsely represented tweets," he declared.  And then he proceeded to prove it with undeniable evidence.
• 
Armed with a collection of visuals, Schoen showed how an important tweet by Trump appeared to have been significantly altered and how numerous videos involving the former president had been cleverly doctored to transform exculpatory evidence into incriminating evidence.
• 
If this were a court of law, the prosecutors would be held in criminal contempt and tossed in the hoosegow.
• 
The centerpiece of Trump's defense rested on the actual words he used on the day of the riots.  House Managers deliberately concealed those words during their two-day presentation of evidence.
• 
Once again, the video exposed their malice.  Trump was seen telling his supporters to behave "peacefully and patriotically" as they made their "voices heard" in support of Republicans who were challenging the electoral votes.
• 
Never once did Trump encourage or advocate violence or destruction of property, as Democrats have persistently asserted.  Their impeachment said Schoen, "is driven by hatred, vitriol, and political opportunism."
• 
In a thirst for vengeance against a man they have long loathed, they deprived Trump of due process, contorted the evidence against him, and lied about what truly occurred.
• 
Their ultimate goal is to prevent Trump from ever running for president again.  As defense attorney Michael Van Der Veen reasoned, "They want congressional control over which private citizen can run for office... they want to disqualify a political opponent."
• 
He condemned this as nothing more than "constitutional cancel culture." He is absolutely correct.
• 
The defense readily acknowledged that the violence that took place at the Capitol Building was despicable.  But in their rush to judgment, Democrats plotted to exploit that tragedy for partisan gain.
• 
In the process, they attempted to strip Trump of his primary defense under the First Amendment.  They sought to punish him by impeachment for exercising his right to free speech.
• 
Van Der Veen put it best when he said, "This sham impeachment threatens political speech everywhere."
      Pelosi's impeachment charade undermined by evidence the Capitol attack was planned in advance  (Fox 02/09/2021)
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It is a perfunctory exercise with a pre-ordained outcome of acquittal that was forced on them by a House Speaker consumed with hatred and a Democrat caucus that resembles lemmings marching to the sea.
• 
Treating impeachment like a bag of "minute rice," Pelosi cooked up the case against former President Donald Trump without bothering to scrutinize the true facts of what happened when rioters invaded the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021.
• 
Instead of conducting a comprehensive investigation and then examining all the gathered evidence, the Speaker engineered a rash and reckless vote just days after the attack based solely on the frailty of the emotional moment.
• 
Substantial and compelling evidence has emerged that the attackers planned their assault days and weeks in advance.
• 
Much of this evidence collected by the FBI shows that the criminal conduct was not incited by Trump's speech on January 6th but was the result of a previously coordinated and premeditated plot to invade the Capitol and disrupt Congress as it tallied the electoral votes in the presidential election.
• 
The genesis of the conspiracy, according federal authorities, dates back to November of 2020, shortly after the election but well before the Electoral College convened in December to award the presidency to Joe Biden.
• 
Not only was the FBI aware of a potential attack on the U.S.  Capitol, but local law enforcement in Washington, D.C.  knew that violence was likely to occur.
• 
Had the House Speaker acted responsibly by holding hearings and soliciting evidence before voting to impeach, the nation might have been spared yet another specious Senate trial driven by a rush to judgment.
• 
But this is what Pelosi does.  Rage replaces reason.  In a feverish race to blame Trump, she never hesitates to violate established House rules designed to ensure fairness and due process.
• 
We've seen this tired movie before.  More than a year ago, Pelosi launched the first impeachment inquiry improperly — without approval from the full House.  She sanctioned secret hearings in a basement bunker of the Capitol and then blitzed impeachment through the House with record speed.
• 
Trump's easy acquittal in the Senate was a humiliating defeat for the House Speaker and an extravagant waste of time.
• 
But Pelosi is so consumed by her hatred for Trump that she can't seem to get out of her own way.  Her determination to impeach him all over again is constitutionally anemic since Trump is no longer president.
• 
More importantly, his speech on the national mall does not come close to meeting the definition of incitement.  He urged supporters to protest "peacefully." At no time did he direct or advocate violence or destruction of property.  His words constitute political speech protected by the First Amendment.
• 
Pelosi, no doubt, will be standing in the wings urging Senators to endorse another of her fatuous and frivolous impeachments.  "Once more, with feeling this time!"
• 
See related Tantrum! (Mike Shelton, 01/14/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Democrats' impeachment of Trump – here's why this is a lost cause  (Fox 02/03/2021)
• 
The inexorable outcome of the Senate trial set to begin the week of Feb.  8, 2021, was ordained the moment 45 Republicans voted last week to dismiss the case against Trump on the ground that the Senate "lacks jurisdiction over the 45th president because he holds no public office from which he can be removed."
• 
To their credit, some on the GOP side must have actually read Article II of the Constitution which provides that the "The President" – not a former president who is now a private citizen – "shall be removed from Office on Impeachment and Conviction."
• 
Yet, Democrats maintain the tortured illusion that a person can be removed from an office he no longer holds.
• 
Thankfully, the Framers did not pen the Constitution with disappearing ink.  They meant what they wrote and memorialized it in such plain language that a simpleton could absorb it.
• 
Of course, this means there are at least 55 senators who are severely challenged when it comes to reading comprehension.  Or maybe they just don't care about that pesky document called the Constitution.
• 
Against this backdrop, the impending impeachment trial in the Senate is little more than a farce.  But it was rendered so by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her fellow Democrats who abandoned all semblance of due process by rushing to impeach in the House without holding a single hearing.
• 
They denounced Trump for "inciting an insurrection," but never bothering to present any evidence before casting their predictable votes.
• 
There is a manifest reason why Pelosi and her confederates chose to deprive Trump of his due process rights – they had no credible and incriminating evidence to present.
• 
They knew the full content of Trump's speech at the national mall on Jan.  6, 2021.  He encouraged the crowd "to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
• 
At no point did he advocate violence or destruction of property.  The exculpatory evidence is on tape.  You can watch it yourself on "YouTube" or any video platform.
• 
Did Trump express his views about the election passionately?  Yes, but what political speech does not embrace emotional rhetoric designed to motivate the audience?
• 
Take a moment to examine some of Pelosi's own bombast – courtesy of any search engine.  Over the past four years, she has publicly accused Trump of racism, fascism, treason, sedition, bribery and causing mass deaths.
• 
Incendiary?  Absolutely.  Trump's words on Jan.  6 seem to pale by comparison.
• 
I have repeatedly argued that Trump's remarks that day were foolhardy and driven by a dogmatic, indeed unfounded, belief that Congress had the authority to reverse the election result.
• 
However mistaken his opinion may have been, Trump was entitled to express it just as Democrats did in 2017 when they, too, mounted a campaign to contest the electoral vote in Congress.
• 
In America, we call this free speech.  It is a protected and cherished right under the First Amendment.
• 
Significantly, there is no plausible evidence to be found anywhere in Trump's address that supports the definition of incitement.  Being wrong in your convictions is neither a crime nor an impeachable offense.
• 
This is where the law lends clarity.  In her floor speech on Jan.  13, 2021, shortly before the House voted to impeach, Pelosi posed to her colleagues a carefully crafted rhetorical question as her primary indictment of Trump: "Were his words and insurrectionary mob a high crime and misdemeanor?"
• 
Examine that statement closely.  Pelosi cleverly contrived a non-sequitur.  She conflated two separate and very different actions to imply that Trump was responsible for what the mob did.  The rioters committed crimes, but Trump did not.  Pelosi knows this.
• 
Nowhere in his speech did Trump advocate or direct imminent harm, as the law of incitement demands.  Moreover, incitement requires proof of the speaker's specific intent to cause violence.
• 
There is no evidence whatsoever that Trump intended for the mob to launch an assault on the Capitol building, breach security, attack police, threaten lawmakers, riot, vandalize, loot and commit rampant criminality.  None of those malign acts can be reasonably inferred from his spoken words.
• 
Pelosi's deceptive question was designed to convict Trump by association (not causation) because she knows there is a paucity of evidence that Trump was the proximate cause of the crimes perpetrated by the mob.  This is why Pelosi summarily dispensed with a hearing in the House and its mandated presentment of evidence.
• 
Pelosi is now demanding that the Senate do what she refused to do – present evidence by calling witnesses.
• 
Fine.  Let's hear the testimony of Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who revealed on Tuesday that she received text messages warning of the expected violence one week before the riots.
• 
Really?  So, how is it possible for Trump to have incited violence that was planned before he delivered his speech at the Ellipse?  That illogic must have escaped AOC when she voted to impeach Trump.
• 
In my last column, I called this a "counterfeit impeachment." But it's worse than that.  It is an egregious assault on the principle of fundamental fairness that has long been the foundation of our democratic institutions.
• 
How can Americans have trust in a Congress so riven with bias and blinded by hatred that it is willing to contort the meaning of the Constitution to achieve an illegitimate and vindictive end?
• 
Our Founding Fathers – no strangers to corrupt politicians and unjust governments – would be ashamed.
• 
See related Tantrum! (Mike Shelton, 01/14/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Pelosi seeks retaliation in Trump impeachment trial — get ready for 'the sequel'  (Fox 01/25/2021)
• 
Pelosi and her colleagues didn't bother to abide by their own established rules that call for hearings, presentation of evidence and witnesses, the right to cross-examine those witnesses, the right of defense counsel to be present, and the right of an accused to mount his own defense.
• 
By depriving Trump of the essential rights of due process, they abandoned all semblance of fairness in an impetuous bid to pass what can only be described as a "counterfeit impeachment."
• 
This thin veneer of legitimacy will not withstand scrutiny in the Senate when the trial is expected to commence on Monday, February 8, 2021.
• 
Republican senators are sure to assail the trampling of fundamental rights that are a cherished part of any trial process, including impeachment.
• 
A motion to dismiss the case on this basis must be seriously considered.
• 
A dismissal motion should also argue that the Senate lacks jurisdiction and authority to hold an impeachment trial of a private citizen who cannot be removed from office.
• 
It is obviously an impossibility to expel a person from an office he has already left.
• 
Take a moment to read the text of Article II of the U.S.  Constitution.  It states that "The President...shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High Crimes and Misdemeanors."
• 
Yet, Trump is no longer "The President" as the Constitution defines it because Joe Biden is.  We have one president at a time.
• 
As law professor Jonathan Turley has correctly argued, removal from office is the primary purpose of impeachment.  Inasmuch as Trump does not hold a federal office, a belated Senate trial of the former president would be invalid and unconstitutional.
• 
Some have argued that the value of a retroactive Senate impeachment trial is to bar Trump from holding future federal office.  However, a strict reading of the Constitution indicates that disqualification from office is a secondary purpose.  Indeed, it is a separate vote that can happen only after the Senate decides on removal.  In other words, it is an optional, discretionary, and contingent penalty.  Without removal, there can be no disqualification.  Since Trump cannot now be removed from an office he does not hold, such a disqualification vote would not be constitutionally valid.
• 
If Congress is allowed to prevent private citizens from holding office by the practice of retroactive impeachments, what is there to stop it from deploying this tactic to forbid anyone they might politically oppose in the future?  The answer is nothing.  This is surely not what the Framers intended.
• 
Given the current composition of the U.S.  Senate (a 50-50 tie with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the deciding vote), a motion to dismiss may not succeed for purely political, instead of constitutional, reasons.  Trump's defenders will then be forced to argue the case based on its conspicuous lack of merit.
• 
Did Trump truly "incite an insurrection," as the impeachment article alleges?  It appears that Democrats cavalierly assumed that Trump was the proximate cause of the violence without ever bothering to consider what he actually told the gathered crowd.
• 
In relevant part, here is what Trump said: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
• 
Nowhere in Trump's remarks did he advocate violence or destruction of property.  He did not direct or encourage protesters to launch an assault on the Capitol building, breach security, attack police, threaten lawmakers, riot, vandalize, loot, and engage in seditious conduct.
• 
To the contrary, Trump called on the crowd to act "peacefully." He urged them to make their "voices heard," not their actions devolve into violence.
• 
Under the law, incitement requires the speaker to be clear, obvious, and unequivocal in directing specific acts of imminent harm.  There is no evidence Trump did this.
• 
Yes, he extolled people to voice support for Republican lawmakers who were contesting the electoral vote and to "fight like hell" in their challenge of that result.  But encouraging a public demonstration is not the same thing as inciting criminal acts.
• 
There is a big difference between rousing passions in a speech — which all politicians do — and inciting an insurrection.  The former is protected by free speech, while the latter is not.
• 
As I have argued before, Trump's remarks on January 6, 2021 were ill-advised, if not foolhardy.  They were driven by an obstinate refusal to accept defeat and the mistaken belief that Congress had the constitutional authority to reverse the outcome by altering the tally of electoral votes.
• 
But his words that day do not remotely constitute an impeachable offense or meet the legal definition of incitement.
• 
The violence on our nation's Capitol was grotesque and disgraceful.  Those who committed crimes must be prosecuted and punished.
• 
However, what happened there does not constitute grounds for impeaching Trump, nor should Congress be permitted to compound the tragedy by contorting the meaning of impeachment for political gain or persecution.
• 
It is time to end the politics of revenge.  An assault on our seat of government should not give rise to an assault on our Constitution.
      Gregg Jarrett: Pelosi and Schumer wrong to claim Trump can be removed with 25th Amendment  (Fox 01/08/2021)
• 
Against this legislative backdrop, the 25th Amendment has no application to the circumstances that unfolded Wednesday.  Pelosi and Schumer don't care about that.  In a shameless ploy, they seek to bastardize a constitutional standard for partisan gain.
• 
The objective of the Democratic leaders is to score political points by further demonizing Trump during the last two weeks of his presidency.  Their previous efforts ended in failure.  Trump-Russia collusion proved to be a hoax.  The attempt to remove the president by impeachment was a predictable bust.
• 
Many Democrats and some in the mainstream media accuse Trump of inciting violence and an insurrection against the United States on Wednesday.
• 
Yet, the record (and videotape) of the president's remarks to supporters who rallied in Washington does not back this up in any criminal sense.
• 
As he has done so often since the Nov.  3 election, Trump argued to the gathered crowd that widespread fraud had "stolen" the presidency from him.  Both state and federal courts have consistently rejected this claim.  Nonetheless, Trump told his supporters "we will never concede."
• 
The president then extolled the crowd to march to the Capitol where objections to the Electoral College vote count were being presented by Republican House members and senators (mimicking what Democrats did in 2004).
• 
Nowhere in the president's remarks did he advocate acts of violence or destruction of property.  He did not direct the protesters to launch an assault on the Capitol building, breach security, riot, and engage in seditious conduct.
• 
Under the law, encouraging a demonstration of grievances is not the same thing as inciting criminal acts.  For the latter to attach, the language of the speaker must be clear, obvious and unequivocal.
• 
Make no mistake: the lawless display of violence inside the Capitol was appalling and disgraceful.
• 
Those who smashed windows and doors, looted and vandalized federal property, threatened lawmakers, and assaulted police officers are nothing more than common criminals.  They should be arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned.
• 
It will not be forgotten that five people — including a Capitol Police officer — lost their lives.
• 
Regardless of his intentions, President Trump's involvement in Wednesday's tragic and sad spectacle is not without responsibility or recrimination.  It will serve as an indelible stain on his legacy.
• 
He seems incapable of moving beyond the first two stages of grief — denial and anger.  He may never be able to reach the fifth stage of acceptance, although he acknowledged in a video released Thursday night that "a new administration will be inaugurated Jan.  20th."
• 
Yes, there are serious questions about election integrity and voting improprieties that need to be addressed by both Congress and individual state legislatures.  This must be done soon if Americans are to have any confidence in their representative democracy.
• 
But the kind of major fraud that would reverse the election outcome never materialized in the way the president's legal team promised, at least to the satisfaction of dozens of judges who considered the many challenges.
• 
Trump's failure to gracefully, if grudgingly, concede defeat constitutes a stunning act of political self-immolation.  He will likely be remembered not for his considerable accomplishments in a single term, but how he left office embittered by an ignominious obsession.  It did not have to end this way.
      In Russia hoax probe, fired FBI Deputy Director McCabe gives ludicrous defense of misconduct  (Fox 11/11/2020)
• 
Fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe wants his old job back.  Heaven help us.
• 
It's hard to think of anyone who?  did more sustained damage to the FBI than McCabe.  Well ... maybe two other odious characters: fired FBI Director James Comey and fired counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok.  It's a close call.
• 
All three bad actors demolished the good name and reputation of the once-vaunted law enforcement agency.  It's quite possible that the bureau may never recover.
• 
Smug and arrogant as ever, McCabe appeared Tuesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee and brushed aside all the evidence of the FBI's abuse of power under his watch.  He dismissed it as mere mistakes, not malevolence.
• 
To hear him tell it, the FBI is guilty only of monumental incompetence — as if that's a benediction.
• 
... McCabe was a key participant in corruption, in his case at the FBI.  He presided over every decision in the bureau's misbegotten investigation of Trump and his campaign.
• 
... there was never any plausible evidence that someone connected to Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election.
• 
There was no credible evidence to justify the FBI's intrusive investigation, which included undercover informants, secret recordings, and illegally obtained surveillance warrants.
• 
Before Trump's inauguration in January 2017, McCabe's agents tracked down Steele's main source, Igor Danchenko, who promptly discredited the dossier as nothing more than multiple hearsays and rank speculation, some of which emanated from Danchenko's drinking buddies.
• 
It was also determined that parts of the dossier were likely Russian disinformation and that the Russia Hoax itself was invented by none other than Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to smear Republican candidate Trump with an alleged scandal.
• 
Did McCabe know this?  It is inconceivable that he did not.  But ... McCabe insisted that he was oblivious to the exculpatory evidence and knew nothing at all about what his own agents had discovered.
• 
Documents prove that McCabe was intimately involved in every facet of the Trump investigation, codenamed "Crossfire Hurricane."
• 
Yet, McCabe professed complete ignorance of the pervasive deceit, misfeasance and corruption that contaminated the case.
• 
Evidence of Trump's innocence was scrupulously concealed by McCabe's FBI.
• 
"If you knew then what you know now, would you have signed the warrant application in June 2017 against Carter Page?" Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked McCabe.
• 
"No, sir," McCabe said.
• 
Everything else was wrapped in puerile ineptitude and amnesia.  McCabe feigned no recollection whatsoever of the infamous meeting in his office with Peter Strzok and Strzok's lover, Lisa Page, where the subject of an "insurance policy" against Trump's election was discussed.
• 
McCabe didn't recall writing a text message expressing his hope that Trump would lose to Clinton.
• 
Nor did McCabe remember whether he authorized the decision to keep open the FBI's investigation of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn in January of 2017, even though his own investigators had determined Flynn had done nothing wrong.
• 
... McCabe struggled to explain why he thought Flynn presented a national security threat for daring to speak with the Russian ambassador to the U.S.  during the presidential transition period.
• 
Conversations like this with foreign officials are something that all transition teams do to prepare the incoming administration for the foreign policy challenges ahead.  Hundreds of such conversations typically occur.
• 
n one fiery exchange, Sen.  Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed out that former Vice President Joe Biden has recently spoken with foreign leaders about his forthcoming policy agenda, as widely reported.
• 
"Do you believe Joe Biden is violating the Logan Act?" Cruz asked.
• 
McCabe refused to answer, claiming that he wasn't certain whether Biden had been conversing with foreign officials.
• 
Sen.  John Kennedy, R-La., mocked the hypocrisy in McCabe's actions.  "Gen.  Flynn's been prosecuted for lying to the FBI.  You lied to the FBI, and you are not being prosecuted.  Don't you think that sends the wrong message to the American people?"
• 
McCabe was fired for repeatedly lying to the FBI (and his own boss) and obstructing its investigation after he authorized the furtive disclosure to a reporter of sensitive information to "advance his personal interests."
• 
Naturally, McCabe blames Trump and is suing to get his old job back.  "I did nothing wrong," he claimed.
• 
Given the extraordinary damage McCabe did to the FBI, the bureau would roll up the welcome mat and lock the doors.  McCabe knows this, which is why he seems perfectly contented now as a paid CNN commentator spewing his anti-Trump bile.
• 
Where else could a documented liar land gainful employment?
      Facebook and Twitter's censorship is an insult to democracy — they must stop or be broken up  (Fox 10/15/2020)
• 
The great Twitter and Facebook masquerade is over.  Posing as disinterested and neutral media platforms, they have unmasked themselves as partisan protectors of Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden and propaganda advocates of the progressive cause.
• 
It is time that Twitter and Facebook be forced to halt their destructive practices or be broken up.
• 
The two technology giants wield too much marketplace power in the ever-expanding social media universe.  With power comes abuse.
• 
This was on full display Wednesday when both Twitter and Facebook blocked access to a New York Post story offering stunning email evidence that Biden may have exploited his position as vice president to financially benefit his son, Hunter Biden.
• 
If the Post's evidence is authentic, as it appears to be, it would put a lie to the candidate's previous denials that he engaged in influence peddling and knew nothing about his son's business dealings.
• 
... a smoking-gun message from a top executive at the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma thanking Hunter for arranging a meeting with his father in Washington.
• 
The son was being paid a minimum of $50,000 a month by Burisma to sit on its board, even though he had absolutely no experience in either natural gas or Ukrainian affairs.
• 
As Hunter was pocketing the cash, his company Burisma was under siege for suspected corrupt practices and searching desperately for a way to quash any government action against it.  Emails from Burisma asked Hunter to tap his influence.
• 
It is obvious why Hunter Biden was being paid such an outlandish sum of money every month despite his utter lack of qualifications.
• 
Burisma was in deep trouble.  It was searching for a powerful political figure who could exert pressure on Ukraine to leave the company alone.
• 
Joe Biden fit the bill perfectly.  He was the vital point-person in the Obama Administration's foreign policy directives to Ukraine.
• 
Sure enough, the elder Biden intervened and later bragged about it on camera.  He threatened to withhold $1 billion in U.S.  aid to Ukraine unless the chief prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, was fired from his job.
• 
Shokin is on record stating that he was poised to launch a criminal investigation of Burisma where Hunter Biden was employed.  With his termination, all of that suddenly and magically vanished.
• 
What inexorable conclusion can we draw from this?  The evidence is compelling that Vice President Joe Biden used the powers of his high office and taxpayer money to take action that benefited a foreign company that was paying his son.
• 
Is that a crime?  It could be.  It certainly merits an investigation because it is a felony for a public official to confer a benefit to a foreign government (for example, a billion dollars in financial assistance) in exchange for something of value to himself or a relative.
• 
While it is true that not all acts of wrongdoing constitute crimes, the facts as presented by the Post deserve scrutiny by both the media and voters who are poised to cast — and, in some states, have already cast — their ballots in a presidential election.
• 
In his pointed attacks on Trump, Biden has made character and corruption an issue.  So, too, have many Democrats and the press.
• 
Shouldn't Biden be held to the same standard of fitness and rectitude that he demands of his opponent?  Of course he should.  Biden has unwittingly invited the scrutiny he now deserves. 
• 
And yet, Twitter, Facebook, and many in the media have sought to suppress the evidence reported by the Post.
• 
The damning emails come from a laptop computer that almost certainly belongs to Hunter Biden.  It was dropped off at a repair shop in Delaware and never retrieved by its owner.
• 
In the process of fixing the computer, the shop owner discovered the material, grew alarmed about its contents, and notified the FBI.  Armed with a subpoena issued by a Delaware grand jury, the bureau seized the laptop and its hard drive in December of last year.
• 
What followed was conspicuous (if not disturbing) silence.  No meaningful action was taken.
• 
Concerned that evidence of wrongdoing involving a presidential candidate was being buried as the election draws near, the shop owner gave a copy of the hard drive to President Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.  From there, the Post gained access and reported its contents.
• 
Almost immediately, Facebook initiated a blackout maneuver "reducing" the ability of users to distribute the Post article and its supporting email evidence.  Facebook described the story as "potentially harmful" and it hadn't verified its legitimacy
• 
Nearly every major story is "potentially harmful" to someone.  If that is the standard, Facebook would have no media traffic.
• 
Moreover, since when does Facebook verify the legitimacy of articles that are damaging to President Trump?  The answer is never.
• 
Think of all the "collusion" stories that were peddled by major news organizations that were unverified and wrong.  Facebook didn't restrict or ban those.
• 
More recently, Facebook did not restrict or ban access to a New York Times "potentially harmful" story on Trump's taxes that was based on unnamed sources and documents the newspaper refused to produce.
• 
Yet, the New York Post is not permitted to post its story on Biden based on documents it actually did produce.  This is nothing more than selective and dangerous censorship motivated by political bias.  It is also an effort to influence an election by the withholding of relevant information.
• 
Twitter also banned the Post story, claiming that it violated its "Hacked Materials Policy." Except the material wasn't hacked at all.  Hacking is unauthorized access.
• 
The repair shop was granted authorized access to fix the water-damaged laptop.  Thereafter, the device was abandoned without compensation, giving the repair shop constructive ownership.
• 
Twitter's excuse for repressing the Post story is inane.  It disingenuously declared that its policy "prohibits content obtained without authorization." Really?
• 
Twitter must have forgotten the countless stories it has allowed that were anonymously sourced from leaked classified documents that were illegally obtained and disseminated.
• 
The unconscionable actions of these two tech giants has produced such outrage that it only managed to elevate — not suppress — the Post's story about Biden.
• 
While there is some satisfaction in that boomerang effect, there is no doubt that both Twitter and Facebook will continue their partisan manipulation of information until they are stopped.
• 
Congress is now duty-bound to impose new restrictions on such marketplace abuse.
• 
At the same time, the Justice Department must consider levying severe penalties or, preferably, breaking up both companies under anti-trust laws.
• 
Too much power and little accountability is a recipe for destructive behavior that is anathema to our cherished freedoms.
• 
Like a witness who incriminates himself, the politically driven decisions by Facebook and Twitter are the best evidence against them.
      'Russia hoax' was lie created by Hillary Clinton and one of the dirtiest political tricks ever  (Fox 10/07/2020)
• 
For Hillary Clinton, inventing the lie was easy.  Spreading the lie was even easier.
• 
For President Trump, uncovering the truth has been hard.  The truth always has its enemies.
• 
This is the maxim – and chilling lesson – of the Russia hoax.
• 
Newly declassified handwritten notes authored by former CIA Director John Brennan show that on July 28, 2016, he briefed President Barack Obama on intelligence evidence that Clinton had approved a plan to vilify Trump with false accusations that he was colluding with Russia.
• 
She did it, the intel concluded, to distract from her own damaging email scandal.
• 
It was an audacious plot put in motion by one of Clinton's foreign policy advisers and then sanctioned by the then-Democrat presidential candidate on July 26.  But the genesis of the smear came from Clinton herself.
• 
For months, she had peppered her campaign speeches with increasingly venomous accusations that her opponent was a Kremlin asset and a "puppet of Putin."
• 
There was not a shred of plausible evidence.  It was a shameless lie drawn from the insidious depths of Clinton's fictive imagination.  It was magnificently devious and classic Clinton.
• 
But the lie didn't stop there.  Through a conduit, her campaign commissioned an ex-British spy who composed an anti-Trump dossier of rumors and disinformation derived from a suspected Russian spy.
• 
These fabricated stories were then secretly and sedulously fed to James Comey's FBI and the gullible media, both of whom went after Trump with a vengeance.
• 
The result was the greatest mass delusion in American history and one of the dirtiest political tricks ever perpetrated.
• 
In short, it was Clinton who invented, financed and disseminated the collusion hoax.
• 
The intelligence community caught on to Clinton's machinations.  The evidence of what she had done was so credible and persuasive that Brennan determined Obama must be informed immediately.
• 
That briefing is memorialized in Brennan's top-secret notes that have been buried for four long years in the bowels of the vast intelligence apparatus.  Until now.
• 
John Ratcliffe, the new director of National Intelligence, deserves credit for having the courage to dig up and make public the shocking proof.  But it should have happened long ago.
• 
On May 23, 2019, President Trump granted Attorney General William Barr "full and complete authority" to declassify and unveil the carefully guarded government secrets in the Russia investigation.
• 
Trump directed that it be done quickly to "ensure that all Americans learn the truth about the actions that were taken and to restore confidence in our public institutions."
• 
So, why did it take more than 16 months?  The answer is an indictment of the nefarious elements working destructively within our nation's clandestine intelligence operations.
• 
It is truly reprehensible that the CIA, FBI and Obama concealed this vital information over the last four tumultuous years.
• 
The truth would have dramatically altered Trump's presidency, spared Americans from a rancorous national nightmare, and saved taxpayers $30 million in a phony investigation.
• 
It was Clinton who should have been investigated for promulgating a lie, not Trump.
• 
And yet, Obama remained silent.  Did he do so to protect Clinton, his chosen successor, and to destroy Trump?  The question answers itself.
• 
The former president sat idly by and watched as the country devolved into convulsive turmoil.  He uttered not a word about the incriminating evidence he had seen.
• 
Brennan shares equal blame.  As a paid commentator for MSNBC, he repeatedly stoked the odious narrative that Trump was a Russian asset, knowing full well that it was untrue.  He even accused Trump of treason.
• 
It should surprise no one that Comey's dirty fingerprints are all over the collusion lie.
• 
Comey's sudden onset of acute amnesia was laughably preposterous.  When the CIA tells you that a presidential candidate has concocted and propagated false evidence against her opponent and demands an investigation, it's not something any FBI director would forget.  Ever.
• 
If nothing else, the newly disclosed evidence confirms just how immoral, conniving, deceitful and unscrupulous Hillary Clinton is.  Her malevolence knows no bounds.  But the evidence also shows that Trump was the victim of a contemptible hoax.  He became the innocent target of a baseless and exhaustive witch hunt.
• 
In the wake of these revelations, President Trump has renewed his demand/order that all relevant documents pertaining to the Russia investigation be declassified and released, including all redactions.
• 
Americans deserve the full and unadulterated truth.  Anything less would only compound the collusion lie with even more cover-ups.
      Stunning revelations expose FBI’s Trump probe as dirtiest political trick in US history  (Fox 09/25/2020)
• 
It was always a witch hunt designed to "get Trump." Collusion was an illusion invented by a suspected Russian spy but zealously embraced by malevolent actors at the FBI and later by scheming prosecutors on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team of partisans.
• 
... has exposed how the bureau's collusion investigation of Donald Trump was based on nothing more than "supposition on supposition" and devoid of any credible evidence.
• 
... came to realize that the case against Flynn was being engineered or manipulated as way to damage President Trump.  Flynn, whose life and livelihood were ruined, became collateral damage.
• 
FBI investigators, who concluded there was no plausible case against Flynn, were ignored.  Instead of closing the investigation down, the critical decision to move forward was made "top-down."
• 
Then-Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who had a contentious past relationship with Flynn, was calling the shots.  The retired three-star Army general didn't stand a chance.
• 
... meticulously documented the bureaucratic malfeasance and malicious politicization of the legal process.  In what are known as 302 reports, he memorialized "the ‘get Trump' attitude by some at the SCO" (Special Counsel Office).  Whatever the president said or did was reflexively misrepresented by Mueller's confederates.
• 
When President Trump asked investigators to "get to the bottom" of a matter, special counsel lawyers interpreted it as "cover it up."
• 
The firing of FBI Director James Comey was viewed as conclusive proof of obstruction by the president, instead of an action motivated by some other logical reason such as the president's dislike of Comey and a desire to replace him.
• 
While many of Mueller's lawyers may have been motivated by a hatred of Trump, ... it seemed like they "wanted to be part of something ‘big,' a successful prosecution."
• 
All of this comes at the same time as the release of another set of declassified documents detailing how the infamous "Steele dossier" alleging Trump-Russia collusion actually originated from a suspected Russian spy who was designated as a possible "national security threat."
• 
In simple terms, the phony collusion narrative appears to have been the clever product of Russian lies and disinformation designed to damage Trump and funded by the Clinton campaign and Democrats.
• 
Comey's FBI knew this all along, having interviewed Steele's primary source in January 2017 — just days after Trump was inaugurated as president.  But the bureau kept it carefully concealed.
• 
Evidence continues to mount that Trump was been victimized by rogue and lawless government actors throughout his entire presidency.  Law enforcement was weaponized for a purely political purpose.
• 
Public officials chased a specious conspiracy that never existed, as Democrats and the biased anti-Trump media spun the daily tale that Donald Trump was a traitor working with and for the Russians.
• 
If Americans are to have any faith in their government, Durham must expose the full truth.  And those who betrayed their positions of trust should be held accountable.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Michael Flynn’s prosecution is a shameful injustice – charges against him should be...  (Fox 06/18/2020)
• 
Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty, so he must be guilty.  This is the canard repeated ad nauseam by the multitude of Flynn critics on social media and among so-called elite journalists.
• 
... why didn't the Times bother to mention that roughly 20 percent of exonerated defendants in the U.S.  have pleaded guilty?
• 
The answer is quite simple.  The New York Times is so animated by its own liberal bias that it is blind to such trivial matters as facts, truth and innocence.  Anyone associated with President Trump must be guilty of something, or so the Gray Lady would have its readers believe.
• 
Among 2,551 known exonerations, more than 500 pleaded guilty.  Like the Flynn case, the false pleas were often coerced under threat by ruthless and dishonest law enforcement.
• 
The Justice Department has also filed a motion to dismiss all charges against Flynn.  Unbelievably, U.S.  District Judge Emmet Sullivan has signaled he is reluctant to grant the motion.
• 
The Justice Department decided to drop the Flynn case when it discovered atrocious misconduct by the original prosecutors who suppressed extraordinary exculpatory evidence of Flynn's innocence.
• 
Under the law, Sullivan cannot conduct an inquisition into the decision-making or motives underlying the motion to dismiss.
• 
He can permissibly review the Justice Department's stated reasons in its 20-page brief that was supported by 86 pages of newly discovered evidence.
• 
But even if Sullivan disagrees with those reasons and believes they are unwise or incorrect, he is constitutionally powerless to force the government to proceed with its prosecution.
• 
The decision to bring charges or drop them is solely an executive branch function.  It cannot be countermanded by the judicial branch without violating the constitutional separation of powers.  Sullivan has no authority to pursue the case on his own accord.
• 
Nevertheless, Sullivan appears to be under the mistaken impression that once a guilty plea has been entered, the case is closed and sentencing must proceed.
• 
The defense brief cites no fewer than 32 federal court cases in which dismissals have been granted during sentencing or post-sentencing.
• 
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (Rule 11d) afford a defendant the absolute right to move to change his or her plea.  Yet, Sullivan has now indicated he may charge Flynn for perjury contempt of court for exercising his legal right.
• 
In essence, the judge wants to punish an innocent defendant for having the audacity to assert his actual innocence.
• 
Were any of the aforementioned 500-plus innocent defendants who falsely pleaded guilty ever prosecuted for perjury?  Of course not.  It would be a bastardization of justice to do so.
• 
But Sullivan doesn't care.  He seems determined to punish a defendant for a crime he did not commit because he previously pleaded guilty under duress.
• 
"Regrettably, our ‘justice' system has become a conviction machine so powerful that innocent people are regularly compelled to ‘confess' guilt they do not have and plead to crimes they did not commit."
• 
"The prosecutor-dictated plea bargain system, by creating such inordinate pressures to enter into plea bargains, appears to have led a significant number of defendants to plead guilty to crimes they never actually committed."
• 
Michael Flynn is one such victim.  Evidence of his innocence was hidden from him for years.  Unscrupulous prosecutors threatened to charge his son unless the father copped a plea.
• 
They crushed him financially as he tried to defend himself.  With mounting legal bills, he was forced to sell his home.  He finally surrendered under the intense emotional strain and monetary pressures.
• 
None of this seems to matter to either Judge Sullivan or the biased media.  For them, the end justifies the means – even if the end constitutes a shameful injustice.
      Gregg Jarrett: Flynn prosecution should end – lawyer makes weak arguments trying to keep baseless case alive  (Fox 06/11/2020)
• 
There is an old adage among lawyers: "If the facts are on your side, pound the facts; if the law is on your side, pound the law; if you have neither the facts nor the law, pound the table."
• 
On Wednesday, Gleeson filed a 72-page brief (an oxymoron, to be sure) that was stunningly feeble on both facts and law.
• 
To compensate for his anemic arguments, he tortures the judges on the U.S.  Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia with overwrought blather that bears little relevance to the main issue at hand.
• 
Perhaps Gleeson was hoping the court would simply weigh his submission on a scale and award him the prize for mindless verbosity.
• 
I don't recommend reading the document.  A root canal sans Novocain would be less painful.  But the core of Gleeson's argument can be found on Page 26, where he asserts – without a shred of credible evidence – that "prosecutors have offered pretextual reasons for dismissal," and "there is clear evidence of gross prosecutorial abuse."
• 
Gleeson's inane reasoning is that President Trump has tweeted about the Flynn case, so there must be corruption afoot.
• 
Gleeson offers no real proof, of course.  But he offers enough innuendo and supposition to fill a dumpster.
• 
Gleeson contends that the "decision to dismiss is based solely on the fact that Flynn is a political ally of Trump" (Page 38).  In other words, guilt by association should be good enough to send Flynn to the hoosegow.
• 
Conveniently, Gleeson glosses over the real reasons the Justice Department decided to end the Flynn case: that special counsel prosecutors engaged in egregious misconduct by hiding exculpatory evidence of Flynn's innocence and that the government "no longer believes it could secure a conviction at trial."
• 
The Justice Department asked Judge Sullivan to drop the case against Flynn after the department conducted a comprehensive review and determined that the charges against the retired Army lieutenant general were without legal merit and should never have been brought in the first place.
• 
Gleeson couldn't care less.  Never mind that the FBI had no legitimate basis to even interview Flynn, but snookered him into a conversation under false pretenses.
• 
Forget the fact that the two FBI agents who met with him determined that he was not lying at all and was not an agent of Russia.  Those reasons more than justified a dismissal of the case.
• 
There was no basis to believe Flynn committed a crime.  Yet, Gleeson repudiates all these facts by cavalierly labeling them "preposterous."
• 
Much of Gleeson's 72-page screed is an unconscionable smear of Flynn over his decision to capitulate to a coerced guilty plea.
• 
Naturally, the ex-judge ignores how unscrupulous members of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team of hyper-partisans threatened to prosecute Flynn's son under an inflated interpretation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
• 
But Gleeson doesn't stop there.  In addition to declaring that "Flynn's guilt is plain" (who needs a jury trial?), he argues that the retired three-star general clearly committed perjury by attempting to withdraw his original guilty plea.
• 
Gleeson seems oblivious to the established doctrine that a coerced confession is no confession at all.  And neither is an involuntary plea.
• 
To Gleeson, following the rule of law is "empty formalism and bureaucratese" (Page 43).
• 
The FBI's nefarious design to get Flynn to lie so he could be prosecuted or fired is not a "cognizable defense," Gleeson claims.
• 
Really?  Since when is evidence that a defendant was set-up and framed by the government not a defense?  It is truly frightening that Gleeson once served as a federal prosecutor and, later a judge.
• 
Gleeson is nothing if not a hypocrite.  When he was on the bench he issued a memo and order stating that "the government has near-absolute power to extinguish a case that it has brought."
• 
Citing well-established case law, the then-judge maintained that "it is entirely clear that the refusal to prosecute cannot be the subject of judicial review."
• 
Neither the facts nor the law are on Gleeson's side – and he surely knows it.  So, like a lawyer with a losing case, he has resorted to pounding the table.
• 
The D.C.  Circuit Court of Appeals should pay no attention to his contrived noise.
      Gregg Jarrett: Rod Rosenstein must be grilled by senators Wednesday about his abuse of power  (Fox 06/01/2020)
• 
It was Rosenstein who presided over the special counsel investigation of President Trump, all the while conspiring behind the scenes to overthrow him.  The duplicity was classic Rosenstein. 
• 
He well knew that his appointment of Robert Mueller in May of 2017 was an illegitimate abuse of power and contrary to federal regulations governing the naming of a special counsel.
• 
Months earlier in January of 2017, the FBI had debunked the anti-Trump "dossier" as little more than scurrilous lies, exaggerations and fiction.  There was no other credible evidence of a collusion conspiracy.  James Comey's FBI knew it, and so did Rosenstein.
• 
The White House was understandably shocked.  And so were other top officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ).
• 
... he had launched — on his own authority — a national nightmare that would hobble the presidency for two more years, divide Americans over an unfounded scandal and inflict profound damage to our system of justice.
• 
But hiring the special counsel was merely the first part of Rosenstein's nefarious scheme.
• 
The moment Comey was fired by the president, Rosenstein began meeting secretly with Comey's temporary replacement, acting FBI director Andrew McCabe (who was later fired for lying).
• 
McCabe decided to initiate a new FBI investigation of Trump simultaneous with Rosenstein's appointment of Mueller as special counsel.
• 
In other words, they double-teamed Trump even though neither one had a scintilla of evidence to justify their actions.
• 
At the same time, Rosenstein and McCabe convened repeatedly behind closed doors to discuss a plan to evict the duly elected president of the United States from office and undo the 2016 election results.
• 
According to McCabe, it was Rosenstein's idea to depose Trump by secretly recording the president for the purpose of gathering incriminating evidence of something — anything.
• 
Armed with such supposed evidence, he would recruit cabinet members to remove Trump under the 25th Amendment
• 
Here is what McCabe later told: "The deputy attorney general offered to wear a wire into the White House.  He said, ‘I never get searched when I go into the White House, I could easily wear a recording device, they wouldn't know it was there.' Now, he wasn't joking, he was absolutely serious, and in fact, he brought it up in the next meeting we had."
• 
"Discussion of the 25th Amendment was simply, Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort."
• 
McCabe claimed that Rosenstein was already "counting votes" among cabinet members he had contacted surreptitiously.  Government memos confirm this account, and those documents were handed over to Mueller.
• 
Did he do anything about it?  Of course not.  The special counsel report made no mention of it.
• 
The plot to carry out the equivalent of a coup would have been a lawless misuse of power.
• 
The 25th Amendment provides for the removal of a president if he is incapacitated or "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office."
• 
Disliking a president or his decision-making is not a basis for evicting him from office under the amendment.
• 
The FBI and Rosenstein relied almost entirely on the "dossier" composed by ex-British spy Christopher Steele.  It was phony on its face.  It was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats.
• 
Newly declassified documents show that it was nothing more than malicious Russian disinformation.
• 
By January of 2017, the FBI knew this.  Surely, Rosenstein knew it too.  All of this was concealed from the judges.
• 
"In order to get a FISA warrant, you need an affidavit signed by a career law enforcement officer who swears the information is true... And if it is wrong, that person is going to face consequences.  You can face discipline and sometimes prosecution."
• 
Rosenstein's words frame a prophetic indictment of his own wrongful and, arguably, illegal actions.
• 
It is ironic that the man who so sternly lectured an audience about how imperative it was for every prosecutor to ensure that a spy warrant contained truthful information is the same man who may never have bothered to read the one he signed against Carter Page.
• 
Rosenstein is far more guilty than others.  As the highest-ranking official involved, he had a special and affirmative duty to ensure that the law was being scrupulously followed.
• 
His chronic failures and malevolent actions, as described above, constitute an egregious breach of trust.
• 
... senators in their questioning of Rosenstein should give no quarter in demanding honest answers from a man who has shown no regard for either honesty or justice.
      Gregg Jarrett: Trump attorney accuses Mueller of 'monstrous lie and scheme to defraud'  (Fox 05/27/2020)
• 
"Mueller's scheme was the same one captured in the (newly released) FBI set-up notes pertaining to Flynn.  They knew they had nothing, but using their official power they created and perpetuated the facade of an investigation."
• 
... commitment of cooperation and transparency in dealing with Mueller was eventually turned against the president, as the special counsel "misled" Trump's legal team in order to manufacture a crime where none existed.
• 
... Mueller learned early in his investigation that there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion to influence the 2016 presidential election.
• 
So, Mueller shifted to a legally contorted interpretation of obstruction of justice in order to keep his investigation afloat.
• 
"As I look back, we had the most perfect trusting relationship with Mueller based on his word and handshake, which held throughout.  No paper.  Word was solid.  They received everything they asked for without a hitch or page missing, including the most intimate notes of conversations with and by POTUS (President of the United States).  Every witness they requested testified truthfully.  No lying.  No grand jury testimony.  Mueller affirmed all of this in our March 5 (2018) meeting.  How could there be a whisper of obstruction under these circumstances?"
• 
Despite no evidence of an underlying crime, Mueller insisted that the president be interviewed by the special counsel.
• 
He was clearly angling for obstruction of justice and hoping to ensnare the president in the equivalent of a perjury trap if he consented to be interviewed.
• 
But obstructing what?  Mueller readily acknowledged that there was no underlying crime.
• 
Moreover, Trump had encouraged every witness connected to his campaign and the White House to testify.  He voluntarily produced more than a million pages of documents.  The special counsel's investigation had proceeded unimpeded.
• 
"That is when I knew he had lied to me in our original meeting (June 16, 2017) and every meeting thereafter.  Robert Mueller — ‘D.C.'s great man' — completely and deliberately misled us in order to set up a perjury/false statement trap for POTUS.  It was a monstrous lie and scheme to defraud."
• 
... numerous documents and letters supporting his accusations against Mueller.  They paint a vivid picture of a special counsel determined to damage the president with an investigation bereft of any credible evidence.
• 
In the March 5, 2018, meeting, the special counsel suggested that maybe Trump's firing of Comey (Mueller's longtime friend, partner and ally) might constitute obstruction of justice.
• 
This was especially ludicrous since both Comey and deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe had testified that no one had obstructed the bureau's investigation and that the probe had continued uninterrupted after Comey's departure.
• 
... patiently explained to Mueller that the firing had been an exercise of presidential authority under the Constitution and could not, by definition, establish obstruction.  Even Comey had confirmed this.
• 
Trump had sacked the director for repeated violations of FBI regulations in his mishandling the Hillary Clinton email scandal and on the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, as well as several former attorneys general and deputy attorneys general from different eras and both political parties.
• 
... Mueller became so desperate that he broached the absurd idea of how Trump's public criticism of the special counsel might be construed somehow as an obstructive act.
• 
"They acted like crybabies who were offended that someone dared to criticize them, so they instinctively labeled it obstruction.  It was insane."
• 
... the FBI's counterintelligence investigation was predicated on Russian disinformation secretly fed to ex-British spy Christopher Steele, who composed a phony anti-Trump "dossier" that was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats.
• 
... declassified documents were released proving that Kremlin-sponsored disinformation drove the collusion case.  Comey and his confederates deliberately exploited what they knew to be untrue and discredited information.
• 
They used it as a pretext to spy on the Trump campaign and investigate the president.  This led to the illegitimate appointment of the special counsel, Bob Mueller, who launched an investigation in search of a crime that never occurred.
• 
... called Mueller's investigation and report a sham.  "They knew there was nothing there." Dowd said that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein also knew it and is "just as guilty."
• 
... hopes that U.S.  Attorney John Durham, who is currently investigating the Russia hoax, would hold all of them to account for their rampant corruption and dishonesty.  "Their three-year investigation was all phony."
• 
"They knew there was nothing to investigate.  People subverted the system of justice.  One corrupt act after another.  It's staggering.  The lies were monstrous.  It was all pretense and fraud.  Mueller should not walk.  Rod Rosenstein should not walk."
• 
And neither should James Comey, Andrew McCabe and disgraced ex-FBI agent Peter Strzok.
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Gregg Jarrett: Judge who attacked Chief Justice Roberts is a biased liberal flamethrower  (Fox 03/12/2020)
• 
A federal judge in Wisconsin is making headlines by trashing Chief Justice of the United States John Roberts and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
• 
This is likely what he wanted.
• 
The first thing you should know about U.S.  District Judge Lynn Adelman is that he is a zealous and habitual flamethrower.
• 
His latest diatribe ... was designed to shock with the incendiary title, "The Roberts Court's Assault on Democracy."
• 
Using the word "assault" was an invective guaranteed to conjure up images of criminal behavior, although that is nowhere in Adelman's article.
• 
But his contention that democracy is on the precipice because conservatives hold a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court is his underlying thesis.
• 
This is so, according to the 80-year-old jurist, because sometimes the Supreme Court rules in a way that is contrary to popular sentiment.
• 
Never mind that there might be a legitimate or well-reasoned legal basis for such decisions.
• 
The "will of the majority is ignored," bemoans the judge.
• 
Adelman seems to be under the mistaken impression that justices are supposed to conform their decisions not to the law, but to public opinion at any given moment.
• 
This is a profoundly distorted vision of how justice and the rule of law are designed to operate within our constitutional framework.
• 
The other two branches of government – executive and legislative– are political in nature and do, indeed, reflect the public's will.  That's why elections exist.
• 
The judicial branch, however, is notably different.  Its job is to interpret the law as written and/or intended.
• 
That is how the framers constructed our tripartite government.
• 
The duty of the Supreme Court is not to take the transitory temperature of its citizens or consult polling data and then rule on cases accordingly.
• 
Adelman, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1997, levels harsh criticism at a variety of Supreme Court decisions, including campaign finance, collective bargaining, health insurance, gerrymandering and voting rights (his hobbyhorse).
• 
As constitutional law professor Josh Blackman remarked, "This screed could have come from a Bernie stump speech." He added, "It has no place in a publication by a federal judge."
• 
Setting aside the dubious ethical propriety of a sitting federal judge lambasting the chief justice of the United States and his Supreme Court colleagues, it is the blatant partisan nature of Adelman's attack that undermines his own arguments.
• 
To hear Adelman tell it, President Trump is an "autocrat" and the source of all imagined evil.
• 
So, too, is the Republican Party, acting as a witting co-conspirator in the plot against democracy.
• 
Sadly, this liberal federal judge gives no credit to the intellectual honesty of the justices who sit well above him on our nation's highest court.
• 
Nor does he respect the judicial philosophies that inform their decisions.
• 
We may not always agree with the Supreme Court.  But publicly castigating the justices for their rulings and personally attacking the chief justice as disingenuous serves only to demean and diminish the federal bench.
• 
Adelman certainly has a right to express his opinions.
• 
But the caustic nature of those opinions makes one wonder if his own decisions are free of the kind of bias of which he so freely accuses others.
      Barr shouldn’t criticize Trump’s Roger Stone tweet – AG should clean up Justice Department mess  (Fox 02/13/2020)
• 
Democrats and the mainstream media are in the grips of mass hysteria – again.
• 
Exercising his First Amendment right of free expression, President Trump used his thumbs to tweet late Monday night and state the obvious: it was "horrible and very unfair" for federal prosecutors to seek a seven- to nine-year prison sentence for Roger Stone.
• 
Stone – a former Trump confidant – was convicted in November by a jury in Washington of making false statements, obstruction and witness tampering in a case that arose from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
• 
By any reasonable standard, the sentencing recommendation for Stone was excessive and overly punitive.
• 
Stone is 67, has no criminal history, and was convicted of nonviolent offenses.
• 
Yet, overzealous prosecutors asked that he serve twice as much time behind bars as those who are found guilty of more serious crimes such as armed robbery, rape, sexual assault, and even negligent manslaughter.
• 
The moment Trump hit the "send" button on his tweet, collective hysteria swept through the halls of Congress and liberal newsrooms everywhere.
• 
The unhinged harangues were all predicated on a brazen assumption that Trump had directed Attorney General Barr to overrule the trial prosecutors and recommend a more appropriate and equitable sentence for Stone of three to four years.
• 
The Justice Department said the decision to seek a lesser sentence for Stone was made Monday, when the leadership there first learned what the prosecutors had done – before Trump's tweet.
• 
The president, the White House, the Justice Department and the attorney general himself all insist that there were no communications about the case.
• 
There is no evidence to suggest otherwise.
• 
It appears that the prosecutors who demanded an unduly harsh sentence for Stone misrepresented their intentions to senior officials at the Justice Department.
• 
The Justice Department then moved to correct an injustice.  In so doing, Barr became a political punching bag, and the president's tweet only exacerbated matters.
• 
It is no wonder that Barr, under siege, felt frustrated enough to give an interview ... in which he complained that the president's tweets "make it impossible for me to do my job."
• 
Impossible?  No.  Difficult?  Yes.
• 
Importantly, Barr underscored that Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case."
• 
While it may be unwise for a president to comment about a criminal case still pending, Trump's tweet was driven by his own understandable frustration.
• 
He sees prosecutors, led by a key member of Mueller's team of partisans, advocate for a draconian punishment well beyond the norm.
• 
Had Stone not been associated with Trump, it is inconceivable that he would have been targeted in such a severe way.
• 
The disparity in treatment of those connected to the president is striking.
• 
None of the people who falsely accused Trump of being a Russian agent and who perpetuated their imaginary case of "collusion" with Russia against him have been prosecuted.
• 
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz filed criminal referrals against former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.
• 
Yet, no action has been taken against them.
• 
The inspector general determined that officials at the FBI and Justice Department deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and obtained illegal warrants without probable cause in order to spy on a Trump campaign associate.
• 
So far, no one has been held accountable.
• 
Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper were never prosecuted for allegedly lying under oath.
• 
And lest we forget, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mishandled classified material and destroyed documents without any criminal consequence.
• 
Selective prosecution and unequal application of law is a disgraceful legacy for the Justice Department.
• 
Instead of complaining about Trump's tweets, Attorney General Barr should clean up the shameful mess wrought by his predecessors and rogue prosecutors.
• 
Barr can begin by agreeing with defense attorneys that Stone deserves a new trial.
• 
... there is substantial new evidence that the foreperson of the jury that convicted Stone has a "history of Democratic activism and a string of anti-Trump, left-wing social media posts."
• 
Trump was right when he called the Stone prosecution "a miscarriage of justice."
• 
That is a tweet to which Barr should pay attention.
      Dem impeachment report on Trump is a political attack with no factual basis, no GOP support  (Fox 12/03/2019)
• 
Impeachment is a grave step of last resort to remove a duly elected president.
• 
The act of wrongdoing must be sufficiently egregious, and the evidence so clear and convincing, that the constitutional remedy of impeachment merits support from both political parties represented in Congress.
• 
However, unlike previous presidential impeachments, not a single member of the president's own party has yielded on the matter.
• 
It also reflects the sentiment of most Americans who are split along party lines.
• 
This alone should give Democrats pause to reconsider the dangerous path they have undertaken.
• 
"The impeachment inquiry uncovered overwhelming and uncontested evidence that president Trump abused the powers of his office to solicit foreign interference in our election for his own personal, political gain."
• 
Schiff's claim is brazenly untrue on many levels.
• 
First, if the evidence was "overwhelming," surely Republicans in Congress and Americans at large would be so persuaded.
• 
They are not.  The evidence was conspicuously underwhelming.
• 
... Schiff's witnesses offered a stream of hearsay, opinion and speculation that Trump demanded a "quid pro quo" from Ukraine...
• 
If the evidence was, as Schiff claims, "overwhelming," there would be a phrase or sentence somewhere in the transcript of the call establishing proof.  It is nowhere.
• 
Second, Schiff's contention that the evidence is "uncontested" is demonstrably false.
• 
The Republican report itself consumes 110 pages contesting the alleged evidence.
• 
Perhaps Schiff didn't bother to read the Republican report, since he is convinced of his own certitude or teased by hope out of ignorance.
• 
Maybe he didn't listen as Republicans spent hours during cross-examination casting doubt on the knowledge and credibility of the purported "fact witnesses" who trafficked in rumor, innuendo, and rank conjecture.
• 
Third, Schiff's assertion that Trump "solicited foreign interference in our election for his own personal, political gain" is nothing more than an assumption or supposition.
• 
There is no mention whatsoever of an election in the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky conversation.  Trump asked Zelensky to look into Biden's recorded "quid pro quo" boast saying that as vice president Biden stated he would withhold $1 billion in U.S.  aid from Ukraine if the chief prosecutor in Kiev was not immediately fired.  In doing so, how was Trump requesting political interference for personal gain?
• 
Trump has stated repeatedly that he wanted to determine whether Biden committed a corrupt act by extorting taxpayer dollars to force the firing of a prosecutor who was investigating the Ukrainian natural gas company that was paying his son Hunter anywhere from $50,000 to $83,000 a month to serve on its board.
• 
Was Biden's demand intended to protect his son?
• 
If a president has reason to believe that a public officeholder may have engaged in corrupt behavior involving a foreign government, he has every right and duty to request that nation's leader to investigate.
• 
The president is entitled to do so under the terms of a 20-year old treaty with Ukraine.
• 
Biden does not enjoy immunity or amnesty simply because he is now a candidate for office as he pursues the Democratic presidential nomination.
• 
Predictably, Nadler stacked the deck against the president, selecting three law professors who have either prejudged Trump or expressed animus toward him.  Only one professor from the Republican side is permitted.
• 
Most scholars agree that our Founding Fathers did not want an opposing party to remove a president for political reasons – simply because lawmakers of the other party dislike the president or his policies.
• 
Yet, that is exactly what Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, and most Democrats are doing.
• 
See related The Hearsay Impeachment (Gary Varvel, 11/17/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Impeachment (Bob Gorrell, 11/12/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      'Poor Lisa' Page.  She wants to go from villain to victim — and Trump is to blame [naturally]  (Fox 12/02/2019)
• 
Four months before the FBI would even interview Clinton, Page predicted that she would become president.
• 
Of course, that would have been impossible if the FBI had recommended a criminal indictment.
• 
In another text, Page warned her paramour that any aggressive tactics in their investigation would backfire on the bureau once they absolved Clinton and she became president.
• 
... "God, Hillary should win 100,000,000-0." Pause for a moment to consider what that message meant.
• 
Two key FBI officials were prophesizing a Clinton presidency that could happen only if they first ensured that she would escape criminal charges.  The process was corrupted.
• 
Once Clinton was absolved, Strzok and Page turned their attention to the political opponent who was the only remaining obstacle to her path to the White House: Donald Trump.
• 
The FBI launched an investigation on the unfounded accusation that Trump was "colluding" with Russia to win the presidential election.
• 
Page: And maybe you're meant to stay where you are because you're meant to protect the country from that menace.
• 
Strzok: Thanks.  And of course I'll try and approach it that way.  I just know it will be tough at times.  I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps.
• 
Page: He's not ever going to become president right?  Right?!
• 
Strzok: No.  No he's not.  We'll stop it.
• 
When confronted with dozens of other messages extolling Clinton and disparaging Trump, Strzok had the temerity to tell Congress, "I do not have bias."
• 
He insisted, "Those text messages are not indicative of bias."
• 
In those texts, we see the mindset that led to the greatest mass delusion in American political history.
• 
Without any factual basis, without anything more than a perverted kind of wishful thinking, two people who should have known better believed that only a vast international criminal conspiracy could lead to President Trump's election.
• 
Strzok: I want to believe the path you through out for consideration in Andy's office that there's no way he gets elected –but I'm afraid we can't take that risk.  It's like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you're 40. 
• 
Page later confirmed that the "insurance policy" was the FBI's then-secret Russia "collusion" investigation of Trump.
• 
Under their plan, it would be quietly investigated by the bureau but held in abeyance unless and until the "unlikely" event occurred – the election of Trump.
• 
If he defied all expectations and prevailed on election day, the investigation would then be kicked into overdrive. 
• 
In their minds, Trump was a threat only if he became president.
• 
The chimera of "collusion" might then be used against him to undo his presidency and drive him from office.
• 
It was the FBI's version of an "insurance policy" against the risk of Trump.
• 
When, indeed, it happened, Strzok wrote that his investigation of the new president could be used to impeach him.
• 
Numerous other texts between Page and Strzok show a stunning hostility toward the man they were investigating.
• 
They called him "awful," "loathsome," a "disaster," a "f***ing idiot," an "enormous do*che," and other disparaging names that were laced with incandescent profanity.
• 
Republican supporters were smugly branded as "retarded," "the crazies," and "ignorant hillbillies" who "SMELL."
• 
Their toxic rants underscored an abiding enmity toward Trump that poisoned any chance that the FBI's investigation would be neutral, objective, and fair.
• 
It was fatuous for either Page or Strzok to deny bias in the face of such graphic and overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
• 
As insipid as their pro-Clinton and anti-Trump text messages were, they illustrate how pervasive bias contaminated both the Clinton and Trump investigations.
• 
Strzok, Page, and others considered themselves above the law because they were the law.
• 
When a top official at the FBI learned of the affair, he did nothing.  Instead of removing Page and Strzok from the Trump case, they were promoted to Robert Mueller's special counsel team.
• 
Yet, Lisa Page is determined to re-write history in order to play a starring role as "the victim."
• 
At no time has she accepted a scintilla of personal responsibility for her actions.
• 
Instead, she seeks to portray Trump as the villain because he dared to speak publicly about her conspicuous bias against him.
      At impeachment hearing, irrelevant opinions by Trump critics masquerade as facts  (Fox 11/20/2019)
• 
There is a stark difference between truth and opinion.
• 
Truth derives sustenance from facts, whereas opinion is a judgment influenced by prejudices.
• 
Leonardo da Vinci recognized the fallible nature of opinions when he observed: "The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions."
• 
Deception was on full display Tuesday during the House Intelligence Committee's impeachment hearing, where opinions masqueraded as facts.
• 
Diplomatic witnesses offered their interpretations and judgments of a telephone conversation between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
Democrats yearn to impeach Trump over a purported "quid pro quo" that is found nowhere in the transcript of the phone call. 
• 
Bereft of facts, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is determined to remove Trump from office based purely on the opinions of others who surmised or imagined that Trump demanded that Ukraine investigate former Vice President Joe Biden or the U.S.  would withhold $391 million in military aid to Kiev.
• 
Ukraine never launched such an investigation, and the financial support was delivered.
• 
Anyone can read the transcript, as it is available online.
• 
It speaks for itself and is the best evidence that there is no evidence at all of a "quid pro quo."
• 
This was corroborated by the statements of Zelensky, who confirmed that there was no demand, threat, condition or pressure applied by Trump.
• 
Indeed, the Ukrainian government never knew that U.S.  aid had been temporarily frozen until almost five weeks after the July 25 Trump-Zelensky call.
• 
This renders a "quid pro quo" a legal impossibility.
• 
The recipient of the "quid" must, at the very least, be aware of the "quo."
• 
Moreover, two of the testifying witnesses readily conceded that the frozen aid was "consistent with administration policy."
• 
The unvarnished truth is that Vindman did not like what Trump said on the phone call because the president did not strictly follow the notes Vindman had prepared for the discussion.
• 
How dare Trump deviate from Vindman's carefully crafted diplomatic script!  So Vindman complained.
• 
Instead of registering his complaint with his direct supervisor, Tim Morrison, Vindman conveyed his feelings to others.
• 
Among them was an individual in the intelligence community that Vindman won't identify, who may be the faux "whistleblower" or source for the "whistleblower."
• 
By his acts, it appears that Vindman was instrumental in initiating the current impeachment insanity.
• 
An unelected subordinate employee disagreed with the policy judgment of the president of the United States and sought to create havoc by disseminating (or, if you prefer, leaking) his discordant opinion.
• 
To make matters worse, Vindman contorted the president's use of the words "do me a favor" by asserting that Trump had made an "inappropriate demand" of Zelensky.
• 
... Vindman elected to impute a demand by arguing that for those who serve in the military, a request or favor for something is always considered a demand.
• 
In other words, Vindman applied a military standard to a president who has never served in the military and has stated unequivocally that he made no demands of Zelensky.
• 
The Ukrainian president, who also did not serve in the military, is on record stating that no demand was made of him, as noted earlier.
• 
But Vindman, armed with uncommon clairvoyance, somehow knows better.
• 
Perhaps Vindman thought that he was above the president or a super-special expert to which all individuals, including Trump, should defer.
• 
In his deposition Vindman stated: "I'm the director for Ukraine.  I'm responsible for Ukraine.  I'm the most knowledgeable.  I'm the authority for Ukraine, for the National Security Council and the White House."
• 
The self-puffery was unbecoming, but it spoke volumes about what may have motivated Vindman when President Trump had the audacity to conduct foreign policy in a way that his NSC staffer did not pre-approve.
• 
In reality, just how important was Vindman in the White House hierarchy?  He conceded that he has never so much as met the president.
• 
Vindman's bias and coziness with Ukraine was underscored when he admitted that the foreign government had offered on three separate occasions to make him its defense minister.
• 
Throughout the hearing, Schiff turned himself into a pretzel as he tried to rewrite the law.
• 
He shut down any questions to Vindman that might unmask the fake "whistleblower" by asserting erroneously that the unidentified undercover informant "has a statutory right to anonymity."
• 
Schiff neglected, of course, to cite the specific statute because it does not exist.  ... There is no right, guarantee or privilege to anonymity anywhere in any statute.
• 
During the hearing, Schiff adopted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's recent pivot from the term "quid pro quo" to "bribery" ... But the chairman unwittingly destroyed the bribery argument when he confessed that "bribery does involve a quid pro quo."
• 
If the Ukrainians had no knowledge of the "quid pro quo," there can be no bribery.
• 
This obvious point seemed lost on Schiff, a former prosecutor.
• 
Members of the unelected bureaucracy in our nation's diplomatic corps are entitled to their moral, ethical and policy differences.
• 
But they are not allowed to substitute their own judgments for those of the president and seek to undermine his authority on foreign policy.
• 
A president should only be removed based on an impeachable offense supported by facts, not opinions.
• 
Why?  Because, as the Athenian philosopher Plato recognized: "Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance."
      Gregg Jarrett: The Trump whistleblower may not be a whistleblower at all  (Fox 09/20/2019)
• 
The latest media mass hysteria over a whistleblower's complaint that ... "reportedly involved allegations President Trump made a troubling and unspecified ‘promise' to a foreign leader," is based on precious little information.
• 
That has not stopped journalists from convicting Trump in the court of public opinion and predicting his imminent demise.
• 
Who exactly is this unidentified "whistleblower"?
• 
What is the specific nature of his or her "urgent concern" complaint against the president?
• 
Does this complaint really qualify under the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act (ICWPA)? 
• 
Despite the paucity of facts, some reasonable observations and conclusions can be drawn.
• 
1.  It appears that an American spy in one of our intelligence agencies may have been spying on our own president.
• 
The complaint suggests that this intel agent was listening in on Trump's conversation with a foreign leader.
• 
Was this person officially asked to listen to the conversation or was he or she secretly listening in?
• 
2.  This agent, who is an unelected and inferior federal employee in the government hierarchy, apparently believes that it is his/her job to second-guess the motivation behind the words of the elected president, who is the most superior officer in the U.S.  government. 
• 
3.  Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make demands or offer promises.
• 
The Constitution does not grant the power of review, approval or disapproval to spies or other unelected officials in the executive branch. 
• 
4.  The ICWPA law defines the parameters of an "urgent concern" complaint as an abuse or violation of law "relating to the funding, administration, or operations of an intelligence activity involving classified information, but does not include differences of opinions concerning public policy matters."
• 
The president's conversation with a foreign leader does not seem to fall under this whistleblower definition. 
• 
5.It appears the acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) agrees with this assessment.  His agency's general counsel wrote a letter stating the complaint did not meet the ICWPA definition because it involved conduct "from someone outside the intel community and did not relate to intelligence activity"...
• 
To put this in plain language, a spy who allegedly spied on the president does not have a legitimate whistleblower complaint against that president under the law.
• 
The ICWPA is a mechanism to report alleged misconduct by members within the intelligence community, of which the president is not. 
• 
So, it turns out that the "whistleblower" may not be a whistleblower at all.
• 
But you will not hear that from the mainstream media.  They are too busy lighting their own hair on fire. 
      Gregg Jarrett: The two faces of Robert Mueller, and Trump's presumption of guilt  (Fox 05/29/2019)
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has peddled two different stories.  Only one can be true. 
• 
In his final act before resigning his position, Mueller told the gathered media on Wednesday that his non-decision decision on whether the president obstructed justice was "informed" by a long-standing opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the Justice Department that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime.
• 
"We were frankly surprised that they were not going to reach a decision on obstruction and we asked them a lot about the reasoning behind this.  Mueller stated three times to us in that meeting, in response to our questioning, that he emphatically was not saying that but for the OLC opinion he would have found obstruction."
• 
Barr said there were others in the meeting who heard Mueller say the same thing – that the OLC opinion played no role in the special counsel's decision-making or lack thereof.
• 
"We specifically asked him about the OLC opinion and whether or not he was taking a position that he would have found a crime but for the existence of the OLC opinion.  And he made it very clear several times that was not his position."
• 
Yet, on Wednesday Mueller was telling a different tale.
• 
He seemed to argue that he could not have accused the president of obstruction because he was handcuffed by the OLC opinion.
• 
Mueller did not abandon the OLC opinion in this case because he surely knew the facts and evidence did not support the law of obstruction.
• 
Instead, in his 448-page report, he implied presidential obstruction in a remarkable achievement in creative writing.
• 
He set forth in luxurious detail "evidence on both sides of the question."
• 
But this is not the job of any chief prosecutor, anywhere.
• 
He was hired to investigate potential crimes arising from Russian interference in a presidential election and make a reasoned decision on whether charges were merited.
• 
Mueller's actions were not only noxious but patently unfair to Trump.
• 
The special counsel publicly besmirched the president with tales of suspicious behavior instead of stated evidence that rose to the level of criminality. 
• 
This is what prosecutors are never permitted to do.
• 
Justice Department rules forbid its lawyers from annunciating negative narratives about any person, absent an indictment. 
• 
How can that person properly defend himself without trial?
• 
This is why prosecutors like Mueller are prohibited from trying their cases in the court of public opinion.
• 
If they have probable cause to levy charges, they should do so.
• 
If not, they must refrain from openly disparaging someone that our justice system presumes is innocent.
• 
... Mueller shrewdly and improperly turned the law on its head.
• 
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
... "While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
Prosecutors are not, and have never been, in the business of exonerating people.  That's not their job. 
• 
An experienced federal prosecutor, Mueller certainly knew this.
• 
It appears he had no intention of treating Trump equitably or applying the law in conformance with our criminal justice system.
• 
... Mueller managed to reverse the legal duty that prosecutors have rigidly followed in America for centuries.
• 
Their legal obligation is not to exonerate someone or prove an individual's innocence.
• 
Nor is any accused person required to prove his or her own innocence.
• 
Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence.  It is the bedrock on which justice is built. 
• 
Prosecutors must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
• 
To bring charges they must have, at minimum, probable cause to believe that a crime was committed. 
• 
The special counsel took this inviolate principle and cleverly inverted it.
• 
He argued that he could not prove the president did not commit a crime.
• 
Think about what that rationale really means.  It is a double negative.
• 
Mueller was contending that he can't prove something didn't happen.
• 
What if this were the standard for all criminal investigations?  Apply it to yourself.
• 
The special counsel created the impression that Trump might have engaged in wrongdoing because he could not prove otherwise. 
• 
The consequential injustice and harm that inevitably follows is what happens when we reverse the burden of proof and abandon the innocence standard that are revered in a democracy as fundamental rights. 
• 
Yet, this is what Mueller did.  He improvised a new standard that applies only to Trump — presumption of guilt.
• 
Under this novel "guilty until proven innocent" paradigm, it is up to the president to prove the allegations are false. 
• 
Barr told Congress that he was forced to correct Mueller's mistake.
• 
"I used the proper standard.  We are not in the business of proving someone did not violate the law – I found that whole passage very bizarre."
• 
Our system of justice in America is designed to protect the innocent.
• 
Mueller was well aware of this.  In the "introduction" to Volume II on obstruction, he recited the duty of prosecutors to be fair by refraining from comment.
• 
In the case of a sitting president, wrote Mueller, "The stigma and opprobrium could imperil the President's ability to govern."
• 
Ironically, the special counsel then proceeded to ignore his own warning.
• 
He produced his own "dossier" on Trump that was filled with suspicions of wrongdoing.
• 
He refused to make a decision to charge the president in a court of law but was more than willing to indict him in the court of public opinion. 
• 
His report was a non-indictment indictment.  It was calumny masquerading as a report.
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump-Russia 'collusion' was always a hoax — and dirtiest political trick in modern US history  (Fox 03/25/2019)
• 
There was never any evidence that Donald Trump "colluded" with Russia to steal the 2016 presidential election from Hillary Clinton.
• 
It was all a hoax.
• 
It constituted what is surely the dirtiest political trick in modern American history.
• 
The hoax was based largely on an anti-Trump "dossier" conjured from the fertile imaginations of two nefarious characters: ex-British spy Christopher Steele; and Fusion GPS Founder, Glenn Simpson.
• 
It was commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats, then peddled all over Washington to journalists, the FBI, the State Department and the Department of Justice.
• 
The premise of the ruse was as outlandish as the actions of those who advanced it.
• 
There were no credible facts when the FBI wrongfully launched its "collusion" investigation in July of 2016, violating its own regulations.
• 
There was still nothing remotely plausible in May of 2017 when fired FBI Director James Comey absconded with government documents and leaked them to the media for the sole purpose of triggering the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller.
• 
If you harbor any doubts about the "paucity" of evidence, read the closed-door testimony of FBI lawyer Lisa Page and Comey.  Their admissions will stun you.
• 
Along the way, the FBI obtained a wiretap warrant on a Trump campaign associate, Carter Page, by concealing vital evidence to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) and deceiving the judges.
• 
No one, as yet, has been held accountable for any of that.
• 
The last time I checked, perpetrating a fraud on a court is a felony.  Several of them, in fact.
• 
Oh, and undercover informants were dispatched by the FBI to infiltrate the Trump campaign. 
• 
Now, after an exhaustive 22-month investigation, we have finally learned from the new Attorney General, William Barr, that "the Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S.  presidential election."
• 
Trump did not hack the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party organizations.
• 
Trump did not hatch a plot in the bowels of the Kremlin to win the election.
• 
The infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer was not a crime.
• 
Carter Page was not a spy after all.
• 
The list of false accusations that Trump has suffered are too numerous to recount here.  You'd need a calculator.
• 
To Democrats and most in the media such trivial things as evidence never mattered.
• 
They didn't care about that.  They treated facts as a mere nuisance.
• 
They allowed their political bias and personal animus toward Trump to blind them.
• 
Their obsessive belief in a nonexistent conspiracy with Putin consumed all common sense.
• 
As their hatred for Trump and his policies grew, they became more sedulous in propagating fictitious stories.
• 
Democrats convinced themselves that President Trump's election was misbegotten.
• 
They accepted "collusion" as a matter of faith driven by their own prejudices, and teased by hope out of ignorance.
• 
Will they ever apologize?  Of course not.
• 
They will conjure some vacuous excuse and move on to the next accusation.  They're already doing it.
• 
Many journalists were equally reckless and malevolent.  Most of them never bothered to examine the facts, evidence and the law.
• 
Will network brass take action to punish those who so egregiously exaggerated or, in some cases, even lied to Americans?
• 
Not a chance.  Network chiefs were complicit cheerleaders. 
• 
Without missing a beat, they are pivoting to obstruction of justice by parsing what Attorney General William Barr wrote in his summary letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees.
• 
"Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and I have concluded that the evidence developed during the Special Counsel's investigation is not sufficient to establish that the President committed an obstruction of justice offense."
• 
One of the reasons that led Barr and Rosenstein to their inexorable conclusion is that Trump had committed no underlying crime of conspiracy with Russia or, if you like, "collusion."
• 
In simplistic terms, it is difficult to argue that someone intended to obstruct a non-crime.
• 
This is exactly the question Trump has posed on more than one occasion when he asked, rhetorically, "Why would I interfere in something I didn't do?" Why, indeed.
• 
While Mueller was more than willing to conclude that Trump never "colluded" with Russia, he deliberately dodged rendering any decision on obstruction of justice.
• 
"While this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
• 
This was a blatant cheap shot by Mueller, although thoroughly expected.
• 
It's very much like a prosecutor who loses a case and then claims to the media, "Well, the jury may have found the defendant not guilty, but that doesn't mean he's innocent."
• 
Technically, that's true.  But it's how losers try to justify the result they don't like.
• 
Mueller knew Trump did not obstruct justice in firing Comey.
• 
The president was constitutionally authorized to dismiss him for a stated reason or no reason at all.
• 
I suspect Mueller ducked his obligation to render a decision on obstruction and inserted the "exonerate" language in his report so that rabid Democrats in Congress would take up the anti-Trump cause as a pretext for impeachment proceedings.
• 
Sure enough, within minutes of Barr's letter ... "In light of the very concerning discrepancies and final decision making at the Justice Department following the Special Counsel report, where Mueller did not exonerate the President, we will be calling Attorney General Barr in to testify before the House Judiciary in the near future."
• 
The Russia Hoax begat the Witch Hunt... and Mueller has seen to it that the Witch Hunt is far from over.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
• 
See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
 Jeffress  (02/07/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/15/2022) | Next sect (12/19/2019) | List bot 
      Dr.  Robert Jeffress: Impeachment — why America must let go of bitterness to heal  (Fox 02/07/2021)
• 
On Monday the Senate will begin impeachment proceedings against the now-former President Donald Trump.
• 
The same political controversies that have embroiled our nation seem to continue on, with no end in sight.
• 
Research shows that prolonged stress — including stress triggered by political anger — even decreases the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines.
• 
It is no secret that I was, and continue to be, an enthusiastic supporter and friend of President Trump.
• 
I believe Donald Trump's presidency made our nation's laws more just by protecting unborn life and promoting religious freedom.
• 
I was disappointed by the results of the election.  During his first two weeks in office President Biden signed a number of executive orders that I find deeply troubling and wrong.
• 
I have every intention of pushing back against the torrent of ungodly policies that I believe the Biden/ Harris administration will unleash on our country.
• 
But I refuse to allow that determination to devolve into an all-consuming anger that poisons my spirit and infects everyone close to me.
• 
I would encourage my fellow Trump supporters to do the same.  As the writer of Proverbs warned, "Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life" (Proverbs 4:23, The New Living Translation).
• 
My concern about next week's impeachment trial is that once the expected acquittal comes half of the country will refuse to accept it, giving Democrats the ammunition they need to continue their relentless attacks on the former president.
• 
I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to be angry — even over political differences.
• 
The reason we get angry is because we are made in the image of God who is angered over any kind of injustice.  But in the Bible, there are two kinds of anger — destructive anger and productive anger.
• 
Destructive anger tries to take vengeance into its own hands.  It's like a cancer in our souls, spreading corrosive rage until it eventually destroys us.  Destructive anger knows no bounds, zealously trying to settle the score through vitriol and violence.
• 
However, productive anger recognizes that there are real injustices but responds with a totally different posture of heart.
• 
Productive anger forgives personal offenses and seeks justice through the proper channels, whether it be from God Himself or through God-ordained channels such as government.
• 
And if we feel justice has not been served, we trust God to ultimately right the wrong.  The apostle Paul told us, "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord'" (Romans 12:19).  While God doesn't always settle the score immediately, He will settle it ultimately.
• 
Republicans certainly have the right to believe that the election was stolen, but after they have exhausted their appeals it is time to move forward and try to win the next election.
• 
Democrats who believe President Trump committed an impeachable offense need to make their best case next week and, if they fail, they should focus on supporting the new president rather than persecuting the last one.
• 
Real injustices happen in our broken world every day.  But with every offense comes a choice.
• 
The choice is ours.  Letting go promotes healing; holding on ensures destruction.  As comedian Lily Tomlin said, "Refusing to forgive is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die."
• 
What's true at the level of individuals is true at the level of the nation.
• 
If we can't find a way to forgive and heal, we're headed for devastation.  However, as theologian Lewis Smedes wrote, "When we forgive we set the prisoner free, and the prisoner we set free is us."
• 
It's time for America to be set free from the destructive power of bitterness.
 Jipping  (12/19/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/07/2021) | Next sect (05/13/2020) | List bot 
      Trump impeachment hinges on whether he had 'corrupt intent' in taking lawful actions  (Fox 12/19/2019)
• 
House Resolution 755, which was adopted Wednesday night largely along party lines, contains two articles of impeachment against President Trump – one labeled "abuse of power" and the other "obstruction of Congress."
• 
It's important to understand that this is not the first impeachment resolution filed against President Trump by House Democrats.
• 
HR 438, introduced in July 2017, proposed impeaching Trump for hindering the investigation into Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election.
• 
HR 621, introduced a few months later, had five impeachment articles alleging: violation of the Constitution's emoluments clause; "lack of respect for the federal judiciary," such as by tweeting and criticizing judges; and speaking negatively about the media.
• 
HR 705, introduced in January 2018, said Trump should be removed from office for "sowing discord among the American people."
• 
In short, the impeachment of Trump appears to be a punishment in search of a crime.
• 
The impeachment process is, next to declaring war, the most consequential thing Congress can do.
• 
It would not only nullify the last election – it would prevent a president from running for reelection if he is in his first term.
• 
That means a simple majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate could neutralize the electoral votes of 30 states.
• 
That is, it would take no more than 218 House members and 67 senators to wipe out the votes of 63 million Americans who cast ballots to put Donald Trump in the White House.
• 
While the Constitution does not require a particular standard of proof, such as "beyond a reasonable doubt," the gravity of impeachment and its consequences demands something at that end of the scale.
• 
The House did not impeach Trump for pushing Ukraine to investigate corruption, or for delaying security assistance for Ukraine and refusing to hold a White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
Nor did the House impeach Trump for conducting some aspects of foreign policy in an "irregular" manner.  By themselves, there was nothing wrong with those actions.
• 
The House impeached Trump for what the impeachment resolution called his "corrupt purposes" behind those actions.
• 
The thing that turned permissible presidential choices into impeachable offenses, the House said, is that Trump took those actions to "solicit the interference of a foreign government" – Ukraine – in the 2020 U.S.  presidential election.
• 
Trump's alleged offense was not his "urging and soliciting Ukraine to undertake investigations," but the allegation that he "corruptly" did so "for his personal political benefit."
• 
This is the single most important issue in the entire impeachment drama.
• 
The House impeached Trump for his intent – his motive and purpose behind otherwise legitimate actions.
• 
The Senate must now conduct a trial for Trump, serving as both judge and jury.
• 
According to the American Bar Association, the jury "listens to the evidence during a trial, decides what facts the evidence has established, and draws inferences from those facts to form the basis for their decision."
• 
Specifically, senators must decide whether the evidence has established Trump's intent to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election.
• 
If a criminal defendant is charged with a specific-intent crime, the prosecutor must prove, separately and by the same standard, both the underlying action and the intent behind that action.
• 
The same should be true during the Senate impeachment trial.
• 
The prosecutor's role will be played by designated House members.
• 
Senators should not let them off the hook in terms of proving the central element of the charges they have leveled against the president.
• 
As the American Bar Association put it, does the evidence clearly establish the fact of Trump's intent – the alleged "corrupt purpose" – that House Democrats say should take from the American people the decision about whether Trump should remain in office?
• 
This is the question that every senator must answer.
• 
See related Guilty and Sentenced (Gary Varvel, 09/24/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Jolovitz  (05/13/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/19/2019) | Next sect (01/09/2021) | List bot 
      Michelle Obama, Netflix, and a gullible American audience  (INN 05/13/2020)
• 
"There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." — Soren Kierkegaard
• 
"The fools.  But just because they are fools does not mean they are not a threat." — Kendare Blake
• 
Netflix premiered one of its signature accomplishments this past week: It is Michelle Obama's "Becoming" – the story of the development of a woman who is universally seen as the most popular woman in America.
• 
... beyond the fabrications and distortions that are endemic throughout, it is the self-absorbed, boastful and self-centered story of the Obama rise to fame.
• 
It is an autobiographical revisionist account of its own version of the personalities who are still writing their own history in the way they want it to be told.
• 
What is discernibly obvious, but lost to those not willing to see, is the reaction of the American audience that actually buys into this deception, one which is fraught with disingenuous rubbish.
• 
The real story is the one no one seems to have noticed: It is the audience that the Obamas continue to play to, and have exploited so brilliantly.
• 
The obvious question begs to be asked: Are the Obamas that smart, or have they simply manipulated those who are not?
• 
Mark Twain answered that question over a century ago: "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
• 
Fifteen minutes into "Becoming" , we see that Michelle Obama succeeds in convincing the lemmings watching this documentary that she is smarter than they are.
• 
As the cameras follow her from one interview to another on a 34-stop tour – questioned by sycophantic celebrity friends like Oprah Winfrey and conducted before audiences that have paid handsomely to sit and adulate – interspersed with the requisite stops to sign copies of her book for groupies who can say they "almost touched her", Michelle takes notice of her conquests
• 
She is very carefully no longer the Michelle LaVaughn Robinson who, during her college days at Princeton, had expressed an unapologetic hatred for Whites.
• 
The same Michelle Obama who confided with us publicly in February 2008 that it was the first time she was ever proud of being an American.
• 
The same presidential candidate's wife who was kept completely out of the public's eye for so many weeks for fear that she might confess as much, again.
• 
Americans, however, have long had a very short memory.
• 
And, in "Becoming" – Michelle Obama authored a book that engendered a documentary that has now raised her to a level of veneration that Stalin or Kennedy would have gladly settled for.
• 
Because of the audience.  The easily fooled audience that can never be convinced that they have been fooled.
• 
Well, there are actually two audiences here, and we ought to fear both.
• 
The first is the one we see in this documentary serving as the backdrop to many of Michelle Obama's on-screen appearances.
• 
Look closely, and carefully.  Look at their faces.  Their reaction to the haughty person who bemoans the fact that the trajectory of her own talented destiny was temporarily derailed by the birth of two children.
• 
The other is the Netflix audience – the one envious of the figure on screen, those who were there in person.
• 
Maybe she ought to get a Nobel Peace Prize herself for, well, something yet to be determined.
• 
It comes down to this.  With an audience as naive and unsophisticated as the one she has already conquered, and with the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden displaying a cognitive acumen that diminishes by the day, why not pursue that gullible vote and bring a second Obama into the White House, and an end to the Trump era?  After all, useful idiots get to vote too.
• 
A reasonable answer: She dares not, because it is easier to fool people when you write your own script.  As a presidential candidate challenging the unpredictable Donald Trump, you might not always be able to do that.  Just ask Hillary.
• 
See related I Love Them so! (Mike Lester, 03/26/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related China Vacation (Glenn McCoy, 03/25/2014) cartoon from USA picture album
 Jones  (01/09/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (05/13/2020) | Next sect (02/09/2021) | List bot 
      Johnny 'Joey' Jones: After Capitol riots, this moment matters.  We can't lose faith in America  (Fox 01/09/2021)
• 
Life happens in moments.  Things change in the blink of an eye.  Along with the universal gift of self-determination comes the responsibility of decision making.
• 
People react every day in a split second to save a life or prevent a disaster.  These moments are the determinative high and low points of human existence.
• 
Our Constitution is little more than a game plan for gambling on these moments, to wager complete chaos and anarchy for personal liberty and self-governance.
• 
Freedom and democracy live in the space between the problems we face and the decisions we make.
• 
The moment protest turn to riots, the moment anger turns to rage, the moments faith in something becomes a total lack of respect for it; those are the moments our founding fathers and our sacred document took a risk for.
• 
They believed in us, they believed in our ability to see beyond the moment, to understand the consequences of our actions and to move towards fixing problems rather than relieving frustration.
• 
I don't know if this election was fraught with fraud, and frankly at this point I don't know how much it matters.
• 
I've been cheated many times in my life, I was cheated out of my legs trying to keep people safe, I was cheated out of a comfortable life by my parents and grandparents' misfortune and just last year my kids were cheated out of a grandad because my dad has an unexpected heart attack.
• 
I can't reverse any of these things but I can overcome them.  I can respond to them and I can make changes to deter them from happening to my kids.
• 
We have an opportunity to decide if what happened in Washington, D.C.  this week will be a flame to light a fire of chaos and destruction or a venting of mass frustration that makes way for a cooling off of anger and mobilization of foresight and wisdom.
• 
This is a moment for every American, especially those who feel cheated, to look ahead and find unrelenting faith while living inside the empty feeling of betrayal.
• 
We still have a federalist system of government.  We have power, true power, over D.C.  Our state legislatures decide wholly how we conduct our election and pick our electors.
• 
Invest your energy in your neighbors, and support leaders who represent you.
• 
Let me be clear, if I know anything I know two things 1) life is not fair and 2) that's not an excuse to lose.
• 
I, like most of you, have had cards stacked against me before.  Yet, we're still here walking through life, finding victories, letting our voices be heard.
• 
Even after my body was blown to pieces.  After I suffered the painful and tormenting task of accepting my fate as forever limited, smiles come easier than frowns.  Why?  Because I control the moments that matter.
• 
You either let your emotions control you, or control and mold your emotions.
• 
Taking control now simply means not giving up.  It means going to work, continuing to believe and finding strength and faith you might not have known you hold. 
• 
President Trump was a disruptor, he advanced conservative polices and values in a time we feared such things were on the brink of a political extinction, and I thank him for it.
• 
But he was never going to carry the load forever.  The burden is still ours.
• 
In a moment in November he unwillingly passed that torch back to us.  We can't be so scared that the things we believe in will die that we kill them ourselves in desperation and fury.  We know better.
• 
Today, as every day, is a new opportunity.  It's the best-kept secret of life.
• 
So today, we can make a choice.  We can choose freedom, liberty and country or we can choose fear, division and hatred.
• 
This moment matters and even when it feels like it's against all of us, this moment can be ours. 
• 
God bless our beautiful republic and God bless you, America.
 Jordan  (02/09/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/09/2021) | Next sect (02/27/2020) | List bot 
      Rep.  Jim Jordan: Trump impeachment trial – here's what the Senate must do  (Fox 02/09/2021)
• 
It's been almost a month since he left office, but Democrats still can't let go of President Donald Trump.
• 
That's why, as our country faces many urgent challenges, the Senate will set aside its real work this week and instead focus on yet another political impeachment charade.
• 
After all the bluster and rhetoric from the House Democrat managers, the Senate must acquit President Trump because the facts and the Constitution are on his side.
• 
We all agree that the events on Jan.  6, 2021, were as wrong as wrong can be.  Every American has the right to peacefully protest.  But there is no place for political violence of any kind – whether in Washington, D.C., or in Portland, Ore.
• 
Republicans have been consistent in denouncing acts of political violence.  Democrats have not, and now they are casting political blame for what happened at the Capitol.
• 
President Trump did not incite the violence of Jan.  6.  News reports suggest the FBI knew in advance that violence would occur.  The U.S.  Capitol Police also reportedly understood that there was a "strong potential for violence" that day.
• 
Far from inciting violence, President Trump urged listeners to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
• 
Those who failed to heed the President's advice and who committed the acts of violence must be held accountable.
• 
But Democrats cannot seriously accuse President Trump of inciting violence when he specifically called for peaceful protests.
• 
Democrats ignored these facts.  They also ignored the Constitution.  Democrats afforded President Trump no due process in the House of Representatives.  In fact, there was no process whatsoever – no witnesses, no depositions, no hearings, no cross-examinations.
• 
The Constitution states the "President ... shall be removed from office on impeachment ... and conviction." The Constitution also specifies that "Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor."
• 
The Senate obviously can't remove a president who is no longer in office, and so it can't disqualify a president from future office if it didn't remove him while he was in office.
• 
The Constitution also requires that the chief justice of the United States preside over a presidential impeachment trial.  Chief Justice Roberts has said that he won't preside over this trial.  The substitute presiding officer, Sen.  Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is also a juror who has already signaled support for President Trump's conviction.
• 
In their desperation to attack President Trump, Democrats are trampling on other important constitutional rights.
• 
Last week, Democrats threatened President Trump that if he declined to testify during the Democrats' impeachment charade, they would use it as proof of his guilt.
• 
That may be how trials work in socialist countries.  But that's not how it works in America.
• 
Democrats are going to these lengths because they are obsessed with canceling President Trump.  Democrats tried to impeach President Trump at least nine times since January 2017.  They investigated him endlessly – the Russia hoax, the Mueller investigation, the first sham impeachment.  They pestered him, his family and his associates.
• 
But President Trump wasn't fazed.  He got results for the American people.
• 
President Trump said he'd cut taxes, and he did.  He said he'd reduce regulations, and he did.  He said he'd get out of the Iran nuclear deal, and he did.  The president said he'd put the U.S.  Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem, and he did.  He said he'd build a wall on our southern border, and he did.  He said he'd bring hostages home, and he did.  The president said he'd win approval of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement on trade, and he did.  He said he'd appoint well-qualified conservative Supreme Court justices, and he did – three times.
• 
At the end of the day, Democrats don't want President Trump to run for office again.  They're scared of him.  They know he works the American people, and not the Washington Swamp.
• 
Unlike most politicians, President Trump did what he said he'd do.  Hopefully, one day, he'll get to do it again.
• 
The Senate must stand up for the facts and the Constitution.  The Senate must acquit President Trump.
• 
See related Rent Free (Gary Varvel, 02/04/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
 Judd  (02/27/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/09/2021) | Next sect (04/20/2020) | List bot 
      Trump’s court win denying sanctuary cities grants is major blow to liberal extremists  (Fox 02/27/2020)
• 
Despite their best attempts, pro-illegal alien extremists are failing to stop the Trump administration's efforts to restore law and order to the nation.
• 
... ruled that the Department of Justice can indeed withhold grant money from local and state governments that purposely flout the law and put American lives at risk.
• 
This ruling is obvious, sensible and just — at least to anyone who isn't a pro-open-borders extremist.
• 
In question in this specific case was the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which dispenses $250 million per year to support state local criminal justice efforts, and upon which many sanctuary jurisdictions rely in order to meet their budgetary needs.
• 
One such jurisdiction is New York City, and the response to Wednesday's ruling from its mayor, Bill de Blasio, typifies the hypocrisy and outright absurdity of those who think releasing criminal illegal aliens onto the streets is the right thing to do.
• 
"President Trump's latest retaliation against his hometown takes away security funding from the number one terrorist target in America," de Blasio said in a statement, "all because we refuse to play by his arbitrary rules."
• 
Those so-called arbitrary rules are the literal law of the land, requirements specifically added by Congress for cities that want to receive Bryne grants, whether Mr.  de Blasio likes it or not.
• 
And the notion that a mayor who as a matter of policy refuses to hand over criminal illegal aliens to federal law enforcement — instead unleashing them to wreak more havoc on law-abiding citizens — would suddenly pretend to care about the security of his city is quite frankly offensive.
• 
Yet to Mr.  de Blasio and his allies, President Trump's efforts to enforce the law of the land and protect American lives amounts to "retaliation."
• 
This is the essence of their position against the Trump administration's policy.
• 
They truly believe that they have the right to take federal money intended to help them enforce the law while simultaneously refusing to assist federal law enforcement.
• 
They actually have the gall to demand federal money intended for public safety while actively undermining public safety with their sanctuary policies.
• 
In addition to highlighting the morally indefensible position of sanctuary jurisdictions and their supporters, the circuit court decision also highlights the importance of President Trump's efforts to reshape the judiciary.
• 
We have seen the lengths to which proponents of sanctuary cities are willing to go to maintain their state of lawlessness and protect their reckless practices.
• 
We have seen that there are activist judges on various courts willing to support them.
• 
And we have just seen that sound, constitutionally-based legal judgments may be our last line of defense against those who wish to replace the American Dream with American Anarchy.
 Kazianis  (04/20/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/27/2020) | Next sect (09/01/2021) | List bot 
      Harry Kazianis: Costs of coronavirus — China must pay for its misdeeds, start with these 5 steps  (Fox 04/20/2020)
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With over 39,000 American lives lost forever due to the COVID-19 pandemic — 13 times more than the savage terror attacks on Sept.  11 — multiple reports ... point to China's sloppy handling of a lethal pathogen in a virology institute in the city of Wuhan as the most likely cause.
• 
Combined with clear evidence of Beijing's coverup of the severity of the virus — even going to great lengths to silence its own experts who tried to warn an unsuspecting population — it is only the scale of China's responsibility in the current coronavirus that is up for debate.
• 
President Trump must ensure that China pays a considerable price for any actions that cost our country tens of thousands of lives, trillions of dollars of economic growth along with trillions more in debt, precious jobs lost and something even more important: a sense of security that may not return for years — if ever.
• 
Such a response should mirror what the Trump administration has done to other rogue states: maximum pressure, but on steroids.
• 
China — and other nations contemplating such behavior — must know that their actions will result in the severest of consequences.
• 
We must completely rethink every aspect of our China policy and be unafraid to label Beijing what it is: a dangerous 21st-century evil empire whose communist government should have fallen into the ash heap of history along with the Soviet Union.
• 
First, America must boycott the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.  Jimmy Carter led such a boycott of the 1980 games in the Soviet Union when the stakes were far lower.  We must repeat this action, as we cannot ever reward a regime that has caused such carnage on a global scale.
• 
Second, we should adjust our diplomatic strategy to fit the times, which means stronger ties with Taiwan, unafraid of Beijing's bullying response.  ... We should no longer abide by outdated diplomatic arrangements that only help Beijing crush a vibrant democracy, one that tried to warn the world about the coronavirus — but was silenced.
• 
Third, we must do what we can to turn what makes China stronger by the day — its growing economic power thanks to U.S.  consumers — into a weakness.
• 
If a product is imported from China to the U.S.  a clear "Made in China" label needs to be placed on the front of the package.
• 
Warning labels are the only way to force American's to understand how, through our purchases, we are transferring trillions of dollars of wealth to China.
• 
If we truly want Americans to buy American, we first need them to understand what they are buying and from who.
• 
Fourth, we must, once again, make human rights one of the central pillars of our conversations and policy choices with China.
• 
Finally, China must pay a financial penalty for the coronavirus crisis.
• 
Americans must be able to sue China for any actions that resulted in the loss of life or financial hardship.
• 
Only the severest financial penalties, including having their assets seized by Americans, can make China, or any other nation, understand that such misbehavior will not go unpunished.
• 
These, and perhaps other strong steps, will ensure that China does not get away with its actions and understands that the United States and other like-minded nations will not allow hundreds of thousands of lives around the world to be forgotten.
• 
If Beijing did cause this pandemic and the world does not collectively punish Communist China, we ensure that we will suffer such a crisis again.
• 
See related Thanks, China (Bob Gorrell, 03/19/2017) cartoon from World picture album
 Kirk  (09/01/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/20/2020) | Next sect (03/15/2019) | List bot 
      Charlie Kirk: Forget MAGA, Biden's got the Knock on Wood doctrine going forward  (Fox 09/01/2021)
• 
In eight short months, America has gone from the Doctrine of America First and "peace through strength," to that of American weakness, literally trusting terrorists to keep our troops safe.
• 
The few times Biden has lowered himself to taking questions about his failures in Afghanistan, he has demurred, placing much of the blame on a previous treaty signed by President Trump. ...
• 
This is nonsense, of course, and there are a few very obvious reasons why.  Since taking office Biden has been pathologically bent on reversing nearly every single Trump-era policy he could by executive fiat.
• 
Trump left the World Health Organization; Biden promptly rejoined.  Trump rejected the Paris climate accord; Biden promptly rejoined.  Trump established the very successful Remain in Mexico policy for illegal immigrants; Biden immediately cancelled MPP, which led to a historic migrant crisis at the southern border.
• 
At every turn, Biden's record-breaking executive order onslaught was designed with one guiding principle in mind: Whatever Trump did, do the opposite, the consequences be damned.
• 
And yet, we're supposed to believe that Joe Biden inherited an unworkable mess from President Trump and he wasn't able to reverse course? ...
• 
... while Trump terrified the Taliban into compliance, Biden's hope and prayer execution is marked by weakness, which has only emboldened America's enemies around the world.
• 
It's no secret that Trump wanted to end the war in Afghanistan as soon as he took office, but his was always a conditions-based withdrawal.  He proved it, too.  In September 2019, he shocked the world while drawing widespread criticism, canceling peace talks when he felt the Taliban weren't living up to their end of the bargain.
• 
Trump eventually signed a peace deal in February 2020, but it was always predicated upon strict compliance by the Taliban.
• 
Trump even warned the Taliban that he would bomb their family villages if so much as a hair on the head of an American was harmed. ...
• 
"... the Taliban understood that if they acted against Americans and took actions that were inconsistent with what they had promised to do, we'd respond and we did.  We did it multiple times.  When they pushed on us and the Trump administration, we responded with American power and American might..."...
• 
By contrast, Biden didn't just withdraw, he surrendered.  At every step he has deferred to the demands of the Taliban...
• 
The Biden Doctrine has led to hundreds of thousands of refugees coming to America, billions in high-tech military equipment handed over to our enemies, the emergence of a new terrorism super state, a power vacuum Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran are sure to fill, and 13 dead Americans and countless Afghan civilians.  Oh yeah, and the Taliban once again rule Afghanistan.
• 
Instead of ending America's longest war, Biden's weakness threatens to indefinitely embroil the U.S.  in the land of blood and sand. 
• 
May God protect our troops, as it's been said.  Joe Biden's disgraceful Knock on Wood Doctrine certainly won't. ...
      Coronavirus shouldn’t take away our God-given freedoms – Los Angeles mayor doesn’t get that  (Fox 05/24/2020)
• 
Discussing the severe restrictions he imposed on residents of his city in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Garcetti said: "let's continue to earn this freedom."
• 
Earn our freedom?
• 
Without a close competition for second place, this is the most outrageous and un-American statement I can remember coming from a major political figure.
• 
Our Declaration of Independence makes it crystal clear that we as Americans don't have to "earn" anything from the likes of Garcetti...
• 
The Declaration states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life- liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
• 
The mayor clearly has confused the idea of English philosopher John Locke's natural law with Los Angeles' emergency ordinances and decrees.
• 
While the idea of natural law predates Locke (who was born in 1632) in various forms, it was Locke who made it front and center with regard to defining a just form of government.
• 
Locke made it clear that natural law applies to all people and can be discovered through reason.  No revelation required, as is the case with Divine Law.
• 
Our right to life, liberty and property were "natural" under Locke's construct.  He believed that virtually any limitation imposed by government upon our use and expression of those rights is a violation of the law, not an expression of it.
• 
Garcetti seems to think that his ideas and those of his advisers supersede natural law and our Constitution, and if we're good boys and girls, we might just be rewarded and have our fragile freedoms restored.
• 
The mayor is telling us that rights are not rights, but are simply state-granted privileges.
• 
... the near house-arrest measures were said to be likely extended another three months as directed by Dr.  Ferrer.
• 
Doctor of what, by the way?  ... I respect their experience, and value their counsel, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't question their conclusions.
• 
Ferrer, for example, is a doctor of social welfare, not medicine.  She's supposed to be overseeing Los Angeles' growing homeless crisis.
• 
Instead, she's best known for starting the National Day of Racial ... as well as Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Centers on university campuses.
• 
And now Ferrer is known for advising Garcetti to extend Los Angeles' draconian lockdown measures all the way to Independence Day.
• 
Going back to President Woodrow Wilson and ever since, Democrats have ranged from expressing frustration to voicing open hostility for the limits that the Constitution places on government and their collectivist dreams of ordering society the way they believe is best.
• 
I have a message to Garcetti and Ferrer and to all the other mayors and doctors out here who are enjoying their moment of directing freedom-limiting public policy by edict, telling us what we have to do to "earn it back."
• 
Our freedom is not yours to give back to us.  It is ours to take back from you.
      Charlie Kirk: Starbucks engages in intolerable discrimination against police  (Fox 07/06/2019)
• 
On Feb.  1, 1960, four black college students sat down at a Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., and politely ordered coffee.  White waitresses ignored them because the store had a policy of not serving African-Americans.
• 
The incident sparked massive protests across the nation involving sit-ins by black people at Woolworth lunch counters, leading the chain to finally desegregate that July and boosting the civil rights movement.
• 
This week, on the Fourth of July, the Officers Association in Tempe, Ariz., says six police officers were drinking coffee at a Starbucks coffee shop before the start of their shift when they were asked to move out of the line of sight of a customer or leave the store.
• 
A barista told them a customer "did not feel safe" because of their presence.
• 
The officers — including some who have defended our country in the military — left.
• 
It's obvious that the discrimination against black people who were trying to order coffee all those years ago was wrong, shameful and inexcusable.
• 
It should be just as obvious that the same is true for the discrimination against the police officers at the Starbucks in Arizona this week.
• 
In late May, Starbucks closed 8,000 stores across the U.S.  for several hours of anti-bias training after two black men in one of the chain's coffee shops in Philadelphia were arrested for trespassing while they waited for a friend to join them.
• 
Are we now going to see a similar store closure for anti-bias training regarding police who want to order overpriced coffee at Starbucks?
• 
Don't hold your breath.
• 
Donald Trump ran for the presidency as a supporter of law enforcement.  Both before and since his election, President Trump has repeatedly stood at podiums across the country and has been outspoken in his praise for the people who put on a uniform every day to protect American citizens from threats found not across oceans, but across the street and even in coffee shops.
• 
Quite ironically, the support President Trump has shown is one of the driving reasons that police are now facing such open hostility across the country.
• 
This particular wrongheaded thread runs something like this: Trump is evil and wants to harm minorities; Trump supports the police; therefore, the police are evil and want to harm minorities.
• 
No one can claim all police are perfect, or that no police officer has ever acted improperly or even criminally.
• 
The truth is that the vast majority of police officers willingly risk their lives to protect the rest of us from criminals who would commit all sorts of crimes and do us grave harm if no police were around.
• 
Who in their right mind would want to live in a city without a police force, where criminals were free to rob, rape, murder and do anything else they wanted?
• 
The person who complained to the barista about the police officers in the Starbucks store would no doubt welcome their presence if attacked by violent criminals.
• 
And just by being in the Starbucks, the officers would almost certainly have scared off any criminals who entered and kept them from attacking anyone.
• 
The bottom line is that the prejudice that says all members of a group should be the targets of our hatred and be discriminated against is wrong and frankly, un-America – whether we're talking about people from a particular racial, ethnic, religious or professional group.
• 
Starbucks needs to make sure all of its employees understand this, or else fire them for engaging in intolerable discrimination.
• 
      Americans must wake up and fight against the socialist movement that’s already well underway  (Fox 02/20/2019)
• 
As this socialist tragedy unfolds in Venezuela, my questions is this: Do the American people know how deadly socialism is, and how real the threat of it is here in the United States?
• 
I would pose this question especially to Millennials, who polls show are increasingly riveted by socialism.
• 
The president declared again Monday that the United States will never be a socialist country – a theme he introduced in his recent State of the Union address.
• 
To many Americans, saying the United States will never be socialist is rhetorical: Of course it won't – we have a Constitution that forbids it.
• 
What those Americans miss is that the Constitution works only if it is adhered to, and only if it remains.
• 
Right now, that Constitution is under attack institutionally and individually all around the country.
• 
The socialist movement is well underway.  This is a defining moment in American history.
• 
Democratic socialist congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was not beamed in from a spaceship.
• 
She has lived there for most of her life and she has been "produced."
• 
She has come through an educational system that is filled with people who believe in the ideas of socialism.
• 
She has lived around people who are motivated by their envy of others, who feel like victims, who believe they are entitled, and who think it is ok to take from the oppressive "haves" by any means necessary.
• 
People start to yawn when you warn them about a move toward socialism.  It seems abstract.
• 
But if you discuss the issues that arise from high taxes, oppressive regulation, seizure of private property, and dictating of individual behavior, people understand them, and they reject them.
• 
Well guess what?  Those are the four basic food groups of socialism.
• 
People often point to Karl Marx when they talk about socialism.  They shouldn't.
• 
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the Swiss philosopher of the 18th century, is the true intellectual founder of socialism and was an inspirational leader of the bloody French Revolution.
• 
Rousseau launched the attack against private property, which is at the core of socialist thought.
• 
If you take away what a person owns, you control what that person can do.
• 
People in the United States who do not take the threat of socialism seriously, who do not think they have to wake up and fight against it, would do well to contemplate the words of 19th century Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle: "There once was a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas.  The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first."
 Knowles  (03/15/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (09/01/2021) | Next sect (01/17/2022) | List bot 
      Ocasio-Cortez’s ignorance proves admissions fraud is the symptom, not cause, of America’s...  (Fox 03/15/2019)
• 
Unfortunately, admissions fraud is the least of the nation's academic problems – a symptom, rather than the cause, of the degradation of American higher education.
• 
What unknown fact does the scandal expose?
• 
Wealthy parents have long relied on a properly timed donation to improve their children's chances at admission to college.
• 
And it isn't just the wealthy who play the system to gain an advantage.
• 
Legacies, athletes, and favored racial minorities all receive preferential treatment from admissions committees to the exclusion of academically better-qualified students.
• 
American universities have never considered academic merit the sole criterion for admittance.
• 
The parents caught up in Tuesday's sting simply exploited this reality to a criminal extreme.
• 
An even more troubling question is not how the deficient students matriculated but how they graduated.
• 
Over his six-decade career at Harvard, Professor Harvey Mansfield has witnessed grade inflation reach such ludicrous heights that he now gives students two different grades: one that will appear on their transcripts and another that they deserve.
• 
In 2017, Yale changed its course requirements such that an English major may now graduate without ever having read Shakespeare.
• 
A 2007 survey from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute showed that college students graduate with less knowledge of history, politics, and economics than they had before they entered.
• 
The admissions scam succeeded for so long because everyone knew once the sub-par students made it into these schools they were unlikely to encounter any real scholarly rigor.
• 
So what is a college degree worth these days?
• 
Millennial congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez majored in Economics and graduated cum laude from a private university that costs nearly $70,000 per year.
• 
Since entering Congress, she has struggled to articulate even basic economic concepts.
• 
Last month, AOC blocked Amazon from relocating tens of thousands of jobs near her congressional district because she failed to understand the difference between a tax incentive and a slush fund.
• 
On Tuesday, during congressional testimony, Ocasio-Cortez appeared bemused as Wells Fargo CEO explained the basic function of a bank.
• 
If Ocasio-Cortez represents the quality of an Economics degree from BU, the university should lose its accreditation.
• 
The liberal arts enable us to understand and earn our liberty.
• 
Unlike professional and mechanical education, the liberal arts do not train students for any particular job.
• 
They are literally the arts of freedom, and no society that abandons liberal education can remain free for long.
• 
Unfortunately, the left's decades-long effort to subvert liberal education through pseudo-academic disciplines, administrative bloat, and outright censorship have transformed even our nation's most elite universities into little more than decadent indoctrination camps.
• 
Compounding the problem, the leveling myth that every American regardless of aptitude or interest ought to receive precisely the same education has saddled an entire generation with a trillion and a half dollars of student debt and degrees worth less than the paper on which they were printed.
• 
The wealthy parents who cheated their children's way into college committed a relatively minor crime, akin to petty theft.
• 
The greater criminals are the academic arsonists who have burned down our institutions of higher learning.
• 
In a democratic republic, our legislators are as benighted or enlightened as our voters.
• 
As go the liberal arts, so goes our liberty.
 Kudlow  (01/17/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/15/2019) | Next sect (06/05/2020) | List bot 
      Kudlow: It is dismaying that a growing number of woke progressives have attempted to subvert MLK's mission  (Fox 01/17/2022)
• 
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
• 
This is a thought that I would assume all Americans regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, political party could agree with.
• 
But it is dismaying to me that a growing number of far-left, woke progressives in the name of so-called 'equity' have attempted to subvert MLK's brilliant statement, by moving us toward a society where solving the remnants of racism leads to ever more racism.
• 
I'm speaking particularly of critical race theory which seeks racial divisions and routinely denounces color blindness as 'White supremacy' or 'White privilege,' or for that matter, Black victimization.
• 
These ideas of reverse racism and Black victimization and attacks on people with White skin not only run completely against what Reverend King envisioned, it's something that provides the greatest harm to children in school where unfortunately critical race theory is being taught by too many left-wing teachers across the country.
• 
Two years ago, when I was in government, and rioting broke out across the country, and the woke CRT cry of systemic racism reached its zenith I would try to argue, "wait a minute, we just elected an African American president for two terms who garnered 80 million White votes just a few years ago."
• 
And African Americans routinely serve in the cabinet, the Supreme Court, the Senate, the House, state governors, legislatures.
• 
Our election system undoubtedly could stand with some improvements, but in the last six or seven decades, minority progress has been enormous; that is, African American progress.
• 
Civil rights laws were passed in my lifetime that did enormous good, and more good can undoubtedly come to our imperfect institutions as long as we invoke some civility in the discussions and some common sense in the solutions.
• 
As a young man, I came to believe that civil rights and equality on the basis of merit and character was really a matter of common sense and fairness.
• 
I think these crazy, woke, critical race theory leftists are the real racists in our society today.  And I truly believe their vision will be soundly defeated while Martin Luther King's will triumph.
 Kurtz  (06/05/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/17/2022) | Next sect (03/23/2019) | List bot 
      NY Times revolt over Republican op-ed forces paper to back down  (Fox 06/05/2020)
• 
We are getting a great insight into the culture of the New York Times.
• 
The paper struck a blow for honest journalism — and that greatly upset many of its staffers.
• 
At stake is whether the op-ed pages of a newspaper should be a forum for debate, or just a vehicle for reinforcing what its top editors and a majority of its readers already believe.
• 
To choose the latter course is to reduce that precious real estate to predictable propaganda, which is not just one-sided but boring.
• 
The Times did the right thing — well, until it didn't.  The paper's editors chose to publish a piece by Tom Cotton, a Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, titled "Send In The Military."
• 
Cotton argues that it's perfectly appropriate for President Trump to use the military to restore order in cities wracked by violent protests after the brutal killing of George Floyd.
• 
Well, there was an open revolt at the paper, led by black journalists who were offended.
• 
"As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this."
• 
"Running this put Black @nytimes staffers in danger."
• 
"His piece was inflammatory and endorsing military occupation as if the constitution doesn't exist."
• 
Editorial Page Editor James Bennet took to Twitter to defend his decision:"Times Opinion owes it to our readers to show them counter-arguments, particularly those made by people in a position to set policy.  We understand that many readers find Senator Cotton's argument painful, even dangerous.  We believe that is one reason it requires public scrutiny and debate."
• 
Publisher A.G.Sulzberger added his support in a sensitively worded note to employees yesterday:
• 
"It is clear many believe this piece fell outside the realm of acceptability, representing dangerous commentary in an explosive moment that should not have found a home in The Times, even as a counterpoint to our own institutional view.  I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit."
• 
It's stunning to me that both men had to plead with their employees (and readers) to understand the essence of op-ed debate.
• 
The Arkansas senator praised the editors yesterday, telling Fox: "They've stood up to the ‘woke progressive mob' in their own newsroom.  So, I commend them for that."
• 
But he spoke too soon.  About two hours after I checked in with the Times PR office, the paper caved.
• 
"We've examined the piece and the process leading up to its publication," the new statement said.  ... "This review made clear that a rushed editorial process led to the publication of an op-ed that did not meet our standards." The paper said it would make changes, expand its fact-checking operation and publish fewer op-ed pieces.
• 
Meanwhile, a similar controversy erupted at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and staffers were so angry that some of them walked out.  In fairly short order, the paper apologized.
• 
"...  We're tired of being told to show both sides of issues there are no two sides of."
• 
No two sides — there's that ideological stance again.  Agree with us or your words shouldn't be published.
• 
And this for a column that flatly declared black anger is justified — but lamented the senseless destruction of property.
• 
... the notion that only one viewpoint is acceptable, and no contrary words should be published, even on an opinion page, gets at the heart of why journalism has lost so much credibility.
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      Free speech isn't just saying what you want to say, it's also hearing what you don't want to hear  (Fox 03/23/2019)
• 
... our president signed an executive order designed to protect and promote free speech on college campuses — threatening to pull federal research funding if colleges don't play ball.
• 
He said, "Under the guise of speech codes, safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today."
• 
I couldn't agree more and I'm glad Trump is using his bully pulpit to push back on the college liberal indoctrination disease.
• 
Quite frankly, it needed to be done.  I am saddened it took government intervention to make it happen.
• 
It shouldn't be that way.  College kids and their school administrators shouldn't be so fragile, so delicate, so close-minded an executive order is necessary to stop the madness.
• 
How did we get here?  There have always been liberals, conservatives and competing ideas in this country — that's part of what makes it so great.
• 
When then, are we at the point where safe spaces, trigger warnings, cry-ins, and screaming at the sky are the new norm?
• 
All for what?  Because Trump won the election?  All because conservative college groups invite speakers?
• 
This, from the same people who claim to be all about tolerance, peace, and love?
• 
You claim our president — and yes, he is your president, too, and those who support him are so reprehensible you have to threaten violence and destruction when a conservative speaker comes to campus?
• 
Trump is a meanie so you have to beat up anyone who disagrees?  Or smash and burn your own campus?
• 
It's sad to think some college-age students are signing up to fight for our country in the U.S.  military and meanwhile, others are sitting on their precious California campuses whining about Ann Coulter and others.
• 
Pathetic.  Absolutely pathetic.
• 
You know free speech isn't just saying what you want to say, it's also hearing what you don't want to hear and that includes conservative opinions too.  Sorry.
• 
And let's not forget, no one forced these students to go listen to these conservative speakers.
• 
It didn't cost them anything.  They aren't losing college credits or hurting their grades by not going.
• 
Conservative students have to listen to liberal garbage from professors every day and yes, they are required to be there for that!
• 
Over the course of your lives, you're gonna have to hear things you don't want to hear from folks you may not like.  Get used to it.
• 
You're not that special.  And if you can't be around people you don't like saying things you don't like, you can't go around creating mass chaos and physically attacking people because you think words hurt.
• 
Grow up.  Get over yourselves and develop a thicker skin.
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
 Langfan  (10/26/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/23/2019) | Next sect (06/05/2022) | List bot 
      Bribes to Hunter Biden would be just as criminal as to Joe Biden  (INN 10/26/2020)
• 
The reality that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Justice, and the Director of National Intelligence all say there is absolutely no evidence Russia is involved in the Hunter Biden laptop scandal seems to be of no effect on these accessories after the fact to what appears to be the greatest criminal corruption scandal in the history of the United States.
• 
Additionally, the fact that a Navy Officer veteran has not only verified many of the emails, but also said Joe Biden was personally involved in many of the transactions seems to cut no ice with the lame-stream media.
• 
But the real key to understanding how Joe Biden is likely guilty of federal criminal bribery is carefully parsing Biden's Oct.  22, 2020 debate statement that "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life."
• 
This statement is vital because while Joe Biden said that personally, he hasn't taken "a penny from any foreign source," if his son Hunter has taken "a penny" from foreign sources and Joe Biden knew about it, it is just as much of a crime as if Joe Biden had taken the "penny" personally.
• 
Hunter Biden receiving money from companies and governments that specifically benefitted from Joe Biden's official decisions as Vice President explicitly invokes the Federal criminal bribery law, specifically 18 USC Sec.  201.
• 
Under 18 USC Sec.  201, "Bribery of public officials and witnesses," the mere fact that Joe Biden knew that Hunter Biden, with no experience in these areas, was receiving huge sums of money from companies and entities regarding which Joe Biden was making favorable decisions would, at a minimum, be a predicate for a full scale criminal investigation, if not a likely federal bribery crime in, and of, itself.
• 
... Biden's debate-night carefully parsed statement that "I have not taken a penny from any foreign source ever in my life." looks suspect when viewed through the lens of 18 USC Sec 201 where it is every bit as much of a direct crime if Hunter took foreign source or any source money in return for a favorable official act by Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
It is also clear that Joe Biden knew the only reason these companies, (specifically Burisma when Joe was Vice President) were giving Joe Biden huge sums of money was because Hunter was Joe's Biden's son.
• 
Did Joe Biden expect these companies to give his son millions of dollars with nothing for Joe Biden to do in return?  Of, course not.
• 
Joe Biden's actions with respect to directly protecting Burisma by demanding the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor who was criminally investigating Burisma is, at a minimum, a red flag predicate act to start a major criminal investigation of Joe Biden, if not prima facie explicit evidence of gross bribery.
• 
But tragically, the failure of the relevant US government agencies to properly investigate Joe Biden's suspicious acts, and either clear him or indict him, has allowed a possibly suspect person to be a candidate for the office of the next president of the United States.
• 
The American government agencies' failure to properly investigate Joe Biden is, perhaps, an even greater crime than the one Joe Biden may have committed.
• 
Joe Biden may be personally corrupt, but the American government investigative agencies' failure to even investigate Biden's Burisma actions proves conclusively that these branches of the American government itself are hopelessly corrupt.
      Democrats have become "Mobocrats"  (INN 08/17/2020)
• 
It started with the "Occupy Wall Street" Movement.  The Democrats saw an enthusiasm that they thought could be capitalized on (pardon the pun) at the polls to win elections.
• 
But, what started with the "Occupy" Movement has become an amalgam of the white-fascist Antifa and the black-fascist Black Lives Matter.
• 
Over the last two to three months, the Democrat Party, its Democrat governors and its Democrat mayors believed it was to their electoral advantage to kow-tow to these violent, looting, fire-starting laser-pointing mobs, and let them run rampant.
• 
The Democrat Presidential Nominee Joe Biden and the entire Democrat Party, with few exceptions, co-opted the "Defund the Police" and the Antifa/BLM platform virtually lock, stock and barrel.
• 
The Democrat Party has become the Mobocrat Party and is leading the United States into a tyrannical socialist-cum-communist abyss from which we, the American People, and the world, will never recover.
• 
... the Democrat leaders' validation and acquiescence to violent mobs in Portland, Seattle and everywhere else proves the Democrats don't "Hate Donald Trump;" it proves the Democrats hate America, and everyone who works hard, has a job, and wants to live in safety and peace.
• 
If the Democrats thought that the mob violence was actually bad for their election prospects, they would have been, from the start, out in front trying to close the violence totally down.
• 
But the Democrats thought the gross violence was a net political positive so they sat by, and still sit by, and watch statues, businesses, and buildings torn down and burned to the ground.
• 
The Democrats actually think they are scaring America into voting Democrat because if America votes for President Trump again, America can expect a lot more of these violent "peaceful demonstrations."
• 
The Democrats are essentially criminally extorting America with the threat: "Either Vote for us, or the recent violence will look like child's play compared to what you'll get if Trump is elected again."
• 
This, then, leads us to the very simple question: Are these violent, fascist Antifa and BLM organizations under the control of the Democrat Party?  Do the Democrats control these violent mobs?
• 
On the one hand, if the Democrats control these violent criminal mobs, then the Democrats aren't a political party but a vast criminal/domestic terrorist organization that needs to be stopped immediately.
• 
On the other hand, if the Democrats don't control these violent mobs, how will the Democrats prevent these mobs if they are elected?
• 
The answer is that the to-be elected Democrats won't be able to control the mobs.  And, in fact, the mobs have already received and will receive additional police policy implementation that only makes them stronger, if not untouchable.
• 
The question's answer postis only two possibilities: either the Democrat Party is a domestic criminal terrorist syndicate, or the Antifa/BLM criminals control the Democrat Party, and the Democrats will have less control over the violent thugs than President Trump and the Republicans have.
• 
This makes the Democrat extortion of the American People with their "Vote Democrats, or get more violent riots" even more of a tragic criminal farce.
• 
For, if the Democrats don't control the violent thugs now, then when they are elected, America will only get more violence with elected Democrats who will be powerless to and paralyzed from stopping the bedlam and mayhem.
• 
In conclusion, it seems the Antifa/BLM domestic terrorists are, today, the Democrat Party's "Military Wing."
• 
They both have exactly the same end-game policy platform of razing the American system to the ground and replacing it with a hybrid-racist-fascist communist system.
• 
The Democrat Party wants to rule a communist America, and Antifa wants to rule a communist America.
• 
The only question is how long the "Political Wing" of the Democrat Party will be able to keep up the charade that Military Wing Antifa/BLM is not in the real control of the Political Wing.
• 
A vote for any Democrat candidate for any office is a vote for Antifa thugs permanently blinding Federal Officers with lasers.
• 
A vote for any Democrat is a vote to have your house confiscated by the mobs that will soon be coming for you.
• 
Don't think you're immune.  Because, just remember, the Democrat Party and its Antifa and BLM brown-shirt fascist thugs aren't coming for Trump; they are coming for America; they are coming for you.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      Democrats are siding with a genocidal terror state  (INN 01/14/2020)
• 
... America is in a national security crisis situation with Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
• 
And, what are the Democrats doing?  They are goading the Iranians into attacking American troops so that the Democrats can gain a "Trump has blown up the world" talking point.
• 
In effect, the Democrats are actively colluding with terror-state Iran.
• 
Instead of minimizing the military risk to our deployed soldiers, the Democrats are wantonly maximizing the military risk to our soldiers.
• 
The Democrats are putting their attempt to gain a political advantage on Trump over the security of our soldiers.
• 
... the Democrats seem to have joined forces with Iran against President Trump, in a sense against America, and soon against Israel.
• 
Explaining how the Democrats see Iran as the heroic resister to President Trump doesn't make their colluding with the GI-murdering genocidal Iran any better.
• 
It makes their actions infinitely more dangerous and deplorable.
• 
If it was bad to have allegedly "colluded with Russia," then it is positively evil to collude with Iran.
• 
Instead of the FBI opening a new investigation of alleged Russian attempts to interfere with the 2020 Election, it should open a counter-intelligence investigation of the Democrats open, inexcusable collusion with the terror-state of Iran.
      Can American billionaires cover the cost of Warren's health plan?  (INN 11/11/2019)
• 
... adding up the total net worth of the top 400 American billionaires only reaches about $3 Trillion.
• 
Even if you render every US billionaire penniless, the total only covers about 8 months of Warren's plan.
• 
Sen.  Warren (like the entire Democrat party) is a fraud.
• 
A bigger fraud is being perpetrated by the American news media which has decided to ignore that reality.
• 
More important, Sen.  Warren's "wealth-tax" on assets is actually unconstitutional.
• 
The United States had to pass a constitutional amendment to allow the Federal government to tax its citizens' incomes in the first place. 
• 
... on July 2, 1909 Congress passed the 16th Amendment which authorized the Federal government to tax income.
• 
It was ultimately ratified, after 4 years by the states, on February 2, 1913.
• 
The actual amendment reads: The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration. 
• 
The key operative words are "Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes." Nowhere does the Amendment authorize taxes on "assets." Hence, any tax on "assets" will likely be constitutionally challenged and rejected.
• 
The greatest danger is not the fraudulent Democrat Party spewing "divide and conquer" politics.
• 
The greatest danger is the American media that is hiding the truth of the Democrat's fraud from the American people.
• 
What we are witnessing is an evil conspiracy with the Democrat Party to cause America'grave harm.
• 
In conclusion, Sen.  Warren is a fraud, and the Democrat Party is a bigger one.
• 
Unless we Americans start to educate ourselves, and dig ourselves out from under the American Legacy Media's Big Lies, we will soon find ourselves enslaved to malevolent forces beyond our imagination.
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      Levin: Ruling class attacks your liberties to avoid facing their own failures  (Fox 06/05/2022)
• 
"We have a ruling class that is narcissistic, that is incompetent and in many respects, anti-American.  We have seen failure after failure for which they take absolutely no responsibility."
• 
"As a matter of fact, when they fail, they blame you.  The American people.  When they fail they blame other people, institutions and our history, they do whatever they can to deflect.  Why?  Because the answer to their failure is always more power for them, and less freedom for you."
• 
"Ladies and gentlemen, there is not a damn law they can pass in this country that will stop these shooters, when we have people who are responsible for enforcing these laws that don't do it."
• 
"When the ruling class fails it doesn't look in the mirror" ... they "look at you." "They're not going to say their ideology doesn't work.  They're going to press the gas pedal.  These people aren't going to fix what they broke."
      Levin: Biden operating 'the most diabolical presidency and Democratic Party probably since slavery'  (Fox 08/15/2021)
• 
... congressional Democrats with Biden's blessing seek to permanently transform America from a capitalist model to one that is far to the left by ushering in "American Marxism" through massive legislative bills disguised as "infrastructure" and "voting rights."
• 
Combined ... the Democrats seek to nullify the opposition Republican Party and control all levers of power in a way not seen in over 150 years.
• 
"The economics of that, how that's going to impoverish so many Americans in the war on success, the destruction of the voting system to make it [so] only one party can ever win, blowing out the Republican state legislatures so they have no say on it."
• 
"This is probably the most diabolical presidency and diabolical Democrat Party, probably since slavery."
• 
Levin went on to describe what he called the collective "thin reed" that separates 245 years of American liberty from tyranny – the two moderate Democratic Sens.  Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia.
• 
"Every other single Democrat senator is marching right behind Chuck Schumer and the American Marxists."
• 
... their roles as one of the few remaining congressional moderates are evidence America is "always one election away from tyranny."
• 
"[Democrats] will ram through whatever they have to.  They don't play within the boundaries of the Constitution.  They play outside the boundaries."
• 
... Miller, a former speechwriter and aide to President Donald Trump, added that Biden is "the vessel that American Marxists have been waiting for their entire lives to advance their radical program."
      Mark Levin: I have a plan to liberate your children from Marxists  (Fox 08/01/2021)
• 
"Parents are starting to show up in numbers at school board meetings, but they're abused at these school board meetings, the entrenched unions, the entrenched educational bureaucracy and administrators, the school board members, this cabal, they have no intention of doing what we demand."
• 
"We spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year for these institutions.  They call it public education.  Yet we have no say on anything that takes place.  We don't even have transparency.  While that's got an end.  And I got a plan."
• 
"It's not just for parents.  It's for those of us who care about this country, It's about taxpayers.  It's about grandparents.  It's about all of us, whether you have children or not."
• 
The first step ... is to "adopt some of the strategies of the left."
• 
"This BDS movement, we can apply it against school systems.  More importantly, we can apply it against the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers and their state and local affiliates."
• 
... parents must "get tactical" and become "more litigious" to combat the dangerous ideologies overtaking their children's schools.
• 
"It's time for us to get tactical in what we do, How are these budgets decided?  These school board meetings, they have these executive sessions.  Why are they having executive sessions?  What's discussed in the executive sessions?  And ladies and gentlemen, lawsuits can be brought.  Obviously, they're expensive, but they're legal groups throughout the country... Your children are not supposed to be subjected to a hostile educational environment that preaches that indoctrinates about racial stereotypes."
• 
"There's some of these suits going on now.  They ought to be all across the country.  We need to become litigious just like they are."
• 
... also encouraged parents to file complaints with the Internal Revenue Service against the National Education Association and its state affiliates.
• 
"You can do this... You don't have to be a lawyer to do this.  But again, there are legal groups who will help you."
• 
"It is time to liberate our school systems.  It is time to prevent them from being the playthings of these Marxist movements in the Democrat Party."
      Mark Levin outlines origins of 'American Marxism': Exported from Berlin, 'radicalized' on campus  (Fox 07/22/2021)
• 
That history ... began in the former Weimar Republic as the politics of philosopher Herbert Marcuse, who was born in Berlin in 1898.
• 
Marcuse traveled to Freiburg in 1928 to study under fellow German philosopher Martin Heidegger – the latter of whom went on to join the Nazi Party.
• 
Marcuse, however ... later fled Hitler for the United States, and became a "very prominent professor" at Columbia University in New York City.
• 
According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Marcuse sought to develop what has been named "Heideggerian or phenomenological Marxism."
• 
"When you look at the background of critical race theory, this comes out of critical theory.  Where does that come from?  It comes from the ... Frankfurt School out of Berlin: These are a group of Marxists."
• 
"[Marcuse] was the founding father, basically, of ‘critical theory'.  Critical theory was the basis for the New Left Movement, Weather Underground, the SDS, and all the rest."
• 
"Then you have a gentleman Derrick Bell at Harvard Law school.  He takes this idea (of 'critical theory'), which I will get to quickly, and he racializes it."
• 
... quotes Bell as notably declaring that "we use a number of different voices, but all recognize that the American social order is maintained and perpetuated by racial subordination."
• 
"It's a fringe ideology.  Critical race theory – just to put it in plain English – is basically Louis Farrakhan dressed up as scholarship."
• 
"That's what it is: Hate-America, Anti-Semitic.  Anti-White.  And so, we try to put some kind of historical perspective on it — the perspective is that 'anything White is bad because that's the dominant culture'.  You dehumanize people.  You don't treat them as individuals."
• 
"This ideology was invented half a century ago.  And the idea that it's in our schools is unbelievable."
• 
"What is it when you are teaching to destroy our monuments, to destroy our books, to destroy our history to push a racist ideology, you talk about taking down the economic system."
      'Neo-Marxist' Democrat 'enemies' seek to destroy US, as Biden engages in 'radical cultural attacks'  (Fox 07/10/2021)
• 
"I was doing research and studying the scholarship and who were behind these various movements, critical race theory, the current immigration movement, so-called climate change, the de-growth movement.  Transgender movement, which is an attack on the social construct... and I said we have allowed these people to intimidate us long enough.  We have allowed these people to use language, we regurgitate their language."
• 
"I said enough is enough.  If we are going to defeat this, we are in the abyss trying to claw our way out – we are not looking into the abyss anymore, we are in the abyss and if we are going to get out of this, we need to know exactly who we are dealing with."
• 
... the left are not "opponents" or rivals as often described but truly our "enemies." "Our institutions are under attack.  Our children are now being brainwashed.  This isn't the Red Scare or McCarthyism, this is American Marxism."
• 
"...  clever enough to try and customize it and tailor to the American system — you chip away at it and chip away at it so the American Marxist is very clever and conniving about how they conduct themselves and develop these various movements over the course of decades and we are seeing the pinnacle is here whether it's in the classroom, whether it comes to economic system, energy and so forth, intersectionality all come together in the aggregate and that is what we are confronting today."
• 
"This is a cabal of American-hating Marxists, that's exactly what they are.  They defend Hamas, they trash Israel, trash the United States, want to eliminate law enforcement, eliminate the border.  That's not a Squad.  That's poison, a cancer, that's what these people are."
• 
... the Democrats have "adjusted" historically understood Marxist tenets and constructs to present day society, and that critical race theory is itself essentially "Louis Farrakhan dressed up in scholarship."
• 
"Farrakhan hates Whites, hates America, [is an] anti-Semite, separatist, nationalist: That's pretty much what critical race theory is but even worse because it's objective is the Marxist objective which is what?  To overthrow and overturn the American society."
• 
... the Democrats continue to attack American history and seek to undermine our founding ideals and founding fathers – ... their quest to destroy and topple all of the historical monuments is rooted in the Marxist belief that history begins anew at day zero.
• 
"When you look at Joe Biden and the executive orders he signs, they are the most radical cultural attacks on our system in American history.  He attacks the nature of gender and sex and undermines women's sports, they attack over 60% of the people in this country who are White, they are as divisive and racialist as one can possibly imagine."
• 
"[Marxists] don't believe in free speech.  They don't believe in engagement.  They don't believe in discussion."
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      Curt Levey: Amy Coney Barrett's judicial philosophy – here's what skeptical Democrats are missing  (Fox 10/13/2020)
• 
... she said in a 2019 lecture, "The law is comprised of words — and textualists emphasize that words mean what they say, not what a judge thinks that they ought to say...  Fidelity to the law means fidelity to the text as it is written."
• 
In her opening statement on Monday, Judge Barrett emphasized that "The policy decisions and value judgments of government must be made by the political branches elected by and accountable to the people," not by the courts.
• 
... a justice who leaves policy decisions and value judgments to the people's representatives is exactly what most Americans want.
• 
To understand why Democrats make this assumption about Barrett and other Catholic judges, you need to understand the left's judicial philosophy: living constitution theory.
• 
It views the Constitution and even statutes as documents that evolve to adapt to changes in values, culture and politics.
• 
"If the Constitution is not constant ... then someone is changing it, and doing so according to his or her own ideas about what the Constitution should look like...  So a living Constitution becomes ... just some gauzy ideas that appeal to the judges who happen to be in power at a particular time and that they impose on the rest of us."
• 
When Democrats project this philosophy onto Barrett, they conclude that she too will use her power as a Supreme Court justice to impose her personal values on us, including those which spring from Catholicism.
• 
Not only are Democrats skeptical that a conservative jurist can interpret the law as written, they also see that approach as a threat to their nearly century-long project of using judicial activism to mold the Constitution into what they want it to be.
• 
When Senate Democrats tell you this week that Judge Barrett's Catholicism will stand in the way of her dispassionately applying the law, remember that it's the last thing they want.
      Schumer's threat against Gorsuch, Kavanaugh exposes his hypocrisy, why we need to re-elect Trump  (Fox 03/05/2020)
• 
Shouting as he addressed a pro-abortion rally yesterday in front of the Supreme Court, while the justices heard an important abortion case, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.  issued a threat that would be chilling enough if it came from a lone wolf.
• 
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price," he said.
• 
"You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."
• 
The threat is far more chilling and irresponsible coming from Schumer, who knows his remarks will reach millions, including angry, unstable people who might interpret them as a call for violence.
• 
This from a man who has accused President Trump of being responsible because of his tone for violence by extremists in Charlottesville and elsewhere.
• 
Worst of all, the minority leader's remarks are a deliberate attempt to intimidate at least two Supreme Court justices.
• 
That poses a grave threat to the Constitution's separation of powers, particularly coming from someone who has the power to potentially make good on his threats.
• 
Think funding cuts for the Court, blocked Supreme Court nominations and a drawn-out Senate trial for any justice House Democrats decide to impeach.
• 
Schumer's remarks are every bit as threatening to the separation of powers as, say, a judge suggesting he will lock up Congressional leaders if their legislation angers him.
• 
This from a senator who repeatedly calls the president a threat to democratic norms and the rule of law.
• 
Schumer's remarks were so over the top that Chief Justice John Roberts felt compelled to immediately respond.  "[T]hreatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous."
• 
Though Schumer was forced to backtrack a bit on Thursday, his immediate reaction to the letter was to double down and shamelessly lie.
• 
"Schumer's comments were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans will pay for putting these justices on the court" and blamed Roberts for "follow[ing] the right wing's deliberate misinterpretation of what Sen.  Schumer said."
• 
The minority leader's pique against Roberts' response is all the more remarkable in light of Schumer's grandstanding last month when President Trump suggested that the judge handling Roger Stone's case is biased.
• 
Schumer took to the Senate floor to call on the chief justice to rebuke Trump.
• 
Why is Schumer so enraged at the Court's newest justices that he is driven to make threats he must later deny?
• 
It reveals that what Schumer is really livid about is that Trump's election allowed him to appoint justices in the first place.
• 
More generally, Sen.  Schumer and the rest of the Left are apoplectic about the appointment of conservative justices because, for the last half of a century, they have relied on the Supreme Court to enact the many parts of the progressive agenda that lack a popular majority.
• 
It should not be surprising that Schumer's threat, while particularly egregious, is but the latest instance in a recent campaign of attempted intimidation of the Supreme Court by Democrats and their allies.
• 
One of the more brazen examples came last year, when a group of Democratic senators included a thinly-veiled threat in a legal brief submitted to the justices.
• 
The amicus brief, filed in a gun case, accused the Court of being "not well," adding that "Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured.'"
• 
Unless those doing the intimidating are held to account, this campaign will only accelerate.
• 
President Trump apparently agrees ... "There can be few things worse in a civilized, law abiding nation, than a United States Senator openly, and for all to see and hear, threatening the Supreme Court or its Justices.  This is what Chuck Schumer just did.  He must pay a severe price for this!"
• 
Civil or criminal punishment of Schumer is not in the cards.  Though his threat may lead to violence against a justice, it does not meet the relevant narrow First Amendment exception for words that incite "imminent lawless action."
• 
Some have suggested that Schumer be expelled from the Senate.  But expulsion would garner few Republican votes, no less the two-thirds majority of senators required.
• 
Instead, Senate Republicans should seriously consider censure, which requires only a majority.
• 
At the end of the day, the most effective way to teach Schumer a lesson is for Americans to re-elect President Trump and support his appointment of justices who will create a reliable and principled conservative majority on the Court.
• 
That will dramatically demonstrate that trying to intimidate the Supreme Court is a losing strategy.
• 
See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
 Levy  (07/12/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/13/2020) | Next sect (02/08/2021) | List bot 
      Trump wrong to give DACA recipients ‘road to citizenship’ — unless Dems change immigration policy  (Fox 07/12/2020)
• 
"I'm going to do a big executive order, I have the power to do it as president and I'm going to make DACA a big part of it."
• 
When he campaigned for president in 2015, Trump correctly labeled Obama's decree as being illegal.
• 
For Trump to do an about-face now and give DACA recipients what he called "a road to citizenship" would be a huge blow to his base and a major policy mistake if he does so without getting significant concessions in return from the open-borders crowd.
• 
In 2016, many voters were turned off by candidate Trump's acerbic style, but they voted for him anyway because of his policy positions — including getting tough on illegal immigration — and because he was perceived to be a practical businessman and a tough negotiator.
• 
Indeed, the president negotiated some commendable deals, including the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement to replace the North American Free Trade Agreement, along with a promising trade deal with China prior to the coronavirus pandemic.
• 
So why would Trump simply cave to the Democrats on DACA without requiring them to give something on their end?
• 
The president's comment about a pathway to citizenship for DACA recipients smells of election-year desperation.
• 
But Trump shouldn't think for a second that granting this amnesty is going to get him additional votes.
• 
It's one thing to grant protection from deportation, but it's quite another to take the next step and provide citizenship.
• 
Such action would almost guarantee Republicans being shut out of the White House for a generation.
• 
This is another example of Republicans seeking short-term gain at the expense of long-term security.
• 
It's what we saw when corporate America sold out the long-term interest of America's middle class for short-term profits in moving jobs to China.
• 
It's what we're seeing today as corporate America sells out to the radical and intolerant left in the support of boycotting other businesses.
• 
These short-term ploys wind up being a form of political suicide.  That's exactly what granting citizenship to illegal immigrants would be for Republicans who ignore the views of their base.
• 
One of President Ronald Reagan‘s biggest mistakes was signing the 1986 Amnesty Act for illegal immigrants.  It was supposed to be the last amnesty we ever had.  All it did was send a message that it paid to come here illegally, rather than waiting in line.
• 
As a result, another 20 million individuals did just that over the next 35 years.  In the meantime, the millions of people around the world patiently waiting their turn to get into America the right way have become the biggest suckers on the planet.
• 
There surely are a number of Republican strategists figuring that an election victory by former Vice President Joe Biden is going to give citizenship to illegal immigrants anyway.
• 
So why not just do it now, with the hope of siphoning some votes from Democrat Biden?
• 
But that's not why Americans – Republicans, independents and even some conservative Democrats – elected Trump.
• 
They wanted a fighter, not someone who was going to cave in for political expediency when things got rough.
• 
The only chance America has of stemming the tide of illegal immigration is a Trump win in November and the leverage that it would provide to get the concessions from open-border Democratic politicians.
• 
What's the point of voting for Trump if he's going to make a major concession to Democrats on illegal immigration and get absolutely nothing in return?
• 
... the president should not cave on illegal immigration – one of the core policy issues that first attracted disaffected voters to the Trump campaign.
      Steve Levy: To Debra Messing and the left – I didn't vote for Trump in 2016.  Now, I will  (Fox 09/05/2019)
• 
It's due in large part to the fascist antics and modus operandi of the left, including actress Debra Messing, of "Will and Grace" fame, who is seeking what amounts to a blacklist of Trump supporters
• 
... there was too much about this political neophyte that was bothersome.  Trump possessed no apparent core political beliefs (other than a consistency on unfair trade policies).
• 
He had seemingly no desire to tackle deficits (which is why I wrote in the name of spending hawk, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, on my 2016 ballot).
• 
Trump also had an apparent isolationist foreign policy.
• 
And worst of all, he appeared to have a mean disposition and an unfiltered impulsiveness that could belittle the office of the presidency.
• 
These foibles have endured through his first term, but there is something of far more concern weighing on me as I ponder my 2020 vote: the fanatical leftward shift of the Democratic establishment and the mainstream media.
• 
I'll be supporting Trump in his reelection bid, in part, because of his surprising policy successes, and, in part, because he is the only thing standing between an America as we've known it and a nation that will be irretrievably transformed into an unrecognizable socialist state.
• 
As frustrating as his insensitive and often divisive rhetoric can be, any danger Trump may pose is far less than a Democratic Party seeking to impose open borders, class warfare, an unrealistic Green New Deal that will cripple our economy, appeasement to traditional foes such as China and Iran, a hostility toward the Israeli democracy and a clampdown on free speech, as highlighted by Messing's quest to punish those not sharing her political views.
• 
When close to 50 percent of the population is constantly barraged by the Democratic media cabal with accusations that they are complicit in a racist mass murder in El Paso because they had the temerity to support Trump, or to not follow liberal orthodoxy, these folks are going to push back.
• 
The best way to thumb your nose at those who would seek to destroy you for not following their groupthink is to lend support to the very person they so loathe.
• 
As the old saying goes: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
• 
Who do these radical scoundrels think they are trying to intimidate average law-abiding American citizens from carrying out their constitutional right to support anyone they so desire?
• 
The left has emboldened Antifa and its violent ways.  It condones the banishing of conservative speakers on college campuses.
• 
It is giving a wink and a nod to miscreants who are hurling water, and even concrete slabs, at our police officers.
• 
It is now doxxing contributors to political campaigns to pressure them into dropping their support for a candidate of their choice.
• 
Why would so many Americans support Donald Trump even though they basically don't like him personally?
• 
Well, as a wise politician once said: People will vote for someone they don't like, but won't vote for someone they believe doesn't like them.
• 
It is increasingly clear that the Democratic Party and their allies controlling the media, academia and the entertainment industries have a visceral disdain for middle America.
• 
On the other hand, despite his often grating personality, Trump is perceived as truly fighting for these forgotten folks in flyover country.
• 
His economic policies have jump-started a stagnant Obama economy that gave us an anemic 1.6 percent level of growth in his final year.
• 
And while Trump hasn't yet succeeded in reining in illegal immigration or China's criminal trade practices, the feeling is, at least he's trying.
• 
And then there is the judiciary, which Trump is slowly moderating after Obama stacked the courts with hundreds of leftist, interventionist jurists...
• 
Equally important is the department heads a president appoints.  Trump's appointees have reversed ludicrous Obama regulations that classified rain puddles on farms as toxic sites, or protocols that restricted due process for male students on campus accused of sexual assault, or restrictions on needed pipelines to heat our homes in the winter.
• 
An election is a binary choice.  Even if an independent-minded voter has reservations about Trump's demeanor, there is far more to be concerned about with the intolerant, radical, anti-public safety and often anti-American forces seeking to displace him.
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
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      The Tyrannical Left's Sinister Conspiracy to Silence Conservatives  (JWR 02/08/2021)
• 
As worried as we should be about the hyperexploding national debt and our inevitable fiscal catastrophe, I am even more worried about the left's success in turning America into a police state (ironic, given its simultaneous war on the police).
• 
People still able to summon their rational faculties during this pandemic have to be concerned about this insane, concerted effort to control people's thoughts and speech.
• 
How can those who purport to rage against the fascism of former President Donald Trump, which was an abject Democratic and media myth, promote actual fascism in our culture?
• 
It strains the mind to imagine that fair people can deceive themselves into believing that silencing and canceling people for "offensive" views is consistent with our liberty tradition.
• 
Some rationalize that because government is not the moving agency in this censorship, and because the Constitution only restricts state action, not that of private entities, there is no violation of our constitutional principles.
• 
They can lie or fool themselves, but don't let them fool you.  Let's not pretend that this consortium of overblown, unaccountable digital oligarchs does not represent an equal threat to our speech.
• 
The left has been quite strategic in its sinister plans to silence and control conservatives.  If it could sufficiently demonize us, it could emasculate us as effective opponents of its agenda.
• 
Leftists have laid the groundwork for decades, along with their other extremist ideas they are now peddling as mainstream.
• 
They've persistently hammered the narrative that conservative speech is inherently hateful and inciteful, leading people to violent behavior.
• 
They've framed mainstream conservative ideas and speech as racist, bigoted, homophobic, devoid of compassion and hateful.
• 
The smear is more powerful and malleable than ever.  Leftists have exploited it to drive their open-borders policy — essentially arguing that America is the first nation in the history of the world that doesn't have a right to control its own borders and pretending it could survive if it were to give up that control.
• 
They're using it to advance socialism, arguing that our "racist" past requires us to scrap the founding principle of equality of opportunity and replace it with "equity," a euphemism that means guaranteed equality of outcomes.
• 
Justice is now social justice, which also means cashiering principles of equality in favor of forcing equal outcomes.  "White privilege," critical race theory and "systemic racism" are part of the same mix.  The racism smear has even found its way into climate change and pandemic politics.  It's embarrassing how mind-numbed we've become.
• 
In order to credibly argue that we need a fundamental reordering of our constitutional and judicial systems, leftists must show that America is irredeemably drenched in the sin of racism and can only expatiate itself through the atonement of socialism, reparations, guaranteed universal income, outright wealth redistribution and the rest.
• 
... the endless vendetta against Donald Trump is not primarily about Donald Trump.  He is a convenient scapegoat to taint the entire conservative movement.
• 
If they can succeed with their preposterous claim that the 74 million Trump supporters were accessories before the fact to the few hundred or so people who stormed the Capitol, then they've made a prima facie case that conservative ideas — and conservative speech — are intrinsically hateful and dangerous.  What's the big deal, after all, of silencing "domestic terrorists"?
• 
Disgracefully, this censorship crusade is being pushed by the very people who have a particular duty to safeguard free speech, i.e., the mainstream media.
• 
... the adaptable left is employing yet another euphemistic sleight of hand to marshal the private sector to shut down its political opposition.
      Biden & Co.  are driving the American freight train leftward at full throttle — we must resist  (Fox 01/22/2021)
• 
Now that the Democrats won't have Donald Trump to kick around anymore, they'll do it anyway, if for no other reason than to keep your eyes off their extremism.
• 
While President Joe Biden is talking about "unity and compromise," the leftist machine is still obsessing over Trump (by design) and demonizing and silencing his supporters.
• 
Leftists don't want unity and compromise, which has been clear since Trump announced his candidacy in 2015.  They want total control and submission.
• 
Their strategy is to keep the spotlight on Trump to continue to capitalize on the week from hell during which the D.C.  riots occurred, milking from it every last ounce of negativity to discredit and neuter the MAGA movement.
• 
Meanwhile, Biden and his handlers are conducting the American freight train leftward at full throttle.
• 
Our job is to counter their propaganda and resist every leftist executive order and policy initiative with as much force as Democrats resisted Trump from day one — not for payback, not to be petty but for the good of the nation and our fellow citizens.
• 
Progressive media outlets are beside themselves with glee; they feel empowered to renew their push to dismantle America as founded and use their fascist social media allies to implement their radicalism.
• 
CNN blissfully reported, "President Joe Biden is finalizing 17 executive moves just hours after his inauguration Wednesday, moving faster and more aggressively to dismantle his predecessor's legacy than any other modern president."
• 
Likewise, The New York Times glowed, writing, "In 17 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations signed hours after his inauguration, President Biden moved swiftly on Wednesday to dismantle Trump administration policies his aides said have caused the 'greatest damage' to the nation."
• 
Does that sound like an agenda of unity and compromise?  Aren't you tired of disingenuous rhetoric from politicians?  Biden is pretending with one hand that he is unifying and compromising while using his other to misrepresent and vilify Trump's record.
• 
It's certainly Biden's prerogative to push his preferred agenda, but could we please dispense with the double talk?  Biden's actions are not in the spirit of compromise, and they will damage the United States, not undo damage.
• 
But in the spirit of humoring Biden's narrative for discussion purposes, let's ask ourselves what terrible damage Biden is trying to undo.  Well, he's halting funding for the construction of a border wall.  But did the erection of a border wall harm America?  It did the opposite, and discontinuing the project will, in fact, harm the national interest.
• 
Biden is canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, which will harm the United States and Canada and help our adversaries — but it will appease environmental radicals, as will Biden's move to reenter the Paris climate accord in 30 days.
• 
The principal reason our emissions have decreased, by the way, is the shale gas revolution, which Biden and crew will probably try to end in an upcoming war on fracking.
• 
Adding insult to injury and guaranteeing further damage to the United States, Biden will impose a temporary moratorium on oil and natural gas leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• 
Biden designated Susan Rice, no stranger to political controversy and divisiveness, to lead a "robust, interagency" effort to force all federal agencies to make "rooting out systemic racism" a priority.
• 
... by doing this, the Biden administration is adopting the ideas of the radical left on critical race theory, which, a short time ago, was a kookish theory far outside the mainstream of thought and propagated by leftist academics.
• 
Now the president of the United States is telling us that racism is so deeply ingrained in our institutions that it will require a systemic overhaul.
• 
Do you honestly believe that?  Do you have the courage to say what you believe anymore, or do the thought police and cancel culture enforcers have your tongue in a vice?
• 
I don't see how we can reduce racial tension in this country when the left is constantly pointing fingers and agitating.  Everything is race, race, race.  This exploitation might not be as toxic if Democrats, including Biden, hadn't been trying to cast all conservatives as bigots, but sadly, they have.
• 
It also might not be as toxic if Democrats weren't using race to villainize conservatives and as a Trojan horse to usher in their socialist agenda.
• 
Democrats want you to forget this, but Trump amassed a mile-long record of accomplishments that dramatically improved America, not damaged it.
• 
His policies triggered an unprecedented economic boom with enormous increases of middle-class family income and record-low unemployment rates, especially for minorities.
• 
For 40 months in a row, there were more job openings than job hirings.  African American homeownership increased, and income inequality decreased.
• 
So, could we please keep our eyes on the big ball and not allow the left to divert us?  They know Trump's policies didn't damage the United States, but they have to convince Americans otherwise to facilitate their fundamental transformation of America, which former President Barack Obama began and now seeks to complete during what has been ominously dubbed his third term under the failing Joe Biden.
• 
Don't fall for it.  Resist.
      Trump Haters Gaslighting Trump Supporters  (JWR 09/25/2020)
• 
It's getting scary out there, people.  Everywhere you turn, Trump haters are venting their wrath against Trump supporters, as if supporting President Trump is an unforgivable sin.
• 
They're projecting and gaslighting — blaming Trump and his supporters for everything they're doing.
• 
It's madness, but at long last, they might have awakened the sleeping giant they're trying to hunt down and destroy.
• 
MSNBC's Joy Reid tweeted, "Genuine question: what will be the relationship between the majority of Americans, and Trumpists after this long, national nightmare ends — and it will eventually end — do people anticipate simply letting bygones (be) bygones with people who joined the Trump personality cult?"
• 
What bygones?  Who's doing what to whom?  What are we Trump supporters doing to you Trump haters...
• 
We are trying to mind our own business and stay safe.  Are you and yours?
• 
MSNBC's Donny Deutsch likened a Trump rally to a Hitler rally from the early '30s:"Well, basically you had a destruction of the belief in the free press.  You had a blurring between the executive branch and the Justice Department.  You have creating an other, whether it's Muslims, whether it's Mexicans, whether it's congressmen who weren't born in this country.  And then you have the destruction of free elections.  And we're here."
• 
This is screaming insanity.  Trump supporters aren't censoring people on social media.  They aren't threatening their opponents' civil liberties.  They aren't violating the separation of powers, which leftists routinely do, including through their activist courts and lawless executive orders (under former President Barack Obama).  They're not demonizing other races, as you maliciously accuse.  Quit belching that vicious slander.  And they are not the ones threatening the integrity of the electoral process.
• 
The left, on the other hand, has promised to stack the Supreme Court; add territories to the union to increase its electoral prospects; circumvent the Electoral College; obliterate the integrity of the voting process through rampant unverifiable mail-in ballots and the elimination of voter ID rules; and lower the voting age to 16.  Republicans aren't the ones threatening to lawlessly invoke impeachment to block Trump's lawful Supreme Court nominee.
• 
Increasingly deranged, intolerant, hateful and unhinged actor-turned-artist Jim Carrey said, "Too many Americans support Trump because he appeals to their basest and most primitive urges."
• 
What base and primitive urges do you mean?  Our commitment to the Constitution, law and order, equal protection under the law for everyone, liberty, prosperity and a strong national defense?  Protecting the borders to ensure orderly and legal immigration?  Are these commitments racist and sexist to you, Jim?
• 
And how about the now-famous Leo Guinan, who publicly bragged that he told his parents neither he nor his children would visit them because they had placed Trump signs in their yard.
• 
We have obnoxious leftist "protestors" in St.  Petersburg, Florida, taking over peaceful diners' tables from restaurant to restaurant, ratcheting up the despicable practice they began a few years ago to harass Trump supporters.
• 
And, once again, we have violent leftists rioting in the streets of Louisville, where two policemen were shot trying to keep the peace.
• 
The left is projecting its own darkness onto Trump and his supporters.  Countless leftists accuse Trump of inciting violence and hate while displaying their own intolerance and hatred and committing violence.  Trump is trying to stop the violence, while Democratic governors and mayors are fanning the flames.
• 
How many Trump supporters are burning down cities, murdering cops, threatening mayhem if Joe Biden is elected, bullying Biden supporters out of restaurants, accosting people with Biden caps or yard signs, threatening to withhold their children from their Biden-supporting parents and stirring up racial disharmony throughout the nation?
• 
When have Republican lawmakers ever tried to destroy the character of a Democratic president's Supreme Court nominee?
• 
Yes, Republicans say they're ready to defend themselves, but I know of none who are threatening to commit violence and mayhem if Trump loses.
• 
I don't know how people can be so warped as to condemn Trump for allegedly inspiring violence simply because they don't like him, when they themselves are actually committing violence or enabling those who are.
• 
I don't know how they can rage against Trump as a dictator when he is doing nothing but exercising his lawful authority in office and appointing justices who will uphold the Constitution and rule of law, and when they are openly promising to thwart the Constitution in countless ways if they regain power.
• 
Notwithstanding the planted trick question, Trump will not resist the peaceable transition of power, but he might legally contest a stolen election.  Meanwhile, prominent Democrats are promising not to accept a Trump victory — just like they never accepted his 2016 victory.
• 
No, Joy Reid, we Trump supporters are not part of a cult, no matter how much Trump haters have convinced themselves otherwise.
• 
But we do see him as the last best hope to restore America's greatness — and that includes liberty, peace and security for all, not just for those who agree with us, unlike many on your side believe.
• 
We are relying on him to lawfully prevent the left's destruction of the nation, its violence and lawlessness, and its abolition of liberty.
      David Limbaugh: Trump will win in November — Here's why I believe that bold statement  (Fox 09/12/2020)
• 
As a Trump supporter, I don't casually dismiss the polls that consistently show he's behind.  But I am cautiously optimistic he's going to win, for many reasons.
• 
Trump won in 2016 against overwhelming odds, the formidable Hillary Clinton machine and almost-unanimous predictions of his defeat.
• 
Though Trump was a well-known public figure, people didn't know whether he would fulfill his campaign promises and govern as a conservative.
• 
Sure, his outsider status was a major part of his appeal, and, yes, Clinton's unlikability helped, but I'm unimpressed with the theory that Joe Biden will defeat Trump because Trump has baggage and Biden doesn't have Clinton's negatives.
• 
Biden has plenty of negatives thus far strenuously shielded by the media, and they're becoming more apparent daily.
• 
His main negative, of course, is that he is not even a candidate but a hapless placeholder, a puppet in the Democrats' sinister scheme to implement a Bernie Sanders agenda under cover of "centrist" Biden.
• 
Meanwhile, we've never seen a Republican president generate more enthusiasm.  He has an electric bond with his supporters, who rightly recognize that he is uniquely situated for these turbulent times.
• 
Conservative, patriotic Americans and everything they hold dear have been under relentless bombardment by the militant left in all sectors of our society — culture, academia, Hollywood, the media.
• 
Everywhere they turn, they're told that America sucks; that they are racist; that they are uncompassionate Christian bigots, homophobes and sexists.
• 
They are vilified as intolerant by the most intolerant of people and censored by those waving the banner of free speech.
• 
Most people have no way to respond to the bullying.  They're often too intimidated to share their opinions for fear of being demonized.
• 
They have their talk radio and television defenders, but they've had no one in elective office to stand up for them and their essential goodness and dignity.
• 
No prominent public official has stood athwart this fraudulent, toxic narrative and said, "Enough is enough." But in Trump they've found their fearless, tireless advocate.
• 
What other Republican president would have had the guts to stand against this high tide of political correctness and challenge the left's divisive ideas, as when he recently banned federal sensitivity training on so-called white supremacy and critical race theory?
• 
Trump has given freedom-loving patriots a voice, and they will never forget it.  Despite efforts to portray him as a carnival barker, he has proven his sincerity on the things that matter to his supporters.  They see his genuine love for America and his steadfast commitment to their shared agenda.
• 
While Trump's opponents cast him as an inveterate liar, he has kept his campaign promises perhaps more than any modern president.
• 
Indeed, Trump has vigorously resisted enormous pressure from radical environmentalists to surrender our sovereignty to international bodies guided by pseudo-science and a Marxist worldview, hellbent on returning us to the horse and buggy.
• 
He has also kept his promise to secure more favorable trade deals for the United States, and even Joe Biden recently admitted that the USMCA is better than NAFTA.
• 
He has studiously protected American manufacturing jobs, which is not lost on American workers.  Unlike his predecessors, he honored his promise to move the U.S.  embassy to Jerusalem.
• 
... despite gratuitous Democratic obstruction, Trump is proceeding with the wall and has made substantial progress.
• 
Though the Democrats and media have savaged this president every day for four years, falsely accused him of unspeakable acts, mounted ceaseless investigations and impeachment proceedings against him, and given him no favorable coverage, he remains undaunted and presses forward.
• 
On top of all this, America is under siege by leftist street radicals who are fomenting racial tension and turning our cities into hellish war zones, not to advance the cause of racial justice but to dismantle America root and branch and fundamentally convert it into a Marxist state.
• 
... minorities also care about law and order and jobs and are slowly awakening to Democrats' taking them for granted.
• 
President Trump stands as a towering figure against this lawlessness condoned and often enabled by Democratic governors and mayors.
• 
The public can't help but notice that a man the left depicts as erratic, unpredictable and unstable has been a steady hand throughout the pandemic (notwithstanding Democratic propaganda to the contrary), the riots and the endless personal onslaught against him.
• 
Democrats are so confident they have irreversibly tarnished Trump that they believe they can defeat him with a candidate who's already ripe for the 25th Amendment.  They are brazenly hiding Biden in the closet with the media's reprehensible complicity.
• 
So, take heart, Trump supporters.  We have a strong candidate with a remarkably successful record, running against a Democratic Party that bears little resemblance to the party of JFK.
• 
This new party has no real candidate, no constructive solutions, and a stubborn insistence on dividing Americans based on their group identities and tearing America down.
• 
There are surely enough patriots left to ensure President Trump's reelection.
      David Limbaugh: Democrats own these riots – blaming Trump won't work  (Fox 08/29/2020)
• 
Democrats can try but won't succeed at distancing themselves from the violence they have enabled on American streets.  People surely know where the Democrats have stood on this...
• 
To blame this violence on Trump because he's in office is like blaming him for the border wall not being erected fast enough.
• 
It's like blaming him for the economic slowdown caused by the coronavirus when, in fact, he has persistently tried, over strenuous Democratic obstruction, to sensibly and safely reopen our economy.
• 
It would be like blaming him for abortions because they have persisted during his first term despite his valiant efforts for the innocent unborn.
• 
Democratic CNN has called the Kenosha riots "fiery but mostly peaceful," and the Democratic Virginia Senate just passed a bill allowing assaults on police officers to be mere misdemeanors, for crying out loud.
• 
Then, something happened.  No, Democrats didn't all of a sudden become outraged at the criminal assaults and property destruction against people whose only sin was to own businesses in a convenient location for Marxist arsonists and opportunistic looters.
• 
One of Biden's handlers must have seen the polling data, too, though, for after months of silence on the matter, Biden finally faintheartedly denounced the chaos, saying: "Needless violence won't heal us.  We need to end the violence now – and peacefully come together to demand justice."
• 
Well, Mr.  Biden, why haven't you urged Democratic governors to take charge of this madness?  Why haven't you encouraged them to accept President Trump's offers of federal assistance?  And just what do you mean that we ought to all come together to demand justice?  You know that Trump condemned the George Floyd killing within hours of its occurrence, yet some of your Democratic friends are acting like he kneeled on Floyd's neck himself.
• 
... the entire Democratic Party apparatus, now that it has strategically decided it better shift gears and publicly oppose the violence, is poised to blame the anarchy on Trump, not just because it is happening during his presidency but also because Democrats claim he is an evil racist who engenders an atmosphere of racism in the country.
• 
Democrats own these riots.  They own this endless leftist drumbeat of hatred toward America and everything it stands for.
• 
They can now pretend to oppose the violence until they are as blue in the face as the uniforms of the cops they demonize, but it's too late.
• 
They chose the wrong time to side with criminals torching our cities – a time when Americans are feeling particularly unsafe and insecure.
• 
No one is going to believe they didn't know exactly what they were doing, and few will buy that they've had a genuine change of heart.
• 
See related Democrat Knee (Sean Delonas, 05/31/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      David Limbaugh: Obama attacks on Trump are petty, personal, dishonest and divisive  (Fox 08/21/2020)
• 
I urge those who still indulge the fiction that former President Barack Obama is a uniter and great statesman to read the transcript of his Democratic National Convention speech with an open mind and discerning eye.
• 
Obama proudly violated the long-practiced rule that former presidents shouldn't attack sitting ones.
• 
But he's Obama, exempt from the rules, and he was attacking President Trump, whom the left considers fair game for any smear anytime, anywhere, no matter how deceitful and malicious.
• 
Obama was petty, personal, dishonest and strikingly divisive while pretending to call for unity.  He showcased the very qualities for which he torched Trump.
• 
Obama said: "I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously, that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.  But he never did."
• 
"For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work, no interest in finding common ground, no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends, no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves."
• 
"Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't.  And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead, millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever, our worst impulses unleashed, our proud reputation around the world badly diminished and our democratic institutions threatened like never before."
• 
Projection, anyone?  In every single sentence.
• 
I honestly don't know how even the most rabid Trump haters can deny he takes the job seriously, even if he occasionally gets in the mud with his detractors.
• 
He clearly recognizes the gravity of the presidency and reveres our system, which happens to not be a democracy but a constitutional republic.
• 
Obama is confusing President Trump with himself.  Trump is nothing if not an energizer bunny, tirelessly working to advance his pro-America agenda.
• 
No, Mr.  Obama, you and your party are the ones assaulting our system, while Trump is trying to protect it.
• 
He is the immovable force on our side standing in your way, and, boy, do you and yours loathe him for it.
• 
Trump is committed to appointing judges who will preserve our constitutional system, instead of exercising the wicked prerogative of dismantling it through judicial legislation.
• 
He further seeks to uphold the integrity of "our democracy" by safeguarding the integrity of our voting process and opposing myriad Democratic efforts to thwart it — plans to undermine the Electoral College; stack the Supreme Court; block voter ID measures; lower the voting age to 16; and push schemes to transfer power from duly elected congressmen to an unelected, unaccountable, power-mad administrative state.
• 
Obama's criticism of Trump for showing "no interest in finding common ground" is a bad-faith cliche.
• 
Progressives like Obama routinely accuse conservatives of divisiveness without proof, assuming the charge will stick because they've long categorically demonized us as bigots.
• 
But in fact, Trump has repeatedly reached across the aisle and only abandoned his efforts when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., consistently snubbed him and blocked almost all bipartisan initiatives he proposed, including those they had earlier embraced, such as a border wall.
• 
They even obstructed a COVID-19 relief stimulus package to keep Trump from getting any credit.
• 
Sadly, Obama is the one who drives an ongoing wedge between groups of Americans on the basis of identity.
• 
Trump has not only appealed to all Americans and specifically to minorities; his policies, in stark contrast with Obama's, have dramatically improved their economic circumstances.
• 
Shouldn't those real results matter far more than inflammatory, condescending rhetoric aimed at perpetuating an atmosphere of minority victimhood?
• 
Obama and his fellow travelers have no proof that Trump is using the power of his office to enrich himself, unlike some in Obama's orbit.
• 
They simply throw charges against the wall, and the media pile on to complete the libel, never providing evidence — only vicious, unsubstantiated innuendo.
• 
If all this weren't audacious enough, Obama also blamed Trump for every single COVID-19 death — as if heads of state can eradicate the coronavirus with a magic wand or cruise missile.
• 
To the contrary, Trump has been on this problem from the beginning, and we must emphasize that he has usually followed the advice of his medical team, Democratic sweethearts Drs.  Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx.
• 
Critics can't have it both ways.  If Trump was wrong, they were wrong.
• 
Obama's most surreal claim was that Trump has caused the economic problems brought on by the virus.
• 
From the start, Trump has been urging America to get back to work, while Obama's party has fought to keep America locked down.
• 
On top of all this, Mr.  Obama, President Trump has rescued this nation from your lead-from-behind foreign policy and restored us to a position of respect in the world.
• 
Poor taste or not, Obama certainly has the right to use his undeserved stature to excoriate President Trump, but many of us would appreciate it if he didn't insult us by masquerading as bipartisan in the process.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump critics don’t understand him or his supporters — we don’t care if he’s unpresidential  (Fox 07/17/2020)
• 
Presidents always frame their policy positions in the most favorable political light, especially this close to an election.  Don't even think about saying Trump is unique on this.
• 
Of course Trump is going to argue that his actions warrant his reelection.  It's absurd to claim that's unusually political, as if it's possible to separate policy from politics.
• 
But the liberal media's hypocrisy is hardly noteworthy anymore.  We'd be fools to expect fairness from them.
• 
What is notable, though, is that some establishment conservative strategists and analysts also joined in, lamenting that Trump shot himself in the foot by going off script and meandering all over the board.
• 
They cringe that Trump is unorthodox, unpolished and unafraid to get down in the dirt with his opponents, especially from the lofty, hallowed presidential podium.  They also don't get Trump supporters, who are not holding their noses to vote for him.
• 
These establishment handwringers have shown themselves ill-equipped to analyze Trump or his supporters because they can't adapt their expertise and experience to Trump, who broke the mold and is unlike any political figure they've ever encountered.
• 
They are handicapped by their willful blindness to the unprecedented fascism of today's political left.
• 
The overwhelming majority of Trump supporters don't give a rip about his so-called presidentiality.
• 
They don't care about the proverbial crease in his pants, or many other characteristics the pseudo-sophisticated Beltway elite cherish.
• 
They don't want someone like Mitt Romney, who let President Barack Obama walk all over him in a presidential debate instead of fighting for what he purported to believe in.
• 
Trump supporters don't want Trump to moderate his positions in the hopes that the committed radicals will morph into moderates and the crisis will pass.  It won't, because leftist agitators won't let it.
• 
Trump supporters realize we're in a war for the survival of the country — a war we didn't start and one we'll lose if we don't fight back with every fiber of our being.  We want him to counter the violent, revolutionary left at every turn.
• 
Shame on us if we ignore or downplay the anarchy and violence in the streets; the destruction of monuments; the assault on and defunding of police; the sanitization of radical groups as humanitarian rather than Marxist organizations; the cultural terrorism against ideological diversity; and the deliberate fanning of racial discord.
• 
Sadly, there's no rational basis for clinging to the hope that the Neville Chamberlains of the right are going to wake up to the existential struggle we're in and get on board.
• 
So, at the very least, we mustn't let them discourage those who understand the struggle.
• 
Purveyors of conventional political wisdom miss the reality on the ground.  They fail to grasp how much Trump supporters appreciate that he counters the liberal media narrative, that he's calling out the anti-Americanism of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's and the insane radicalism of their energy-and-economy-destroying green agenda.
• 
Trump supporters don't believe he's inhumane for refusing to allow America to be paralyzed by fear, and for insisting that we reopen the economy and get our kids back to school.
• 
They deny that he's racially insensitive because he believes we should protect our borders and shouldn't kneel for the national anthem.
• 
They reject the false choices foisted on them by a media dedicated to extinguishing the Trump presidency and fundamentally transforming America.
• 
They resent being called racist because they celebrate our founding and our Constitution.
• 
They will not be bullied into submission by those cynically using the race card as a Trojan horse for socialism and leftist authoritarianism.
• 
Trump supporters understand that the failing Joe Biden, whether or not he's a radical himself, will be putty in the hands of extremists and that, if Trump loses this election, their children's chances of living in freedom drastically diminish.
• 
They see what these radicals have done when their political party of choice is out of power, and they shudder at what they would do if in power.
• 
So you "conservative" strategists longing for the surrender of our principles for the sake of Oxford eloquence and phony politeness in the midst of an all-but-hot civil war will just have to remain frustrated, because if you don't understand what's at stake by now, you never will.  You just aren't wired to get it.
• 
We Trump supporters understand that we may lose the election and the country, but we won't do it without fighting or because we fear being falsely depicted as bigots more than we fear losing the nation.
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
      The Silent Majority Can Be Silent No More  (JWR 06/22/2020)
• 
... the country is under siege, so we cannot indulge the luxury of being discouraged.
• 
It wouldn't take a Christian fanatic or an excitable conspiracist to conclude that America is now the target of an intense spiritual onslaught — brought on by its own rampant descent into decadence.
• 
The left has been at war with America as founded for decades, and it has made great progress in transforming our culture and institutions.
• 
Leftists are activism-oriented and relentless.  They pursue their goals 24/7, exhausting their less activist and less calculating opponents, and advance their agenda by sheer attrition.
• 
But a more important factor in the left's success is the depressing naivete of too many conservatives about its ultimate aims.  If you underestimate the extremism and determination of your opponents, how can you counter them?
• 
Perhaps one silver lining emerging from the Democrats' enabling of the proliferating lawlessness in America is that unsuspecting patriots are finally awakening to the horrors facing us and the left's cynical exploitation of them.
• 
The virus isn't red or blue, but the left immediately weaponized it against President Donald Trump, their endless efforts to remove him having failed.  From the beginning of this scourge, it was obvious they were more interested in demonizing Trump than in defeating the virus.  The media and the Democratic Party bludgeoned Trump instead of working with him to combat the virus.
• 
They savaged him for defying the medical experts, when he was following their advice at every turn, including in shutting down the economy.
• 
Though they have shut the economy down even more severely in their blue-controlled states, they preposterously blamed the inevitable economic downturn on him.
• 
Though Trump and virtually all of America condemned the senseless killing of George Floyd, the extreme left seized the moment not merely to protest officer misconduct but to condemn the nation for "systemic racism," "white privilege" and "white supremacy."
• 
Leftist activists converted the protests into riots, looting and violence, and Democratic leaders refused to condemn it and instead fanned the flames lit by the organized mob.  They have joined the movement to topple monuments and erase all other unpleasant aspects of American history — as if they never occurred.
• 
How can an entire political party give itself over to a lawless mob?  How can it condone the systematic suppression of political speech by Hollywood, the corporate left and social media giants?
• 
Do rank-and-file liberals want to live in a country whose culture destroys people who won't toe the leftist line?
• 
Ironically, it will only be a matter of time before the mob they legitimized will turn on them, as surely as the French revolutionaries turned on their mastermind Maximilien Robespierre.
• 
For an unquenchable mob hellbent on eradicating all traditions, systems and laws, nothing is sacred, and no one is immune.
• 
Note to conservatives: If you have been casually dismissing leftist extremism, maybe now you will wake up.  Can't you hear the alarms blaring?
• 
Too many on the right also mistakenly believe that this Democratic frenzy and leftist unrest is all based primarily on their contempt for President Donald Trump.  He has made them crazy, and they'll do anything to get rid of him.  Then everything will return to normal.
• 
Yes, he makes them crazier, more desperate and more unreasonable — mainly because he's fighting them hammer and tongs — but he didn't make them leftists, and leftists don't need any prompting to unleash their hell on America.  It stands for everything they hate.
• 
With or without Trump, their goals remain the same.  But without Trump, their chances of finally undoing America immeasurably increase.
• 
Let's wake up and rededicate ourselves to preventing the destruction of America.  Don't ever lose hope.  My bet is the silent majority is bigger than ever and that we'll see that in November.
• 
Stay in the fight like your children's future depends on it — because it does.
• 
See related Just in the Way (12/23/2019), ) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Finally Got Him (Chip Bok, 03/31/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Coronavirus (Sean Delonas, 03/012/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      David Limbaugh: Is there anything Trump's haters won't blame on him?  (Fox 06/06/2020)
• 
Once again, President Donald Trump is being scapegoated for societal problems that he didn't cause.
• 
He didn't bring the coronavirus to our shores, and he has not created an atmosphere of racial disharmony in this country.
• 
Trump roundly condemned George Floyd's murder shortly after it occurred, but that wasn't enough.
• 
He condemned the organized thugs who hijacked the protests to vandalize, loot and endanger innocent people, but that was unacceptable.
• 
By condemning the anarchists, he was somehow chilling the peaceful protestors' free speech rights and showing insensitivity to their cause and their pain.
• 
People who viscerally hate Trump find fault in everything he does.
• 
Those wrongly accusing Trump of dividing the nation are themselves tearing us apart at the seams.  He's working to restore law and order, and they're trying to undermine the peace.
• 
... when Trump denounces antifa terrorists for turning our city streets into war zones; torching and pillaging commercial establishments; and injuring and murdering innocent people, he is accused of trampling on the Constitution.
• 
No.  He is doing precisely what a president should do.  He is upholding the Constitution by restoring law and order; reestablishing domestic tranquility; and protecting American citizens, their property and their livelihoods.
• 
He is not on some power trip here; he is trying to prevent criminals from engaging in wanton destruction and dismantling our civil society.
• 
Just as one can simultaneously defend the right of citizens to peaceably protest while condemning rioters and looters, one can support the overwhelming majority of good and honorable law enforcement officers while condemning renegade cops.
• 
If we surrender to domestic terrorists and criminals, we won't have a nation anymore, which is apparently what the anarchists want.  Stunningly, they're making substantial progress.
• 
It is indeed a sad day for America when people cheer on the disintegration of our society.
• 
Of course, decent and civilized people must denounce the murder of George Floyd and any other despicable incidents of police brutality, but that doesn't mean losing our heads and condemning all police officers by the very same type of stereotyping and antipathy that lie at the root of racism.
• 
We are all individuals and must be accountable for our own behavior, not smeared by a broad brush of indiscriminate condemnation.
• 
Couldn't Trump's opponents, who constantly accuse him of dividing the nation, just once try to join him in combating these deadly menaces threatening our society — the virus, the economic shutdown and the violence in our streets — instead of always focusing their energy on destroying him?
• 
See related Hates America Like Before (Jake Fuller, 2017)") cartoon from USA picture album
      Kayleigh McEnany gets vitriol hurled at her daily by liberal media — and it proves this  (Fox 05/30/2020)
• 
The level of vitriol the leftist media hurls at her daily — during and apart from the press briefings — conclusively proves she is doing a superb job.
• 
Liberal journalists whip their long knives in her direction and seem shocked she doesn't grovel.
• 
It would be different if the media were to use the briefings to help inform the viewing public.
• 
But few of them ever ask questions that could better inform the citizenry.  Instead, they serve up accusations not even thinly disguised as genuine questions.
• 
The media's attitude is purely adversarial, yet they act appalled that McEnany returns fire, albeit calmly, respectfully and eloquently.
• 
They uniformly dismiss this Harvard Law graduate as green and over her head, but she is remarkably polished, and it is driving them mad.
• 
You see, you are not allowed to talk back to the sacrosanct Washington press corps, especially if you work for that unrefined, interloping president who stole the election and is still trespassing on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
• 
As Trump's press secretary, McEnany is an accessory to his adverse possession of the White House who forfeited any expectation of civil treatment when she accepted the job.
• 
Some television anchors and commentators are particularly offended by McEnany's aforementioned practice of parrying the hostile questions they volley at her with suggestions of other questions.
• 
This just cannot happen because the press is holy and McEnany is their inferior who must curtsy while they abuse her and slander her boss.
• 
It is odd enough these self-important journos believe they are above challenge, but it is even more so considering they draw first blood.
• 
Do they actually believe McEnany is supposed to stand there passively in the face of their mistreatment, and not fire back and reasonably defend herself and President Trump?
• 
I can guarantee you one thing: The tens of millions of Trump supporters don't agree, and they have her back.
• 
We don't share the media's warped belief that they can behave rudely and then whine like innocent victims when they get a small dose of their own medicine.
• 
The media can continue this sick charade that they are objective journalists, but half the nation knows better, and the other half probably does, too.
• 
But many approve of the media's odious behavior because they applaud a media at war with a president they loathe.
• 
Anyone familiar with media "fact-checkers" knows that today's left describes contrary opinions as lies.
• 
Even if McEnany were completely deferential, the Trump-hunting media would never accept her unless she betrayed Trump.
• 
They would accuse her of lying anytime she presented a position that differs from theirs.
• 
The liberal media will continue to posture and complain about McEnany, and the rest of us can rest assured that in so doing, they further validate her in our eyes.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
• 
See related He Hit Back! (Glenn McCoy, 07/07/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      David Limbaugh: Obamagate matters – media should focus on these facts, not conspiracy theories  (Fox 06/06/2020)
• 
No, President Donald Trump is not ranting and raving about Obamagate to keep himself center stage or to distract attention from COVID-19, as liberal media are suggesting.
• 
Two recent columns contend that Trump has ulterior motives in harping on Obamagate – the notion that the Obama administration tried to destroy Trump with the myth that he colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
• 
Wrong.  How about we draw the most obvious inferences from Trump's statements instead of the liberal establishment's theories, which are far more outlandish than the Obamagate conspiracy they're ridiculing.
• 
Everyone knows that Trump has long been outraged by the Russia hoax, and with good reason.
• 
Even after he has been thoroughly vindicated of this frame job, the perpetrators have escaped accountability, and the left still pretends Trump is the guilty party.
• 
Trump was effectively exonerated when the vaunted, high-powered and obscenely funded team of Special Counsel Robert Mueller couldn't find a shred of evidence to tie Trump to Russian election meddling.
• 
Now, with the revelation that Obama administration officials and the FBI collaborated to incriminate former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, the retired Army lieutenant general, we have a smoking .357 Magnum in the hands of scores of those officials.
• 
It is the liberal media – not Trump – who are trying to divert the public's attention from a story – the one showcasing the Democrats' complicity.
• 
Trump wants us to focus on the virus and on out-of-work Americans because he is determined to prudently reopen the economy precisely to help the same people these journos claim he is ignoring.
• 
... it is inconceivable that he could avoid virus-related issues during the campaign even if he tried.  The media's diversion claim is patently absurd.
• 
... Trump truly believes he was set up with the Russia hoax, and the evidence supports him.  That's why he's ranting about it even while COVID-19 is still with us.
• 
There must be a reckoning for the political party that abused governmental power to engineer a coup against the other party.
• 
Progressives pounded the table for three years over Trump's alleged theft of the election, and they now expect us to shuffle docilely into the night when we have his opponents dead to rights doing the very thing they accused him of doing?
• 
The left can smear Trump from their basements for not waving his wand and immediately accelerating our COVID-19 testing capacity to a billion per month and for the economic devastation caused by shutting down the economy.
• 
But they show unprecedented audacity blaming him for a death count that would have been worse and for an economic shutdown that would go on indefinitely if they were in charge.
• 
Unhappily for the media, President Trump is alert, engaged and proactively addressing a comprehensive range of issues affecting Americans.
• 
He is fully capable of calling attention to this Democratic corruption of shocking magnitude without impeding his efforts to make America well and prosperous again.
      Schumer's non-apology for Kavanaugh, Gorsuch threats makes first statement worse, not better  (Fox 03/06/2020)
• 
Arrogant Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., crossed the line in threatening United States Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
• 
"I want to tell you, Gorsuch.  I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.  You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price!  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."
• 
It's one thing for members of the political branches to criticize judges after they've made decisions they disagree with, but to threaten them with consequences in advance of a decision is shocking.
• 
He has no more right to threaten judges over a prospective decision involving the Democrats' holy sacrament of abortion than he does, say, over a pending immigration case.
• 
Schumer said he shouldn't have used those words and they didn't come out as he intended.
• 
He wasn't issuing a threat; he was referring to the political consequences the case could have.
• 
I count six "yous" in addition to the naming of the justices.  Is Schumer saying he meant for the justices to convey his comments to the congressmen?  That's laughable.
• 
"(Y)ou will pay the price" and "you won't know what hit you" are unambiguous threats, even if metaphorical.  But how could these justices pay metaphorically?
• 
Was Schumer threatening to impeach them?  What for — following the Constitution?
• 
At the very least, Schumer was fanning the flames of the abortion throng, and that itself is dangerous, given the left's penchant for violence these days.
• 
There's no excuse for his comments or doubling down while pretending to apologize.
• 
Schumer's non-apology makes his original statement worse, not better.
• 
It confirms that he thinks it is appropriate to put political pressure on judges in advance of their rulings.
• 
It shows that he believes the court should make a political decision in this case, rather than interpret statutes and the Constitution.
• 
Schumer's lack of repentance appears in his defiant response to the normally mild-mannered Chief Justice Roberts calling his remarks "dangerous."
• 
Schumer shot back, accusing Roberts of bias for not calling out President Donald Trump for criticizing Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsberg last week.
• 
But Trump didn't threaten the justices.  He simply pointed out they were biased against him and that Sotomayor had accused Republican-appointed justices of being biased in favor of Trump.
• 
One fundamental difference between conservatives and progressives is that conservatives, like the framers, believe the judiciary is a non-political branch of government and that courts should interpret laws, not make them.
• 
For progressives, everything is political, including the judiciary, and the court should decide cases based on political considerations.
• 
This is all the more reason we should appreciate Trump's stellar track record in appointing two originalist Supreme Court justices and a host of other originalist appellate and district court judges.
• 
Schumer's misbehavior is a glaring reminder of the importance of defeating the lawless party in November.
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      Salute the American Revolution's enduring legacy  (JWR 07/05/2021)
• 
Ours is the greatest revolution the world as ever known.  It succeeded where so many other revolutions have failed, delivered a severe blow to monarchy and aristocracy, inspired republican movements around the world and won the independence of a country whose power and ideals have influenced the course of history for the better.
• 
We shouldn't underestimate the violence and at times the brutality of a multi-dimensional, years-long struggle that killed more Americans per capita than any conflict besides the Civil War.
• 
But there was nothing like the Vendee, the bloodbath when royalist resistance to the French Revolution in a Western region of the country was put down in a spasm of all-consuming savagery in 1794, let alone the terrors that characterized 20th-century communist revolutions.
• 
The Revolution's military leader, George Washington, had no ambitions to rule on his own and tamped down a potential military coup by restive soldiers at Newburgh in 1783.
• 
The Revolution didn't devour isn't own.  Its leaders died in their beds.  At the end of long lives, sworn political enemies John Adams and Thomas Jefferson struck up a respectful correspondence and both died on July 4, 1826, still honored 50 years after the Revolution.
• 
When the country's politics factionalized after the war, no one was guillotined or exiled for his beliefs; instead the profound disagreements between the two sides played out in battles in the newspapers and at the ballot box.
• 
The Revolution didn't seek to wipe out all that had come before.  There was no Year Zero.  The idealism of the Revolution (Thomas Paine: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again") was leavened with a realism about human nature (James Madison: "There is a degree of depravity in mankind").
• 
It established a republican system that endured.  Where other revolutions have given way to serial changes of regime, whether in Mexico or France, the Revolution led to the adoption of a Constitution of remarkable staying power.
• 
"The Revolution commenced the demolition of the early modern hierarchical world of kings, aristocracy, serfdom, slavery, and mercantilist colonial empires, initiating its slow, complex refashioning into the basic format of modernity."
• 
Were the Revolution's ideals of republicanism and equal rights incompletely realized and the men who espoused them often blinkered and hypocritical?  Yes, of course.
• 
But the Revolution coincided with a searching debate about the status of slavery that opened up new vistas.
• 
... the aftermath of the Revolution saw "the abolition of slavery in the North, a sharp increase in the number of free blacks in the upper South, and the ending of the African slave trade."
• 
In his famous 1852 speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass thunderously condemned the United States for celebrating its liberty at the same time it tolerated — or affirmatively defended — the barbaric practice of chattel slavery.  Still, he appreciated the greatness of the founding generation and their handiwork.
• 
"It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men.  Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future.  They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense.  Mark them!"
      We Are All Restrictionists Now  (JWR 04/03/2020)
• 
Borders mark off the sovereign territory of one people from another.
• 
They are a means — if they can be enforced and defended — for a sovereign state to protect its people from invaders and unwelcome immigrants and goods.
• 
They are a tool almost every nation has used to try to keep the coronavirus from gaining a foothold in its population, and try to keep it from spreading further.
• 
If there were really no countries and the world were as one, we'd be even more vulnerable to whatever threat arises across the globe in a city in central China.
• 
Of course, travel restrictions haven't prevented the spread of the disease — there's no such thing as an air-tight seal against the virus.
• 
But restrictions at least bought governments some additional time, and openness to foreign travel from China has been an accelerant on its spread.
• 
Imposing travel restrictions is the least of it.
• 
Italy has had trouble importing masks because European counties have been working to keep medical supplies within their own borders, indeed to keep produce within their borders.
• 
According to the Wall Street Journal, "German officials said their restrictions were partly designed to safeguard supplies at German supermarkets from French shoppers."
• 
So much for a new era of European solidarity dissolving the historic, centuries-old political and cultural divisions among continental nations.
• 
In a crisis, no one says, "Please, ship our medical gear that we need here at home overseas — we are citizens of the world too broad-minded to care about the interests of our own people over the interests of anyone else."
• 
And no government has acted this way, whether right, left or center; whether led by cosmopolitans or nationalists; whether in Asia, Europe, or North America.
• 
Everyone realizes their first obligation is to their own, and there's nothing wrong with that.
• 
Of course, Trump is naturally inclined to this view, and it fuels his political rise.
• 
He imposed travel restrictions even before he was truly seized with the seriousness of this crisis.
• 
The pandemic gives new credibility to his instinctive hostility to our commercial entanglement with China and before this is all over, there will probably be bipartisan legislation to minimize our dependence on China regarding pharmaceuticals and medical equipment.
• 
None of this means that we shouldn't wish other counties well, help if we can, and share information and technologies.
• 
But borders exist for a reason.
• 
All peoples have their own governments that, if they are doing their jobs, put the health, safety and welfare of their own people first.
• 
The coronavirus has acted as a solvent on a decade or more of cliches about the arrival of a globalized world where borders no longer matter.
• 
In a crisis, no one believes that, and everyone turns to borders as a first line of defense.
      Yes, Gun Ownership Is a Divine Right  (JWR 09/06/2019)
• 
... said that he wouldn't use "the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the G od-given rights of my fellow Texans."
• 
The basic proposition actually isn't hard to defend, and indeed it is written into our fundamental documents.
• 
This doesn't mean that G od wants you to own an AR-15, or that every jot and tittle of our current gun regime is divinely mandated.  Far from it.
• 
Yet there is a natural right to self-defense and gun ownership is inherently connected to that right in a modern society.
• 
The Second Amendment isn't fundamentally about Uncle Dick bagging deer, but about his ability to defend himself and his family.
• 
The notion of G od-given rights shouldn't be controversial.
• 
It is a bedrock of the American creed, written into the Declaration of Independence.
• 
It's preamble says, of course, that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
• 
In his inaugural address, John F.  Kennedy said "the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forbears fought are still at issue around the globea — the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of G od."
• 
The Bill of Rights puts flesh on the bones of those "unalienable rights" of life and liberty, and numbers "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" among them.
• 
Why?  Because the founders believed, rightly, that everyone has an inherent right to self-defense.
• 
John Locke, the English philosopher influential with the founders, wrote:
• 
"I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred."
• 
Owning a gun is an extension of this law of nature, and has been recognized as such for a very long time in Anglo-America.
• 
Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist of the importance of "the original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government."
• 
This right can be used if necessary, per Hamilton, "against the usurpations of the national rulers."
• 
As the great writer and reformer Noah Webster put it, "The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
• 
It is a canard that the Second Amendment contemplates gun ownership only in the context of militias.
• 
It clearly guarantees an individual right to bear arms.
• 
It uses the word "people," which appears in other amendments denoting individual rights.
• 
Whatever their merits, the most commonly proposed gun-control restrictions wouldn't substantially lessen gun ownership in this country.
• 
It does mean, however, that there is a limit to how far gun control can go in America, and that proponents of new restrictions should be fully aware that they are tampering with a constitutionally protected individual right.
• 
The Second Amendment doesn't have lesser status than the First.
      Woke assimilation: Teaching our pols to hate America  (JWR 07/16/2019)
• 
Beto O'Rourke — the losing Texas candidate for the US Senate who bootstrapped his way into becoming a losing presidential candidate — had a message for refugees who had come to America: Your new country is a hell-hole.
• 
The former congressman told a roundtable of refugees and immigrants in Nashville last week: "This country was founded on white supremacy.  And every single structure that we have in this country still reflects the legacy of slavery and segregation and Jim Crow and suppression."
• 
Just in case the newcomers were inclined to believe that they had escaped to the greatest country on Earth — an open, dynamic, generous society that, whatever their struggles now, will afford them opportunities unimaginable back home — Beto was there to tell them of all its sins.
• 
This is the backdrop of the controversy over Ilhan Omar, the Somali-born left-wing member of Congress whom President Trump urged, in particularly noxious tweets, to return to her native country and fix it before presuming to tell us what to do.
• 
It's a mistake, though, to think that Omar is anything other than on her way to total assimilation, only on the terms set out by Beto O'Rourke.
• 
America has two assimilation problems.
• 
One is immigrants feeling only a tenuous connection to America and getting isolated in ethnic enclaves
• 
The other is immigrants like Omar — and some of her second-generation colleagues — assimilating into the America of identity politics and grievance.
• 
They have learned to speak not just English but the language of oppression.
• 
They understand our system — at least no less than the average officeholder — but hold it in low regard.
• 
They may be citizens, but they are certainly outraged victims.
• 
"I arrived at the age of 12 and learned that I was the extreme other."
• 
"I was black.  I was Muslim.  I also learned I was extremely poor and that the classless America that my father talked about didn't exist."
• 
Somehow, despite all the depredations, she gained a seat in Congress.
• 
It wasn't peans to her new home that paved her way, but the tropes and priorities of a progressive left, as you'd expect from a former Director of the Women Organizing Women Network.
• 
Omar doesn't represent a majority-minority district.
• 
She started her elected career ... by getting to know "older peace-and-justice hippies."
• 
She attended Black Lives Matter protests and established relationships with all the left-wing groups in Minneapolis.
• 
Most of these people wouldn't object to, indeed would welcome and expect, her adversarial posture toward the country where she gained more notoriety and power than the vast majority of the native-born.
• 
Her narrative is the narrative of American malignancy.  Her default is to blame America first.
• 
She explained that local Somali-Americans attempted to join the Islamic State as a function of "systemic alienation."
• 
She contends that she has met American veterans "who say the most horrendous things, who have complete disregard for life."
• 
And she has accused her congressional colleagues of singling her out for demonization.
• 
Anyone who thinks these attitudes are alien to the United States has never been to a modern college campus or watched MSNBC.
• 
In short, whatever foolhardy things Trump may tweet, Ilhan Omar is not suited to return and fix Somalia — rather to join a segment of the American elite.
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      Liberty or Equality?  What the Founding Fathers knew  (JWR 07/06/2020)
• 
With the fulminating on the left about inequality — "Fighting inequality is the mission of our times," as New York's mayor, Bill de Blasio, summed up the theme of his postelection powwow with President Barack Obama — it's worth pausing to admire anew the very different, and very realistic, modesty underlying Thomas Jefferson's deathless declaration that all men are created equal.
• 
We are equal, he went on to explain, in having the same G od-given rights that no one can legitimately take away from us.
• 
But Jefferson well knew that one of those rights — to pursue our own happiness in our own way — would yield wildly different outcomes for individuals.
• 
Even this most radical of the Founding Fathers knew that the equality of rights on which American independence rests would necessarily lead to inequality of condition.
• 
Indeed, he believed that something like an aristocracy would arise — springing from talent and virtue, he ardently hoped, not from inherited wealth or status.
• 
In the greatest of the Federalist Papers, Number 10, James Madison explicitly pointed out the connection between liberty and inequality, and he explained why you can't have the first without the second.
• 
Men formed governments, Madison believed (as did all the Founding Fathers), to safeguard rights that come from nature, not from government — rights to life, to liberty, and to the acquisition and ownership of property.
• 
Before we joined forces in society and chose an official cloaked with the authority to wield our collective power to restrain or punish violators of our natural rights, those rights were at constant risk of being trampled by someone stronger than we.
• 
Over time, though, those officials' successors grew autocratic, and their governments overturned the very rights they were supposed to protect, creating a world as arbitrary as the inequality of the state of nature, in which the strongest took whatever he wanted, until someone still stronger came along.
• 
In response, Americans — understanding that "kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people," as Jefferson snarled — fired their king and created a democratic republic.
• 
Under its safeguard of our equal right to liberty, each of us, Madison saw, will employ his different talents, drive, and energy, to follow his own individual dream of happiness, with a wide variety of successes and failures.
• 
Most notably, Federalist 10 pointed out, "From the protection of different and unequal faculties of acquiring property, the possession of different degrees and kinds of property immediately results."
• 
That inequality would be a sign of the new nation's success, not failure.  It would mean that people were really free.
• 
The democratic republic that the American Revolution brought into being, however, contained the seeds of a new threat to natural rights, Madison fretted.
• 
Yes, the new nation will operate by majority rule, but even democratic majorities can't legitimately overturn the fundamental rights that it is government's purpose to safeguard, no matter how overwhelming the vote.
• 
To do so would be just as grievous a tyranny as the despotism of any sultan in his divan.  It would be, in Madison's famous phrase, a "tyranny of the majority."
• 
As Continental Congressman Richard Henry Lee put it, an "elective despotism" is no less a despotism, for all its democratic trappings.
• 
How would such a tyranny occur?  Almost certainly, Madison thought, it would center on "the apportionment of taxes."
• 
How easy for the unpropertied many to expropriate the wealth of the propertied few by slow erosion, decreeing that they should pay more than a proportionate share of the public expenses.
• 
Not content merely to limit and define explicitly the federal government's power, Madison made sure that the Constitution divided it up among several branches, limiting the power that any single individual or official body could wield and putting each jealously on guard against any other's attempt to seize a disproportionate share.
• 
Moreover, all these officials (except the judges) were elected representatives of the people: they were the agents through whom Americans, who had no rulers, governed themselves.
• 
If the liberty that America had secured through the war was going to be about pursuing your own happiness in your own way, then Hamilton aimed to create an economy that would give his fellow citizens the fullest opportunity to do so, through a limitless variety of career possibilities.
• 
The wealth of the nation and of individuals will mushroom, he saw, and America's opportunity economy would be a mighty engine of upward mobility.
• 
In a free, opportunity society, by contrast, "each individual can find his proper element, and can call into activity the whole vigour of his nature." The purpose of such a society is moral as well as practical.
• 
Much of what we can make of our single life — or even imagine making of it — depends on the kind of society around us.
• 
The liberty and opportunity that the United States would afford, Hamilton believed with all his fiery intensity, would allow individuals to realize every G od-given potential and to become all that they had it within themselves to be.  It's hard to imagine a higher aspiration for your fellow man than that.
• 
When we see the same faults followed by the same misfortunes," Madison wrote, "we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others."
• 
So, against the liberty and opportunity central to the Founding American vision, which produced two centuries of freedom and prosperity unmatched in history, what have the dreams of equality yielded?
• 
At the outermost extreme, the French upheaval for egalite in 1789 and the Russian drive toward a classless society in 1917 drenched every inch of their respective countries in blood and immeasurably decreased the stock of human happiness and freedom for years to come
• 
Though the 1913 ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment — levying the first permanent income tax, with unequal, graduated rates — cracked open the door to Madison's dreaded tyranny of the majority, it was only in the Depression that radical income redistribution became national policy.
• 
It stayed so for half a century, until the Reagan administration gradually lowered income-tax rates and made them less unequal.
• 
... one more proof to Madison that "[i]n framing a government of men over men the great difficulty is this: You must first enable the government to control the governed, and in the next place, oblige it to control itself."
• 
George Washington and many of his fellow Founders believed that a special kind of culture, one that nurtures self-reliance and a love of liberty, was essential to keeping alive the free Constitution over whose creation he had presided.
• 
It is possible to demoralize an entire people and stifle their faith in the future and in themselves.  The welfare underclass, filled with aggrieved resentment and void of hope, is the most extreme case in point.
• 
Because man makes the meaning of his life himself, through work, through family, through community, it is not easy for a person kept by government, from womb to tomb, like a gerbil in a cage, to retain a sense of dignity and purpose.
• 
Nor is it easy for someone branded his victimizer, and taxed unequally to support him and the army of bureaucrats who live by claiming to make sure he gets his due, to retain with confidence his own sense of dignity and purpose.
• 
Hamilton and Madison had a much larger and nobler sense of human possibility.
      What Trump 'gets' about China that most American still don't — or won't  (JWR 08/26/2019)
• 
Anyone who says that Donald Trump is unable to learn on the job hasn't been paying attention to how much his insight into a host of key problems has deepened over three years.
• 
He started out as an mossbacked mercantilist, fuming about the trade imbalance between the world's two biggest economies.
• 
Why was China selling us so many pots and pans, lightbulbs, TVs, and computers, while buying a much smaller dollar amount of pork bellies, cars, and tractors?
• 
Surely improper currency manipulation and state subsidies must account for so large a trade deficit, and surely, he imagined ... it was sucking the wealth right out of our nation.
• 
Though sophisticated economists countered that it benefits rather than impoverishes us to have another country sell us goods we want for less than it would cost us to make them, Trump sensed the social costs of this imbalance with an acuity the economists lacked.
• 
It was killing our factory towns, weakening our social fabric, and transferring abroad important skills and capabilities that we might someday regret having lost, especially if we needed to scale them up quickly.  The gain in these transactions was easier to quantify than the loss.
• 
But Trump came to realize that the problem was much larger.
• 
To enter its market, China for years has required high-tech companies to transfer proprietary technology to local partners, so that U.S.  corporate bosses, with their focus on quarterly results rather than long-term viability, promiscuously allowed Chinese firms to filch a storehouse of laboriously acquired Western knowledge that could vault so industrious a people to domination of the highest-value industries in short order.
• 
What's more, these were technologies key to the projection of power, both domestically, in Orwellian systems of social control, and globally, through cyberwarfare, spying, and sophisticated weaponry.
• 
Add to that Xi Jinping's hegemonic ambitions, already well advanced with his "Belt and Road" initiative meant to vassalize developing nations and establish embryo naval ports there, along with his illegal militarization of the South China Sea, and Lenin's contemptuous quip that the capitalists will sell you the rope to hang them with rings more ominously true than ever.
• 
Trump has grasped that China presents a national security problem even bigger than its commercial challenge, and he responded with a tariff regime that, given America's vastly superior economic staying-power, might force a reluctant China to change its ways.
• 
But Xi's best counterstrategy would be to do everything he can to stir up economic, strategic, and propaganda trouble to make Trump a one-term president.
• 
Then he could deal with a Democrat inclined to think that a centrally-planned and -controlled economy might be as good as — or even better than — a free one.
• 
He might have a freer hand with an orthodox Democratic foreign policy establishment holding the surprisingly Marxoid belief that, as culture is mere superstructure on an economic base, lots of "free" trade with China will inexorably liberalize their government and society — as those who admitted China into the World Trade Organization believed, and as Trump jeeringly does not.
• 
For electoral reasons, at the very least, Trump needs to explain both the economic and national security reasons underlying his China sanctions, stressing that they are two separate if interrelated concerns, with the national security worry by far the more important.
• 
With the swelling chorus of criticism of the tariffs as harmful to our own economy from Democrats, the mainstream press, and even some Republicans, he needs to explain that America's safety and geostrategic power are at stake.
• 
He also needs to keep this distinction clear in his own mind and emphasize it to his advisers, so that he does not accept a Chinese commitment to buy huge amounts of U.S.  agricultural products and label that a victory, allowing Xi to go on his merry, imperialist way.
• 
Of course, he will be kicking over some longstanding shibboleths in doing so, including the idea that when nations engage in world trade (and send their kids to CalTech and MIT) they become more free.
• 
But the Midwestern farmers most harmed by the tariffs have readily grasped — and accepted — the tradeoff, so it is not an impossible argument to win, if only Trump will make it clearly.
• 
See related US-China Maritime Tensions (Dave Granlund, 10/28/2015) cartoon from World picture album
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      Grinning werewolf: Thoughts on the massacre in Germany  (INN 02/21/2020)
• 
A century ago, in 1918-20, Europe sunk into the "red terror".  Inspired by the Russian revolution, people with red armbands, red flags and red stars were determined to celebrate the "new bright future".
• 
... and their families and deprived them of land and property.
• 
The Bavarian Soviet Republic, Hungarian Soviet Republic, Slovak Soviet Republic, Alsace-Lorraine Soviet Republic, Bremen Soviet Republic, Red Finland - the creators of the great Utopia destroyed everything that was associated with traditional values, ideals and virtues.
• 
Nowadays no one seems to remember it.
• 
The Left will not benefit from those memories; the Right dreads accusations of whitewashing Nazism.
• 
The outcome was dramatic.  The consequences of the attempted social experiment on a living body of society were brutal - at first spontaneous, then organized: Furious nationalism, revived racial phobias and unrestrained thirst for revenge.
• 
Even enlightened intellectuals such as Thomas Mann were caught up in the wave of hatred.
• 
Utopia choked on blood in Russia.
• 
In Europe, the nationalists won: Moderate and prudent, like Mannerheim; cruel but predictable, like Admiral Horthy; and monstrous like Hitler.
• 
A lot has changed in the last hundred years.
• 
The Soviet empire collapsed, Eastern Europe resurrected and gained solid immunity from "universalistic theories"; the "World Revolution" of the Third World failed, a good many Jews directed their unrestrained temperament to create their own state.
• 
Only one thing has remained unchanged: the passionate faith of the Western elite in perverted Utopian theories of all sorts and kinds.
• 
As result, in the 21st century, once again the world has entered a vicious cycle of revolution and reaction.
• 
The reaction has already begun.  ... It was predictable, explainable and logical.
• 
The globalist quasi-Marxist ideology has turned the inhabitants of the Third World and, especially, Muslims into "people of the highest sort".
• 
They became the 'proletariat' of modern times and in sharp contrast, 'white straight males' became the symbol of repression, racism and violence, 'the new world enemy'.
• 
But the people refuse to agree with the destruction of the thousand-year-old foundations, family, faith and traditions.
• 
They refuse to be marginal in their own countries.
• 
Forcefully implanted alien culture is rejected by the society and in such an atmosphere psychopaths take up arms and kill those they think are the operatives of a new pseudo-religious sect and their allies.
• 
You can turn a blind eye to it, ignore the causal relationships, yell about the racism of the white society, but it does not change the essence.
• 
This is a reaction to violent fanatical implantation of Utopia, regardless of how it's labeled: Marxism, Globalism, Progressivism, Multiculturalism, Political Correctness, Intersectionality, Political Identity, Cultural Diversity or Tikkun Olam.  They are all the same.
• 
It is reaction to Antifa, BLM, Islamic terror, Muslim culture of raping and bullying.
• 
Loner psychosis is a precursor of mass psychosis.
• 
"Red Plague" generates a "Brown Plague."
• 
We see how the ideas of the Third Reich gain power in Western culture again from the USA and Canada to France.
• 
They no longer try to conceal it.  Their time is approaching, because the soil has already been fertilized for them by the progressives.
• 
Because of the globalists and progressives the Western world is plunging into chaos and hatred.
• 
Only a small group of lucky people will get the next Mannerheim.
• 
However, and almost certainly, most of them will get new Fuhrers.
• 
The carriers of New Utopias are by far more guilty for wronging their people and history than their predecessors with red flags in Bavaria and Hungary.
• 
First, Russia with its despotism of Tsars, the Pale of Settlement and the Okhrana (secret police) as well militaristic Prussian Germany were seriously ill.
• 
The horrors of the Great War and the cloaca of the Industrial Revolution devastated the soul of the West.
• 
But the current progressives have inherited healthy, stable, and prosperous communities.
• 
So by carrying out the program of ethnic substitution by mass migration from Third (especially, Muslim) world and by destroying cultural and religious values of their people, the globalists don't demolish dying, rotten regimes, instead they bulldoze successful democratic states.
• 
Secondly, Lenin, Trotsky, Bela Kun, Dzerzhinsky were sincere idealists, they had not yet had the sinister experience of the 20th century.
• 
But Corbyn, Sanders, Obama, Trudeau, Elizabeth Warren, Melenchon, Kamala Harris, Juncker or Macron are not idealists.
• 
These are hypocritical plutocrats and manipulators of consciousness, craving for power and glory.
• 
And finally, third and most important.  Marxism grew out of Utopian communism, rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition...
• 
Their views (no matter how we evaluate them) were based solely on Western culture itself.
• 
They had nothing to do with the archaic, primitive and cruel cults of backward peoples and surely had nothing in common with gloomy dogmatic and aggressive Islam...
• 
They would have turned in their graves, had they learned that their heirs represented by new Western elite open their gates for crowds of primitive savages.
• 
Man is a part of nature and obeys its laws.  According to Newton's Third Law of Motion, "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
• 
Transgression of human nature yields violence and monsters - three monsters in our case: Red, Brown and Green ones.
• 
Prosperous, stable and tolerant communities have been replaced by Red-Green Hydra, on the one hand, and a Werewolf, on the other.
• 
However, who is Newton to dictate the laws to a progressive-minded person?
• 
No more than a Dead White European Male...
      Does Israel need peace?  (INN 10/22/2019)
• 
There are two aspects to the answer: a universal and an Israeli one.
• 
Whether we like it or not, human societies traditionally have identified themselves according to a simple principle: "We and They."
• 
The presence of a strong and dangerous enemy facilitates the unity of a society, the formation of its spiritual values and prosperity.
• 
It was the case in Athens during the wars with Persia and in Rome during the confrontation with Carthage.
• 
The republican values of the Romans reached their highest peak - they disappeared when the external enemy was crushed, and Rome went on to larceny and ruthless conquests. 
• 
We have witnessed the same course of action in the USA and the West in general.
• 
It's only in the face of the "Red Scare" that the democratic ideals of American society and its cohesion were extremely strong.
• 
Differences in the approach of the Democrats and Republicans basically disappeared: John Kennedy was as resolute as Johnson or Reagan in his willingness to confront the Soviets.
• 
And even Carter — a "soft-bodied" hypocrite — was forced to respond to the Kremlin's aggression in Afghanistan, rallying the nation. 
• 
Paradoxically, the collapse of the Soviets was the beginning of the end of Western democracy.
• 
Millennials hate their own values and at same time naively believe in utopian theories.
• 
Leftist ideologies flourished in lush color.
• 
British Labour and American Democrats look like their predecessors in the same way the Turks of today look like the ancient Hellenes.
• 
Traditional spiritual and moral values are trampled to dust; self-flagellation and ingratiation before modern age barbarians from the East has turned into paranoia.
• 
Churches are turning into mosques.  Christianity has given way to new fanatical quasi-religions: globalism, progressivism, the "fight against global warming" and the cult of sexual perversions.
• 
In America, the relations between white majority and the black minority have opened old wounds; in Europe, separatism has gained a new life.
• 
Destructive nihilism, avant-garde and anti-rationalism in all spheres of human activity have transformed the West ... into a society of "substantial emptiness".
• 
The European culture, rooted in ancient philosophy, the cult of experience, logic and reason of Locke, Spinoza and Descartes, the moral and ethical ideal of the Biblical prophets, is equated to the culture of the Berbers, Indians of South America and African tribes.
• 
... Somali migrants urinating on masterpieces of Florentine masters were the symbol of the new era.
• 
There are no more "boys" and "girls".  ... There are "pregnant transgender people" and 15 types of sexes, according to a Canadian Federation of Primary School Teachers...
• 
Coevals of those who landed in Normandy 75 years ago locked themselves in "Safe spaces" and coloring pages, unable to endure the anguish of the election of the "bad president."
• 
Like mushrooms sprouting after rain, infantile subcultures have sprung up...
• 
Universities have become their own parody.
• 
One of the graduate students published the article "The conceptual penis as a social construct" as a joke.  This "Study" was greeted with enthusiasm.
• 
God was declared dead - he was replaced by exhibitionism, as a form of gaining unlimited happiness.
• 
The new rulers of thoughts praised schizophrenic thinking, overthrew the "suffocating" logic, declared as irrelevant the concepts of "good" and "evil", "morality" and "immorality", "truth" and "lies".
• 
Supporters of "flat earth" theory and even cannibalism revival have emerged to help prevent global warming.
• 
Classical art in galleries was replaced by ugly figurines with punctured eyes and buried noses; drawings on asphalt and on bodies; architectural complexes turned inside out with "interiors" made out of sewer pipes...
• 
This world, according to Solzhenitsyn, was "disassembled to the state of a cemetery, where there is no life, but every single thing or any idea emits a smell of decay."
• 
Islam, the rudimentary, archaic, patriarchal religion of the desert, has become the fetish of enlightened intellectuals. 
• 
One generation has passed and the unimaginable happened: the total degradation of civilizational foundations.
• 
Now, let's talk about Israel.
• 
No matter how often we declare ourselves as a united people, no matter how we brag about our achievements, it sometimes seems that the only thing that really unites all of us is fear in the face of deadly external enemies.
• 
Drop this enemy and this anxiety, and you will see a patchwork mosaic community of people with basically little common ground except their being born Jewish.
• 
Once the reins of fear are released the demons of mutual disdain and dislike, in some cases hatred, will tear apart Israeli society.
• 
Palestinians, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran – are the "forces" keeping people living in Israel from self-destruction, from the bitter fate the two Temples.
• 
Even for rational and sensible nations, peace has turned into an unbearable test.
• 
What will it be for Israel?  Sadly, peace, not war, is the real danger for our people, which has not yet become one nation.
• 
See related Generations (Michael Ramirez, 06/05/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
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      Black Lies Matter  (JWR 11/24/2021)
• 
I dare you to look, with a clear and unfiltered lens, at the bloody nightmare we once called the United States of America.
• 
Connect the dots.  Contemplate the utter chaos in every major city while Black Lives Matter militants, academics and bureaucrats prattle on about "systemic racism" and "two-tiered justice."
• 
It's about much more than the horrific mass murders and attempted murders in Waukesha, Wisconsin, where the annual Christmas parade will now forever be stained by the wanton acts of alleged killer Darrell Brooks — a convicted sex offender and domestic abuser who sailed through George Soros-funded Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm's soft-on-black crime revolving door like a Six Flags season pass holder.
• 
Look at Philadelphia, home to another Soros-funded DA, where four black teenage girls beat the stuffing out of a group of Asian students on a SEPTA train in broad daylight last week.
• 
The lead aggressor, a hulking female in a hijab, brutally punished one Asian girl for asking her to stop harassing her friends.
• 
Viral video shows how Ms.  Islam-Is-Peace tackled the intervener to the ground and beat her over the head with her shoe and clenched fists.  Not a single adult intervened.
• 
Look at the living hellhole of New York City, where homeless lunatics push random strangers off subway platforms, repeat offenders rob and beat pedestrians on their way to work, and druggies urinate, defecate and fornicate openly on once-safe tourist thoroughfares.
• 
Look at Oak Brook, Illinois, just outside woke-hijacked Chicago, where mobs of diverse thieves carted off $120,000 from a Louis Vuitton store on Wednesday afternoon.
• 
Look at Walnut Creek, California, where roving bands of black-clad gangs absconded with $200,000 worth of merchandise from Nordstrom.
• 
We are all supposed to pretend we can't discern the race of the criminals so "experts" can castigate us for using racist terms like "looting" to describe ... looting.
• 
We are hectored repeatedly by the Biden administration that "white supremacy" is the root of all this country's problems.
• 
CNN reported as "news" this week that "there's nothing more frightening in America today than an angry White man."
• 
Systemic racism and two-tiered justice won't allow black criminals to get a fair shake, we are propagandized over and over — even as a new catch-and-release carousel-riding Darrell Brooks emerges with numbing regularity by the week or day.
• 
The scourge of Soros DAs has ushered in nothing but misery, filth and death across the ravaged plain in the name of social justice, but if we just tear down one more Thomas Jefferson statue, strip away one more Confederate general's name off a military base and toss another trillion or two or 10 or 20 at "diversity, inclusion and equity" initiatives to make white people atone for their alleged sins, peace and harmony will prevail.
• 
Fraud upon fraud upon fraud.  How many more innocent Dancing Grannies and schoolchildren have to die for the Big Lies?
• 
When will more good people stop reflexively cringing in the face of accusations of "racism" and call out the racist system of two-tiered justice that is actually bringing America to its knees?
      No Time for Phony Healing  (JWR 11/11/2020)
• 
After liberal media operatives prematurely declared Biden the winner of election 2020 this weekend, Biden's handlers carefully trotted him out in front of the cameras to read a script that proclaimed: "It's time to put away the harsh rhetoric, to lower the temperature, to see each other again, to listen to each other again."
• 
"Listen" ?  Biden's already hatching plans to crack down even harder to silence patriots and dissidents who share their ideas online.
• 
Twitter, which ran censorious interference for Biden throughout the campaign, allows thousands of tweets by users wishing to "assassinate Trump," but deplatforms peaceful conservatives and independent investigators exposing voter fraud, COVID-19 hypocrisy and left-wing violence.
• 
"See each other again"?  Biden and his Silicon Valley cronies want to wipe us all completely off the internet.
• 
"Lower the temperature"?  Tell that to the flag-burning, window-breaking, traffic-obstructing lunatics shouting: "All cops are bastards!" "Shut it down!" "No borders; No walls; No USA at all!"
• 
Biden has never disavowed them, and for his running mate, Kamala Harris, has helped raise millions of dollars in bail money for them.
• 
Biden now says it's "time to heal." I call bullcrap.  This corrupt career politician and his mob-coddling party seek to disarm us, debase us and destroy us.
• 
Biden's celebrants marched onto the streets Saturday with President Trump's bloody head on pikes.  One Black Lives Matter bigmouth shrieked that asking them to be peaceful was "white supremacy."
• 
They've torn down statues across the country, pillaged small businesses, invaded residential neighborhoods, and engineered assaults and assassinations of Trump supporters.
• 
They've slapped senior citizens and gunned down retired cops while deifying serial criminals, convicted sex offenders, and home invasion robbers.  They've been threatening to burn down Washington all year.
• 
This is the time for hell-raising, not healing.  Every legal vote must be counted, every illegal vote thrown out, every lawsuit heard.
• 
Anything less amounts to exactly the kind of "coup" undermining the "peaceful transition of power" that anti-Trump forces falsely accused our president of perpetrating.
• 
We, the 71 million Americans who voted to reelect Donald J.  Trump, resist the media-Silicon Valley coronation of Biden-Harris.
• 
We, the 71 million Americans who voted to reelect Donald J.  Trump, do not relent.
• 
We, the 71 million Americans who voted to reelect Donald J.  Trump, do not yield.
• 
We, the 71 million Americans who voted to reelect Donald J.  Trump, do not concede.
      Get Up Off Your Knees  (JWR 06/03/2020)
• 
Dear law-abiding Americans: You have done nothing wrong.
• 
Being white is not a crime.  Being a Trump voter is not a crime.  Being a police officer sworn to "protect and serve" every day is not a crime.  Being a non-white police officer proud to uphold and enforce law and order is not a crime.  Being a black or brown or yellow American who rejects excusing criminal behavior is not a crime.
• 
Rejecting collective guilt is not a crime.  Refusing to acknowledge "white privilege" when you were born poor, or in a broken home, or with physical or psychological challenges, is not a crime.  Embracing the historic American nation, instead of erasing it, is not a crime.
• 
Enforcing your private property rights is not a crime.  Teaching your wife and children to use a gun in self-defense is not a crime.  Owning an AR-15 or two is not a crime.
• 
Do not let the media, Hollywood, academics or politicians gaslight you.  Stop internalizing lies.
• 
Turn off CNN and tune into the facts on the ground.  At least 25 Philadelphia cops have been hurt during mob violence this week.  It's an all-out war on the thin blue line.  At least 150 cops have been assaulted — four nearly murdered — in New York City as of Tuesday afternoon.  Two Buffalo, New York, law enforcement officers were run over late Monday night.  In addition, 51 members of the U.S.  Park Police were injured; a Cincinnati cop was grazed by a bullet aimed at his head; four St.  Louis officers were shot; one retired St.  Louis police captain was killed; a Las Vegas Metro cop was shot; and a federal officer was shot and killed in Oakland — all in the name of peace, tolerance and reparations.
• 
"You walk through my door, you threaten my life, I'm aiming for the head."
• 
It is how armed small-business owners of all colors are now facing an onslaught of crazed, greedy and evil barbarians hell-bent on destroying every enforcement bulwark that protects our civil society — from our borders to our neighborhoods to the White House.
• 
It makes me sick to my stomach to see virtue-signaling police chiefs kneeling before barking rioters calling them "pigs."
• 
I am nauseated by the sight of sobbing white people groveling for forgiveness before sadistic Black Lives Matter demagogues — as if this will appease the unappeasable.  It will not and never will.
• 
America, straighten your spines.  Unbow your heads.  No home or nation was ever saved by kowtowing to invaders or ransackers.  Unless you are praying to G od, get up off your knees.
 Marcus  (05/04/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (11/24/2021) | Next sect (12/01/2021) | List bot 
      Yelling 'racism!' only shuts down speech, and threatens U.S.  strength  (Fox 05/04/2022)
• 
The biggest problem with all of this grandstanding is not that it's slanderous, though it is, it's not that it's lazy, though it is, it's that it makes very serious and needed conversations about our country and society completely impossible.
• 
We actually do need to talk about how to best protect speech on the internet while combating things like child porn and foreign information operations, but instead the left just points and yells ‘racist!'...
• 
What makes this all so insidious is that the baseless charge of racism not only allows progressives to refuse to engage with conservative ideas, it compels them to do so by arguing that it is immoral to legitimize these so-called racists by even discussing their ideas and perspectives.  And yet, at the same time, they can't even define what a racist is.
• 
The left has concocted a definition of racism that is a mile wide and an inch deep, one that is functionally useless.
• 
It does not require the expression of animosity towards minorities, it does not require any discriminatory behavior.
• 
All it requires is insufficient deference to progressives' bizarre, almost religious belief that racism is everywhere in America – that it is the very air we breathe.
• 
It is difficult to know whether this deeply illiberal tendency among progressives is a cynical tactic to shut down discourse, or a deeply held belief that shutting down "racist" conservative speech is a moral imperative.
• 
Either way, the result is the same.  We can no longer talk to each other.  There is no greater threat to democracy – any democracy – than the inability to discuss the issues we ultimately vote on.
• 
American conservatives really do want a debate about ideas and issues, but that can't happen if the left uses racism as a tool to shut down any discourse they don't like.
• 
There are very few things that can truly threaten the strength and power of the United States.  But this is one of them.
• 
The American people need to talk again, to share, to do so without fear of slander.  Pray this happens before things get much worse.
• 
See related China Vacation (Glenn McCoy, 03/25/2014) cartoon from USA picture album
      Canada truckers' anti-vaccine-mandate protest has important message for politicians, out-of-touch elites  (Fox 02/01/2022)
• 
Truckers are a unique breed.  There are very few jobs in modern Western life quite so solitary as driving a huge vehicle across the mostly barren landscapes of North America.
• 
So the anti-vaccine-mandate protest initiated by these modern-day cowboys in Canada is worth paying attention to.  These are people who know a thing or two about freedom.  In fact, they base their whole life around it.
• 
What is most telling about the reaction to the protest is the disdain being shown to these truckers by their own government and many in the media.
• 
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has dismissed the effort, and apparently gone into hiding as the big rigs surround the capital of Ottawa.
• 
He claims that these men and women hold "unacceptable views." Heaven forbid.
• 
... for politicians like Trudeau and so many leftists in Canada and the United States, it's not really COVID they are worried about.  It's the idea that some people, specifically people who work for a living and aren't slaves to their handouts, have the audacity not only to disagree with them, but also to ignore them.
• 
Pandemic restrictions and mandates galore are easy to impose on urban dwellers with office and service jobs.  They can be and have been crushed with the flick of a governor's pen.
• 
But denizens of the open road, without whom our modern miracle of an existence screeches to a hungry standstill, are not so easy to control.
• 
Most of us in the influencer class, the politicians and pundits, leaders of business and those unsung heroes, Hollywood celebrities, don't think very much about how things actually get done.
• 
Toilets flush, thanks to plumbers, houses are built, thanks to carpenters, and yes, store shelves are stocked (at least they used to be) thanks to truckers.
• 
The better sort of people, with their degrees and acceptable views don't generally have to think much about any of this.
• 
But what the Canadian truck protest shows is that this is a two-way highway.  The truckers are just as free to ignore the elites as the elites are to ignore the truckers.  The key difference being that the elites don't produce much beyond noisy chatter.
• 
There is an emerging recognition that regular people, the ones who actually do things and make society function, are under no obligation to listen to the bleatings of the supposedly powerful.  Maybe freedom isn't dead after all.
• 
The time may be coming when robots push hogs across the vast stretches of our North America, when we no longer need the obstinate, caffeinated men and women counting mile markers with empty packs of cigarettes.
• 
But that time ain't yet.  For now, with the turn of a key, they can threaten those who seek to control them.  It's a valuable lesson.
• 
When those who choose to live a solitary existence, who wish power over no one but themselves, decide to speak out, it is worth listening.
• 
And if the politicians listen carefully they will learn something important.  They work for the truckers.  The truckers do not work for them.
 Markowicz  (12/01/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (05/04/2022) | Next sect (12/03/2021) | List bot 
      New Twitter rules, CEO Parag Agrawal signal social media giant still doesn't understand freedom of speech  (Fox 12/01/2021)
• 
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey resigned from his post this week and replacement Parag Agrawal was named to the job.
• 
Dorsey had famously banned President Donald Trump but continued to allow accounts from despots and their spokespeople in places like North Korea and Iran.
• 
In an interview with MIT Technology review last year, Agrawal said, "One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet.  Most people can speak.  Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.  The scarce commodity today is attention.  There's a lot of content out there.  A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention.  And so increasingly our role is moving toward how we recommend content and that sort of, is, is, a struggle that we're working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we're building, how we direct people's attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory."
• 
Agrawal certainly doesn't sound like he believes Twitter's role is to facilitate free speech.
• 
The day after the announcement Twitter announced changes to their "private information policy." "When we are notified by individuals depicted, or by an authorized representative, that they did not consent to having their private image or video shared, we will remove it."
• 
It sounds good.  Certainly people who have been mobbed on Twitter will appreciate the ability to have their private information contained.
• 
But it also will limit things like videos from inside schools indoctrinating children.  The larger conversation about what kids are being taught in school is happening at least in part because of materials and videos that have been captured inside schools.
• 
What about filming a crime?  Does the criminal have the right to have their image removed by Twitter?  Would the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict be the same if video hadn't emerged of what actually happened that night?
• 
What about protests?  Can people in public spaces really have a right to privacy that precludes sharing their images on Twitter?  The language on this is vague.  "We recognize that there are instances where account holders may share images or videos of private individuals in an effort to help someone involved in a crisis situation, such as in the aftermath of a violent event, or as part of a newsworthy event due to public interest value, and this might outweigh the safety risks to a person.  We will always try to assess the context in which the content is shared and, in such cases, we may allow the images or videos to remain on the service."
• 
The trouble, of course, is that Twitter has been uniquely bad at assessing situations in the past and adding another layer of difficulty is a bad idea.
• 
See related Twitter Mad Man (Gary McCoy, 01/15/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Karol Markowicz: Parents as terrorists, cancel culture mobs – we must fight the age of conformity  (Fox 10/14/2021)
• 
It is the age of conformity.  We see it in the cancel culture around us, the vaccine mandates pushed by the president, the move to turn parents at school board meetings into domestic terrorists.  Speaking out, speaking up, gets scarier all the time.
• 
For a long time, the cultural enforcement was happening by the left for the left.  They impose speech codes on each other and change language on a whim.  "Latinx," 76 gender names, were how you knew you belonged with the in-group of the left.
• 
It was much harder to cancel public conservatives.  Prominent conservatives can rile up the left weekly, have their names trend on Twitter, but ultimately would only grow in prominence from being the left's targets.
• 
The pandemic emboldened the survivors of the circular firing squad to turn their attention to the rest of us.  It was a particularly difficult time for free thinking and speech.
• 
Any questioning of conventional wisdom on COVID was immediately shut down.  Discussion of a possible lab leak in Wuhan, China was considered so racist and unacceptable that Twitter, YouTube and Facebook would censor discussions about it.
• 
During the election, there were many stories of assaults on people wearing the Trump campaign's signature "Make America Great Again" hats throughout the country.  How could people living in a free country accept this? 
• 
The conformists cannot be stopped through compliance, only through resistance.  We're in a precarious moment in American history where the conformity enforcers can so easily win.
• 
But we're a country founded on rebellion and the fight is necessary now.  Americans need to remember that and stand up.
      Karol Markowicz: As an immigrant, I know left-wing America-bashers are wrong  (Fox 07/20/2020)
• 
Believing in America, and that the core of our country is good and sound, shouldn't be tied to any president or political party.
• 
Yet the hard left continually pushes the line that America is hopeless and terrible.  The Democratic Party too often follows along.
• 
It isn't good for any of us when half the country's population thinks we suck.
• 
In January 2012, I attended an event held by WNYC New York Public Radio.  It was very likely that I was the only conservative in the room.
• 
The WNYC host, Brian Lehrer, asked a room full of New York liberals — people who should have been thrilled by President Barack Obama's first term — who was ­optimistic about the future of America.
• 
I was one of only two people to raise their hands.
• 
Last year, Rep.  Alexandria ­Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., suggested that America offered most citizens little more than "garbage," owing to inequality and other social ills.
• 
Here was a member of Congress, supremely privileged and supremely unaware of how lucky she was to have been born American.
• 
Her rage and fury, her provincial mindset, are products of her ignorance.
• 
She doesn't know what people around the world live through.  She doesn't know garbage.  Bless her heart!
• 
Yet America-hating has real consequences.  There is a movement now to erase America's imperfect history.
• 
Every day brings a new online hot take about how we should get rid of our National Anthem or remove Thomas Jefferson's statue from New York's City Hall.
• 
There's irony in the fact that the party which considers itself "pro-immigrant" is also the one that wants to destroy our country's rich and complicated heritage.
• 
If Democrats believe ­immigrants come to America to be anything but American, they are kidding themselves.
• 
My family and millions of others came here longing to be free, to say what we want, to worship how we want and to raise American children who will know nothing but freedom.
• 
Don't end our patriotic displays because an influential fringe has decided they are somehow evil.
• 
We are in a difficult moment in our nation's history.  But if an immigrant family — arriving in a new country in the tumultuous late 1970s — could believe in the goodness of America and have hope for a better day, so could we all.
• 
America's best days are ahead, if we remember what made us great in the first place.
      Sorry, Democratic Socialists — you're still pushing poison  (NYP 08/05/2018)
• 
In the crazy, topsy-turvy year of 2018, socialism is somehow on the rise in America.  To those of us unfortunate enough to have been born in the Soviet Union, this is troubling.
• 
The new socialists say it's different this time.  They have a new name and everything: "Democratic Socialism."
• 
Don't buy it: It's still based on the same old, failed redistributionist tenets as the old kind — the kind that gave rise to devastating failure in my family homeland.
• 
... does her best to explain the snake oil: It's "the basic belief" that "in a moral and wealthy America ... no person should be too poor to live in this country."
• 
Note the word "wealthy." How exactly does she think the US got that way?
• 
It certainly wasn't because of socialistic transfers from wealth producers to wealth consumers.
• 
In fact, whatever funds are shifted are available only because some Americans are motivated to produce wealth in the first place.
• 
Alas, all that escapes those pushing an economic system that has yet to work anywhere.
• 
Sure, Democratic Socialists take pains to disassociate themselves from the Soviet failure.
• 
Yet their ideas just aren't much different from those that formed the basis for that failed state: "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs."
• 
I happen to know a little something about the transfer of private industry to government control.  My grandmother's father had his bakery seized in the Soviet city of Gomel.  He was sent to a gulag, where he then died.
• 
Oh, that's crazy, Democratic Socialists would respond.  No one is planning to seize bakeries.  And no one will be sent to prison for owning a business.
• 
No?  What if those who own companies in industries that "necessitate some form of state ownership" don't want to give them up willingly?
• 
What happens when the state runs out of money from the industries seized and needs more?
• 
It's baffling how we can still be considering centralized control of industries when that has never worked anywhere.
• 
Fact is, "socialism" only works when it's paid for by capitalism.
• 
"The perfect version of socialism would work; it is just the imperfect socialism that doesn't work.  Marxists like to compare a theoretically perfect version of socialism with practical, imperfect capitalism which allows them to claim that socialism is superior to capitalism."
• 
... the idea that the USSR did not attempt its own form of socialism is a canard — much like the notion that the United States is purely capitalist: Remember, here we have subsidies, tax credits, transfers, welfare and bailouts for companies we consider too big to fail.
• 
Somehow, our imperfect capitalism defeats all versions of socialism every time.
• 
n the fall of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev gave a series of speeches here.  In one, he said, "We are catching up with you in economic progress, and the time is not far distant when we will move into the lead."
• 
In Russia, that prompted folks to joke: "When we finally catch up to America, can I get off?"
• 
That Democrats and millennials seem to have no idea about the horrors inflicted on the masses in countries like the Soviet Union and want to go in that direction is scary indeed.
• 
Let's just hope the majority of Americans reject that idea.
• 
There won't be anywhere to get off to if we don't.
• 
See related Socialism Illustrated (Mike Lester, 07/26/2007) cartoon from General picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
 McCarthy  (12/03/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/01/2021) | Next sect (06/05/2020) | List bot 
      America's cash bail system has many flaws, here's a better solution  (Fox 12/03/2021)
• 
The problem is that many states require courts to set bail, even though the Constitution does not.  That leads to the pretextual setting of high dollar-amounts – meant to deny bail, not grant it.
• 
This not only fuels the Left's narrative that the system is rigged in favor of the rich; it undermines the purpose of bail, which is to permit the accused to be at liberty pending trial, not prevent release.
• 
It is very simple: If a defendant is a high risk to commit more crimes or flee, that defendant should be denied bail.
• 
If not, bail should be set at a level that the defendant can meet – preferably, release on the accused's own recognizance (i.e., with no assets posted), but otherwise with just enough money or property posted by the accused – or by people, such as family members, with moral suasion over the accused – to provide confidence that court appearances will be made and no new crimes committed.
• 
If an offense is sufficiently serious – e.g., violent crimes that carry heavy sentences – or if a defendant was already under restrictions outlined above, bail should not be set.
• 
Beware, though, the dirty little secret: The Left hates transparency.  When sentencing guidelines came into effect, they were soon attacked for being too severe.
• 
Because the numbers don't lie, faithful application results in higher sentences, while undercutting the fiction that race is the driving factor.
• 
The same thing would happen with pretrial detention: More criminals would be denied bail because of the seriousness of their crimes and criminal records.
• 
That would mean less crime ... but for progressive prosecutors, less crime is never progress.
      How to Put a Stop to Twitter’s Game-Playing on Censorship  (10/20/2020)
• 
The much-misunderstood Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act is in the spotlight again.
• 
Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook, suppressed reporting that Joe Biden abetted his son Hunter's cashing in on the then-vice president's political influence.
• 
Since there are plenty of alternatives to these social media platforms, their actions merely drew more attention to the story while calling into question their qualification for Section 230 immunity from lawsuits.
• 
... there is no evidence that the emails, photographs, videos, and other materials on the laptop were hacked or otherwise misappropriated.
• 
Hunter suffers from drug addiction and is notoriously erratic.  The laptop was brought to a repair shop in Delaware and never reclaimed.
• 
The shop owner, in addition to being given consensual access to the data, reported it to the FBI.  Plus ... the work order prepared when the computer was dropped off appears to bear Hunter Biden's signature.
• 
A hypothetical: Let's say information that really had been hacked was damaging to the Trump campaign, Republicans generally, or conservatives.
• 
Is there any doubt that Twitter would readily permit the free exchange of that information?  Of course not.
• 
Twitter and its allies on the left would insist that the hacked information was newsworthy political data, that any unilateral effort to suppress it would be futile, and that if it weren't authentic then the victims would say so.
• 
... Twitter is playing games.  It is not a place where everyone's voice is equally welcome; it is a Democratic partisan that occasionally censors information and people it finds politically disagreeable.
• 
Because Twitter poses as a nonpartisan medium of exchange that does not engage in political-viewpoint discrimination, it is struggling to camouflage its suppression of news harmful to Democrats as good-faith, ideologically neutral censorship: portraying its actions as discouragement of cyber-theft, or the purging of "Russian disinformation" (another kneejerk claim that lacks supporting evidence).
• 
As one would expect, Twitter's poor judgment has calls to repeal or drastically amend Section 230 raining down from Washington.
• 
To be sure, the provision does need some tinkering, but the rancor against the statute is misplaced.  Section 230 states a modest, salutary statutory immunity.
• 
The problem here is not the safe harbor; it is that Twitter should not be entitled to its protection unless it meets the qualifying conditions.
• 
The matter is definitional.  Twitter is claiming to be nothing more than an interactive computer service, as that term is defined in Section 230(f)(2).
• 
But it is patently more than that.  It is also a content provider, as that term is defined under Section 230(f)(3), because it partially develops the substantive presentation of information by engaging in politically motivated content discrimination.
• 
To be sure, it does not do this all the time.  But understand the legal landscape: The issue here is not regulating behavior (i.e., the government telling Twitter how it must operate) or punishment (i.e., the government fining Twitter for its behavior).
• 
The issue is qualification for a legal benefit — viz., immunity from liability that publishers of arguably actionable content ordinarily face.
• 
That is a benefit that the government provides, but only to entities that comply with the terms on which the benefit is offered.
• 
No one sensible is claiming that Twitter's partisan censorship is illegal.  Twitter is not the government; it is a private actor.  It need not enable free speech.  It is perfectly free to be openly progressive in its politics...  Twitter has not committed a legal wrong by suppressing a politically damaging story in order to help Joe Biden's presidential campaign.
• 
But when we talk about denying Section 230 immunity, we are not talking about penalizing Twitter.
• 
Section 230 immunity is a legal privilege to be earned by compliance with the attendant conditions.
• 
If an entity fails to comply, that just means it does not get the privilege; it does not mean the entity is being denied a right or being punished.
• 
To be a mere interactive computer service entitled to immunity from speaker/publisher liability, a platform must refrain from publishing activity — which includes suppressing one point of view while promoting its competitor.
• 
Twitter is well within its rights to censor its partisan adversaries; but in doing so, it forfeits the legal privilege that is available only to interactive computer services that do not censor on political or ideological grounds.
• 
... to repeat, it would not be a penalty to deny publisher immunity to Twitter and other social-media platforms that are content providers because they practice political-viewpoint discrimination.
• 
It would simply force them to make a choice.  If they want to be progressive media outlets, then they have to bear the same risks as left-wing magazines, websites, and programming.
• 
This would be a challenge for them because they transmit copious amounts of content, and they want to do it instantaneously.
• 
But media outlets that shape content have to avoid defamation and other harms; if they don't, they have to bear the legal costs.
• 
To earn the immunity, Twitter has to comply with the terms, which should include no political-viewpoint discrimination.  It's not more complicated than that, and it is eminently fair.
      No, Joe Biden, it is not packing the Court for the president and Senate to fill vacancies  (Fox 10/12/2020)
• 
In a flourish that would have greened George Orwell with envy, the media-Democrat complex now proclaims that Democrats are merely intent on depoliticizing thice Supreme Court because Republicans have been "packing" it for four years.
• 
This, of course, turns on its head the commonsense, historical understanding of court-packing that has been universally accepted – and, indeed, invoked by such Democrats as [checks notes] Joe Biden – for decades.
• 
To "pack" the Supreme Court means to enact legislation to expand the size of the tribunal in order to achieve constitutionally dubious political outcomes that the Court's legal rulings are frustrating.
• 
The concept arises out of President Franklin D.  Roosevelt's threat to pack the Court because its decisions were invalidating New Deal legislation.  This was during the Great Depression. 
• 
Notwithstanding that FDR had won a historic landslide victory in 1936 and enjoyed super-majority Democratic support in Congress, his own party slapped his proposal down, forcing the 20th Century's most powerful president to beat a hasty retreat.
• 
That happened because Depression-era Democrats, unlike today's Democrats, not only grasped but feared the implications.
• 
Expanding the Court and filling the new slots with progressive ideological allies, as FDR intended to do, would irrevocably convert the non-political judiciary into a politicized super-legislature.
• 
It would eviscerate the rule of law, which courts are presumed to enforce without partisanship, substituting the ideological preferences – the brute political will – of the party that happened to be dominating the political branches at that point in time.
• 
Those Democrats understood that times change.  If they packed the Court, the Republicans at their next opportunity would expand the number of seats and array their own politically-driven lawyers in judicial robes.
• 
The Court would have become a super-legislature.  That would destroy the Court as an institution.  The legitimacy of the tribunal's rulings – the reason its decisions are accepted by the public as law – is that they are presumed to be driven by the remorseless logic of jurisprudence, not the wheeling-and-dealing of politics.
• 
The destruction of the judiciary as a non-political institution would inexorably destroy our framework of government.
• 
The Constitution sets up a system based on separation-of-powers: The division of authority that prevents any actor in the system from accumulating too much power, the Framers, as students of Locke and Montesquieu, believed would lead to tyranny.
• 
Among the system's key checks and balances is the judiciary's insulation from politics.  This enables it to preserve the Constitution and statutes as written, pushing back against majoritarian political impulses that would otherwise overrun minority rights and individual liberty – our system's ideal.
• 
If the Supreme Court became a nakedly political institution, then it would be the tool of the majority party in power.
• 
In sum, it could no longer perform the function for which it was created: To serve as a bulwark between Americans and government oppression, protecting the former's rights to free speech, worship, self-defense, property, privacy, due process and equal protection under the law.
• 
To be clear, it is not packing the Court for the elected president and Senate to fill vacancies that arise under existing law.
• 
As a matter of constitutional law, there are only two rules for filling a vacancy: The president must appoint, and the Senate must consent.
• 
Historically, when the presidency and Senate are controlled by the same party, the president's nominees (assuming they are professionally and ethically qualified) get confirmed.
• 
If they are controlled by different parties, the Senate often does not consent and thus nominations are defeated.
• 
When Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016, the last year of President Obama's term, the White House and Senate were in control of different parties, and the Senate did not consent to Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland.
• 
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently passed away while Trump was still president, which he will lawfully be until at least January 20; and while Republicans still controlled the Senate, which they will lawfully do until at least January 3.
• 
Trump has thus nominated the highly qualified Judge Amy Coney Barrett, and the Senate is poised to confirm her.
• 
That is not "court-packing." It is the Constitution in action.
• 
There is nothing magic about the number nine.  The Constitution makes Congress the master of the Supreme Court's size.  It started out with six members after the Judiciary Act of 1789.  Over the next 80 years, the number varied between five and ten justices.
• 
Since 1868, it has been set at nine.  That has proved a prudent number for resolving tough issues while making sure all legitimate legal positions are effectively considered.
• 
It was one thing to vary the Court's size when the nation was growing, the Court's role was evolving, and the work of the federal judiciary was expanding.
• 
As FDR found, however, it would be a very different thing, a ruinous thing, to expand the court to achieve political outcomes.
• 
That would not only destroy the Court as an institution; it could be a mortal blow to our constitutional system.
      Steele’s Dossier Source Was a Suspected Russian Spy  (09/26/2020)
• 
See if you can follow this: In an effort to depict Donald Trump as if he were in an espionage conspiracy with the Kremlin, the Obama administration used bogus information, from a man the FBI suspected was an actual Russian spy, to brand as a suspected Russian spy a former U.S.  naval intelligence officer who had actually been a CIA informant.
• 
Your head spinning?  Mine too.
• 
And that's just the beginning.  It turns out that Igor Danchenko, the man the FBI suspected of being an actual Russian spy, initially provided the bogus information about the American, Carter Page, through a former British spy, Christopher Steele.
• 
Through a couple of cut-outs, Steele had been retained by the Clinton campaign to dig up — or, alas, to make up — Russian dirt on Trump.
• 
Through his private intelligence business in London, Steele was known to be working for Russian oligarchs, while Danchenko was on Steele's payroll.  That is, the Clinton campaign, and ultimately the Obama administration, colluded with Russians for the purpose of accusing Donald Trump of ... yes ... colluding with Russians.
• 
Nobody bothered to check the information or press Steele about its sourcing.
• 
Steele did not have a network of sources; he had Danchenko.  In turn, Danchenko had a motley collection of drinking buddies, a grifter, a girlfriend, and an anonymous source Danchenko cannot identify.
• 
And ... none of these sub-sources could actually vouch for anything they heard, or wildly speculated, about Trump and Russia.
• 
On this score, we can't let pass the opportunity to describe what Steele and, ultimately, the FBI portentously describe as a "close associate" of Trump's who asserted that the candidate-turned-president was in a "well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" with the regime of Vladimir Putin.
• 
It was left to Steele, the old intel pro, to turn this sow's ear into a silk purse.
• 
By the time the craftsman was done "summarizing" Danchenko's unverifiable, anonymously sourced gossip, "this guy" had evolved from Danchenko's "Source 6" to Steele's "Source E," depicted as "an ethnic Russian and close associate of ... Donald TRUMP," who had "admitted" that "there was a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation" between the Trump campaign and Russian leadership (emphasis added).
• 
And now we know, the liberal inflation of unsubstantiated — indeed, unattributable — rumor into purported probable cause that the now-president of the United States was a Kremlin mole is not the half of it.
      The Hysterical ‘Trump Won’t Leave’ Canard  (07/26/2020)
• 
... the Washington Post: "Trump's assault on election integrity forces question: What would happen if he refused to accept a loss?"
• 
The premise is that the president is engaged in "relentless efforts to sow doubts about the legitimacy of this year's election" by "escalating attacks on the security of mail-in ballots."
• 
This is coupled with Trump's refusal, a priori, to accept the legitimacy of the election outcome, echoing the position he took in the last presidential campaign — you know, before the same Democrats who feigned outrage over Trump's demurral began four years of mulishly refusing to accept the outcome of the 2016 election.
• 
... declaims that Trump is "undermining confidence in the most basic democratic process we have" and "arousing his core supporters for a truly damaging crisis."
• 
What rubbish.  We are a nation of laws, not men.  It would be nice if our elections were universally regarded as such solemn democratic exercises that, without fail, all incumbent and challenger candidates could confidently commit to endorse the outcome ahead of time.
• 
But we don't bank on anyone's good will.  We rely on the law.
• 
Under the 20th Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1933, the president's term "shall end at noon on the 20th day of January."
• 
At that point, if he has lost the election, Donald Trump would no longer be the president of the United States.  Period.
• 
His personal feelings about how the loss came to pass, and whether he did or did not regard the result as legitimate, would be irrelevant.
• 
Under the Constitution, he would neither be president nor wield the powers of the presidency as of that moment.
• 
There is no rational reason to indulge the anti-Trump hallucination of a defeated president holed up in the Oval Office refusing to leave.
• 
Presidents do not exercise any control over the electoral process.  They may influence it by challenging the results in state and federal courts.
• 
An incumbent president who loses the election may grouse.  His supporters may insist that he was robbed.
• 
But the states follow their own legal processes to certify the outcome of voting, the electors vote as they must under state law, and Congress tabulates and certifies the result.
• 
The last thing this country needs right now is a disputed election.  But let's not pretend this is so familiar and straightforward that potentially serious problems are unimaginable.
• 
Moreover, as we saw with Hillary Clinton in 2016, even if a candidate purports to endorse the legitimacy of the election beforehand, that is not an enforceable commitment to accept the result after the candidate has lost.
• 
So it is pointless to fret over whether a candidate will pledge, before the voting, to endorse the process and the result.  Such a pledge would be nothing more than political posturing.
• 
In two of the last three presidential elections that Democrats lost, they claimed the result was illegitimate.
• 
And if Joe Biden loses in November, who would be surprised to find battalions of Democratic lawyers filing challenges in the courts of every battleground state?
• 
But fear not.  No matter what happens in the election, no matter how messy the process, the presidential term that began at noon on January 20, 2017, will end at noon on January 20, 2021.
• 
And at that point, when the new term commences, the president will be whomever Congress certified two weeks earlier, based on the Electoral College votes cast in December by electors in each state.
• 
It won't matter what the candidates and their supporters have to say about it.  It only matters what the Constitution says about it.
      Andrew McCarthy: Trump critics wrongly mount political attack on his use of fed law officers to protect cities  (Fox 07/24/2020)
• 
"Unidentified stormtroopers" is what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called the law enforcement agents of the Department of Homeland Security struggling to protect the federal courthouse that Portland, Ore., rioters have been firebombing.
• 
"The president's personal militia," chimed in Tom Ridge, the nation's first Homeland Security secretary.
• 
It's shameful.  Never is it more critical for the nation's senior officials and elder statesmen to present a united American front than in times of insurrection.
• 
No matter how we may feel about the underlying political grievances, when peaceful protest descends into violent subversion, or — more accurately — when essentially violent subversion is allowed to masquerade as peaceful protest, there needs to be ringing condemnation and support for law enforcement.
• 
Yet, Democrats and Trump-abhorring Republicans cannot get past their petty political score-settling, even for the purpose of supporting law enforcement against violent anti-American radicals.
• 
This is not one of those times for "But Trump ..." bleating.  Yes, the president is abrasive and prone to say inexcusable things.
• 
On this one, though, there is only one right and one wrong side.  The demagogues aligning themselves with subversives against federal agents are wrong.  Say what you will about the president, he's made it very clear he's with our agents.
• 
Pelosi is a professional political partisan ... thinks it can make common cause with violent radicals, even use them as political attack dogs, and not get bitten in the end.  Sadly, then, her slander against law enforcement comes as no surprise.
• 
Ridge's remarks, on the other hand, are worth pausing over.  First, there was the revisionist history: DHS, he says, "was established to protect America from the ever-present threat of global terrorism."
• 
... DHS was established so Washington could try to show the country it was doing something meaningful after jihadists killed nearly 3,000 Americans in the Sept.  11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
• 
The main government failing in the 9/11 debacle was the failure to share intelligence within and across agencies that have national security responsibilities.
• 
Congress being Congress, it was thought that more bureaucracy would improve how bureaucracies cooperated...
• 
Taking aim at Trump, and promoting the Democratic narrative that the president is a dictator using federal agents as a military force, Ridge asserted: "It would be a cold day in hell before I would consent to an uninvited, unilateral intervention into one of my cities."
• 
But DHS performs such missions all the time.  One of its component agencies is the Federal Protective Service.
• 
FPS's job, according to its own mission statement, includes the protection of U.S.  government "infrastructure, services, and the people who provide or receive them."
• 
This includes providing "integrated security and law enforcement services to more than 9,500 federal facilities nationwide."
• 
... DHS agents go into cities all across the country, every day, uninvited by the state and local governments, and unilaterally protect federal courthouses and other federal property — even when those facilities are not being firebombed, vandalized, and otherwise forcibly attacked by radicals and arsonists.
• 
If DHS agents didn't do this, they'd be flouting their legal obligations.  If the president did not direct them to do this, it would be a dereliction of his solemn constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
• 
In Portland, the rioters overwhelmed the contingent of DHS agents that, in normal times, is sufficient to protect the courthouse and other federal facilities.  As commonsense would dictate, DHS brought in reinforcements from its other law enforcement agency components...
• 
As Ridge well knows, these agents are not a military force.  They are now seen wearing heavy protective gear — not because they are soldiers but because they are under siege.
• 
They are not carrying out a personal mission for the president.  They are carrying out their lawful, congressionally mandated responsibility to protect federal infrastructure.
• 
Ridge also knows this is not occurring in a vacuum.  At the same time federal facilities are under attack in Portland, violent crime is spiking in major American cities.
• 
If the president is to fulfill his constitutional duty to enforce federal law, he must take action on that front as well.
• 
Consequently, Trump has announced that federal law enforcement agencies ... will be surged to high-crime cities...
• 
Trump is not sending federal agents to storm Democratic-controlled cities.  The president is beefing up existing federal-state partnerships ... to assist in quelling murderous brutality that is making swaths of cities unlivable for the Americans who reside there.
• 
Yet, knowing that, Democrats are exploiting a violent crime crisis — one largely wrought by their own policies — to hone a political message: Trump is a dictator who is militarizing federal agencies to suppress peaceful protest.
• 
In this mendacious narrative, Democrats conflate the security mission they have distorted in Portland with the law enforcement mission in the cities where violent street crime is on the rise.
• 
They would have the public think the president has already sent "troops" — indeed, "stormtroopers" — to Portland and is now planning to send them all over the country.
• 
The Democrats know this is not true.  Tom Ridge knows it's not true.  But they are saying it anyway.
• 
They are making the already dangerous job of dedicated federal agents even more perilous.
• 
For them, the political imperative of defeating Trump in November is a higher priority than the safety of Americans.  That's a disgrace.
      Portland riots – it is Trump's constitutional duty to enforce federal law and he should  (Fox 07/21/2020)
• 
"[H]e shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." The Constitution says that's the president's job, but we're not hearing much about that from the chattering classes.
• 
We hear plenty of bloviating from the media-Democrat complex, dutifully masquerading the rioting in Portland as "mostly peaceful protest."
• 
And there is no shortage of faux outrage over President Trump's purported trampling on state sovereignty by dispatching federal agents to address the mayhem.
• 
The president has two principal, closely related responsibilities: to provide for national security and to see that the laws are enforced.
• 
The latter duty very much includes the protection of federal property and the execution of laws Congress has constitutionally enacted to address violent crime.
• 
Back in June, in the mayhem that followed George Floyd's death after being arrested by Minneapolis police, there was a raging public debate about whether the president should deploy the National Guard and perhaps other U.S.  military forces to stabilize cities and reestablish order.
• 
As a matter of law and history, the commander-in-chief has such authority; there are, however, certain circumstances in which the Constitution calls for waiting until the state government has asked for federal military assistance.
• 
Law enforcement is a completely different matter.  Enforcing federal law is an independent obligation of the chief executive.
• 
Consequently, the president and the Justice Department never have to wait for a state to ask for federal intervention.
• 
Federal law enforcement agencies may and routinely do take investigative and enforcement action within the territorial jurisdiction of the states.
• 
They need not provide notice to, much less a request for permission from, the state government and its police agencies.
• 
... consider for a moment the concept of a "sanctuary city." That is a municipality that obstructs the federal government's enforcement of the immigration laws.
• 
The concept would make no sense if the feds needed the state's permission – the state would simply refrain from asking the immigration authorities to conduct arrests and deportations.
• 
Cities purport to become "sanctuaries" only because the local authorities realize that the federal government has an independent obligation to enforce federal law; they can't prevent the feds from coming in, so they try to impede federal action.
• 
(Obviously, I am not endorsing sanctuary cities; I am simply explaining why they exist.)
• 
Federal officers in Portland are not a military force.  They are deputized law enforcement agents of the Department of Homeland Security and other federal police agencies.
• 
They are not, as Senator Paul misleadingly suggests, "rounding up people at will." They are making arrests based on probable cause that laws enacted by Congress have been violated.
• 
To my knowledge, Senator Paul has not proposed any legislation to repeal federal penal statutes that prohibit, for example, mutilating federal property, arson, and conspiring to oppose government authority by force.
• 
In circumstances where police are being targeted for assault and harassment, which includes being "doxed" by radicals who use identifying information to threaten the police and their families, it is perfectly reasonable to withhold the names of the agents – particularly when their badges and numbers are visible.
• 
Federal agents must be able to operate undercover, particularly when they are dealing with radical militants who mask themselves, strategically obstruct law enforcement from making arrests and protecting property, and attack police in stealth.
• 
When arrested for a federal crime, a suspect has the rights to be detained with no greater force than necessary under the circumstances, held humanely, given Miranda warnings, and brought without undue delay to a federal judge, who advises the suspect of the charges, assures that counsel is assigned and sets bail.
• 
Notwithstanding, the political demagogues who would have us turn a blind eye to violent crime under the guise of honoring free expression, the Trump administration has the constitutional duty to uphold federal law.
• 
In Portland, federal agents are faithfully executing our nation's laws.
      Trump Spares Stone from Imprisonment, Sparking Howls from Amnesiac Democrats  (Fox 07/11/2020)
• 
President Bill Clinton pardoned his own brother for felony distribution of cocaine.  And a key witness in the Whitewater scandal for which he and Hillary Clinton were under investigation.  And three others convicted in independent counsel Ken Starr's probe.  And Marc Rich, in what was a straight-up political payoff.  And his CIA director.  And his HUD secretary.  And eight people convicted in an investigation of his Agriculture Department.
• 
No surprise there: The Clintons and their supporters then, like President Trump and his supporters now, regarded the special-prosecutor probes into the administration as witch hunts.
• 
Clinton also commuted the sentences of convicted terrorists, some of whom hadn't even asked for clemency.  Shameless as he was, though, even he couldn't bring himself to pardon Oscar Lopez Rivera, the defiantly unrepentant FALN leader.
• 
President Obama took care of that.
• 
Obama also commuted the sentence of a U.S.  soldier who passed top-secret information to WikiLeaks.  He pardoned his former Joint Chiefs of Staff vice chairman, who'd been convicted of making false statements about a leak of classified information to The New York Times.
• 
So, as abuses of the pardon power go — and they do go — I can't get too whipped up over President Trump's commutation of Roger Stone's 40-month sentence for non-violent criminal obstruction of a bogusly based and ridiculously over-prosecuted investigation.
• 
Not under circumstances in which jail-house doors have been swung open all over the country by federal, state, and local governments, which are using the coronavirus pandemic as a rationale to release both hardened criminals and elderly convicts (i.e., those around Stone's age).
• 
Not under circumstances in which many of Trump's loudest critics are the same Democrats and media cheerleaders who not only soft-pedaled the outrageous Clinton and Obama pardons, but who would have been blissfully content to have the pervasively corrupt Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office exercising the pardon power — no doubt on her husband's model.
• 
I should here specify that Roger Stone is a whack job.  If we are assessing President Trump's job performance, though, it is more damaging that he has brought people such as Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Stone into his inner circle than that he has used the pardon power to spare one of them from imprisonment.
• 
If you are offended by Trump's act of clemency on behalf of a longstanding ally of checkered character, go ahead and vote him out of office.  Just please spare us the righteous indignation if you'd be perfectly happy to have the Clintons or the Obama-Biden team back in power making the clemency calls.
• 
As for the rest it, we're left with the usual unhinged commentary from people who ought to know better.  Take top Mueller deputy Andrew Weissmann.  After the clemency was announced, Weissmann took to Twitter to assert, "Time to put Roger Stone in the grand jury to find out what he knows about Trump but would not tell.  Commutation can't stop that." Well, no, but the Fifth Amendment can.
• 
A lawyer of Weissmann's acumen should not get such a basic legal point wrong, but he is so politically and emotionally invested in attacking Trump that he obviously tweeted without thinking things through.
• 
The tweet underscores that Weissmann — an overt Biden surrogate these days — was a terrible choice for a special-counsel probe that should have been rigorously non-partisan.
• 
He scorched the earth investigating Trump for three years; to imply that he might have nabbed the president were it not for Roger Stone's omerta is pathetic.
• 
Weissman & Co.  did not come close to proving that he or Trump had anything to do with the hacking of Democratic Party emails by Russia or by anyone else.
      ‘President Biden’ Would Be Music to Russian and Taliban Ears  (07/04/2020)
• 
Hard to fathom which notion is more hilarious.  Is it that Joe Biden would get tough with the Taliban, or that Joe Biden would get tough with Russia?
• 
The former veep wants you to know that he's furious that President Trump sat on his hands for the past four months despite knowing that the Kremlin was paying bounties to the jihadists for targeting American troops in Afghanistan.  Biden is sure this must have happened.
• 
No, Biden conceded at a rare press availability that he does not have access to classified information, nor has he been given an intelligence briefing on the subject.
• 
But Biden knows it must have happened because The New York Times and The Washington Post say so, relying on their crack anonymous intelligence sources.
• 
Hmmm ... the Times and the Post, relying on uncheckable sources of unknowable veracity, are peddling a story that Donald Trump has betrayed his country for the benefit of Vladimir Putin.  Who wouldn't take that to the bank after three years of collusion?
• 
In this new and improved narrative, you're to believe that Trump, who has dramatically beefed up military spending over Obama/Biden levels so that our forces can protect themselves, would knowingly endanger those forces; but that Biden, who last worked as a top official and strategist in an administration best known for imposing rules of engagement that made those troops sitting ducks, would back them to the hilt – against those diabolical Russians, who know Biden well, and who therefore know that, why, if they try any of that rough stuff, by God ol' Joe would ... um ... you know ... uh ... the thing!
• 
The thing being ... he'd do nothing.  And that's if we're lucky.
• 
His idea of doing something is to enrich the world's leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism while putting its regime on a glide path to nuclear weapons ... all the while knowing that the mullahs are backing Taliban terrorists targeting our troops ... and that the Russians are backing the mullahs.
• 
On balance, I am not a fan of President Trump's foreign policy.
• 
He's done some good things — among the best was withdrawing us from the dreadful Iran nuclear deal that the Obama/Biden administration had to end-run the Constitution and collude with Russia to pull off.
• 
And, since the Putin regime is utterly corrupt and untrustworthy — just ask any Democrat, at least since November 8, 2016 — Trump is wise to have pulled us out of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Open Skies Treaty.
• 
After all, it is counterproductive to remain strait-jacketed by an arrangement that the other side flouts at will.
• 
Still, for all the babble about "principled realism" regarding radical Islam, on the Taliban, Trump is just as delusional as any transnational-progressive: pretending that we can negotiate a satisfactory settlement with incorrigible jihadist enemies who (a) knowingly gave al-Qaeda the launchpad they needed to attack our homeland and our overseas facilities; (b) are still confederated with al-Qaeda; and (c) are content to put aside internecine Sunni–Shiite strife when it comes to collaborating with Iran against the Great Satan.
• 
The president is so mulishly committed to his "endless war" blather, so hot to cut a deal with the Taliban and pull our few remaining forces out, that he was ready to host our jihadist enemies at Camp David until panicked aides managed to talk him out of it.
• 
It is not my intention to make a case for Trump's Afghanistan policy.  Just to say the idea that a Biden Afghanistan policy would be an improvement does not pass the laugh test.
• 
Biden acts like he's suddenly outraged that Russia would back the Taliban.  But according to him, the Taliban is not our enemy and poses no threat to U.S.  interests, so it's hard to see what the problem is, right?
• 
Don't take it from me.  Here's Biden speaking ... late 2011, as he and President Obama geared up for their reelection campaign:
• 
"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy.  That's critical.  There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S.  interests."
• 
... the Obama/Biden administration took the position that the Taliban are not terrorists, denying the reality that there is a sharia-supremacist ideology that knits major jihadist organizations together into a threat against the West.
• 
That was the Obama/Biden approach to terrorism that Biden would revive: Pretend there is no animating fundamentalist Islamic ideology.  Miniaturize the jihadist enterprises as if they were more interested in local zoning disputes than war on the West.
• 
While the Taliban was colluding with Russia-backed Iran to kill American soldiers, the Obama/Biden administration encouraged Taliban leaders to open a political office in Qatar, where the administration could negotiate with them through intermediaries.
• 
The Taliban had no intention of laying down their arms, but they made clear to Team Obama/Biden that even the mirage of negotiations would require the release of Taliban commanders detained at Guantanamo Bay.
• 
No problem: The Obama/Biden administration swapped five of them for Bowe Bergdahl, a deserter lauded by Obama national-security adviser Susan Rice as having "served with honor and distinction."
• 
Bergdahl has since been found guilty by a court-martial and dishonorably discharged; Rice is in the running to be Biden's vice president.
• 
... the Obama/Biden team entered office with Moscow just having invaded Georgia, which had broken away from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1989.
• 
The new administration's reaction — communicated by, among others, notorious Mr.
• 
Tough Guy Joe Biden — was to "reset" relations, shelve Bush administration plans for missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe, and swoon over the possibilities of strategic partnerships and new arms treaties with the Kremlin.
• 
With Russia continuing to occupy and effectively annex the Georgian territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Obama/Biden not only revived the inane U.S.–Russia Civilian Nuclear Power Agreement; it ushered Russia into the World Trade Organization, in spite of the fact that it is a mafia state that undermines market-based norms, menacing and extorting other nations while crushing domestic dissent.
• 
Obama/Biden followed this up in 2012 by extending to Moscow Permanent Normal Trade Relations status — as if it were a normal trading partner.
• 
In the interim, Team Obama/Biden had the Hillary Clinton-led State Department collude with Russia's foreign ministry in the development of "Skolkovo" — Moscow's answer to Silicon Valley.  ... "Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage ... Why bother spying on foreign companies and government laboratories if they will voluntarily hand over all the expertise Russia seeks?"
• 
An alarmed senior FBI official wrote that Skolkovo was "a means for the Russian government to access our nation's sensitive or classified research and development facilities and dual use technologies with military and commercial applications."
• 
Yet, the Obama/Biden administration pressed ahead, certain that appeasing Putin was the best approach.  The Kremlin's cooperation, after all, would be essential to achieving the Obama/Biden crowning "achievement," the Iran nuclear deal.
• 
The Obama/Biden administration also signed off on the Uranium One deal, Russia's acquisition, through its energy giant Rosatom, of a fifth of America's stock of uranium ore, even though we do not produce enough uranium for our needs.
• 
As Obama and Biden campaigned for reelection in 2012, the president had his now infamous "hot mic" moment with Putin's factotum, Dimitri Medvedev — assuring that if the Kremlin would just keep its usual provocations to a minimum in the run-up to Election Day, he would have more "flexibility" to accommodate Putin in his second term.
• 
Putin, predictably, thumbed his nose...  He joined Iran in vigorously backing the monstrous Assad regime in Syria.  He then stepped up his aggression against another former Soviet satellite, Ukraine, by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and waging a separatist war in the eastern Donbass region...
• 
... it is laughable for Biden, of all people, to claim that Trump's administration has been a gift to Putin.
• 
It would be hard to imagine how things could be better for Putin than they were during the Obama/Biden administration — except for the prospect of more of the same, this time with Biden at the helm.
• 
Trump has canceled the aforementioned treaties, in addition to ratcheting up sanctions against Russia.  He has beefed up the defense budget that Obama gutted, and pressured NATO allies to meet their defense commitments, all to Russia's chagrin.  He has authorized defense missiles for Poland, in addition to shifting U.S.  troops there and supplying the Poles with advanced U.S.  warplanes, infuriating Putin.  He has provided Ukraine with Javelin-2 antitank missiles to use against Russia (weapons that the Obama/Biden administration denied for fear of provoking Putin).
• 
Under his command, our forces engaged in a firefight with Russian mercenaries in Syria and have fired missiles on Syrian installations supported by Russia.  Trump withdrew from the Obama/Biden Iran nuclear deal and slammed Tehran with sanctions despite Russia's objections.  And Trump continues to rally opposition to Russia's coveted Nordstream 2 gas pipeline project with Germany, which would increase Moscow's leverage over Europe.
• 
Is it true that Russia is paying bounties to the Taliban for attacks on U.S.  forces in Afghanistan?  That sort of play by those malevolent actors would not surprise any informed observer and can certainly not be dismissed out of hand.
• 
There absolutely should be a thorough inquiry.  But it would be foolish to assume the worst based on anonymously sourced reporting by the anti-Trump media-Democrat complex, which has already spent years flogging a bogus Trump–Russia narrative.
• 
The only thing that may be more bogus than that narrative is the notion that a Joe Biden presidency sends shivers down the spines of the Taliban and the Putin regime.
      Andrew McCarthy: Defund the police?  Here's what Dems, BLM ignoring about crime  (Fox 06/10/2020)
• 
It is a measure of how frightfully irrational our times are that the "defund the police" campaign led by Democrats and Black Lives Matter activists is thriving.
• 
It has moved to the mainstream of progressive politics even as the need for effective policing becomes ever more palpable.
• 
A new breed of progressive prosecutors, many of them backed by the George Soros network and other deep-pocketed leftwing organizations, has taken control in San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia and other urban centers.
• 
Philosophically, they see policing, prosecution and imprisonment as triggers of crime, rather than deterrents against it.
• 
They've targeted law-enforcement techniques rather than lawbreakers.
• 
They adamantly reject the intelligence-based policing and broken windows policies that have given us a generation of record low crime.
• 
They've eliminated cash bail, which means mandatory release for nonviolent crimes – with a very elastic definition of "nonviolent."
• 
... we are seeing ... the phenomenon no one sensible ever wanted to see again: the one where the criminals are back out on the street making mayhem before the police can even finish the paperwork processing the last arrest.
• 
Pretty soon, the arrests slow to a trickle, even as the crime increases.  Making arrests can be dangerous, and no one wants to take the risk over a pointless gesture.
• 
Violent crime is on the rise, and was edging steadily up even before the mayhem of these last two weeks.  Obviously, that trend is becoming a spike.  On Sunday, May 31, there were 18 murders just in Chicago ... the bloodiest day since the University of Chicago's Crime Lab began keeping data over 60 years ago.
• 
To be sure, there are some corrupt police officers, some who engage in excessive uses of force.  Congress, along with state and municipal legislatures, needs to explore how we can discipline, fire, sue and otherwise discourage them.
• 
... police encounter minority suspects at higher rates because they offend at higher rates.  The stubborn fact is that this is particularly true of young black males.  Though it is fashionable to speak of police departments and the criminal justice system as "institutionally racist," it is also specious.
• 
Over time, police departments more and more reflect the racial and ethnic composition of their communities.  In many big cities, top political and law enforcement officials are themselves African-American.
• 
The notion that they would abide racism, much less thoroughgoing anti-black racism, in an institution they run would be laughable if the matter were less fraught.
• 
We know what offense levels are, not because police are too myopically focused on minority communities, but because crimes have victims.  Those victims report crime, or are found injured or killed at crime scenes.  This is not a statistical game fit for deducing racism on a dubious "disparate impact" theory.  This is real life ... and death.
• 
While we obsess over the treatment of crime's perpetrators, it is crime's victims that merit our most urgent concern.  Minority communities are the ones most targeted and most wronged by criminals.
• 
The people whose families, property and lives would be most under siege if police departments were defunded are minority communities.
• 
The places that would collapse are the cities run by the progressives who promote this lunatic fantasy.
• 
Societal peace and prosperity are dependent on the rule of law, on the order that police uphold.  When that is lost, it takes many years to get it back.  The damage wrought in the meantime would be incalculable.
      Flynn Was Not Masked because the FBI Framed Him as a Clandestine Agent of Russia  (05/24/2020)
• 
FBI officials — if they thought about it at all — figured Flynn need not be masked because they did not see him as an innocent American incidentally caught up in foreign surveillance.
• 
They purported to suspect that he was a clandestine agent of Russia.  Of course, they had no proof of that.  And they knew they had no proof.
• 
That's why they never sought a FISA-court warrant targeting Flynn.  Doing so would have required showing probable cause that he was an operative of Russia; and as to Flynn, they didn't even have a fabulist "dossier" to rely on for such a smear.
• 
Recall: McCabe was fired after the Obama-appointed DOJ inspector general found that he willfully misled investigators — multiple times, including under oath — in connection with a self-serving leak he had orchestrated and for which he had tried to shift suspicion to his fellow agents.
• 
The main problem here is that the story makes no sense — you know: The Obama administration, just three weeks away from leaving office, and after eight years of passivity in the face of the Kremlin's lies and provocations, was suddenly so puzzled by Putin's "no retaliation" announcement, and so worried about its possible national-security implications, that the White House felt compelled to investigate aggressively.
• 
Gimme a break.  No rational person would have assumed, just because Putin said Russia would not retaliate, that it would not make mischief at some opportune time.
• 
Putin is a former KGB agent and a despot who has gotten unimaginably rich by pilfering his country's wealth.  Lying is his business, and he does it more often than you change your socks.
• 
No competent intelligence pro takes what he says at face value.  In those rare times when Moscow is not making trouble for us, it is scheming to make trouble for us — that's a given.
• 
Common sense would have told any savvy analyst that Putin simply did not think it was in Russia's interest, at that moment, to ratchet up tensions with the United States.  He wasn't wounded by the new sanctions.  They were completely consistent with Obama's fecklessness, which, by then, Putin knew only too well.
• 
He knew he could rely on the media–Democrat alliance to peddle "no retaliation" as more "proof" that Trump was in Putin's pocket.
• 
That would sow more American discord and further undermine the new president's capacity to govern — outcomes very much in Putin's interests.
• 
Here's a more plausible explanation of motive.  The Obama administration was actively constructing the Trump–Russia collusion narrative.
• 
Obama officials saw Putin's "no retaliation" pose as an opportunity to float the fiction that the Kremlin had cut a sinister deal with Trump to gut Obama's sanctions as a reward for Russia's hacking of Democrats during the campaign.
• 
Obama officials and the FBI hoped to conceal the Trump–Russia investigation from the incoming Trump administration for as long as possible, and to continue the investigation of Trump's campaign...
• 
The Flynn–Kislyak call was intercepted because the FBI had FISA coverage on Kislyak, and both the Bureau and the Obama White House instantly recognized that hyping the call could advance all these objectives.
• 
Then, they really hit the jackpot: Even though Flynn had done nothing wrong, Trump officials amateurishly misled the public about the call — claiming that Obama's sanctions were not discussed, rather than that the topic came up but Flynn made no concessions to Moscow.
• 
The point of all this was politics, not national security.  It therefore makes perfect sense that Flynn's name would not have been masked.
• 
The intelligence community tells Americans it deeply respects their privacy and realizes that collecting information about them — under the guise of monitoring foreign actors — is something that can only be justified by national-security needs and strict adherence to privacy guidelines.
• 
It is sweet-sounding twaddle.  Sure, American identities are masked the majority of the time.  On close reading, though, our intelligence agencies reserve the discretion to unmask pretty much whenever they wish.
• 
... even if the FBI knows Flynn's job as incoming national-security advisor is to consult with foreign counterparts, and even if the FBI knows Flynn has said nothing improper in his conversation with Kislyak, the Bureau is free to claim that Flynn's name must be revealed in order to "assess the importance" of his conversations with Russia's ambassador — something that is not done to other U.S.  officials whose job is to consult with foreign emissaries, because the FBI knows it has no business monitoring the conduct of American foreign policy.
      Schumer, the Supreme Court, and the Mob  (03/05/2020)
• 
... the Democrats' Senate minority leader stirred up the mob outside the Supreme Court, unabashedly threatening Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh: "I want to tell you, Gorsuch.  I want to tell you, Kavanaugh.  You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions."
• 
Inside, the justices were then hearing argument on what ought to be a straightforward abortion case (i.e., one in which the "right" invented in Roe v.  Wade is not up for consideration).
• 
When called on his menacing remarks, rather than apologize, Schumer brazenly lied about what he had done.
• 
This morning, he was still lying — a tepid apology, offered under pressure while insisting that "in no way was I making a threat."
• 
In a rule-of-law society, that should rate censure.  Case closed.
• 
Except it's not closed, because we are not a rule-of-law society.  We just pretend to be.
• 
In a rule-of-law society, a mob would not gather on the steps of the courthouse in the first place.
• 
Because nearly a half-century ago, the Supreme Court took on the mantle of super-legislature, weaving from whole cloth a right to terminate the lives of unborn children.
• 
With Roe, the High Court decisively transformed itself into a political institution.
• 
The worst kind of political institution, in fact: One that pretends to be something quite different — an apolitical arbiter of what the law says, an oracle of justice shorn of passion.
• 
One that is politically unaccountable to the people whose lives it deeply affects — and affects not as a court deciding the private disputes of litigants, but as a ruler imposing national policy on a heretofore self-determining republic.
• 
The mob is in front of the courthouse because we are inured to the unspoken reality that the Court is innately political.
• 
Political entities can be moved by mobs, such as the one that gleefully cheered Senator Schumer on.
• 
When President Obama nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Court, it was not for her legal acumen.
• 
The salient argument made in her favor, as if there were nothing remarkable about advocating such an attribute as a credential, was that she is a model of "empathy" — a "wise Latina" who would bring a "perspective" outside the ken of your average staid old white guy.
• 
There is, of course, a very appropriate place in our system for a person of such gifts.  Justice Sotomayor would make a superb congresswoman.
• 
In a pluralistic society, the legislature is where we want our diverse interests effectively represented.
• 
That's the place where majorities must be persuaded to empathize with other interests if we are to have domestic tranquility.
• 
But that is not what a court is for.
• 
A court is for telling us what the law is, as opposed to what the judges wish it were, or think it had better be if the mob is to be appeased.
• 
If a court does its job properly, and the people and their representatives do not like the result, they can try to change the law democratically.
• 
No one would blame the judges.  They are supposed to be the messengers, not the lawgivers.
• 
That is the system we were bequeathed.  It is no longer the system we have.
• 
The Court is a political institution.  And Senator Schumer is simply conducting politics the way the Left does politics.
• 
The Left does what Senator Schumer did on Wednesday because it works.  Censure?  Perish the thought.
• 
The demagogues are already telling us he's just passionate about women's health issues (the health of Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh is obviously not a concern).
• 
The Democrats will close ranks behind him — and use the publicity to raise money based on Schumer's heroic activism in protecting "choice."
• 
The left-leaning legacy media will look the other way — there's no reason you need to know that the case at issue is not actually about the enduring legality of abortion, but rather about whether abortionists should have admitting privileges at local hospitals (which actually is a women's health issue), and whether abortion providers — rather than women purportedly harmed by such a requirement — have standing to sue.
• 
No, better for you to be told the lie that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are scheming to consign women to back-alley quacks, and that Schumer had no choice but to call out the pitchforks.
• 
When you're pressuring a political institution, a little extortion can go a long way.
      Stone Sentencing Ends Russia Collusion, Part I  (02/22/2020)
• 
The Roger Stone sentencing farce is as fitting an end to the Russia Collusion saga as one could conjure up ... though it might be more fitting to call it the end of Russia Collusion, Part I.
• 
No sooner did the first flick conclusively bomb than the media-Democrat complex was issuing the casting call for Russia Collusion, Part II.
• 
In the sequel, you're asked to believe that Putin is manipulating the chesspieces to steal a second term for President Trump – somehow preferring an incumbent who beefs up the U.S.  armed forces, pressures NATO allies to beef up theirs, imposes painful sanctions on Moscow, provides lethal aid to Ukraine, ramps up U.S.  energy production, and seeks to thwart the Kremlin's coveted natural-gas partnership with Germany, over an unabashed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and whose policies would wreck the American economy, end the resurgence of American energy production, and hollow out the American armed forces.
• 
It's a lunatic plot.  But the scriptwriters no doubt figure that if they can peddle what they've been peddling for the last two weeks, they can peddle anything.
• 
The severity of the trial team's recommendation was objectively absurd.  It was, more to the point, merely a recommendation — as was Barr's milder but still stiff counter.
• 
It had no legally binding effect whatsoever on the judge.
• 
Not only is the sentencing court free to ignore any recommendation from prosecutors, which judges do with frequency; the court is free to ignore the guidelines...
• 
Nevertheless, Barr's entirely reasonable position was castigated by Democrats, their media notetakers, and progressive lawyers who have transformed the organized bar into just another left-wing hack.
• 
Understand: There was nothing to this.  It was a total fabrication.
• 
The partisans behind this frippery knew full well that the Justice Department's submissions had no legal effect.
• 
Barr could not have slashed Stone's sentence even if he wanted to.
• 
... the brute fact is that sending another human being to prison is the hardest thing judges have to do.  No matter how loathsome the defendant is, there are almost always other lives — those of children, spouses, parents, loved ones, business associates — that are damaged by a sentence of incarceration.
• 
It was a slander to claim that Barr was doing Trump's bidding.
• 
The president wants Stone's case to disappear.
• 
Barr, to the contrary, held firm that the seven felony convictions were righteous, and urged that a sentence of between three and four years for an elderly first-offender would be appropriate.
• 
Of course, this would not be the Russia probe if Trump antagonists were not peddling the collusion narrative.
• 
So Judge Jackson couldn't resist.  Stone, she inveighed at Thursday's hearing, was not prosecuted "for standing up to the president," as his apologists maintain; no, "he was prosecuted for covering up for the president."
• 
Covering up what?  That the Trump campaign might have been hoping that an outside source like WikiLeaks might be planning to leak damaging information about an opponent, just as the Clinton campaign was giddy when someone leaked Trump's tax information to the New York Times?
• 
So what?  That wasn't the collusion narrative.
• 
Judge Jackson is too smart not to know that when she pregnantly claims Stone was "covering up for the president," that will be twisted into a suggestion — from a federal court, no less — that there really was Trump–Russia collusion.
• 
No wonder the judge had such praise for the trial prosecutors.
• 
She was taking a page out of the Mueller playbook.
• 
The Mueller prosecutors knew they had no evidence of a Kremlin–Trump conspiracy.
• 
The indictments they filed against Russian actors elucidate that Moscow neither needed nor wanted American collaborators.
• 
In each indictment, we're treated to pages and pages of big wind about Russians and WikiLeaks and emails; then, you flip to the end only to find that there's no rain — somebody lied about the date of a meeting, or threatened a dog, or just did his job as incoming national-security adviser.
• 
And now we're on to Russia Collusion II.
• 
Already it is shaping up like the original: a sprawling, incoherent, implausible mess of a plot, with a B-movie cast and the same ending
      Impeachment and Amnesia  (02/11/2020)
• 
The president would not pretend to be either sorry or grateful for his reprieve.  This is a big part of what ardent Trump supporters love about their man.
• 
Alas, it is just as big a part of why the president's approval numbers languish in the 40s when they ought to be in the 60s, with a humming economy, record low unemployment, and the nation at relative peace.
• 
As for the incumbent president, it is not in his DNA to admit anything.
• 
This, inevitably, is fuel for his opposition's hysterical claim that he is, and remains, a clear and present threat to the integrity of the 2020 election.
• 
If he will not acknowledge or cannot apprehend the wrong he has done, they say, why should anyone be confident that he won't do it again?
• 
There's the rub.  The president may or may not believe that his dealings with the Ukrainian government were "perfect."
• 
But he is never going to make an admission that would instantly be reframed as a confession to the Democrats' delusional version of what it all means.
• 
Nor is he going to dignify Washington's two-tiered system, in which his venial sins draw the hellfire while his opponents' transgressions are insulated from criticism, let alone expulsion.
• 
Let's see if we can't navigate between perfect and impeachable.  What wrong did he do?
• 
Well, an American president should never encourage, much less pressure, a foreign government to investigate an American citizen for possible violations of that foreign country's laws.
• 
That's basic.  In the matter of Ukraine, the American citizens in question included a top political rival of the president; that makes matters worse, but it is not the main point.
• 
Bottom line: Incumbent officials are not supposed to seek foreign law-enforcement assistance for domestic political purposes, only to aid ongoing American law-enforcement investigations.
• 
So, yes, this was far from "perfect." Still, on these facts, for Democrats and Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) to treat what President Trump did as a hanging offense was ridiculous.
• 
Ukraine's criminal-justice system is so infamously corrupt that Biden would not have been hurt even if there had been an investigation — especially once it became clear that Trump's own Justice Department did not suspect Biden of violating American law.
• 
No matter how you judge the president's intentions, nothing of consequence actually happened — and that is what matters most.
• 
And we haven't even addressed the "pot calling the kettle black" problem.
• 
Do Democrats really think the president and his supporters, or any fair-minded Americans for that matter, are not going to notice that the "how dare you invite foreign interference in our elections" storyline has been concocted by the party that recruited a foreign spy to dig up high-level Russian-government dirt on Trump?
• 
Dirt that was often absurd on its face?  Dirt that could easily have been discredited if the Obama-era FBI had chosen to investigate it, and yet was mendaciously supplied under oath to the FISA court again and again?
• 
Did Democrats figure we'd all quietly abide their puling about "foreign interference in our elections" after the Obama administration collaborated with foreign intelligence services to run informants at Trump campaign officials .  .  .  and then withheld from the FISA court the exculpatory evidence those contacts generated?
• 
Do Democrats suppose it has slipped our minds that they wove a collusion fairy tale against Trump out of unverifiable foreign-intelligence streams, and demanded the appointment of a special counsel to pursue the fairy tale even as it was palpably collapsing — seven months after the Obama administration began seeking FISA court warrants under false pretenses?
• 
And obstruction?  We're going to be lectured to about obstruction by the people who defended to the hilt Hillary Clinton's private email server?
• 
The sealing and burial of the Clinton–Obama emails, and the studious purging of any reference to President Obama in the description of Clinton's misconduct.
• 
Democrats may have suppressed their memory of the IRS scandal, the Benghazi scandal, and the Fast and Furious scandal — the first involving abuse of power in order to interfere in the 2012 election; the last two involving cover-ups after American officials were killed.
• 
But rest assured, this convenient case of amnesia is not contagious.
• 
Whatever you think of Ukraine, it doesn't hold a candle to this record.
• 
Impeachment is a political remedy.
• 
It is not just a matter of what may be legally, ethically, or morally wrong; it is a matter of how a particular wrong stacks up against current norms.
• 
Sorry but Democrats do not get to blow up the norms and then tell us that President Trump has to be impeached and removed over a comparative trifle.
      Why Senate is entirely right to vote down House’s impeachment charges  (NYP 02/04/2020)
• 
It is profoundly wrong to proceed with impeachment in the absence of egregious wrongdoing that galvanizes a public consensus that the president should be removed — wrongdoing so serious that it can move the required two-thirds of senators, regardless of partisan ties, to vote for conviction.
• 
Pursuing impeachment for lesser wrongs is paralyzing for our governance and divisive for our citizenry.
• 
House Democrats never had anything close to that high standard.
• 
Instead, bullied by a hard-left base that has wanted the president impeached since the night he defeated Hillary Clinton, they viewed the convoluted Ukraine episode as a peg on which to hang their predisposition that Trump is unfit for office.
• 
In this, they are aided and abetted still by the mainstream press, which has taken to mocking Senate Republicans for concluding, essentially: "Trump did it, but we're going to let him get away with it."
• 
That's a gross distortion of what has happened.
• 
The "it" in question is not an impeachable offense.
• 
Merely saying the president "abused his power" is not enough.  All presidents abuse their power from time to time.  Recognizing that, the Framers made impeachment-and-removal difficult — available only for truly serious wrongdoing that threatens our security or system of governance.  Hence, the two-thirds' Senate supermajority requirement for conviction.
• 
Let's stipulate that a president should never pressure another country to investigate any American citizen, let alone a political rival, for violations of that country's law.
• 
That said, the president's offense was minor, albeit worthy of our disapproval.
• 
Hunter Biden's cashing in on his father's political influence and Joe Biden's extortion of Ukraine to fire a prosecutor who was investigating the younger Biden's corrupt company is objectively suspicious.
• 
American law encourages the president to encourage anti-corruption efforts in countries, such as Ukraine, on which US aid is lavished.
• 
More significantly, nothing of consequence happened.  The Ukrainians got their defense aid.
• 
The Democrats' claim that Ukrainian and US security were compromised is laughable.
• 
Kiev was required neither to conduct nor announce any investigations.  Volodymyr Zelensky says he never felt coerced by Trump.
• 
Plus, in just nine months, voters can decide Trump's fate for themselves.
• 
There is no need for hyper-partisans in the political class to preempt our election.
• 
That is why impeachment was not warranted.
• 
It's also why there was no bipartisan buy-in for Trump's impeachment, in contrast to Bill Clinton's and (especially) Richard Nixon's.
• 
In America, when a person is properly accused of serious wrongdoing, we insist on due-process protections so that any resulting conviction has integrity.
• 
But accusers cannot afford due process when they knowingly bring an unworthy case.
• 
The Senate is right to reject the House's unworthy case.
      Impeachment Questions That Need Answering  (01/29/2020)
• 
To the House Managers: What is the evidence that announcement of a Ukrainian investigation would have had any material impact on the U.S.  election?
• 
There is nothing conceivably improper in the Trump campaign's calling attention to the Bidens' record of self-dealing – of the likelihood that the former vice president's son Hunter, and perhaps other Biden family members, profited on Joe Biden's political influence.
• 
There is, moreover, no problem whatsoever with the Trump campaign's pointing out that (a) Hunter Biden took a lucrative board position with a corrupt foreign company in a sector (energy) in which he had no experience, facts that powerfully suggest influence peddling; and (b) Vice President Biden knowingly operated under a blatant conflict-of-interest in playing point-man on Obama administration Ukraine policy – such that he may have been corruptly influenced, and even if he was not, he created the appearance of impropriety that government officials are supposed to avoid.  (And Ukraine may not be the only country in connection with which Biden created this unsavory appearance.)
• 
All of that is fair game.  Campaign arguments could properly be made about it, wholly apart from whether the current Ukrainian regime took any investigative action.
• 
What plausible evidence is there that this would have had any real impact on the 2020 election?
• 
Bear in mind: Ukraine is a notoriously, pervasively corrupt country.
• 
no sensible American cares what the Ukrainian government does.
• 
... no sensible American cares what the Ukrainian government does. 
• 
... it is overwrought to suggest that a Ukrainian investigation of Joe Biden would have influenced the U.S.  election.
• 
Democrats have just concocted a Ukraine straw-man to impede Republicans and the Trump campaign from making perfectly reasonable campaign arguments about potential Biden corruption.
• 
To the House Managers: What is the evidence that President Trump is actively corrupting the 2020 election?
• 
Democrats claim that the sovereign, the American people, should not be permitted to decide President Trump's fate for themselves in the November election, just a few months away.
• 
The political class must preempt a democratic election, Democrats say, because the president, right this minute, is actively plotting with foreign powers to undermine the election.
• 
What is the evidence of that?
• 
The Democrats have not presented a shred of evidence that the president has threatened the U.S.  voting process.
• 
The Democratic House impeachment managers nevertheless proclaim, as if it were established fact, that the president is actively undermining the November election.
• 
We don't impeach and remove American presidents on supposition and surmise.  What is the hard evidence?
• 
For the President's Defense Team: Why not subpoena John Bolton for four hours of narrow testimony on a single aspect of his communications with President Trump, or alternatively draw a negative inference against the president?
• 
For reasons that continue to baffle me, the president has not limited his defense to the positions that (a) the House has failed to charge impeachable offenses that approach the constitutional standard of egregiousness, and (b) nothing of consequence happened here – the Ukrainians got their defense aid; President Zelensky got an audience with the president; there was no undermining of Ukrainian security, much less of American national security; Ukrainian investigations were neither conducted nor announced; and the Ukrainians say they did not feel pressured.
• 
The president and his supporters argue that (a) Bolton's testimony is covered by executive privilege and should be suppressed, and (b) if the impeachment trial is going to be extended by witness testimony from Bolton, the president should be entitled to call witnesses that were denied him during the House investigation.
• 
... it is unlikely that anyone wants to see the trial extended when the outcome is not in doubt.
• 
And it is certainly important to protect executive privilege – as Democrats would concede if a Democrat were in the White House.
• 
On the other hand, the president has chosen (foolishly in my view) to make the quid pro quo question an issue in the trial; and he and his surrogates have chosen (foolishly in my view) to mount public attacks on Bolton's credibility.
• 
Furthermore, legal confidentiality privileges are shields, not swords.
• 
A litigant is not supposed to be able to inject an issue of fact into a case (e.g., there was no quid pro quo) and then deny the factfinder access to probative evidence on that same issue.
• 
If you want to rely on your privilege, you need to steer clear of the issue.
      Bolton Blows Up Trump Team’s Foolhardy Quid Pro Quo Defense  (01/27/2020)
• 
Don't build your fortress on quicksand.
• 
That's been my unsolicited advice for President Trump and his legal team.
• 
You always want the foundation of your defense to be something that is true, that you are sure you can prove, and that will not change.  #
• 
Instead, the president and his team decided to make a stand on ground that could not be defended, on facts that were unfolding and bound to change.
• 
Trials and impeachment itself are unpredictable.
• 
You don't know what previously undisclosed facts might emerge during the trial that could turn the momentum against you.
• 
So you want to mount your best defense, the one that can withstand any damaging new revelations.
• 
Here, the president's best defense has always been that Ukraine got its security aid, and President Volodymyr Zelensky got his coveted high-profile audience with the president of the United States (albeit at the U.N., rather than at the White House).
• 
Kyiv barely knew defense aid was being withheld, the very temporary delay had no impact whatsoever on Ukraine's capacity to counter Russian aggression, and Zelensky was required neither to order nor to announce any investigation of the Bidens.
• 
However objectionable the calculations that led to the delay may have been, nothing of consequence happened.
• 
Therefore, there was no impeachable offense.  Case closed.
• 
If the Trump defense had taken the position that we should assume for argument's sake that the president put pressure on Ukraine but, in the end, he folded, the Bolton revelation would be a big nothing.
• 
The president's team could have said it is just more of what we already knew.
• 
They could have stayed on the ground where they are strongest: Nothing happened.
• 
All foreign policy involves pressure and quid pro quo.
• 
There is a good-faith basis to suspect the Bidens were involved in corrupt self-dealing.
• 
It is ridiculous to suggest that Ukraine's defense, let alone American national security, was in any way compromised.
• 
President Trump has done much more to protect Ukraine from Russia than President Obama and the Democrats did — indeed, some of the Democratic House impeachment managers voted against the very aid to Ukraine, the brief, inconsequential withholding of which they now feign outrage about.
• 
The president's team could also have focused their energy on another key point that has gotten no attention: The claim that a Ukrainian investigation of the Bidens would have materially hurt Biden's presidential campaign is specious.
• 
Ukraine is a pervasively corrupt country.  ... That is how it goes in Kyiv, where the party in power routinely persecutes political adversaries and attempts to curry favor with its Western supporters.
• 
Ukrainian investigations have no credibility.
• 
Americans might care deeply if Biden's son is shown to have been cashing in on his father's political influence — which such investigative journalists as Peter Schweizer have been illustrating.
• 
But Americans would put no stock in any Ukrainian investigation.
• 
As best we can tell, even if they announced they were investigating Biden today, they'd be erecting a statue of him by next month if his polls improve.  Who cares?
• 
On Monday, the president's defense team is supposed to be arguing their main defense in the Senate impeachment trial.  It should be focused on these ultimate issues.
• 
They should be in a strong position to contend that all the witnesses and documents Democrats want to subpoena cannot alter the stubborn fact that nothing of consequence happened in Ukraine — certainly nothing worthy of impeaching and removing a duly elected president nine months before Election Day.
• 
But they decided to contest the underlying facts, where the president's case is weakest.
• 
They decided to fight on quid pro quo ... so now they will have to deal with John Bolton's account and the rising demands that he be called as a witness.
      Quid Pro Quo and Extortion: Welcome to Foreign Relations  (10/08/2019)
• 
The coverage of the Trump administration's pressure on Ukraine is verging on the absurd, as to both what is alleged to have been a wrong and the degree to which we should judge it wrong.
• 
In particular, I am referring to the concepts of quid pro quo and of extorting a foreign government.
• 
To listen to commentary, not only by anti-Trumpers but even some Trump defenders who don't seem to understand what they're talking about, one would think that a quid pro quo is always bad, and that it is a terrible thing to pressure a foreign government.
• 
This is nonsense.  Foreign relations typically involve quid pro quo arrangements.
• 
Governments do not ordinarily assist each other out of fondness.  Nations pursue their interests in the world.
• 
Where interests align, they assist each other.  Where interests are opposed, they are adverse to each other.
• 
In any event, they bargain with each other to advance their interests.
• 
It is a matter of "We want you to do this; what do we need to do – whether for you or to you – to make you do it?"
• 
The term quid pro quo has a sinister connotation because we most often hear it in connection with political-corruption cases, often involving bribery.
• 
In truth, all exchanges involve a quid pro quo, but most are not corrupt.
• 
When they are corrupt, it is not because Country A is asking Country B for something, but because Country A is asking for something that it is wrong to ask for.
• 
If the request is not improper, there is nothing wrong with a quid pro quo.
• 
There is, similarly, nothing wrong with squeezing a foreign government in furtherance of American interests.
• 
If important American interests are at stake, the president's job is to pressure other countries.
• 
As long as what an American president is asking for advances an American interest and does not violate either American law or any international obligation we've taken on, there is nothing wrong with pressuring other countries.
• 
Of course, in the real world, things are often not tidy.
• 
Presidents are in charge of foreign relations, and they pursue policies that they've run on.
• 
Presidents seeking reelection need policy successes.  A president's management of foreign policy and his political interests naturally overlap.
• 
At the same time, a policy that is good for the United States may have the collateral effect of politically damaging a president's political rival.
• 
A president should not be discouraged from pursuing American interests just because doing so might help the president or harm the president's opposition.
• 
The fact that Trump's personal interests would be advanced and Biden's damaged does not mean Trump should stop pressuring Iran.
• 
Pressuring Iran is good for America, regardless of whose political fortunes it affects.
• 
... Democrats and other Trump detractors seek to discredit the Barr investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation by claiming that Trump was only seeking Ukrainian assistance that would help him politically.
• 
To the contrary, the Barr investigation, despite media-Democrat disdain for it, is a legitimate Justice Department probe that is in America's interests since it is exploring serious allegations of abuse of power.
• 
The fact that the Barr investigation could advance Trump's political interests and harm Democrats is collateral.
• 
In fact, the investigation could also harm Trump and help Biden if it uncovers that abuse-of-power claims are exaggerated or wrong.
• 
That, too, is beside the point.  In terms of U.S.  interests, it was perfectly appropriate for an American president to pressure Ukraine to assist an American investigation — the fact that this involved a quid pro quo and can be seen as extortionate is unremarkable.
• 
Would it have been better if Trump had not included Biden (and especially Hunter Biden) in the quid pro quo?  Sure.
• 
If activities in Ukraine in 2016 are part of Barr's investigation, then Trump should have just asked for assistance to Barr's investigation and let the Justice Department sort out what, if any, pertinence Biden has to that inquiry.
• 
But to say the inclusion of Biden in the quid pro quo was not just inappropriate but impeachable is ridiculous.
• 
The same people who are screaming about Biden and quid pro quo are indifferent to the undeniable fact that the Obama administration sought and obtained the assistance of foreign governments and intelligence services in the investigation of Trump's campaign.
• 
When it comes to Trump, they would treat a comparatively minor impropriety as a hanging offense; when it comes to Obama, they want to pretend the collusion with foreign governments to interfere in the campaign didn't happen – or excuse the whole thing because, in their minds, Trump is a monster (but don't you dare question Good Ol' Joe).
• 
And you want to talk corrupt quid pro quo?_
• 
Obama traded ransom payments and billions in sanctions relief in order to get a nuclear deal that enriched Iran, the world's leading state sponsor of anti-American terrorism, and gave that regime a straight-line path to becoming a nuclear power.
• 
He traded five Taliban commanders for a deserter while the Taliban continued to fight against and kill American and allied troops.
• 
You want to ignore every Obama quid pro quo that patently harmed national security, but we're supposed to find high crimes and misdemeanors because Trump, in the course of pressuring Ukraine to assist a Justice Department investigation, also pressured Ukraine to look into potential corruption by a political rival.
• 
Not, mind you, to invent an allegation against Joe Biden out of whole cloth, but to see if there is fire under what sure looks like smoke.
• 
... it insults the intelligence, particularly after years of trumped-up Russian-collusion hysteria, to pretend that what the president has done here is singular, unprecedented, and impeachable.
      Andrew McCarthy: Israel Is right to bar entry of ‘Squad’ mates Omar and Tlaib  (Fox 08/16/2019)
• 
"Israel has hypnotized the world.  May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel." So says Rep.  Ilhan Omar, D., Minn.
• 
Well, it's a free country.  Omar is not only entitled to her political opinions; she is entitled to express them as long as she avoids unlawful incitement.
• 
The same goes for Rep.  Rashida Tlaib, D.  Mich., who advocates the "one-state solution" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a final settlement in which there would no longer be a Jewish state and the territory that is now Israel would gradually become Palestine.
• 
Omar and Tlaib are members of the hard left, self-styled "squad."
• 
They are both BDS zealots.  That is the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement by which opponents of the Jewish state seek its extirpation.
• 
Israel later - graciously - agreed to allow Tlaib to visit her aged and ailing grandmother in the West Bank, provided she didn't use the trip to undermine her host.
• 
But the Jewish State was on solid ground with its initial denial.
• 
After all, the liberty to express one's views does not imply immunity from the natural consequences of doing so.
• 
Among these is that the nation Omar and Tlaib seek to destabilize and ultimately dismantle may deny them entry.
• 
President Trump not only endorsed the move; he appears to have catalyzed it with a tweet, asserting that Israel would "show great weakness" if it permitted a visit from Omar and Tlaib because, according to the president, they "hate Israel & all Jewish people."
• 
While this rhetoric is abrasive in the Trumpian style, Israel's exclusion of Omar and Tlaib makes eminent sense.
• 
Since when must a country, particularly one that daily confronts a terrorism challenge the likes of which we have never experienced, roll out the red carpet for aliens who mean it harm and encourage its enemies?
• 
Naturally, because the alliance of Islamists and leftists calls the tune to which our media-Democrat complex dances, we are enduring gaseous denunciations from official Washington.
• 
Progressive groups are echoing Omar's latest blather about how the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "insult[ed] democratic values" (as if a nation's survival were not a democratic value).
• 
Despite this precious sensitivity about insults, Omar could not help herself but add that President Trump is an "Islamophobe."
• 
That term, shrewdly developed by sharia supremacists, intimates that critical examination of Islam – particularly, its doctrinal calls for jihad against non-believers – is racist.
• 
If this were not nauseating enough, Sen.  Marco Rubio, R.  Fla., chimed in with the Official Beltway Republican doublespeak: Even though we agree with Israel that Omar and Tlaib's BDS agenda is reprehensible, it "is a mistake" for Israel to slam the door on its foreign foes because you see, "being blocked is what they really hoped for all along."
• 
No senator, being feted as iconic Israel-bashers by Palestinians who want to disappear Israel is what they really hoped for all along.
• 
It is a reason for Washington to rethink its lunatic notion that we should care what the Islamist-leftist alliance thinks about anything – particularly since it bashes Israel only in its spare time from bashing America.
• 
In the Obama heyday of the Islamist-leftist alliance, we were gifted with U.N.  Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18, an effort to make it illegal to engage in speech that purportedly constitutes "hostility" against religion.
• 
(Translation: speech that actually constitutes expressions of alarm at the linear progression from Islamic texts to influential fundamentalist Islamic scholars to young Muslims carrying out jihadist brutality). 
• 
Notwithstanding that Resolution 16/18 is a patent violation of the First Amendment, it was championed by the Obama administration, particularly the State Department under Hillary Clinton.
• 
When it comes to political dissent, why do we hear grousing from Senator Rubio and his fellow Republicans about the Israeli government but not our own?
• 
Washington, through the hocus-pocus of international law, was perfectly content to erode the right of Americans to speak about threats to America.
• 
Now, though, we're supposed to get upset over another country's exclusion from its territory of aliens who have no right to be there in the first place, and who brazenly seek entry precisely to agitate against the host country.
• 
Have you had a look at U.S.  exclusion law lately?
• 
Our statutes, which are not nearly as robust as they should be about keeping hostile foreign ideologues out of our territory, nevertheless authorize barring the entry of aliens who are reasonably believed to be planning to violate our law; are likely to engage in activities that unlawfully oppose or seek the overthrow of our government; are members of a political or social group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity; and whose activities could have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the U.S.  (though not required to, we exempt foreign officials from this last exclusion).
• 
Even our laws would support Israel.  It justifiably regards the BDS movement as an existential challenge to the nation's security and existence as a Jewish state.  It has enacted a law that bars BDS activists from entering Israel.
• 
Omar and Tlaib, moreover, have extensive histories of associating with Muslim Brotherhood-connected groups that promote terrorism and seek Israel's annihilation.
• 
Israel is the freest country in its part of the world.  Its ethnic Arabic citizens have more liberty and due process than they could hope to enjoy in sharia societies.
• 
It has its own alliance of leftists and Islamists that engages in robust dissent against the incumbent government.
• 
Its assurance of free expression guarantees that no argument Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib could make would be kept from Israelis and Palestinians who care to hear it.
• 
Democracy, however, is not a suicide pact.
• 
No rational country welcomes into its territory foreigners whose fondest wish is its demise.
      Politics is front and center for Russiagate probe — and the farce has reached new heights  (Fox 05/11/2019)
• 
Desperate to project the illusion of cover-up in the utter absence of cover-up, Democrats proceeded against the attorney general even though (a) Barr did not owe Congress a single comma in the report because federal law calls for it to be confidential (i.e., between the prosecutor investigating the case and his supervisor, the attorney general); (b) Barr nevertheless gave Congress about 95 percent of the report; (c) congressional Democrats did not avail themselves of the opportunity to read other unredacted portions to which he gave access; (d) all of the unsavory information about President Trump – i.e., the stuff in the report that Democrats truly care about – has been disclosed; and (e) Barr only withheld grand jury information which it would be illegal to disclose – meaning: Democrats put the AG to the untenable choice of violating the law or being held in contempt.
• 
Oh, and about that grand jury secrecy rule ... it is Congress's own law.
• 
Democrats could easily get the information by just passing a two-line amendment to federal criminal procedure rule 6(e), so that grand jury material could henceforth be disclosed to Congress in special counsel investigations.
• 
With the Trump administration trying to show it is being transparent, the Senate would surely pass such a House amendment, and the president would sign it.  But Democratic legislators are not taking any legislative action (you know, their job) because they don't really want the information.
• 
They want the issue.
• 
They are straining to create the appearance of Watergate, even as Barr has turned over an Everest of information.
• 
But that is just a sideshow compared to the Mueller report itself.
• 
The bottom line is that the special counsel not only found no collusion between Trump's campaign and Russia.
• 
It appears that the FBI's investigation was opened on false pretenses...
• 
The high likelihood is that, after taking over the investigation in May 2017, Mueller knew early on that there was no "collusion" case against the president.
• 
That allegation was largely built on the "Steele dossier," the Clinton campaign-sponsored opposition research screed, which was based on anonymous sources and multiple levels of hearsay, and which the government is now investigating on suspicion that it may have been Russian disinformation.
• 
The last warrant of four 90-day warrants would have lapsed in September 2017.
• 
But Mueller, who by then had been on the case for four months, opted not to go back to the FISA court to seek a new warrant.
• 
That suggests that investigators no longer stood behind the dossier and its sensational, uncorroborated claim that Trump was in cahoots with the Kremlin.
• 
Of course, that raises a big question: Why did Mueller allow the "collusion" investigation to continue for well over a year after it seemed obvious that there was no case?
• 
Much of the presidential misbehavior that prosecutors portray as possible obstruction happened after it appears they must have known Trump had not "colluded" with Russia.
• 
Why was there no interim report announcing that?
• 
Why did investigators continue to lead the country to believe that the president might be an agent?
• 
Democrats turned up the noise and the heat on Attorney General Barr once he announced that he would investigate the origins of the Russiagate probe.  Are they trying to destroy the messenger before he can deliver the message?
• 
See related What's the Charge? (Glenn McCoy, 08/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
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      Rioting, looting, arson and violence have become a civilization-destroying pandemic  (Fox 06/05/2020)
• 
The United States is calmer, though still threatening, following days of rioting that spread with lightning speed across the nation, with murderous assaults on police officers and civilians and the ecstatic annihilation of businesses and symbols of the state.
• 
Welcome to a real civilization-destroying pandemic, one that makes the recent saccharine exhortations to "stay safe" and the deployment of police officers to enforce outdoor mask-wearing seem like decadent bagatelles.
• 
This particular form of viral chaos was inevitable, given the failure of Minneapolis's leaders to quell the city's growing mayhem.
• 
The violence began on May 26, the day after the horrifying arrest and subsequent death of a black man named George Floyd as he lay handcuffed on the ground.
• 
On the night of May 28, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey ordered the city's Third Police Precinct evacuated as the forces of hatred, distinct from legitimate forms of protest, descended upon it for a third day in a row.
• 
The building was promptly torched, sending a powerful sign that society would not defend its most fundamental institutions of law and order.
• 
On May 29, Minnesota Gov.  Tim Walz explained his reluctance to mobilize the National Guard as an unwillingness to seem "oppressive."
• 
Naturally, he apologized for his white privilege – "I will not patronize you as a white man without living [your] lived experiences" – and explained the feral violence as an understandable response to racial injustice.
• 
"The ashes are symbolic of decades and generations of pain, of anguish, unheard," Walz said.  Few arrests were made after five days of rampant crime.
• 
The media, visibly exhilarated by this latest explosion of black rage, had its own explanation for the chaos: people were upset that the white officer who had kept his knee on Floyd's neck for a sickening eight-plus minutes had not yet been arrested and charged.
• 
But when that arrest came, along with murder and manslaughter charges after a lightning-fast investigation by the district attorney, the anarchy continued – not just in Minneapolis but across the country.
• 
Political leaders elsewhere were just as reluctant to use the necessary force to quell the violence.
• 
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio called on police to use a "light touch" in response.
• 
"The explosion we saw last night we'll probably see again tonight," Cuomo said – obviously confident in his own physical safety, if not the safety of the rest of the state's residents.
• 
The attacks on local law enforcement were already happening out of sight of TV cameras before the most photogenic scenes of arson and the stomping of squad cars started showing up on network and cable news.
• 
On May 26, and May 27, Chicago residents surrounded and threw bottles at Chicago police trying to arrest gun suspects.  One suspect was the likely perpetrator of a shooting that had just hit a five-year-old girl and two teenage boys.
• 
On Tuesday ... four St.  Louis officers were shot, and a police captain was killed, amid looting in the city.  The next night, in Brooklyn, an officer was stabbed in the neck and two others were shot.
• 
Even worse is to come, because since 2015, the country has absorbed another five years of academically inspired racial victimology.
• 
Facts don't matter to the academic victimology narrative.  One facts is that whites are the overwhelming target of interracial violence.
• 
Between 2012 and 2015, blacks committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations (excluding interracial homicide, which is also disproportionately black-on-white) ... That works out to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites.
• 
Whites committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimization, or 91,470 felonious assaults on blacks.  Blacks are less than 13 percent of the national population.
• 
If white mobs were rampaging through black business districts, assaulting passersby and looting stores, we would have heard about it on the national news every night.  But it is not happening.
• 
Why are the Minneapolis police in black neighborhoods?  Because that's where violent crime is happening, including shootings of two-year-olds and lethal beatings of 75-year-olds.
• 
Just as during the Obama years, the discussion of the allegedly oppressive police is being conducted in the complete absence of any recognition of street crime and the breakdown of the black family that drives it.
• 
Once the violence began, any effort to "understand" it should have stopped, since that understanding is inevitably exculpatory.
• 
The looters are not grieving over the stomach-churning arrest and death of George Floyd; they are having the time of their lives.
• 
You don't protest or mourn a victim by stealing Oxycontin, electronics, jewelry and sneakers.
• 
Fittingly, the ideological handmaiden of this violence – academia – has already sprung into action.
• 
The chancellors and presidents of Harvard, the University of Arizona, the University of Pennsylvania and Yale – among others – released statements last weekend assuring their black students of their schools' commitment to racial equity, in light of the George Floyd death – an event wholly unrelated to academic institutions.  No college leader denounced the violence.
• 
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block – as well as the school's $400,000 a year vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion and a parade of deans – announced that the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion and the school's legions of equity advisers would be coming up with new programs for "virtual reflection spaces" in which to "humbly acknowledge the pain."
• 
The academic diversity bureaucracy has now been given a whole new excuse for existence and can be assured that it will escape the cost-cutting chopping block, even as universities beg the federal government for more coronavirus bailout money.
• 
Thanks to the magnificent infrastructure of the rule of law, we now take stability and social trust for granted.
• 
We assume that violence, once unleashed in the name of justice, can easily be put back in the bottle.
• 
It cannot.
• 
It was a signal accomplishment of both politics and science to banish humanity's millennia-long fear of darkness.
• 
That city dwellers are now re-experiencing that fear with each fall of night is a measure of how rapidly we are losing our hard-won progress.
 McFarland  (04/13/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (06/05/2020) | Next sect (01/12/2022) | List bot 
      The choice Biden — and the world — faces in Ukraine  (Fox 04/13/2022)
• 
President Joe Biden loves to say that "America is back," bragging that with him in charge we can resume our rightful place as leader of the free world.
• 
But it's time he started acting like it, instead of just giving speeches about it.  Don't just talk about the courageous Ukrainian people.  Give them with the weapons necessary to defend themselves, and do it quickly.
• 
Don't just rant about how evil Russian President Vladimir Putin is, and mutter about regime change.  Take steps to cut off Putin's energy revenues.  Russia takes in more than a billion dollars every day from natural gas and oil exports.
• 
If Biden paused his war on fossil fuels to allow American natural gas production and exports to Europe, Putin's revenues would plummet.
• 
There are only two ways to stop Putin: militarily by defeating him on the battlefield; and economically by reducing his income to the point where he can't afford to keep fighting.
• 
If we fail to supply weapons to Ukraine, and refuse cut off Putin's revenues, Ukraine's fate is sealed.  Russia will bleed it to death.
• 
But that won't be the end of it.  The Ukraine war has ramifications far beyond Ukraine's borders.  A Russian "victory" could deal a fatal blow to the entire concept of democracy and the liberal world order.  We would slide back into a world where might makes right and bullies prevail.
• 
The West is caught in a dilemma.  Everyone wants Ukraine to prevail, but at no significant cost or risk to themselves.
• 
President Biden worries supplying Ukraine with the weapons it needs to defend itself could trigger a Russian attack on NATO, or even Russian escalation to weapons of mass destruction.
• 
If Russia's nuclear blackmail succeeds, all wanna-be nuclear powers will figure that once they cross the threshold, they can get away with anything.  No country is willing to mess with a nuclear weapons state.
• 
At the same time, European nations dependent on Russian energy for everything from heating oil to electricity generation balk at imposing oil and natural gas sanctions.
• 
While such sanctions might reduce Russian revenues, European leaders fear a sudden cutoff of Russian energy would wreck devastation on their own economies.
• 
In this latest phase of the war, Russian forces have withdrawn from Kyiv and western Ukraine, leaving death and destruction in their wake.  They're now concentrating on eastern and southern Ukraine.
• 
Putin has put a new general in charge of the war, a man whose warfighting specialty is not conquering countries, but destroying civilizations.
• 
If Putin's army can't defeat Ukraine's army, he will use it to commit genocide, raze the country to the ground, and force its surrender, just as did fifteen years ago with Chechnya and more recently with Syria.
• 
Putin's war is also on a deadline.  On May 9 people across Russia will celebrate their World War II victory over the Nazis.
• 
Since Putin has cast the entire Ukraine operation as a noble effort to rid Ukraine of its Nazi leaders, he's painted himself into a corner.
• 
He needs to show progress in defeating Ukraine's "Nazis" on the anniversary of defeating Germany's Nazis.  (Never mind that President Zelenskyy is Jewish and grandson of Holocaust survivors.)
• 
In the coming days and weeks President Biden and other western leaders must make a choice.  Will they give Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself?  Even so, Ukraine might not prevail, but at least they would have a fighting chance.
• 
Is Biden willing to pause his sacred war on fossil fuels and let American energy companies ramp up production and increase exports?  If so, we could help Europe wean itself off Russian energy, while at the same time depriving Russia of windfall profits.
• 
If President Biden does neither, the harsh reality is Putin is likely to destroy Ukraine.  And, in a few years' time, when the Russian bear is hungry again, he will be back for more.
      Three ways to stop Putin's next power grab  (Fox 02/26/2022)
• 
Everyone is understandably focused on how to stop Putin's Ukraine grab.  Frankly, it's too late for that.  Nothing anyone can do now will stop Putin.
• 
To their enormous credit, Ukraine's president, military and even civilians are putting up a fight.  But their defeat is inevitable.  Within days Moscow will control Kiev.  The only question is how high a price Moscow will be forced to pay. 
• 
Putin is a prideful man and takes his international reputation seriously.  If his invasion becomes protracted, he will look weak.  If there are considerable civilian casualties, he will look like a nasty bully.
• 
The question we should be asking ourselves is how to stop Putin's next power grab.  What can we do now that will deter him from making a move against some smaller countries along the Russian border, especially Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania?
• 
These three Baltic states, former members of the Soviet Union are now the most vulnerable members of the NATO alliance.
• 
The latest round of sanctions President Biden announced are a slap on the wrist.  The only sanctions that might make Putin pause would be to kick Russia out of the international banking system.
• 
But that will never happen, as long as our European allies are dependent on Russian oil and natural gas for their economic survival.
• 
... the president should explain to his supporters that the existential threat Russia poses to our national security require him to reverse course and take the shackles off the American energy industry he imposed early in his presidency.
• 
We are sitting on the largest reserves of oil and natural in the world, with the potential of becoming the world's energy superpower.  We should use what Providence provided.
• 
... the president should go to our European allies, especially Germany, and tell them we have their backs.  Russia supplies half of Europe's energy.  No European leader dare jeopardize that relationship.
• 
So instead, offer to guarantee their energy security.  We can help them replace Russian oil and natural gas with clean, no strings attached, American liquefied natural gas.
• 
They've been reluctant to make the switch from Russian to American energy.  Perhaps the last few days have shown them the Russian energy comes at too high a political and economic price.
• 
... the president should tell the Russians that we will do everything in our power to bring down the price of oil and natural gas, through our own exports and by encouraging our Arab allies to pump more oil.
• 
Wars are expensive.  Today, Russia is sitting on windfall profits from energy prices that are double what they were a year ago.  If we can drive the price of their major export down to 2020 levels, Russia is broke.
• 
President Biden said Putin is trying to recreate the Soviet Union.  He's right; that has been Putin's dream for decades.
• 
The way we defeated the Soviet Union the last time around was by driving down the price of oil.  We pushed them into bankruptcy, cut off their access to bank loans, and prohibited the transfer of American technology.
• 
We have done it before, and we can do it again.  But we are running out of time.  We won the first Cold War.  We need to win the second one, too.
• 
See related Sanctions (Glenn McCoy, 07/30/2014) cartoon from World picture album
• 
See related Germany and Russia (Gary McCoy, 02/08/2022) cartoon from World picture album
      McFarland says Biden should focus on making US world's 'energy superpower' amid Russian invasion of Ukraine  (Fox 02/24/2022)
• 
"Great words.  No big deeds," McFarland said of Biden's speech.  "The only thing that really matters — the only thing that would affect Russian behavior — is to kick them out of the international banking system, and he wouldn't do it.  Why?  Because the Germans and the French and the Italians — nobody wants to go along with it.  Why?  Because they all rely on Russian energy, Russian oil and natural gas."
• 
"So, if you kick Russia out of the international banking system, no big deal for Americans, huge deal for the Europeans.  They can't afford to give that up."
• 
"Biden should have said to the American people, I'm reversing course, and I'm going to re-open American energy production, oil, natural gas, the Keystone Pipeline, liquified natural gas terminals."
• 
... he should have told the Europeans "I got your back, I will give you energy security.  Don't rely on that unreliable Russian stuff.  We will sell you at a good price."
• 
"Cheap, reliable, clean, American natural gas.  And then he should have turned to the Russians and said, I am going to pump a lot of oil from American companies.  I'm going to get the Saudis and our Arab allies to pump a lot of oil and natural gas.  We are going to drive that price right down and you're going to be bankrupt."
• 
"Here's the thing, We have it.  Donald Trump got us there, and American ingenuity and technical people and engineers, and they figured out a way to get oil and natural gas out of rocks, and it turns out we are sitting on the biggest reservoir of oil and natural gas of anywhere in the world."
• 
"...  Americans just do their job.  Get out of the way, let that energy industry work, and then we become the energy superpower, not just for North America, but for the world."
• 
"We don't belong.  We shouldn't put U.S.  troops in Ukraine.  If the Ukrainians want to fight on their own, you know, by themselves, for themselves, good, give them whatever they need to fight.  But that's not our fight."
• 
"What is our fight, though, is NATO.  And the big question is, if Putin is emboldened by Ukraine, and we'll know in the next 48 hours whether he gets a pro-Russian puppet government in Ukraine, will he want to go further or will he decide that maybe he's got a taste for going after small NATO countries?"
• 
... questioned whether NATO allies will "stay" with the United States "if it gets tough.  I don't know.  There are so many unknowns."
      Russia's long game on Ukraine, energy and Europe  (Fox 02/23/2022)
• 
President Biden took to the East Room to announce a series of sanctions against Russia, as punishment for its "minor incursion" into two provinces of eastern Ukraine.
• 
From the gravity in his voice, he must have assumed Vladimir Putin would be in the Kremlin, quaking in his boots.  I doubt President Putin even bothered to shrug his shoulders.
• 
Putin's power grab in eastern Ukraine is a done deal, a repeat of his rapid occupation and annexation of Crimea after the Sochi Olympics in 2014.
• 
What do these two power grabs have in common?  Joe Biden, obviously.  He was vice president for the first, and president for the second.
• 
But they have something else in common – high energy prices.  In 2014 oil was about $100 a barrel, just like today.
• 
Russia's main export is energy resources.  Nobody buys Russian watches or computers or cars.  Just about everybody buys Russian oil and gas.  When energy prices are high, Russia is flush with cash, and emboldened to do ambitious things.
• 
Putin understood this decades ago.  In the early 1990s, after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Putin left the KGB and went to graduate school.
• 
With an eye to politics, he used his dissertation to outline how to rebuild Russia through energy exports.  He advocated taking oil and gas companies away from the oligarchs and bringing them under central government control.
• 
After investing in infrastructure, and building pipelines, Russia could export gas and oil, especially to Europe.  Russia could use the revenues to rebuild its central government and military.
• 
Europe's energy dependency would give Putin political and economic leverage over his customers.  Putin was prepared to play the long game, and he has finally seen his efforts pay off.
• 
What he didn't anticipate was America's shale oil and gas technology revolution.  Nor did he anticipate a businessman like Donald Trump would become president.
• 
Trump understood the extraordinary opportunities America's sudden newfound energy wealth offered.  We could finally be energy independent.
• 
We could become one of the world's major energy exporters, perhaps replacing Russia and Arab oil countries as the main supplier to Europe and even Asia.
• 
American exports entering the market would force down global energy prices, and push Russia (and Iran) into near bankruptcy.
• 
We could help save the climate as companies and countries moved from expensive, dirty coal to inexpensive, clean American natural gas.  It was a win, win, win proposition for the U.S., and lose, lose, lose for Russia.
• 
Inexplicably, President Biden threw away all that wealth and leverage a year ago.  Immediately upon taking office, he started shutting down the U.S.  oil and natural gas industries, cut back on U.S.  energy exports and canceled the Keystone Pipeline.
• 
At the same time, he gave Russia an extraordinary opportunity, by allowing Russia's considerable stranglehold over European energy supplies to expand even further.
• 
Predictably, when Biden got the U.S.  out of the energy exporting business, oil and natural gas prices skyrocketed.  Russia got a windfall because the revenue from their exports doubled almost overnight.  Their political leverage over Europe grew even more powerful.
• 
European nations get about half of their energy from importing Russian oil and natural gas.  Russian energy heats their homes, powers their factories, runs their cars.  Putin seized that window of opportunity.
• 
Thanks to Biden, Russia was rich and powerful again.  Putin could realize his lifelong ambition of driving a wedge between the NATO allies and restoring the former Soviet empire.
• 
The tragic reality is today Putin can do whatever he wants with Ukraine, whenever he wants, and the U.S.  and our European allies cannot or will not do anything to stop him.
• 
If they try to shut down Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline, Russia already has China lined up as the replacement buyer.
• 
If Biden were serious about stopping Putin, he would restart the American energy industry, build LNG terminals at home and abroad, and offer our European allies energy security.  That would remove Putin's chokehold over Europe.
• 
It would also drive down oil and gas prices, and once again wipe out Putin's energy windfall profits.  Wars are expensive, so are invasions and occupations.
• 
This week Putin put another piece of Ukraine under his belt.  The way to prevent him from getting all of Ukraine, or making moves against even more former Soviet states, is to take away his piggy bank.
      This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for democracy and the commonsense of ordinary Americans  (Fox 11/24/2021)
• 
We went into COVID lockdown nearly two years ago and have emerged to find a greatly changed America.  "Wokeism" has taken over our schools, churches, media and corporations.  Teachers indoctrinate children with racial hatred and anti-Americanism.
• 
Freedom of speech has been banned from college dorms and faculty lounges.  Our most renowned media outlets routinely and proudly censor any voices criticizing the radical left's socialist agenda.
• 
Some of our once great cities are defunding police departments.  Our senior military officials used to focus on defeating America's foreign adversaries; now they're obsessed with which pronouns to use in training manuals.
• 
Anyone criticizing the new "Woke America" is attacked by social media mobs and by the "cancel culture."
• 
Just a few years ago, America was the gold standard for freedom and individual liberty.  Now we're the capital of group think.
• 
Almost all of us have in recent months had conversations with friends who look around the room and whisper fearfully, "What has happened to America?"
• 
The silent majority of Americans realize we're going in a very bad direction — we're just not sure what to do about it.
• 
But I've detected a shift in the last few weeks.  People around the country have finally had enough and are starting to fight back.
• 
The silent majority has found its voice.  We're willing to stand up the socialist, totalitarian, racist, anti-American agenda.
• 
The battlegrounds are not in Washington, they're in local school boards, town halls, and in state capitols.  The warriors are not in our military nor the FBI.
• 
They're the ordinary citizens who live ordinary lives, but who are filled with extraordinary courage that inspire others in different communities to stand up for their rights.
• 
Americans, as a people, are slow to rile up.  We're generally focused on our families, friends, neighborhoods, and our jobs.  We go to our kids' soccer games — not school board meetings.  We drive to work, not to political protests.
• 
But push us far enough, and we will respond.  That's what is happening all over America today.  It's parent protests at school district meetings.  It's whistleblowers revealing government abuse of power.  It's veterans, businessmen, and even truck drivers who are stepping up to run for political office.
• 
It's why I'm thankful for democracy.  Our Founding Fathers understood the nature of government is always to expand its power and privilege.  They took steps to guard against mob rule and a dictatorship of interest groups.
• 
I'm grateful they also had the wisdom to give the average, commonplace, ordinary Americans the power to stop them.
• 
This Thanksgiving, it's God bless America — and our fellow Americans.
      Afghanistan was a fiasco and our woke military, political leaders will never be held accountable  (Fox 09/28/2021)
• 
The generals insisted they did nothing wrong, they bore no responsibility for what happened.  They deflected, bobbed, weaved and tried to spin one of the most significant military disasters into U.S.  military history as a great success.
• 
Nothing was their fault!  It was the incompetent Afghan military!  It was the corrupt Afghan president!  It was the weather!
• 
By the time the generals were finished, they even threw President Joe Biden under the bus.
• 
All three military leaders claimed they advised Biden, in person, that a sudden and complete withdrawal would lead to the immediate collapse of the Afghan military and government.
• 
Yet President Biden has said that all his generals agreed in his withdrawal plans.  He was just carrying out their recommendations.
• 
That just doesn't square — either the generals are lying or the president is.  But don't hold your breath that anyone will take responsibility or be held to account for one of the most shambolic and shameful events in modern American military history.
• 
These three generals, over time and in other positions, trotted up to Capitol Hill year after year telling us that victory in Afghanistan was right around the corner, that all they needed was a few billion dollars more, a few more months, a few thousand more troops.
• 
Why did Gen.  Milley spend hours with authors like Bob Woodward and various reporters spinning himself as a brilliant strategist and politically correct soldier instead of crafting an Afghanistan withdrawal plan that would save American lives and prevent the rise of a super armed terrorist regime?
• 
Contrast their behavior to Marine Lt.  Col.  Stuart Scheller, who last month spoke out on behalf of the rank-and-file military and junior officers who want answers from the senior military leaders.  Their response?  His military bosses relieved him from command.
• 
Tuesday, while the generals were busy wrapping themselves in the bloody flag of the men and women who fought, bled and died in Afghanistan, Scheller was hit with a gag order and thrown in jail.
• 
Scheller is behind bars for speaking the truth, while America's top three generals spin failure as success and get off scot free.
• 
The people responsible for the Afghanistan fiasco – the generals, the politicians, the civilian leaders – will never be held accountable.
• 
For decades they pushed a war they knew we couldn't win.  They failed to create a stand-alone Afghan military or build a modern society. 
• 
When it came time to leave, they were practically criminally incompetent.  In in the end, they abandoned thousands of Americans behind enemy lines.
• 
There is something seriously wrong with the senior leadership of our armed forces.  They have taken a sacred, non-partisan, universally respected organization – the American military — and turned it into a woke, politically correct, media-focused, often militarily incompetent institution.
• 
Contrast them to Scheller.  He risked his life fighting in Afghanistan.  Then he threw away his storied career by asking that senior leaders answer questions and be held accountable for a lost war.  He's a hero.
• 
The three generals?  They're not heroes.  They're not leaders.  They're political hacks in uniforms.
      KT McFarland: Gen.  Milley deserves separate probes over China phone calls, Afghanistan  (Fox 09/17/2021)
• 
Gen.  Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should be fired over the Afghanistan debacle.
• 
If the allegations in Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's book "Peril" are true, General Milley should also face court-martial.
• 
At a minimum there needs to be two separate investigations into his conduct:
• 
The sensational story of the week is that Milley went rogue earlier this year while President Trump was nearing the end of his term.  Here's what is being alleged by Woodward and Costa:
• 
He conspired with Speaker Pelosi to take away the president's nuclear codes. 
• 
He spoke to China's top general and promised a heads of if President Trump took military action against China.
• 
He did all of these on his own, single-handedly, without the knowledge or consent of his bosses at the Pentagon or White House.
• 
His alleged rationale was that he worried about Trump's sanity.  So Milley went rogue because he thought Trump might go rogue.
• 
If the allegations are true, Milley was willing to subvert a fundamental tenet of our Constitution, the crown jewel of the principle of American self-governance, because in his opinion, "Trump had gone into a serious mental decline in the aftermath of the election, with Trump now all but manic and screaming at officials...."
• 
Gen.  Milley will finally be forced to answer for his actions when he appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee to testify under oath later this month.
• 
Senators from both parties should grill him on his actions at the end of the Trump administration and his role in the catastrophic Afghanistan withdrawal.  Both will have repercussions on American domestic and foreign policy for years.
• 
Is it now OK for an unelected senior official, a military officer, on his own recognizance, to decide whether or not the president is up to the job, and then take preemptive action, again on his own recognizance, to thwart him?
• 
If true, that is getting dangerously close to a military coup.
• 
The Afghanistan fiasco has forced our allies to doubt us and offered our enemies an opportunity to exploit us.  As a result, President Biden and his team will now face a series of challenges to American power.
• 
The Great Reckoning has already begun.  North Korea is firing missiles again.  China is sending warships across the Pacific and right up to the territorial waters of Hawaii.
• 
China has warned the Pacific nations that America is not an ally to be trusted, and it has underscored the point with military exercises demonstrating their ability to invade Taiwan.
• 
Perhaps Gen.  Milley is the villain in both these cases.  Perhaps he's merely a pawn.
• 
Either way the American people need answers.  Pronto.
      KT McFarland: 20 years after 9/11 it's like we've been gut-punched again.  Still, don't count Americans out  (Fox 09/11/2021)
• 
After 20 years of war to help Afghans fight off the Taliban; after hundreds of billions spent to build schools, hospitals, roads for the Afghan people; after a generation of effort, our military and political leaders quit the country in an unimaginably chaotic and incompetent fashion.
• 
They knowingly left Americans behind, and abandoned tens of thousands of Afghans who stood loyally with us for decades.  Terrorists have the upper hand and the Taliban now have our military equipment and bases.
• 
Once again, we are left wondering about our future, our place in the world, our national purpose.  While history doesn't repeat itself, it does rhyme.
• 
Although we were united after September 11th, today we seem hopelessly divided.  Our leaders would rather score points against their political opponents than find a way to work together for the common good.
• 
Our president is busy blaming everyone but himself for what is so obviously a political, military, and humanitarian fiasco.
• 
Yet the strength and beauty of our democracy is that we can replace our officials come the next election, and I suspect the American people are in the mood for a major, historic change come 2022 and 2024.
• 
Feckless incompetent leaders parading as patriots are rarely reelected.  We may make mistakes in whom we elect, but we have the means to correct those mistakes the next time around.
• 
In the meantime, it is worth remembering what we have also witnessed in these last few weeks as we quit Afghanistan.  Once again it is common Americans doing uncommonly brave and noble things.
• 
That is the fundamental truth of our founding fathers understood, that often gets lost in the minutiae of politics of the moment.
• 
They understood the nature of Americans.  We are so busy building our own lives that we tend to leave the governing to our elected officials.
• 
People around the world often confuse that with the idea that Americans are soft, lazy and spoiled.
• 
But underneath that layer of seeming unconcern is a backbone of steel.  We are often slow to act, oftentimes we only act when forced to.
• 
But when that happens, we prove our mettle.  The can-do spirit, the self-reliance built into our national DNA, our resiliency.  We improvise, we innovate, we may break a few rules, but we do not accept defeat.
• 
Our adversaries should take note – America has been gut-punched in the past... Pearl Harbor... Sputnik... the Berlin Airlift... Saigon... Sept.  11th... and now Kabul.
• 
Every time our enemies danced with glee, predicting with great confidence our inevitable decline.  They were wrong every single time.
• 
Rather than accept defeat, we got up off our knees, dusted ourselves off and climbed our way out of the tragedy... to greater achievement, prosperity and purpose.
• 
That's what our adversaries never understand about us.  Defeat doesn't doom the American spirit, it reinvigorates it.
• 
I am reminded of what Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said to his colleagues after as they celebrated their utter destruction of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor.  He said, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."
• 
Our adversaries shouldn't count us out this time.  And neither should we.
      KT McFarland: Biden's Afghanistan speech was a chance to speak to a nation in pain.  It utterly failed  (Fox 08/31/2021)
• 
Instead of speaking to a nation in pain, President Biden made this speech all about himself.  He dodged and weaved, blamed others, and even claimed our evacuation from Afghanistan was a great success, while most everyone else saw it as an unmitigated disaster.
• 
... on this day we needed our president to rise above the petty politics of Washington's "swamp" and speak directly to the men and women who fought and bled in Afghanistan, to the Gold Star families whose loved ones gave their lives, and to the world bracing for what will come next in Afghanistan and the region.
• 
We needed him to reassure us that their sacrifices were not in vain.  The failures in Afghanistan were not of their making, but due to the deliberate and inadvertent mistakes of our senior military and political leaders.
• 
We needed President Biden to admit defeat.  We failed to build a modern democracy in Afghanistan.  Despite our efforts, we failed to destroy Islamic extremism, or even al Qaeda's heirs.
• 
We needed him to rise to the power and majesty of his office and confer on our men and women the blessing of a grateful nation.
• 
He did not.
• 
President Biden may not have intended to, but his remarks personified the failures of 20 years of the war in Afghanistan.  Our leaders made mistakes that cost people their lives, but those leaders were never held accountable.
• 
They were never straight with us.  They cared more about their legacies, their reputations, their personal popularity, than they cared about the American people.
• 
The men and women who served in Afghanistan deserved better than this.  So did the American people.
• 
May the Good Lord bless the sacrifices of our men and women who fought, bled and died in Afghanistan — because our president did not.
      KT McFarland: Second COVID cover-up – China, we know about but was there another one in the US?  (Fox 06/28/2021)
• 
The world rightfully wants to find out what really happened in Wuhan and how what should have been a run-of-the-mill virus set off a global pandemic.  We probably never will, however, because of the Great Chinese Cover-up.
• 
But is there another cover-up, hiding right here in plain sight in Washington?
• 
Did America bungle our initial handling of the pandemic because a handful of government scientists and bureaucrats, and their unwitting media enablers, deliberately sent us off in the wrong direction in order to cover up their own complicity in creating COVID-19?
• 
These scientists insisted that anyone promoting the lab leak theory, including our leading governors and well-respected scientists, was a hysterical, xenophobic, anti-science conspiracy theorist.
• 
Did they react with such velocity and venom because they were covering up for their own misguided actions?  What did they not want the world to know?
• 
That they were funding risky gain-of-function research and genetically engineering fairly harmless viruses to make them more contagious, virulent and lethal in order to study them?
• 
That they were awarding grants to an adversarial nation's research lab, where the Chinese military was also involved?
• 
Did they do these things without the approval, or perhaps even knowledge of their bosses and therefore need to cover their tracks, lest the world demand answers for their role for inadvertently contributing to a global pandemic?
• 
I was President Trump's first deputy national security adviser and knew nothing about these potentially dangerous gain-of-function research projects, nor that the U.S.  government was funding Chinese labs.
• 
If President Trump had been briefed, he NEVER would have agreed to it.  First, he would have railed against U.S.  tax dollars being used to pay for research in China.  He was elected to change China policy, not subsidize it.
• 
Trump, a notorious germaphobe, would have railed even more loudly against paying mad scientists to create Frankenstein monster viruses.
• 
So, who did give the go-ahead to resume risky gain-of-function research?  Government bureaucrats?  The so-called "expert class" who have been proven wrong again and again over the course of the pandemic?
• 
Even if they were not specifically funding gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab, what were we funding there?
• 
If we weren't funding gain-of-function research in China, were we doing so at other labs in other lands?
• 
Surely the decision to create killer viruses capable of creating global pandemics if mishandled should have been made at the highest levels of government.  But it wasn't.
• 
When discussing the possibility of a lab leak in gain-of-function research, Dr.  Anthony Fauci wrote "that the benefits of such experiments and the resulting knowledge outweigh the risks."
• 
Tell that to a world still in the throes of a pandemic that has caused almost 4 million deaths.
• 
When President Trump entertained the lab leak theory, they blamed him for the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans.
• 
These same government experts urged their allies in the media, social media and Silicon Valley to censor and silence anyone who questioned their pronouncements.
• 
It is not fearmongering or conspiracy theorizing to ask legitimate questions of our own officials.  It is only prudent.
• 
We are just emerging from a global pandemic that has caused more damage to our society and economy than a world war.
• 
Surely, we need to examine every aspect of the origin and spread of COVID, even if holding up a mirror to our own actions unveils a cover-up in Washington.
• 
      KT McFarland: US-China Cold War – it's real and Biden admin better start doing this  (Fox 03/22/2021)
• 
Chinese Communist Party leaders believe the tides of history have turned ... that China is a rising power and the U.S.  a declining power ... that centralized authoritarian governments are superior to dysfunctional democracies ... that iron-fisted state-run capitalism is more efficient than chaotic free market capitalism.
• 
In short, the Chinese believe they are already, or soon will be, the strongest nation in the world.  Any concessions on major issues will come from others, not from China.
• 
In a way the Chinese have done us a favor – they have put the new Cold War out in the open for all to see.  But that is the last favor they will ever give us.
• 
Today China speaks openly abouts its intentions – the 21st century belongs to them and they plan to replace the United States as the dominant world power economically, technologically, militarily, politically and diplomatically and then rewrite the international rules of order to suit their own interests, and at our expense.
• 
There is no amount of cajoling, negotiating, flattery or scolding that can divert them from their course.
• 
The liberal world order that has served us so well for the last 70 years is fading and will soon be replaced by a world order "with Chinese characteristics" to quote their leaders.
• 
If we are to preserve the liberal world order, democracy and free markets for the 21st century, the U.S.  needs to come up with a new plan to deal with China.
• 
Just as we created a new world order to deal with the Soviet Union and communism after World War II, we must now do the same for dealing with China.
• 
At the end of World War II, the world had two superpowers – the United States and the Soviet Union.
• 
The U.S.  reached out to the nations devastated by the ravages of war and through the Marshall Plan helped rebuild their economies and societies.
• 
We did the same with our national security needs, creating and underwriting a system of mutual defense alliances in Europe and Asia.
• 
It worked brilliantly.  Today those nations are strong economically and politically, they're democracies and they all count themselves as U.S.  allies, albeit friendly economic competitors.
• 
Decades later we used that same template to help China modernize, believing that China would over time also open its economy and society.  However, China had no intention of following our plan.
• 
Their Made in China 2025 plan to master the critical technologies of the future, their One Belt One Road plan to create a EurAsian trade route, their 5G plan to build the internet infrastructure of the future, and China's increased aggressiveness aboard show just how they plan to remake the world.
• 
President Trump saw this early on and focused on China as America's most serious strategic threat.
• 
When the pandemic hit, the Trump administration took steps to protect America's critical supply chains by bringing production back to the homeland and to our allies.
• 
Had he served a second term, Trump planned to take further steps to free America and our allies from dependency on Chinese manufacture.
• 
Hopefully the Biden administration will continue and expand these efforts.  Even so, it's becoming increasingly obvious that these efforts alone will be insufficient to protect American people and prosperity in years ahead.
• 
... if they can band together with Japan, Australia and India to stand up to China and are willing, and able, to work together to deal with China's inevitable pushback, they just might preserve the international world order from Chinese domination.
• 
Like the Soviet Union after World War II, China believes it is destined to rule the world.  The United States created the liberal world order of free trade, rule of law and international organizations.
• 
China's "wolf warrior diplomacy" is already loose in Asia and the world.  They use their trade, military and cyber dominance to punish any country that dares stand up to them.  Their plan is to pick us off, one at a time, until only the U.S.  remains, isolated and alone.
      Hunter Biden should be investigated by special counsel — national security demands it  (Fox 12/18/2020)
• 
I have come to this conclusion not out of a desire for payback, or even because of potential crimes the Hunter Biden might have committed.
• 
I believe that only with a special counsel can we uncover just how deeply and broadly the Chinese Communist Party has gotten its hooks into our ruling elites.
• 
If the Chinese can bribe the former vice president's son, they will go after anyone.
• 
And it's obvious that a Justice Department headed by an attorney general selected by Joe Biden will not be eager to investigate and possibly prosecute the son of the president.  ... it is a clear and blatant conflict of interest for anyone appointed by Joe Biden to run an investigation of Hunter Biden.
• 
We now have abundant evidence of China's influence operations targeting American politicians, academics, business executives and other influential people to serve as China's cheerleaders and apologists.  China has co-opted them with money, contracts, donations, and in some cases even sexual favors.
• 
The intelligence community estimates that China steals $600 billion a year in American intellectual property.  ... China's goal is to "rob, replicate and replace" American products.
• 
China has hacked into personal, medical and financial files of half the American population.
• 
Chinese officials openly brag that for 40 years they have cultivated "friends" at the highest levels of the American elites.  Is Hunter Biden one of these friends?
• 
It is of the utmost and urgent importance that we discover what the Chinese Communists are doing, who they have targeted and how we can stop them from continuing this hostile action directed against the United States.
• 
... a transparent look at influence peddling could go a long way toward healing the divisions in the country today.
• 
Half of America distrusts the other half.  Half of our citizens believe the 2016 election was stolen the other half believe the 2020 election was stolen.
• 
A significant percentage of our people think President-elect Biden is compromised by the Chinese government; just as a significant percentage of the country thinks President Trump was compromised by the Russians.
• 
America has not been this divided since the Civil War.  We cannot go on like this.  Faith in our elections, institutions and leaders are prerequisites for our democracy to survive.
• 
Our government needs to show the American people that no one is above the law, and it needs to be open and transparent about foreign influence peddling.  We are past the point where our people automatically trust our leaders to do the right thing.
      KT McFarland: Trump pardon of Flynn ends unjust prosecution of an innocent man  (Fox 11/27/2020)
• 
Trump's pardon of his former national security adviser — who was my boss when I was deputy national security adviser — ends a four-year nightmare for the Flynn family.
• 
... the pardon will shield Flynn from further persecution by Trump-hating Democrats who may have wanted another go at him again in a Joe Biden administration.
• 
The irony is that Flynn should not have needed pardoning at all, because he never should have been investigated or charged with any crime.
• 
Flynn didn't break any laws.  But he was forced to plead guilty to a crime he didn't commit in order to save his son from being unjustly prosecuted and destroyed by the investigation conducted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
• 
From the dozens of documents, transcripts and notes that have since been released, it is clear that Flynn never committed the initial crime he was accused of when he spoke with Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the U.S.
• 
As Trump's incoming national security adviser during the transition period between Trump's election as president in 2016 and inauguration in January 2017, Flynn was following routine practice by making introductory phone calls to foreign officials he would soon be dealing with as a high-level federal official.
• 
It's exactly what Biden transition officials are doing today.
• 
Mueller's investigators and officials at the FBI and Justice Department knew Flynn had done nothing wrong.
• 
Yet they pressed ahead with an unjustified investigation and prosecution of Flynn because they were determined to undermine Donald Trump even before he took office.
• 
It's important to understand that the persecution of Flynn, me and others was never about any of us.  It was always about getting to Trump and crippling his presidency.
• 
The entire Russia investigation was a hoax — a fraud perpetrated by Trump-hating government officials and their all-too-eager enablers in the left-wing media.
• 
They destroyed lives, sabotaged a duly elected president, and dragged the nation through three years of division and acrimony.
• 
America is now in a place where half the country distrusts and even despises the other half in no small measure thanks to those who spread the baseless allegation that Trump and his campaign worked with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.
• 
One tragedy of the entire Russia investigation is that none of the people who perpetrated the Trump-Russia collusion hoax will ever be brought to justice.
• 
The nation is now entering the Biden honeymoon period, cheered on by the anti-Trump media and Washington power centers.
• 
No one thinks that U.S.  Attorney John Durham's investigation of the origins of the Russia probe will ever see the light of day after President Trump leaves office.
• 
Indeed, some of the same officials who were behind the phony Steele dossier, Mueller investigation and Russia collusion delusion are now slated for senior positions in the Biden administration.
• 
They collected their 30 pieces of silver years ago and are now on the threshold of proudly coming back into power.
• 
But the divisions they have sown across the nation will not quickly disappear nor quietly fade away.
      KT McFarland: Trump and Bolton – this is when I knew it wasn't going to end well  (Fox 06/22/2020)
• 
I asked John if he had already voted, to which he replied, "Yes, for Trump.  He's an idiot, but anybody is better than Hillary Clinton."
• 
That's why I had my doubts when Bolton lobbied so aggressively for and became President Trump's national security adviser less than two years later.
• 
I figured it would be a rocky ride for them both and predicted it wouldn't end well.
• 
First, they had very different approaches to foreign policy.  Trump's first priority was to rebuild the economy, then use it as leverage to renegotiate trade deals.  He would use the bully pulpit to get our security allies to increase their contributions to our mutual defense.
• 
What he would not do was get us bogged down in more forever wars.
• 
I once asked Bolton whether his child had considered military service.  He looked at me dismissively and said, "No, of course not." So, it was all right for other people's children to fight in his forever wars, just not his own.
• 
Bolton and Trump clashed from the beginning – not just over policy, but in style and temperament.
• 
Bolton pushed for preemptive military action against Iran, Syria, Venezuela and North Korea.
• 
When the president took a different course, Bolton took to the phone.  He became the "anonymous source" for reporters, dishing out tales of White House chaos and presidential incompetence.
• 
Bolton was so convinced of his superior intelligence that he was condescending to everyone, including the president.
• 
... Bolton spent most of his time – when he wasn't in the Oval Office – sitting in his office behind closed doors.
• 
His staff wasn't sure what he did for those hours on end.  Now we know – he was, in all likelihood, turning his copious notes into a manuscript, presumably in anticipation of getting a lucrative book deal, and rushing it into print quickly when the inevitable happened and he was fired.
• 
... most of Bolton's complaints are about what President Trump said in the Oval Office, what he mused about doing when he was letting off steam or fantasizing about settling scores with fake news or the deep state.  That's classic Trump.
• 
President Trump uses those meetings as brainstorming sessions.  He is not a passive recipient of information; he immediately takes charge of a briefing and takes it in the direction he wants.
• 
He tosses out ideas, the more out-of-the-box the better, and expects others to do the same.  These meetings are free-for-alls, with everybody weighing in.
• 
If you argue with President Trump, he may grumble and argue back, but that is what his advisers are for: to lay out the flaws in his arguments and warn him if what he's proposing is illegal or out of bounds.
• 
That is why presidents have "executive privilege," which is the right to keep discussions with top aides confidential.
• 
What John Bolton has done is shred executive privilege for future presidents.  There will no longer be such a thing as an off-the-record conversation between a president and his advisers.  Everything, every speculation, every offhand remark will be fair game for the next kiss-and-tell book.
• 
One thing I have learned in working for President Trump is to watch what he does, not necessarily what he says.  Professional politicians have smoothed off their rough edges; they measure their words, in public and in private.
• 
Donald Trump is no professional politician; he revels in his political incorrectness.  He says a lot of things, he tweets a lot of things, he changes his mind, he cajoles one minute and criticizes the next, he rants.
• 
According to Bolton, President Trump wanted to cut off aid to Ukraine unless they investigated Biden's ties to corruption.  But did President Trump do it?  No.
• 
He threatened to pull out of NATO unless our partners ponied up for their fair share.  But did he do it?  No.
• 
Some of the most serious accusations Bolton makes are that President Trump tried to enlist Chinese support to help him get reelected.
• 
Yet, Bolton himself wasn't in those meetings, and those who were have since come forward to say Bolton is lying.
• 
Furthermore, Bolton's claims don't make sense.  Trump is the first American president ever to stand up to the Chinese.
• 
Why would President Xi Jinping want him to be reelected?  Surely his interests lie in a President Joe Biden, who just a few months ago scoffed at the suggestion China posed a threat to our interests.
• 
One cannot help but wonder why John Bolton, who came to believe President Trump was "unfit for office," refused to come forward during impeachment.
• 
He offered some flim-flam excuses, but perhaps his motivation was financial.  Testifying publicly before Congress before his book was on sale would have undercut its shock value – and his profits.
• 
No doubt John Bolton will get rich selling his White House story and will become the newest darling of the Trump-hating world.
• 
But at what price to the nation?  More division, more rancor, more hatred.
• 
Washington has always attracted the venal and the vain, the ambitious and the arrogant, but even they must blanch at what John Bolton has done.
      You want impeachment trial witnesses?  OK, here are questions they should answer about the swamp  (Fox 01/30/2020)
• 
If the Senate insists on making President Trump's impeachment trial an even bigger circus by calling additional witnesses, then let's call all the witnesses.
• 
Why?  Because this is about much more than President Trump; this is about who runs the country – the American voters, or the Washington Establishment.
• 
The Democrats, the Never-Trump Republicans, the anti-Trump media, the administrative state, the permanent bureaucracy and the special interest groups still haven't gotten over the 2016 election.
• 
They are horrified at the prospect that American voters could reelect Trump in November.
• 
So these groups are trying everything they can think of to stop Trump.
• 
They are raising questions regarding the Russia hoax, the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump's businesses, claims of women alleging affairs with Trump, his sometimes inappropriate behavior, character flaws, politically incorrect tweets, aid to Ukraine, telephone calls and Oval Office conversations.
• 
In the Senate impeachment trial, Democrats realize they don't have the votes to remove the president from office, but hope they can rough him up enough that his supporters won't show up on Election Day to vote for him.
• 
Let's not just find out what Trump thought, said and did in the Oval Office.
• 
Let's find out the lengths the Washington Establishment was willing to go to stop Trump.
• 
Let the American people see how people in Congress make common cause with all the Trump haters in the media, the foreign policy establishment, the permanent bureaucracy, special interest groups and the intelligence community.
• 
Let the American people see how Washington really works: how the intelligence community leaks selectively to the media to advance their mutual interests, how lawmakers and their staffs work with National Security Council staff members to undercut a president's policies, how an official's family and friends get rich by that connection, and how government officials do special favors for donors.
• 
To that end, let's hear from former National Security Adviser John Bolton about what Trump allegedly said to him in the Oval Office.
• 
I suspect Trump said plenty of inappropriate things.
• 
Let's hear what Bolton thought was going through Trump's head.  It could be ugly.
• 
But words and thoughts are not illegal.  Certain deeds are.
• 
It's not what people say – it's what they do that counts.
• 
A key to understanding Trump is to watch what he does, not what he says or thinks.
• 
I have heard Trump say a lot of things in the Oval Office when sometimes he was just venting or blowing off steam.
• 
Other times he was speculating off the top of his head, or floating trial balloons.
• 
Trump has opinions on just about everything and is eager to share them, regardless of who he insults.  He revels in being politically incorrect.
• 
Many of Trump's opponents are the opposite.
• 
Their words don't match their deeds either, but it's the other way around.
• 
They are careful never say offensive things in public.  It's what they do – especially what they do in private – that matters.
• 
Let's get them on the witness stand, too.  Here are some questions I'd like to hear answers to:
• 
What contact did the whistleblower have with staff members working for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif.?
• 
Why did then-Vice President Joe Biden take his son Hunter on an official visit to China, just a few weeks before Hunter Biden got a huge contract from a Chinese quasi-government company?
• 
Why was Hunter Biden put on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma while his father was in charge of the Obama administration's Ukraine policy?
• 
Why did Vice President Biden brag that he got a Ukrainian prosecutor who was allegedly investigating corruption by Burisma fired?
• 
Why did foreign companies and countries with business before Hillary Clinton's State Department donate generously to the Clinton Foundation?
• 
Why did FBI Director James Comey, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, and others base their investigation of the Trump campaign on a dodgy dossier that was paid for by the Clinton campaign?
• 
What role did former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper play in trying to bring down the Trump presidency?
• 
Some argue that if witnesses are called, the impeachment trial will go on and on and make this into even a bigger circus.
• 
The reality is that they are already preoccupied with partisan politics.
• 
Let's take this opportunity to really drain the swamp.
• 
Maybe once the American people see how Washington actually works they will get so fed up with the corruption, the hypocrisy and the mendacity of the Washington Establishment that they will insist on change.
• 
Then maybe the country can move on, once and for all.
• 
Then maybe we can get past the crippling partisan divisions that masquerade as responsible governance.
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      Thou shalt not criticize Black Lives Matter  (INN 01/12/2022)
• 
Leslie Neal-Boylan was fired as director of a nursing school in Massachusetts for writing that "everyone's lives matter."
• 
Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson has been censored by his university for calling Black Lives Matter "anti-American activists who want to destroy capitalism in an act of revenge."
• 
Tim Gordon was fired from Garces Memorial High School, a Catholic high school in Bakersfield, California, for calling Black Lives Matter rioters "terrorists" during the looting.
• 
A University of California professor, Gordon Klein, was fired for refusing to allow more exam time for black students during the Black Lives Matter protests.
• 
A Vermont principal ... was fired after posting on Facebook: "I strongly believe Black Lives Matter, but just because I'm not walking around with a BLM sign shouldn't mean I'm a racist."
• 
But we would be wrong twice to think that if at universities you incite for the actual killing of whites, the same result will ensue.
• 
A psychiatrist at Yale medical school told a seminar that she dreams of "killing whites," a professor at Rutgers University argued that "whites must be hunted" and a Cambridge researcher wrote that "the lives of whites they don't count " ... And none of them have lost their jobs.
• 
... this movement wants to "destroy Western civilization by starting to criminalize all its past and rejecting all its legacies.  From the more or less playful deconstructionist pedantry this monster that is 'wokism',was born a conquering conformism that seems to mark the emergence of a new totalitarian spirit " .
• 
And whoever gets in the way must be eliminated.
• 
See related Can't Breathe (Sean Delonas, 06/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
      Osama Bin Laden predicted a weak Joe Biden  (INN 07/15/2021)
• 
In 1993, the television scenes of American soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and Bill Clinton's subsequent withdrawal a few months later will be celebrated by Islamic terrorists as a triumph.
• 
Osama bin Laden will cite that event as a demonstration of his interpretation of the weakness of the United States.
• 
"We can conclude that America is a superpower, with enormous military strength and vast economic power, but that all of this is built on straw foundations."
• 
Looking at what just happened at the famous American base of Bagram, abandoned at night by the United States and ransacked by the Afghans, perhaps Bin Laden was right.
• 
American forces turned off the lights and slipped away without telling the government they should take control.
• 
General Mir Asadullah Kohistani, who now heads the base that was the headquarters of the war against the Taliban for twenty years, said hw only found that the Americans left only two hours after it happened.  When he arrived, the base had been ransacked.
• 
Meanwhile, a thousand Afghan soldiers have fled to Tajikistan to save their skin.  A massive Taliban offensive is ramping up across the country as Western countries have withdrawn.
• 
Dramatic videos show Afghan soldiers surrendering and embracing the Taliban, who have just entered Kandahar, the birthplace of the Islamic group, and taken control of the border with Iran.
• 
One third of the 370 districts in which Afghanistan is divided are now in the hands of the "students of Allah".
• 
The Taliban say they control 85 percent of the country.  They are already storming prisons, freeing hundreds of inmates.  Intelligence agencies believe Kabul could capitulate in six months.
• 
The woman is led to the center of a circle made up of men.  Amid the cries of pain, the woman is heard saying: "I regret it ... It is my fault ... I was wrong".  What did she do that was so serious?  She and she was accused of "immoral relationships" because she spoke to a man on the phone.
• 
Joe Biden said that "you cannot leave troops forever in a foreign country".  Theoretically that is a correct statement.
• 
So what are 23,000 American soldiers doing in South Korea, 55,000 in Japan since 1949 and 12,000 in Germany or Italy?
• 
It is certainly one thing to stay without risk and war commitment in Europe, another thing to continue fighting in what, perhaps rightly, has been called "the tomb of empires".
• 
"Taken as a whole, the West has historically dominated the world for 500 years and today is witnessing the end of that era," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just wrote.
• 
He then adds, with no small irony: "In a number of Western countries, students learn at school that Jesus was bisexual."
• 
Seeing how rapidly the external and internal fronts of the West are collapsing, it is difficult to dispute him.
      Racial Marxism is destroying America  (INN 07/11/2021)
• 
America is in a turmoil over the "critical theory of race" in public schools.  A dark academic ideology formulated in the 1970s is at the center of political debate today.
• 
... Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute explains that Critical Race Theory is an academic discipline which states that the United States was founded on racism, oppression and white supremacy and that these forces are still at the root of our society.
• 
It reformulates the old Marxist dialectic of oppressor and oppressed, replacing the class categories of bourgeoisie and proletariat with the categories of black and white.  A form of "race-based Marxism" .
• 
In Cupertino, California, a school forced third-graders to deconstruct their racial and sexual identities and rank themselves according to their "power and privilege."
• 
In Springfield, Missouri, a middle school forced teachers to place themselves on a "matrix of oppression." "Males, Christians, English-speaking straight men are the greatest oppressors."
• 
In Philadelphia, a school forced fifth grade students to celebrate Black Communism and simulate a Black Power rally.
• 
In New York, a principal of a public school sent material to parents advocating the complete "abolition of whites".
• 
In Portland, Oregon, students are educated on racial justice in terms of "revolution and / or resistance"...
• 
"If we teach that somehow the founding of the United States of America was somehow flawed, it was corrupt, it was racist, it's really dangerous," former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told...
• 
"It affects the... very foundations of our country.  It is called critical race theory, but in the end they are attacking the central understandings we have shared together for 245 years and are trying to divide the country" .
• 
As researcher James Lindsay, one of the main critics of this theory, puts it: "Do you notice the race?  It is because you are a racist.  Don't you notice it?  It is because you are privileged, therefore a racist " .
• 
When in doubt, all that remains is to kneel.
• 
America is declining rapidly in front of our eyes.
      What is with this gender ideology dictatorship?  (INN 08/30/2020)
• 
What does this transgender craze that reigns in every corner of the West represent?
• 
According to Camille Paglia, the US heretical feminist, contrarian and libertarian, it is the sign of the decline of Western culture and civilization.
• 
"Whenever you have tolerant and permissive cosmopolitan cultures, where homosexuality is openly practiced, it seems that these cultures are ripe for collapse!"
• 
Family traditions weaken and civilizations begin to fall.  When a culture begins to decay, there is an inflorescence of transgender phenomena.  This is a symptom of a "cultural breakdown."
• 
... transgender obsession is a sign the writing is probably on the wall for Western civilization.
• 
"Civilizations have gone through recurrent cycles.  Extravaganzas of gender experimentation sometimes precede cultural collapse, as they certainly did in Weimar Germany.  Now as then, there are forces aligning outside the borders, scattered fanatical hordes where the cult of heroic masculinity still has tremendous force".  Like Islam.
• 
"We are in a civilization of exhaustion," French philosopher Michel Onfray has just said.  "We only love what hates us, everything that destroys us is perceived as great."
• 
This transgender dictatorship is the symbol of a very dangerous and unstoppable attraction of the West towards its own abyss: a fluid, liquid, very weak identity, a post-religious, post-family, post-heroic identity.
• 
If the West loses the fight against these internal post-Western enemies and it is overcome by the external anti-Western ones, the decent and brave among us will have to find a place to which to retreat.  But where?
• 
This new erotocratic Western man does not tolerate any dissent.  Education, public and private morals, cultural environment, political pressure, legislative and judicial decisions permeate and surround our children, our schools and our families.
• 
It is increasingly difficult to find a secure enclave that is devoid of that nihilistic influence.
      Cancel culture is Stalinism.  Ask Mike Adams  (INN 08/02/2020)
• 
"A friend of mine died this week and people across the country celebrated his death."
• 
Mike S.  Adams shot himself.  ... Adams, who was a professor of criminology at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, had been forced to resign as of August 1, following two student petitions asking for his expulsion for posting "offensive" comments on social media.
• 
The University had denounced his words as "unjustifiable" , while the petitions grinded 88,000 signatures and the entrance to the faculty was dominated by a rock with the words "Fire Mike Adams" .
• 
On May 28, in the wake of protests for George Floyd, the professor had written: "Do not close the universities.  Close non-essential majors.  Like women studies" .
• 
When university chancellor Jose Sartarelli announced that Adams would be leaving on August 1, the professor replied with a tweet: "Many young people are depressed because they have been taught to feel constantly offended."
• 
Referring to the protests of the Black Lives Matter movement, Adams wrote: "The violent outrage of white liberals taking to the streets is brought to you by your local university.  None of this would be possible without the encouragement of academic extremists who have hijacked the system of higher education."
• 
He seemed to love controversy, from attacks on abortion (his last tweet before death) to criticism of LGBT groups, so much so that he became a hero of Rush Limbaugh's conservative America.
• 
He had published numerous books, most recently "Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand" .
• 
Local movie stars, such as Orlando Jones, and teachers from other universities, including 270 criminologists, had also mobilized in support of his expulsion.
• 
"2020 success, having survived Mike Adams" , people tweeted after his suicide.
• 
Mike Adams had ... been properly and viciously broken.  And too many, perhaps, were looking forward to his self-cancellation.
• 
We have seen this phenomenon before.
• 
Where?  In Moscow in 1937.  Because cancel culture is pure Stalinism.
      It's not about racism, fools, it's about Western folly  (INN 06/08/2020)
• 
Don't be fooled by what's going in the US and in some European cities.  It has nothing to do with racism, injustice and compassion.
• 
It is pure politics on the one hand and a form of mass ideological enslavement on the other.
• 
... most people are there because in the pack they feel better off, can defend themselves from attacks and insults, avoid thinking.
• 
Black Lives Matter, the movement behind the protests, doesn't care about blacks.
• 
They never protest when blacks are killed by other blacks, although the biggest cause of death in the United States of blacks between the ages of 15 and 45 is ... other black men.
• 
They have never protested against black slavery markets such as those in Mauritania or when blacks exterminate other blacks as they do in Sudan.
• 
The police are not anti-black, since an average of about 20 percent of the police force in America is black (50 percent in Los Angeles is Hispanic, 60 percent in Atlanta is black as is 33 percent in Philadephia etc).
• 
Some of America's poorest and most violent cities have black mayors, black governors and black councils.
• 
Reading the outraged media, hearing Obama who embraces the protests, or watching the kneeling members of hypocritical establishments, it would seem that in America racist white policemen have fun going around shooting black unarmed citizens.
• 
There are hundreds of millions of interactions between the police and civilians in America every year.
• 
1004 people were killed by police hands in 2019.  Of these, 235 were black.  And of these, 226 were armed.
• 
This means that 9 unarmed black citizens were killed by police over a population of 330 million last year.  Each of these lost lives is a defeat.
• 
But such as to justify the devastation of cities?  The destruction of people's livelihood?  And the accusations of "systematic racism" ?
• 
The real disease, however, is in the mind of the beholder, it is the idea that we are racist and unjust and that we have to pay for who we are.
• 
Trump has his political game, that is, to close the ranks of white Main Street and others who find the riots frightening and unacceptable.
• 
The Democrats have their game, stirring the racial war for electoral purposes.
• 
Who loses the game?  Society, its decency, our capacity for discernment and culture.
• 
In a society calling itself "open" it is becoming increasingly difficult to say these things without being verbally and physically attacked.
      Kneeling for George Floyd is grotesque Western infantility  (INN 06/06/2020)
• 
When Londoners protested the Minneapolis incident, police guarding the Downing Street gates were told to "get down on their knees." Four policemen did it.
• 
Thousands of people in Britain went out on the streets, falling on their knees, as if hallucinating.
• 
It is acceding to the claim that Western society as a whole is racist.  It is a form of ideological hysteria that makes those who kneel belong to the "right side" .
• 
In several videos, we have even seen American whites kissing the shoes of their black compatriots to apologize.
• 
Being white has become a kind of original sin.  If you do not do penance for being white, paying homage to mass immigration and multiculturalism, you will become a "white supremacist" .
• 
The archbishop of Canterbury called on "white Christians" to "repent of our own prejudices" .
• 
American universities are full of courses on "white privilege" and in French there are conferences "forbidden to whites".
• 
The whole past is projected onto the current generation, colonialism, crusades, birth of America, Nazism, slavery, everything ends up in the same historical kneeler, everything is traced back to your white genes
      Pope Francis’ silence about a forced conversion to Islam  (INN 05/15/2020)
• 
The street from Christianity to Islam is one way.  Woe to he who tries to go the other way.  Even the pope will not come to his aid.
• 
The Pope condemned the conversions of Muslims as told in the "Chanson de Roland".  A thousand years ago.  Very useful.
• 
Where are the high dignitaries of the Islamic world who are willing to nullify Silvia Romano's conversion and free her from the religious yoke imposed on her under captivity?
• 
Where is the Pope?
• 
When we will open our eyes, while we still have them, on the need for some moral equivalency?
• 
Today, Christians are killed if they do not convert to Islam and Muslims who convert to Christianity are massacred.
• 
Meanwhile, in Europe mosques proliferate and churches in the Islamic world are burned to the ground.
      Europe’s elderly are abandoned like lambs in a slaughterhouse  (INN 04/19/2020)
• 
It is a sort of social euthanasia, of "seniorcide," of large-scale triage so it is considered wrong to ask to be put on a respirator for oneself if one is "old and sick."
• 
"Herd immunity, protecting the economy and if that means that some retirees die, too bad"
• 
On the one hand there is an informal protocol, whereby the "elderly" , especially those with pathologies, are not treated but accompanied to death with sedatives in nursing homes, as if Covid-19 was a terminal disease for them.
• 
On the other hand there are formal protocols.  The latest was released by the Financial Times.
• 
NHS, the British Health Service, assigned patients a sort of "score" to decide who is unfit for intensive care.  Age, frailty and previous conditions.  Patients with eight points in the three categories must not be hospitalized.
• 
We are abandoning the elderly because we have decided that their lives are not worth as much as those of young people.
• 
Meanwhile, charitable organizations accuse the British government of not tracking deaths in retirement homes.  "The official figures are wiping out the elderly as if they didn't matter."
• 
They are denied treatment, but also a place in victim statistics.  As if not only had they lost the right to life, but as if they didn't exist.
• 
The idea is simple: the "herd" will survive, but the "weakest" members of society must be "sacrificed" .
• 
"How can we let such a massacre affect our elderly?  They were handed over to certain death, which is absolutely unacceptable in a democratic nation where one life should always be worth another, regardless of age.  A society is judged by the way it takes care of its elders.  It is a true indicator of civilization."
• 
Spain has also put it in writing, advising against treatments for those over 80 years of age and with previous pathologies.
• 
This is how we arrived at the data just released by the London School of Economics: half of all Covid-19 deaths in Europe occurred in nursing homes.
• 
They call it this, "geriatricide" .  And we were very ready for all this.
• 
Not even two months ago, Holland spoke of a pill with which the elderly could commit suicide and in Spain the procedure for passing the euthanasia law had already started.
• 
For years we have discussed "quality of life" and "compassion" .  When the viral tragedy hit society, all we had to do was raise our hands.
• 
Charles Darwin called it "the survival of the fit."
      The pandemic brings us closer to the Judeo-Christian culture of life  (INN 04/05/2020)
• 
"We are told over and over again that 98% of patients affected by coronavirus recover."
• 
"If economic logic reigned supreme, our societies would have chosen to let it go.  The majority of the population is said to have been infected and immunized.  The oldest, the most vulnerable would be dead, ‘useless mouths' in short."
• 
"We didn't want this natural selection.  And if the confinement becomes more and more strict, it is to avoid the congestion of hospitals and to have to sort through the patients: this one no, he is out of breath; that one yes, he is in the prime of his life.  Perhaps the war will force us to these practices of prioritization, as we learn to say."
• 
"But they horrify us.  The life of an old man is worth as much as a person in full possession of his faculties.  The affirmation of this egalitarian principle in the turmoil we are going through shows that nihilism has not yet won and that we remain a civilization" .
• 
The idea makes its way among bioethicists.  Peter Singer, who had previously judged the life of the disabled unworthy of being lived, writes in the Sunday Morning Herald: "What about the quality of life?"
• 
In the New York Times, bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel, an advisor of Joe Biden for coronavirus, writes that priority should be given to health workers, police and firefighters.
• 
A leaked document from Catalan's health department has just revealed it is advising against sending coronavirus patients aged over 80 to Intensive Care Units in hospitals.
• 
Some US states ... have discriminating guidelines: in Tennessee people with spinal muscular atrophy are left behind; in Minnesota, cirrhosis of the liver, lung disease and heart problems and in the state of Washington, states such as New York, Utah, Colorado and Oregon, "general physical and intellectual ability" is evaluated.
• 
In Alabama, reads the document "Scarce Resource Management", "the mentally disabled are unlikely candidates for breathing support" .
• 
And again: "People with severe or profound mental retardation, moderate to severe dementia or catastrophic neurological complications are unlikely candidates for support."
• 
"I suspect that when the peak reaches the United States and our Healthcare workers will be overwhelmed, medical professionals will have to make heartbreaking decisions and I wouldn't be surprised at all if people with disabilities become low priority patients.  I will be happy to be wrong."
• 
A few months ago, the Dutch MP ... proposed to introduce "expectations of quality of life" for access to surgery for those over 70.
• 
The abandonment of holiness and equality of life in the West is a form of horrific nihilism.
• 
It will lead to the abandonment of the weak and vulnerable.  It is already happening.
• 
This epidemic will be a great test to understand if the Judeo-Christian vision still has vitality in the West.
• 
The risk is to surreptitiously delegate to the virus the task of euthanasia and eugenics, a virus that has been around for a long time in the West.
      Will Europe end like the Roman republic?  (INN 08/09/2018)
• 
The political talkers who discuss immigration always politicize it, either as "invasion" or "welcome".
• 
People, on the other hand, know everything intuitively: that Europe, as our ancestor designed it for centuries, is collapsing. 
• 
In Ceuta, the EU's extreme border between Spain and Morocco, 592 sub-Saharan migrants stormed and crossed the border with Molotov cocktails and bars, wounding dozens of Spanish policemen.
• 
Will we follow the example of the decomposition of the Roman Republic?
• 
Even then, the rich senatorial elite had become sclerotic and the rise of populist politicians, such as Catiline or Claudius, helped to destabilize the system through demagogic laws.
• 
Those 592 migrants did not escape from any war.  They come to bring multicultural war to Europe.
• 
Radical Islam now tries to cancel the battle of Poitiers to reintroduce in history the idea of conquering a Europe that has already denied itself.
• 
This is the discourse of the Islamic State and other Jihadists and Muslim suprematists, which is not a historical accident, as much as Stalinism was not a disease of Communism.
• 
It is actually its fulfillment.
• 
And this is always the speech of the "immigrationists", those cynical liberals for whom the world is only a big market - as well as the beautiful souls of multiculturalism, who kneel before the power of the number: the victory of Islam is in fact, first of all, that of the demographic number, sanctioned by migratory phenomena as well as by judicial decisions, and most of all by the weakness of the Europeans, who are told to no longer be themselves.
 Murdock  (05/02/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/12/2022) | Next sect (02/14/2022) | List bot 
      '2,000 Mules' offers vivid proof of vote fraud  (JWR 05/02/2022)
• 
"...  make no mistake," Chuck Schumer of New York declared on the Senate floor.  "There has been no evidence of any significant or widespread voter fraud."
• 
"The Big Lie is just that," President Joe Biden bellowed about crooked ballots.  "A Big Lie!"
• 
... this film uses state-of-the-art technology to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stained, if not fully stolen, through the lowest-tech means: stuffed ballot boxes.
• 
True the Vote researchers Engelbrecht and Gregg Phillips analyzed 10 trillion cell-phone geo-tracking signals captured during the closing weeks of the 2020 general election campaign.
• 
They focused on the commercially marketed "pings" from mobile phones whose owners interacted with ballot drop boxes in five swing states.
• 
Democrats demanded the broad deployment of these boxes during COVID-19, due to the "dangers" of in-person voting.
• 
These digital sleuths then narrowed their search to people who approached 10 or more drop boxes and contemporaneously visited five or more pro-Biden non-profits.
• 
They then requested and acquired 4 million minutes of government-security-camera recordings of these drop boxes.  It would take seven years and eight months to watch all these images at normal speed.
• 
This investigation's results are staggering: Cameras capture one mule after another traveling from box to box to deposit successive fists full of ballots.  One mule in Atlanta slid ballots into 28 different collection bins.
• 
These mules were not just overzealous political operatives.  Corrupt activist groups reportedly paid them per ballot delivered...
• 
So, was there enough fraud to change the outcome?  A mere 42,844 votes sprinkled among three swing states clinched the White House.
• 
... some 2,000 mules averaged 38 drop-box visits and — in each of these scenarios — left five illegal ballots per visit.  This totals 380,000 fraudulent votes.  Coming from heavily Democrat areas, these almost certainly were overwhelmingly pro-Biden ballots.
• 
In Arizona, 200 mules typically approached 20 boxes each.  Disqualifying these 20,000 unlawful ballots would evaporate Biden's 10,457-vote win.
• 
In Georgia, 250 mules stopped at 24 boxes and inserted five ballots per encounter.  Rejecting these 30,000 illegal votes would eliminate Biden's victory margin of 11,779.
• 
In Pennsylvania, 1,100 mules in Philadelphia alone encountered 50 boxes.  Vacating these 275,000 illegitimate votes would eradicate Biden's 80,555-vote victory.
• 
Undoing this evil would have removed these states from Biden's total.  The Electoral College count would have shifted to 259 for Biden and 279 for Trump.  This would have earned DJT four more years.
• 
"This was an organized effort to subvert a free and fair election.  This is organized crime." These criminals should be prosecuted at once.
• 
See related The Big Lie (Dick Wright, 05/19/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      'White nationalists' haunt America while black racists open fire, kill people  (JWR 04/19/2022)
• 
Top Democrats claim that nothing in America is more dangerous than white racism.
• 
As President Joe Biden said last October 21, "According to the United States intelligence community, domestic terrorism from white supremacists is the most lethal terrorist threat in the homeland."
• 
"In the FBI's view," Attorney General Merrick Garland said June 15, "the top domestic violent-extremist threat comes from...those who advocate for the superiority of the white race."
• 
So, where is all the damage from this white-nationalist army?  Where are the wounds of those they have maimed and the cadavers of those they have killed?
• 
"Charlottesville!" Biden and the Democrat Left shout in unison.  Yes, James Alex Fields, Jr.  weaponized his car and murdered protester Heather Heyer during Charlottesville, Virginia's race riots in August 2017 — nearly five years ago.
• 
Anybody else?  The sound you hear is grass growing.
• 
As Team Biden searches furiously for those touched by this supposedly ubiquitous white threat, black racists scream hatred and inflict dozens of casualties, some fatal.
• 
... a black man named Frank James unleashed a smoke bomb on a Brooklyn Subway train.  He then fired 33 rounds from a Glock pistol.  James allegedly shot 10 commuters, and 13 suffered other injuries.  Five were hospitalized in critical condition.  Amazingly, no one was killed.  ... James' profane, deeply bigoted posts foreshadow an atrocious, anti-white hate crime.
• 
... Darrell Edward Brooks last November plowed his Ford Escape SUV into marchers and spectators at a Christmas parade.  Brooks's carnage killed six people and wounded 62 others.  Brooks also is an outspoken, white-hating bigot.
• 
... Noah Green drove up to a barricade on April 7, 2021 and charged two officers with a knife before a third fatally shot him.  Green belonged to the anti-white Nation of Islam, led by notorious Jew hater Louis Farrakhan.
• 
... would-be assassin Quintez Brown shot at and grazed the sweater of Democrat mayoral candidate Craig Greenburg...  His Twitter profile reads: "We have one scientific and correct solution, Pan-Africanism: the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism."
• 
These cases confirm that Joe Biden and the Democrat Left are lost in space.  While they battle imaginary white nationalists, real-life black racists usher their victims into hospitals and cemeteries.
      Fight crime: Arm the American People!  (JWR 01/31/2022)
• 
America's surge in grotesque, random mayhem has become a coast-to-coast crime epic.  ... This unbridled bedlam comes courtesy of the Democrat Left.  Their peaceful, easy feeling toward criminals no longer is cute.  It now induces death.
• 
Beyond addressing "homelessness" rather than lawlessness, the Left's autonomic response is to control guns, not illegal shooters.
• 
... America needs criminal control and, whenever possible, criminal elimination.
• 
The time is now to arm the American people: Law-abiding citizens deserve maximum freedom to acquire guns, defend themselves against criminals and, when appropriate, erase them.
• 
Too bad it has come to this.  But here we are.
• 
The Democrat Left's robust campaign to defund, demoralize, and demonize the police has worked beautifully.
• 
On a good day, decent, industrious, dedicated police officers patrol the streets with their tails between their legs.  Others stay in their squad cars and observe crime.
• 
Numerous Left-wing "prosecutors" proudly refuse to enforce the law.
• 
With the entire criminal-justice system in collapse, the last resort is to let Americans pack heat.  The mere presence of armed citizens will deter some criminals.
• 
The hardier weeds can be yanked out, once and for all, with sober aim and the swift infusion of lead.
• 
This policy can be implemented with sensible precautions: Gun-permit applicants should be law-abiding, sane, and trained in firearms safety.
• 
But within these common-sense parameters, the next step cannot happen too soon: Arm the American people!
      Who keeps democracy in the cross hairs?  (JWR 01/10/2022)
• 
"The former president and his supporters have decided the only way for them to win is to suppress your vote and subvert our elections," President Joe Biden said...  "It's wrong.  It's undemocratic.  And frankly, it's un-American."
• 
Vice President Kamala Harris alluded to President Donald J.  Trump's voters as "the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy."
• 
Congressman Eric Swalwell (D – California) told ... that if Republicans win November's midterm elections, "voting in this country as we know it will be gone."
• 
For Biden, Harris, Swalwell, and their comrades, bellowing about Republicans killing democracy is easier than conceding that Democrats, not the GOP, have battered America's democratic norms and institutions non-stop since at least 2016.
• 
That year, Obama's Justice Department and FBI spied on the opposition party's presidential campaign.  The Russiagate probe was Watergate without the break-in.
• 
The basis for Democrat espionage against Trump was the so-called "Dirty Dossier," funded by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democrat National Committee.
• 
Team Hillary then leaked these Russian lies to pro-Democrat news outlets (excuse the redundancy), which injected them into the public debate over Clinton and Trump.
• 
Soon after Trump's upset victory, Democrats used print ads, TV commercials, and death threats to pressure Trump's Electoral College representatives to change their votes.
• 
When this gambit failed, at least 54 congressional Democrats boycotted Trump's inauguration, dissing America's peaceful transition of power.
• 
Former President Jimmy Carter said, "Trump didn't actually win the election in 2016." Hillary Clinton called Trump "an illegitimate president."
• 
For three years, Democrats advanced the full-throated lie that Trump was a Russian agent.
• 
ANTIFA and Black Lives Matter rioters trashed and burned government buildings in summer 2020.  While some Democrats cheered these rioters, Kamala Harris actively raised bail money to spring them from jail.
• 
Democrats weaponized COVID-19 to bludgeon centuries-old voting procedures.  "Temporary, emergency measures" included no-excuse absentee ballots, mass mail-in ballots sent to all registered voters (alive or dead), diluted or discarded witness-signature requirements, unsupervised ballot drop boxes, and more.
• 
On Election Night 2020, vote counting mysteriously and inexplicably stopped in Atlanta, Philadelphia, and other Democrat strongholds.  Ballots normally are counted overnight, until winners emerge.  Instead, canvassing was halted.
• 
A tabulation room at Atlanta's State Farm Arena was cleared at 10:30 p.m.  so election officials could "retire" for the evening.
• 
In fact, after journalists and GOP election watchers were sent home, surveillance cameras caught poll workers removing boxes from beneath a covered table and placing the contents — ballots — into counting machines until 1:00 a.m.
• 
"We want all the Republican challengers out of this room!" yelled a man wearing an official-looking lanyard in a Detroit, Michigan, vote-counting facility.  Anti-transparency authorities then covered this tabulation room's windows with cardboard.
• 
Georgia and Pennsylvania were among the states where Republican poll watchers were barred from counting rooms or kept too distant to scrutinize vote tallies, inspect absentee-ballot signatures, and otherwise perform their solemn duties.
• 
Democrats relentlessly have jackhammered the pillars of America's democratic elections.  They are democracy's natural enemies.
• 
And rather than own this despicable distinction, Democrats do what they do best: Accuse everyone else of their own evil.
      Deroy Murdock: Biden, Democrat policy failures – from crime to immigration, can Left get anything right?  (Fox 07/26/2021)
• 
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeatedly has claimed that "the border is closed." Regarding the illegal-alien surge through Mexico, "we have seen extreme progress over these last few months," Vice President Kamala Harris insisted on June 25.
• 
Really?  If "extreme progress" is an invading army of Future Democrats of America, then, yes.
• 
... uninvited illegals reach the border and demand admission.  Some 300 or so banged on a steel gate and, slowly but surely, entered America.
• 
Those who patiently wait worldwide for visas and others – already here – who navigate the federal naturalization Skinner box should be revolted.
• 
"It's definitely irksome to see people just marching in like they own the place, especially when I'll end up wasting my prime years languishing in America's legal immigration system," one 20-something European told...
• 
"I probably couldn't become a citizen until well into my 40s, no matter how hard I tried," he added.
• 
In July's first half, 135 illegals at the border's Rio Grande Valley sector tested positive for COVID-19.  Compared to the previous 14 months, this figure rocketed 900%.  As the delta variant blows new wind beneath COVID's wings, this is how "the pandemic president" protects his fellow Americans?
• 
The Left weeps that illegal aliens break into America because "they want better lives." Well, who doesn't?
• 
And if Haitians seek cheerier prospects, why leave their island?  Haiti (2019 per-capita GDP: $2,905) shares Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic ($18,413).
• 
Why don't Haitians bang on Dominican doors?  Where is it written that America must accommodate these people?
• 
The Left's "Defund the police!" battle cry of summer 2020 has yielded an endless winter of chaos and bloodshed.  Rampant shoplifting, assaults, shootings and murders plague Democrat-mismanaged cities.
• 
"Bail reform" catapults criminals – including a New York-based serial synagogue attacker – back onto the streets with dizzying speed.  Rather than jail criminals, far-Left PINOs – George-Soros-funded Prosecutors in Name Only – such as Chicago's Kim Foxx, Los Angeles' George Gascon, and San Francisco's Chesa Boudin wave their social-justice pompoms on behalf of "oppressed" criminals.
• 
President Trump's hard-won energy independence is going dark.  Biden's cruel cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline, his ghastly greenlight for Vladimir Putin's Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany, and his strangulation of domestic petroleum production all have left America and Europe more dependent on foreign energy suppliers, some of whom hate us.
• 
This also has helped hike West Texas Intermediate petroleum from $53 to $72 per barrel under the Biden-Democrat Left – up 36%.
• 
Inflation, as 1970s as Studio 54, is back on the dance floor.  Fear not!  Biden proposes to fight higher prices with ... even more robust federal outlays.
• 
Biden says that this will "take the pressure off of inflation" which hit 5.4% in June, year-on-year.  The startling notion that exploding federal deficits tame prices would make even the late statist economist John Maynard Keynes drop his teacup.
• 
Texas Democrats already have earned 2021's Nobel Prize for Boneheaded Political Gaffes.  Several Lone Star State lawmakers fled Austin, to deny Republicans the quorum needed to adopt election-integrity legislation.
• 
These "parliamentarians of the people" then eschewed commercial aviation and, like the billionaires they hate, took a private jet to Washington.  Unlike average Americans, they escaped the discomfort and indignity of purely theatrical federal in-flight mask mandates.
• 
These Texas twits then created a COVID-19 super-spreader event on the national stage.  After slamming GOP efforts to combat Democrat vote fraud, at least six Texas Democrats, a member of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's staff, and a White House aide all tested positive for COVID-19.  This pathetic stunt could not have gone worse.
• 
Moreover, if Republicans must abandon the U.S.  Senate floor, to deny Democrats a quorum and doom the election-fraud-enabling H.R.1/S.1, the dinosaur media will roar: "The GOP killed democracy!"
• 
Republicans then should play non-stop video of Texas Democrats' COVID-tainted catastrophe and ask: "Who do you think gave us this idea?"
• 
New York Democrats could not leave untouched the standard, centuries-old practice of asking primary voters to pick one nominee per public post.  Instead, Democrats pushed for, and Gotham voters in November 2019 foolishly approved, an absurd and baffling ranked-choice system.  Voters last month were asked for their top five contenders, in preferential order.
• 
On Election Night, June 22, the first-choice tallies for the Democrat mayoral nomination suggested a comfortable victory for law-and-order candidate Eric Adams, a former NYPD officer.
• 
But wait!  Tabulation of choices two through five did not begin until June 26.  Then 135,000 test ballots were discovered among actual ballots and had to be deducted before 124,000 absentee ballots were added among the re-allocated votes of failed candidates.
• 
These and countless other public-policy belly-flops prove that the Left cannot be trusted with anything beyond Broadway, if that.
      Deroy Murdock: Biden opposes the slavery of 1619-1865.  So why does he enable the slavery of 2021?  (Fox 06/24/2021)
• 
"We're finally now getting to the point where we're going to be addressing the original sin of this country, 400 years old," candidate Joe Biden told Wisconsin voters in September 2020, "slavery and all the vestiges of it."
• 
On his first day in office, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that cited "the Civil War and the abolition of slavery."
• 
A presidential proclamation in March decried "the damaging legacy of slavery," while another, on June 1, lamented the "unconscionable hardships of slavery."
• 
On June 17, Biden signed into law the Juneteenth national holiday.  "Juneteenth marks both the long, hard night of slavery and subjugation, and a promise of a brighter morning to come," Biden said in the White House's East Room.
• 
Joe Biden clearly opposes the slavery of 1619-1865.  As well he should.  Too bad he enables the slavery of 2021. 
• 
"Biden's open-border policies have produced the largest human-trafficking operation since the international slave trade, To the extent that immigrants are forced to labor as indentured servants to the crime cartels, these policies have reintroduced slavery into the United States."
• 
The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was adopted in 1865.  This provision drove the final stake into the heart of human bondage in America:
• 
"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
• 
"We have what can be described as modern-day slavery, Human traffickers (as opposed to smugglers) lure unsuspecting migrants with promises of all sorts of opportunity in the U.S., and then hold them hostage once they arrive here with threats of violence against them, or family members back home.  Often people who are trafficked are forced to work in the sex trades."
• 
"I believe that some forms of trafficking and indenture that have been enabled in this crisis are indeed comparable to slavery, even if they are not as systemic, institutionalized, and tolerated as slavery was in the world a century or two ago."
• 
"I have not heard of many cases of people being bought and sold as property, but it does happen, there is no doubt, particularly in sex trafficking."
• 
"The huge increase in illegal immigration caused by the rescission of prior immigration practices, policies and laws by the Biden administration, and the violation of human rights that has accompanied many of these immigrants — including coercion, violence, rape, debts, and payments would qualify as human trafficking, That is slavery."
• 
"The Biden-Harris administration refuses to acknowledge that they are enabling this entirely predictable criminal and exploitive result of their policies."
• 
"They prefer to see themselves as saviors of the migrants, even if their policies are literally enslaving some of the migrants to the cartels and smugglers.  If there are some horrible crimes that happen, well they ‘fix' them by awarding the victims with a U or T visa, and their conscience is laundered."
      Deroy Murdock: Under Biden, our southern border has become a crime scene  (Fox 04/06/2021)
• 
The border criminals include every illegal alien who invades America without permission.  They undermine U.S.  sovereignty, fleece beleaguered American taxpayers, and mock millions of immigrants who arrive legally.
• 
Even more nefarious are apprehensions of aliens with criminal convictions.  ... "That's alarming, and suggests that the criminal aliens feel empowered by Biden's welcome-wagon policies."
• 
Even more menacing ... three Yemenis and a Serb on the FBI's Terrorism Watch List have been nabbed at the border since October.
• 
Meanwhile, Biden's human-trafficking bonanza is huge business for seriously bad guys.
• 
If those who seek better lives in America visited U.S.  embassies, acquired visas, and landed at American airports, most of this chaos and mayhem would go unperpetrated.
• 
Instead, this new administration has engineered the conditions under which international hoodlums prey on, profit from, and even kill other human beings.
• 
In just more than two months, a "nice guy" named Joe Biden has distinguished himself as the trans-border criminal's best friend.
• 
• 
      HR1, the 'For the People Act,' tells us the Democratic Party is now the party of vote fraud  (Fox 03/11/2021)
• 
Democrats resist virtually every Republican idea to make America's elections more secure, and they labor tirelessly to make this country's elections more chaotic, more unsupervised, and more unreliable.
• 
Democrats used COVID-19 as an excuse to dilute voting standards that would make the citizens of almost any Third World country blush.
• 
Democrats, not Republicans, blasted out mass-mail-in ballots to everyone on voter rolls in multiple states — whether requested or not.
• 
Democrats, not Republicans, installed ballot drop boxes on sidewalks, where nobody oversaw them.  How many fraudulent ballots got deposited in these boxes, unchecked, and then got counted?  Who knows?
• 
Democrats, not Republicans, diluted signature-match standards, which made it easier to accept and tabulate mail-in ballots with forged signatures.
• 
Democrats, not Republicans, blocked GOP observers from ballot-counting rooms in Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and other Democrat swing-state cities.
• 
In contrast, Democrat observers did their jobs in peace in Republican-controlled areas.  How do we know this?  It's safe to say that if GOP election officials had given Democrat challengers so much as one dirty look, it would have dominated the headlines for days.
• 
In February 2017, Virginia lawmakers passed SB 1105.  This bill would have required "the local electoral boards to direct the general registrars to investigate the list of registered voters whenever the number of registered voters in a county or city exceeds the population of persons age 18 years or older..." If there are more registered voters than voting-age citizens, take a look.  How sensible.
• 
Well, guess what?  Former governor Terry McAuliffe — a Democrat, not a Republican — vetoed that measure.  Thanks to McAuliffe, phantom voters lived to vote another day.
• 
The federal National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (AKA the Motor Voter Act) and the Help America Vote Act of 2002 both require that states maintain accurate voter rolls.
• 
To obey these federal laws, former Governor Rick Scott (R – Florida) attempted to remove 51,308 dead people from the voter rolls.
• 
Not so fast!  Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder — a Democrat, not a Republican — sued Florida.
• 
Holder and the DOJ behaved as if the Rev.  Dr.  Martin Luther King Jr.  and the Freedom Riders fought valiantly to ensure the voting rights of the deceased.
• 
And now, Democrats — not Republicans — are pushing H.R.  1, a bill that would take everything that went haywire last November and shove it into the U.S.  Code.  The House passed this measure last week, 220 Yeas (all Democrat) to 210 Nays.
      Dem hypocrites pillory GOP for following Dems' example  (JWR 02/05/2021)
• 
Some Democrats aim to expel congressional Republicans who challenged Electoral College votes at last month's certification ceremony.
• 
Democrats likely convinced corporate Cancelistas to terminate PAC donations to as many as seven Republican senators and 138 GOP House members who opposed electors from one or more states...
• 
Harvard students, too many of whom resemble Mao Zedong's Red Guards, demand that university officials yank diplomas from alumni Ted Cruz and Representative Elise Stefanik (R - New York).
• 
There are two massive problems with the Left's jihad against these Republicans:
• 
First, these GOP lawmakers' actions were perfectly legal.  Article II, Section I, Clause 3 of the U.S.  Constitution and the Electoral Count Act of 1887, 3 U.S.  Code A§ 15, both governed their objections to states' electors.
• 
Second, Democrats repeatedly have resisted electors, starting four years ago.  When Democrats do this, it epitomizes public service.
• 
When Republicans do this, it's Kristallnacht.  Indeed, President Joe "Unity" Biden compared Cruz and Hawley to Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Dr.  Joseph Goebbels.
• 
As the Congressional Record confirms, during the January 6, 2017 quadrennial joint-session/certification ceremony, seven House Democrats challenged electors in 10 states.  Among these objectors: Lead impeachment manager, Maryland's Jamie Raskin.
• 
"I have an objection because 10 of the 29 electoral votes cast by Florida were cast by electors not lawfully certified because they violated Florida's prohibition against dual office holding," Raskin complained.
• 
Democrats understandably balked at electors from Michigan and Wisconsin, which Trump won by 0.3 percent and 1.0 percent, respectively.  Whatever these Democrats believed went wrong could have been decisive.
• 
However, Democrats also opposed electors from Alabama (where Trump outran Hillary by 28.3 percent), West Virginia (42.2 percent), and Wyoming (47.6 percent).  This was recreational obstructionism.
• 
No senator joined the fun.  So, House Democrats' objections went nowhere.
• 
... on January 6, 2005, Democrats were back at it.  Representative Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio objected to George W.  Bush's Electoral College votes from her state.  Senator Barbara Boxer of California concurred.
• 
Representative Nancy Pelosi (D - California) praised the 31 Democrat objectors for "speaking up for their aggrieved constituents" during "their only opportunity to have this debate while the country is listening."
• 
"The fight for electoral justice," Senator Boxer argued, was "worth a couple of hours to shine some light on these issues."
• 
On January 6, 2001, 13 House Democrats, including five current incumbents, focused their fire on Florida's electors for G.W.  Bush.
• 
"Mr.  Vice President, I rise to object to the fraudulent 25 Florida electorial [sic] votes," said Representative Maxine Waters (D - California).  "The objection is in writing, and I do not care that it is not signed by a Member of the Senate."
• 
Vice President Albert Gore dryly replied: "The rules do care, and the signature of a Senator is required." No senator stepped forward, and House Democrats' challenge foundered.
• 
Unlike today's unfairly excoriated Republicans, Democrats faced zero repercussions when they exercised over and over again their constitutionally protected and statutorily permitted power to object to Electoral College votes.
• 
Democrats should abandon their congenital hypocrisy and recognize their Republican colleagues' right to behave like Democrats.
      Deroy Murdock: Final, fair look at Trump presidency shows abundant policy victories  (Fox 01/16/2021)
• 
"Life isn't fair," President John F.  Kennedy once said.
• 
A hundred years hence, history books will recall President Trump for his two impeachments and detail the deadly U.S.  Capitol riot that he is accused of fomenting — never mind that he told his supporters at a rally near the White House: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." [Emphasis added.]
• 
Regardless, historians will dwell on the ensuing mayhem.  Pity.
• 
One hundred years from now, a fair-minded assessment of Trump's presidency will recognize his abundant domestic and international accomplishments.
• 
The $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a globally competitive 21% corporate tax rate, immediate deduction of business expenses, eight regulations junked for every new one inflicted, and Washington's overall pro-business tone helped generate the most robust economy in U.S.  history.
• 
Total employment (peaking at 158,803,000 working Americans in December 2019) never was higher.
• 
Median household income in 2019 hit a record $68,703 — up 6.8% from 2018.  Wages grew a healthy 3.6% that year, even as the left's favorite adult toy, income inequality, slid for the second consecutive year under Trump, after rising under President Barack Obama.
• 
America's poverty rate fell to 10.5% in 2019, a record low, with Black poverty at 18.8%, its first year ever below 20 %.
• 
Stock markets soared, thanks to Trumponomics.
• 
Trump's approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline, oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, fracking projects, and other initiatives have made America energy independent.
• 
The U.S.  is now a net energy exporter, to OPEC's regret and the frustration of Russian President Vladimir Putin — Trump's "boss," according to four years of baseless, unsubstantiated, evidence-free Democratic lies.
• 
For those who care, expanded natural gas production under Trump helped cut U.S.  carbon dioxide emissions to their lowest level since 1985.
• 
Trump and the GOP Senate placed 231 constitutionalist jurists on the federal bench: Three Supreme Court justices, 54 appellate judges, and 174 trial-court appointees
• 
Trump's signature on the First Step Act criminal-justice reform ended mass-incarceration and let some 3,100 largely Black, non-violent offenders begin new, mainstream lives in fiscal year 2019.
• 
The president pushed school choice, expanded educational savings accounts to cover K-12 students...
• 
Trump vastly improved Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals, launched veterans medical choice, strengthened health savings accounts, required medical price transparency, and secured for terminally ill patients the right to try experimental drugs.
• 
Trump was the first president to address the National March for Life in person, rather than literally phoning in his remarks.
• 
he president fought for a southern border wall, to stop entry by illegal immigrants, gang members, drug smugglers, terrorists and others who break into America without permission.  Overcoming relentless Democratic objections, Trump ultimately prevailed.
• 
In fact, the president Tuesday celebrated 452 miles of steel and concrete wall along the southern frontier.
• 
Consequently, federal apprehensions and encounters on the U.S.-Mexico border have plunged from 977,509 in fiscal year 2019 to 458,088 in fiscal year 2020 — down 53.1%.
• 
Trump dumped the cost-rich, benefit-poor Paris Climate Accord.
• 
Trump scrapped Obama-Biden administration's absurd, ayatollah-friendly Iran-nuclear deal.
• 
Trump flushed Obama-Biden's asphyxiating rules of engagement and sicced U.S.  and friendly forces on ISIS in early 2017.  By year's end, the bloodthirsty, primitive, Islamic-extremist caliphate — which Obama-Biden let swell to the size of two New Jerseys — was blasted clean off the map.
• 
ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and Iranian terror master Qasem Soleimani both were killed via American force.
• 
Under Trump's guidance, Israel signed the Abraham Accords — four peace agreements (and the first since 1996) between Jerusalem and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.
• 
The president confronted China.  He applied trade sanctions for its cheating and intellectual property theft, locked up its spy-choked Houston consulate, slapped travel bans on top officials, and more.
• 
While Trump's diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un did not denuclearize that country, the North halted the underground nuclear bomb tests and long-range missile flights that chilled the Obama-Biden years.
• 
The president harangued America's NATO allies to keep their word and spend at least 2% of GDP on common defense.
• 
Of course, the Chinese virus arrived a year ago and ruined everything.  The pandemic, ensuing lockdowns, and economic devastation lobbed a sledgehammer into Trump's prosperity machine.
• 
Incredibly, Operation Warp Speed yielded two COVID-19 vaccines within nine months of the March 13 national-emergency declaration.
• 
Thanks to these triumphs, countless promises made and promises kept, and a parade of late-campaign rallies with at least 25,000 people each, Trump scored 74.2 million votes, the most for an incumbent president seeking reelection.
• 
Alas, President-elect Joe Biden won 81.3 million votes and, crucially, 306 Electoral College votes to Trump's 232.  The rest is history.
• 
For four years, Trump's critics banged this pot daily: Trump is a narcissist!  Shocking.  A political leader with a large ego.  (To endure narcissism, watch almost any Obama speech.  "I" is his favorite vowel.)
• 
Future historians should focus less on Trump's abundant self-regard and, instead, do this: Ask not what Donald J.  Trump did for himself.  Ask what he did for his country.
      Lawless, stupid pro-Trump mob that attacked Capitol hurt Trump and GOP — but helped Dems  (Fox 01/08/2021)
• 
The pro-Trump mob that invaded the U.S.  Capitol Wednesday was un-American, destructive and lethal.  An astonishing five people are now dead, but they would be alive if not for the rioters' anti-democratic trespassing, breaking and entering, vandalism and more.
• 
"Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem," President Trump said in a video message released Thursday night, in which he recognized that "a new administration will be inaugurated on January 20th."
• 
The president added: "The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy."
• 
These evils aside, these savages are just plain stupid.  ... These thugs' incursion against America's national legislature was an act of breathtaking political self-sabotage.
• 
Just when these hoodlums smashed into the Capitol, Congress was debating GOP objections to Arizona's electors for Joe Biden.
• 
Grand Canyon State Republican Rep.  Andy Biggs showed a stack of voter registrations that were approved after their statutory deadline.  Sen.  Ted Cruz, R-Texas, offered his constitutional arguments against Arizona's electoral lawlessness.
• 
Left in peace, Republican objectors would have presented affidavits, documents, and other evidence of irregularities and illegalities in up to six states.
• 
Even if this didn't change the outcome of the election, Americans at least would have learned some of the gravely serious reasons why 39 percent of Americans believe "the election was rigged."
• 
But nooooo!  These barbarians disrupted the very process that they demanded and rendered this noble cause as radioactive as plutonium.
• 
Rather than rally lawmakers for election integrity, these savages repelled them.  After rattled legislators reconvened, GOP senators Steve Daines of Montana and James Lankford of Oklahoma turned against scrutinizing multi-state vote-fraud allegations.
• 
Sen.  Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., freshly defeated by far-left Democrat Raphael Warnock in Tuesday's runoff election, abandoned her challenge to her state's highly tainted Electoral College votes, among others.
• 
"I cannot now, in good conscience, object to the certification of these electors, The violence, the lawlessness, and siege of the halls of Congress are abhorrent and stand as a direct attack on the very institution that my objection was intended to protect."
• 
Here's some free advice from a veteran commentor and activist: When politicians are busy doing exactly what you begged them to do, don't send them fleeing for their lives in gas masks.
• 
These marauders have imperiled the fight for election integrity, humiliated hundreds of thousands of peaceful Trump supporters in Washington and millions of others across America, and scarred the president's scores of path-breaking accomplishments.
• 
Those behind this chaos also made an in-kind contribution to the Democratic National Committee worth about $10 billion.  The DNC and related groups will remind voters of this week's carnage for decades to come.
• 
Most urgently, and ironically, these bums have made it tougher for Republicans to oppose H.R.  1.  H.R.  1 would codify numerous dodgy-ballot-fueling measures that COVID-19 "required" last year.
• 
If Republicans oppose this gambit to make voting less secure, Democrats now can respond: "This is just another conspiracy theory from the allies of those who attacked our Capitol." Grossly unfair?  Yes.  Will Democrats say this?  Is milk white?
      Deroy Murdock: Attack on Capitol by un-American anarchists is a terrorist act and disservice to Trump  (Fox 01/06/2021)
• 
It's hard to express my shock and sadness at seeing America's legislative palace breached, a door to the U.S.  House broken, and senators and House members hunkering down, apparently in gas masks.
• 
Most astonishing is to see those involved in this violence not waving Antifa flags but, instead, Trump and MAGA banners.
• 
It would be bad enough if the acts of terrorism now being perpetrated by this mob were underway while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., banged her gavel and shut down any objections to Electoral College votes that many of my fellow Trump fans believe are tainted by ballot irregularities.
• 
On the contrary, 180 degrees, the House and Senate were debating Republican objections to Arizona's Electoral College votes.  Sen.  Ted Cruz R-Texas, was making his case to his colleagues, with his usual eloquence.
• 
Rep.  Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., head of the Freedom Caucus, rose to state his concerns about his own state's Electoral College votes.  He even presented something that should not have existed: A stack of voter registrations that were recorded after the Grand Canyon State's statutory deadline.  This is precisely the sort of evidence that the president's supporters have wanted for weeks to be aired in public.
• 
Thus, the sheer mind-blowing stupidity of the buffoons who stormed the Capitol.  They attacked Congress exactly as it was doing precisely what these people wanted done.
• 
With guns drawn on the U.S.  House floor (!), and reports of one person shot, this is the most vicious breach of the Capitol since the British Army attacked in 1814, during one of the most ominous moments of the War of 1812.
• 
In an astonishing act of self-sabotage, these idiots now have made it enormously difficult for those of us who admire President Trump for his enormous domestic and international policy victories.
• 
Instead, any discussion of the highest median household income in American history, the lowest poverty rate ever, the complete liquidation of ISIS, and two COVID-19 vaccines in nine months will be answered with, "Oh, you mean the boob whose people assaulted the U.S.  Capitol?"
• 
These un-American anarchists have performed an enormous disservice to President Trump, the America First movement, the more than 74 million voters who cast our ballots for him in November, and our beloved United States of America.
• 
Those intruders in the Capitol need to back off, evacuate, go home, and ponder the evil that they did.
• 
President Trump did the right thing Wednesday afternoon.  He issued a video statement from the White House via Twitter and told his overzealous backers to beat it.
• 
They should heed his words at once: "I know how you feel.  But go home and go home in peace."
      Chairman Bernie?  How Senate Committees Could Devolve if Dems Sweep Georgia  (01/04/2021)
• 
Who would you rather have write the U.S.  Senate's next budget — Lindsey Graham or Bernie Sanders?  This is among the choices before Georgia's voters on Tuesday.
• 
These twin races will determine whether Republicans maintain a one- or two-seat majority in the upper legislative chamber or, if Ossoff and Warnock prevail, Democrats take control, along with holding the House of Representatives and White House.
• 
If Democrats capture the Senate and make New York's Chuck Schumer majority leader, they also will chair the Senate's committees.
• 
If Republicans keep command, these committees will be marginally likelier than today's to pursue conservative objectives of individual freedom, limited government, free enterprise, and peace through strength.
• 
If Democrats take power, however, Americans should brace for a jump to the left.  Senate panels will become rocket engines for curbing liberty, swelling the state, shackling the economy, and appeasing America's enemies.
• 
If Republicans decide committees' agendas, they most likely will investigate the deep-state genesis of the synthetic Russiagate non-scandal that hounded President Donald J.  Trump for three excruciating years.
• 
Republicans almost surely will probe Hunter Biden's mangy business affairs and any benefits that possibly flowed to his father.
• 
And Senate sleuths likely will address the myriad irregularities and vote-fraud allegations from November's elections.
• 
If Democrats manage the Senate's committees, they will bury each of these scandals in an unmarked grave and never look back.
• 
Tuesday's choice is as dramatic as America's fruited plains versus the downward-spiralism of left-wing big cities.
• 
Republicans, independents, and Democrats dismayed by their party should run, not walk, to the polls and spare the Republic such Democrat domination of the Senate and its committees.
• 
Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue's victories would keep Bernie Sanders, Patty Murray, Dick Durbin, and their ilk snarling but, essentially, toothless.
      Deroy Murdock: Barack and Michelle Obama's breathtaking ingratitude  (Fox 12/01/2020)
• 
The same liberals who accuse President Donald J.  Trump of narcissism ignore the fact that Obama's third (!) autobiography is more voluminous than Dante's "Inferno."
• 
And, who could forget the photos of Obama admiring himself in a filthy mirror in the White House and snapping pictures of himself with a selfie stick?
• 
But, much worse, Obama is — among many other wretched things — a divisive, self-oblivious ingrate.
• 
"What's always interesting to me is the degree to which you've seen created in Republican politics the sense that white males are victims," Obama told...
• 
"They are the ones who are under attack — which obviously doesn't jive with both history and data and economics.  But that's a sincere belief, that's been internalized, that's a story that's being told, and how you unwind that is going to be not something that is done right away."
• 
So, white-male grievance fueled President Trump's 74 million votes on Election Day 2020.  Wow!  What a great way to bring Americans together, as Democrats never stop claiming they want to do.
• 
Obama never explained how white-male self-pity, rage, or both propelled Trump's support among 12 percent of Blacks (versus 8 percent in 2016's exit polls), specifically, 19 percent of Black men and 9 percent of Black women...
• 
Maybe Black men feel sorrier for white men than do white men themselves.
• 
This theory might not be so outlandish.  After all ... Biden declared ... "If you have a problem figuring out if you're for me or Trump, then you ain't Black."
• 
Trump won 61 percent of white, male voters (according to 2020's exit polls).  This equals some 33,555,556 ballots ... White men, in aggregate, fell an estimated 40,423,122 shy of Trump's 73,978,678 total...
• 
So, 40.4 million minorities and women identified deep-down as grumpy white guys or — what a concept!  — these 25.7 percent of all voters believed that four more years of Trump would benefit them, their loved ones, neighbors, and nation.
• 
Obama saved particularly ugly words for a segment of Americans who backed Trump...  "People were surprised about a lot of Hispanic folks who voted for Trump.  But there are a lot of evangelical Hispanics who, you know, the fact that Trump says racist things about Mexicans or puts detainees, you know, undocumented workers in cages — they think that's less important than the fact that he supports their views on gay marriage or abortion."
• 
Obama also revealed his holistic lack of self-awareness when he slammed Trump for placing "undocumented workers in cages."
• 
Obama's self-oblivion is staggering.  Has he really forgotten who installed these cages?  Obama did!
• 
The BBC's institutional memory is more reliable than Obama's convenient amnesia.  "These chain-link enclosures were built during the Obama presidency.  Some 60,000 unaccompanied minors stopped at the southern border were detained in these cells during one summer alone in 2014"...
• 
Even more damning: "The Obama administration also separated migrant children from adults at the border, though only in rare circumstances."
• 
This is textbook-grade psychological projection, which is a key Democrat offering, along with defunding the police and overlooking the domestic terrorism of ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, and their comrades in the ascendant hard left.
• 
Obama's worst sin — and that of his wife — is breathtaking ingratitude.
• 
While the former president points fingers at supposedly racially biased white dudes, the former first lady sees America drowning in bigots.
• 
She said November 7 ... "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division."
• 
Rather than excoriate the Prejudiced States of America, the Obamas should say thank you.
• 
They should thank America for giving them 69.5 million votes or 53 percent of 2008's ballots.
• 
The Obamas should thank America for handing them 62.6 million votes or 51 percent of 2012's ballots.
• 
And yet, Michelle insists, America is awash in race hatred.  Disgusting!
• 
Along with this whiny wife, Obama should focus on the ex in ex-president and leave the rest of us alone.
• 
See related Miss Me? (Glenn McCoy, 02/28/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump’s 4 Nobel Peace Prize nominations show he’s a peacemaker — not warmonger as critics claim  (Fox 10/25/2020)
• 
... news that Israel and Sudan will establish diplomatic relations is just the latest international breakthrough arranged by President Trump.
• 
The third such peace pact between the Jewish state and its Muslim neighbors since Aug.  13 mocks the chilling forecasts that Trump's election would trigger mushroom clouds.
• 
Hate Trump, Inc.  must be boiling mad to see their bete noir rack up peace agreements and repeatedly gain the attention of the Nobel Prize Committee.
• 
Despite the left's caricature of Trump as a mad bomber, he has started no new wars.
• 
Much like President Ronald Reagan, Trump rebuilt the military (which the Obama-Biden administration depleted), and then used this potential firepower and his outsized personality to forge peace through strength.
• 
This has included Trump's efforts in North Korea, where a denuclearization agreement remains elusive, but the underground atomic tests of the Obama-Biden era have yielded to subterranean quietude and intermittent dialogue between Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
• 
The ISIS caliphate was a bloodthirsty, belligerent threat to U.S.  and allied interests.  Obama-Biden let the Islamofascist quasi-state grow to the size of two New Jerseys.  (A lovely place, but one will suffice.) Trump unshackled U.S.  GIs, and the caliphate was sandblasted off the map.
• 
Even before Friday's announcement, Trump's unprecedented, unconventional strategy yielded two agreements that doubled the number of Arab nations — atop Egypt and Jordan — that recognize Israel, a country only half the size of the late ISIS caliphate.
• 
In Afghanistan, the chaos that Obama-Biden left behind has evolved into a Trump-driven cease-fire and zero deaths of American forces since early February.
• 
The first nomination rebuked Obama-Biden's lack of serious movement towards Balkan tranquility.  Under Trump, this stasis yielded to a commercial-relations accord between Serbia and Kosovo.
• 
"...  what President Trump said ... was, ‘They're fighting politically about everything.  Why don't we give it a try to do something different and creative?  Why not try to do economics first and let the politics follow the economics?' That proved to actually be a formula that they were eager for.  No one had been talking to them about this."
• 
The second nomination recognized Trump's Abraham Accords.  Rather than years of Middle East stalemate that Obama-Biden could not overcome, Trump totally changed the underlying geopolitical conditions that steered that area's conflicts.
• 
Through domestic fracking and other developments, Trump made America independent of Arab oil.  ... The Middle East's generations-long leverage over the U.S.  economy turned to fumes.
• 
The president recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital and accepted the Jewish state's sovereignty over the long-disputed Golan Heights.  This signaled the end of Washington's fetishism over the pointless and unproductive Palestinian "peace process."
• 
Trump also crippled the ayatollahs by junking Obama-Biden's slapstick Iran nuclear deal and delivered the drone-driven destruction of Tehran's top terrorist, Qasem Soleimani.
• 
These steps so emboldened anti-Iranian leaders in Sunni Muslim Persian Gulf states that they felt safe to settle with Israel.
• 
The peace treaty between Israel and the UAE was the first such pact in 26 years.  The Israel-Bahrain compact then became the first such agreement in 29 days.  Sudan's olive branch arrived six weeks later.
• 
For eight years, Obama-Biden used American sovereignty as a doormat — from Obama's rebarbative bowing before kings to the previous administration's binding America to the Paris global-warming treaty, not after U.S.  Senate ratification but upon its approval by 54 foreign governments.
• 
Obama-Biden's dismissal of the U.S.  as just another member of the U.N.  was eclipsed by Trump's America First philosophy.
• 
"In what will no doubt eventually be called the Trump Doctrine, his foreign policy has been based on restraint in military engagements, the rebuilding of American military power as a source of dissuasion against aggression, and the adoption of alternative and refreshing approaches to achieving peace."
• 
"The role of President Trump as a mediator of the Abraham Accords, which potentially mark the dawn of a new Middle East, was indispensable.  It is hard to imagine a president of the United States from the last decades, or a current head of state, who would deserve more the Committee's recognition in 2021 than President Trump for his efforts to build peace in the world."
• 
... his nominations are based on actual diplomatic accomplishments, not just on showing up for work.
• 
"The people who have received the Peace Prize in recent years have done much less than Donald Trump.  For example, Barack Obama did nothing."
• 
President Trump is perfecting the art of the peace deal.  As he demonstrates the concrete benefits of U.S.  fortitude, he confirms that in foreign affairs, America is better off now than it was four years ago.
      Deroy Murdock: The soft bigotry of mass-mail-in ballots  (Fox 08/21/2020)
• 
... crafty liberals begin with the tragic fact that the often-deadly Chinese virus has weighed especially heavily against Blacks and other minorities in general, due to existing medical conditions, subpar medical care, and other woeful factors that ensnare specific patients.
• 
From this sad reality, the Commission's left infantilizes voters of color and assumes that they cannot handle myriad challenges to casting ballots.
• 
The entire paper reeks of what President George W.  Bush once called "the soft bigotry of low expectations."
• 
Requiring notarized signatures makes it harder to cast phony ballots.  This is too much for Commission Democrats.  They complain that voters of color endure a "lack of access to items such as transportation and printers."
• 
Blacks, Hispanics, and other minority voters are perfectly capable of visiting notaries public or asking people to witness their ballot signatures.
• 
The Commission report also claims that underprivileged voters have trouble acquiring stamps and basic office supplies.
• 
The Commission's entire "save minority voters from racist voting practices" theory is baseless.
• 
"...  many of the liberal commissioners see everything through a biased, racial prism even when there isn't any support for their claims."
• 
The Commission should worry primarily about disenfranchisement.  Alas, mass-mail-in-ballots are perfect for making votes vanish.
• 
According to the USPS's inspector general, for 2018, "We found that the Postal Service's nationwide service performance score for Election and Political Mail was 95.6 percent, or slightly below its goal of 96 percent."
• 
Imagine that USPS satisfies its own standards and delivers 96 percent of the ballots to which it is entrusted.  So, only 4 percent of ballots would disappear.
• 
Given that Hillary Clinton won Minnesota by a margin of 1.52 percent, and Donald J.  Trump secured Michigan by just 0.23 percent, a USPS promise to lose just 4 percent of ballots is nauseatingly inadequate.
• 
Unlike the Commission draft, America's highest-profile authority on the Chinese virus does not believe the pathogen merits an all-mail election.
• 
According to federal COVID-19 guru, Dr.  Anthony Fauci, "There's no reason why we shouldn't be able to vote in person or otherwise."
• 
As he told ABC News on August 14: "If you go and wear a mask, if you observe the physical distancing, and don't have a crowded situation, there's no reason why shouldn't be able to do that."
• 
The infirm and those vulnerable to COVID-19 should be free to request absentee ballots, as has been possible for decades.
• 
Everyone else should go vote at the polls on Election Day and hope that the COVID cure also eradicates the political pandemic of mass-mail-in ballots.
      Deroy Murdock: Orwellian Democrats claim Portland's violence = peace  (Fox 07/31/2020)
• 
"Do you disavow the violence from Antifa that's happening in Portland right now?" journalist ... asked Rep.  Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y...
• 
"That's a myth that's being spread only in Washington, D.C.," Nadler replied.
• 
Clearly enraged by the Trump administration's surge of federal officers sent to Portland to combat the carnage that is not happening there, Nadler said, "The president wants footage for his campaign ads, and you appear to be serving it up to him as ordered."
• 
The Judiciary chairman added: "Now you are projecting fear and violence nationwide in pursuit of obvious political objectives.  Shame on you, Mr.  Barr.  Shame on you."
• 
"The playbook is to create the impression that there is violence, that he must send in federal troops.  And that is how he [President Trump] hopes to win the election."
• 
"People are showing up because the troops are there," added Lofgren.  "Most of them are non-violent."
• 
Of course, as a 13-term congresswoman, Lofgren knows the difference between troops, who are not there, and federal civilian officers, who are confronting the impression of violence.
• 
"Most of the protests have been peaceful, Mr.  Barr.  You know that.  In most of these cities, the protests had begun to wind down before you marched in and confronted the protesters."
• 
Unlike House Democrats, who mainly told Barr to shut up, Republicans introduced a radical reform: They asked Barr questions and let him answer.
• 
He listed "rifles, explosives, knives, saws, sledgehammers, Tasers, slingshots, rocks, bricks, lasers.  Have I missed anything?"
• 
"You have missed some things, but that's a good list," Barr replied.  "They have these powerful slingshots with ball bearings that they shoot.  They have used pellet guns, we believe.  We have found those projectiles have penetrated Marshals to the bone.  They use the lasers to blind the Marshals.  They do start fires.  They start fires, if they can get the fire inside or through the windows.  And they start fires along the outside of the courthouse.  When the Marshals come out to try to deal with the fires, they are assaulted."
• 
"Federal courthouses are under attack," Barr reminded the Committee on the Judiciary, no less.
• 
Seemingly exasperated with oblivious, or totally dishonest, Democrats, Barr wondered: "Since when is it OK to try to burn down a federal court?  If someone went down the street to the Prettyman Court here, that beautiful courthouse we have right at the bottom of the Hill, and started breaking windows and firing industrial grade fireworks, and, to start a fire, throw kerosene balloons and start fires in the court.  Is that OK?  Is that OK now?"
• 
According to DHS, "Violent anarchists targeted surveillance cameras around the Hatfield Courthouse, rendering them inoperable."
• 
"I watched as injured officers were hauled inside.  In one case, the commercial firework came over so fast the officer didn't have time to respond.  It burned through his sleeves & he had bloody gashes on both forearms.  Another had a concussion from being hit in the head w/ a mortar."
• 
"The lights inside the courthouse have to be turned off for safety & the light from high-powered lasers bounced across the lobby almost all night.  The fear is palpable.  Three officers were struck in the last few weeks & still haven't regained their vision."
• 
DHS's deployment to Portland is not ritual chest-beating.  It's not toxic masculinity.  It's the law.
• 
According to 40 U.S.  Code § 1315, the Secretary of Homeland Security "shall protect the buildings, grounds, and property that are owned, occupied, or secured by the Federal Government."
• 
Acting Secretary Chad Wolf would break federal law if he left the courthouse undefended and let Antifa & Co.  burn it to the ground.
• 
Of course, if the Hatfield Courthouse went up in smoke, the same people decrying President Trump's supposed fascism would erupt like Klaxons: "Why didn't he stop this?  He was asleep at the switch!  Wake up, Mr.  President!"
• 
Attorney General Barr had every reason to be perplexed by the radical Democrats' institutional indifference toward these relentless onslaughts against federal personnel and what they are guarding: a palace of justice.
• 
"What makes me concerned for the country is this is the first time in my memory that the leaders of one of our great two political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attack on federal courts," Barr said.
• 
"Why can't we just say violence against federal courts has to stop?  Could we hear something like that?"
      To be reelected, Trump must focus on broadening his base — not petty fights on Twitter  (Fox 07/10/2020)
• 
"The drop in Trump's job approval rating puts him in the company of George H.W.  Bush and Jimmy Carter ... who also had sub-40 percent approval ratings in June of their reelection years."
• 
And look what happened to them.
• 
Given these grim poll results, and with just nine weeks before voters pull the first levers, President Trump at once needs to focus like a bloodhound on winning a second term.
• 
The alternative is unthinkable — an addled Democratic President Joe Biden weakly assenting to Sen.  Bernie Sanders of Vermont, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Rep.  Adam Schiff of California, and their every unhinged, extreme, vindictive, far-left fantasy.
• 
The president needs to stop wasting precious time with Twitter messages about seemingly every petty controversy that arises.
• 
The president already has a massive problem getting his important messages out, thanks to the Hate Trump Media, which constantly gnaw at him like termites nibbling through the floorboards.
• 
Creating his own distractions makes it that much harder for Trump to get reelected — an objective that has grown from an urgent priority to an existential imperative for the survival of America as we have known it.
• 
The president needs to stop caving in to temptation as he recently did on Twitter, when he wondered if NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace would apologize over a two-week-old incident involving a noose-like garage-door closer...
• 
First, Wallace is not like failed, publicity-starved actor Jussie Smollett, who totally fabricated a racial "attack" on himself.  At worst, Wallace rushed to misjudgment about the noose/rope in his garage stall.
• 
Second, Wallace is not like Colin Kaepernick, an anti-American radical who denounced July Fourth as a "celebration of white supremacy."
• 
Third, who cares?  The president of the United States has far bigger cars to race...
• 
... with 91 percent of Republicans already supporting Trump, per Gallup, he cannot rise much above his near-deity status within his own party.
• 
Trump needs to expand his base, pronto.
• 
For every rally, the president should do at least three events with independents, suburban women and Black voters.
• 
Trump should explain to Black parents that he strongly backs school choice, while Biden sadistically promises to padlock charter schools.
• 
Trump should visit minority-owned companies that have grown through his Opportunity Zones program.
• 
He should introduce Americans to Black former prisoners who have benefited from his First Step Act criminal-justice reform and made something of themselves.
• 
If Trump can capture 15 to 20 percent of the Black vote, he will romp in November.  That looks daunting, but it's worth the effort — not least because asking for Black votes calms Whites rattled by relentless, filthy media and Democratic lies about Trump's alleged racism.
• 
The president should offer a positive, optimistic vision of how his ideas will reverse COVID-19's damage and make America great again, again.
• 
Trumponomics triumphed.  Tax cuts, deregulation, energy independence and other pro-market reforms can work their magic once more.
• 
Finally, Trump must remember that he is not running against athletes, comedians and pundits.
• 
He is running against an increasingly befogged Joe Biden, first elected 48 years ago.
• 
So, atop his own positive message, Trump must highlight Biden's weaknesses, his shabby Senate record, the Obama-Biden administration's abundant failures, and the bonkers AOC/BLM/Antifa left that will control Washington if Biden wins.
• 
President Trump should discuss these huge ideas, ignore sniping celebrities, and lock up his magic Twitter machine, save for major, upbeat announcements such as bill signings, new treaties and COVID-19 vaccine breakthroughs.
• 
In short, a presidential reelection is a terrible thing to waste.
      Deroy Murdock: George Floyd unrest fuels white self-doubt  (Fox 06/16/2020)
• 
The unanimous national disgust at the killing of George Floyd beneath the knee of Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin has devolved into something completely different.
• 
In an apparent collective nervous breakdown, self-flagellating white Americans have concluded that Floyd's death somehow confirms their own racism, which they are busy exorcising.
• 
Quasi-religious rituals have found whites on bended knees apologizing to blacks for being white.
• 
Perhaps a thousand white people in Bethesda, Maryland, sat their backsides in a library parking lot, held their hands high, and vowed aloud: "I will use my voice in the most uplifting way possible...I will love my black neighbors the same as my white ones."
• 
In Cary, North Carolina, white cops and community members knelt before and washed the feet of two black pastors.
• 
Several young white friends tell me that they must embrace Black Lives Matter daily on social media, lest they endure accusations of racism.
• 
One Turkish personality in mocha-colored body makeup offered this comment: "In a racist society, it is not enough to just say that you are not racist.  One should be loudly against racism!"
• 
Even graver cultural vandalism has involved the Red Guard-style defacement and destruction of monuments and sculptures including those of Christopher Columbus, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and idiotically, the Great Emancipator Abraham Lincoln, abolitionist Matthias Baldwin (thugs painted his face red and graffitied "colonizer" across his Philadelphia statue), and several tributes to Union Army soldiers who helped crush the slave-owning South.
• 
Historically boneheaded barbarians painted profanities on Boston's memorial to the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, an all-black volunteer unit that valiantly battled the Confederacy.
• 
Such mayhem should appall Professor Erin L.  Thompson.  She teaches art crime at Manhattan's John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
• 
Amid this devastation, she used Twitter Wednesday to address nihilists toppling a statue of Columbus at the Minnesota State Capitol:
• 
"I'm a professor who studies the deliberate destruction of cultural heritage and I just have to say...  use chain instead of rope and it'll go faster."
• 
Thompson is no better than the Taliban, who infamously dynamited ancient Afghan Buddha statues in March 2001.
• 
These recent, dramatic displays disparage a country that no longer exists.
• 
If America runs on racism, as the left insists, why doesn't this country erase any trace of the black contribution to this society?
• 
A white-supremacist nation would have sandbagged the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of African American History and Culture.  Instead, the federal government spent some $270 million on this establishment before it opened in September 2016.
• 
Why are so many black musicians, actors, and athletes worshipped, rather than reviled, by white fans?
• 
How do millions of other non-famous blacks succeed in so many walks of life — quietly but concretely?
• 
If America really is so deeply, systematically, irretrievably racist, why did 43 million white voters help elect Obama president in 2008?
• 
Four ruinous years in office tarnished Obama's halo.  Regardless, 36 million whites forgot their inherent racism long enough to help re-elect Obama, comfortably, in 2012.
• 
If America is merely apartheid-era South Africa with four time zones, why did President Donald J.  Trump bother to establish 8,760 Opportunity Zones to revitalize economically distressed communities, many of them black?
• 
How did America's institutionalized racism let Trump provide school-choice options for black kids in K-12 schools, and long-term federal funding and other benefits for Historically Black Colleges and Universities?
• 
Why didn't America's genetic prejudice stop blacks and Hispanics from achieving the lowest unemployment ever recorded, before a Chinese virus rolled in and junked the U.S.  economy?
• 
Shouldn't America's racist ways have sandbagged the First Step Act, a criminal-justice reform measure, before Trump signed it into law, which Obama and Biden utterly failed to do in eight years?
• 
The president of a systematically racist nation never would have made black lives better.  And if he did, he would shut up about it, rather than trumpet these policies at rallies full of his allegedly bigoted supporters.
• 
Will this nation ever entirely expunge racism?  Probably not.
• 
If 99 percent of 330 million Americans suddenly became totally non-racist, 3.3 million bigots would remain — nearly enough to fill Connecticut.
• 
So, as beautiful as it would be, racism is as unlikely to vanish from America as anywhere else.
• 
But, for all the grief, pain, and even death that it still causes, is American racism widespread, systemic, and institutionalized?
• 
No.
      Deroy Murdock: Looting and rioting after George Floyd killing draw shocking support from left  (Fox 06/10/2020)
• 
The looting and riots that roared out of the George Floyd protests were surprising.  The left's celebration of this violence is shocking.
• 
What follows are not the reckless rants of basement-dwelling, boxer-short-clad, baby Bolsheviks.
• 
Rather these are the words and actions of elected and appointed Democratic officials, top activists, and their comrades in the liberal establishment media.
• 
These leading leftists encouraged, enabled and empowered people who decided to riot after they saw four Minneapolis cops go low as one officer knelt on Floyd's neck for nearly nine minutes and killed him on Memorial Day, while the other cops did nothing to stop the killing.
• 
All four now-fired officers face charges of second-degree murder or aiding and abetting second-degree murder.
• 
"A once in a lifetime opportunity," is how Democratic Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey described the subsequent rioting.  "Yes, America is burning, but that's how forests grow."
• 
Rep.  Maxine Waters, D-Calif., seemed unconcerned about store shelves being vacuumed by marauders nationwide.  "Young people, they have a whole new definition for ‘looting."
• 
Two days after looters devoured local stores, Democratic Seattle City Council member Teresa Mosqueda said: "Colleagues, I hope we're all saying we understand why that destruction happened and we understand why people are upset."
• 
"But what I don't want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told looting doesn't solve anything," said Mosqueda's socialist colleague Tammy Morales.  "It does make me wonder why looting bothers people so much more than knowing that across the country, black people are being killed."
• 
Salmah Rizvi, Esq., a former intelligence official with Obama's Departments of State and Defense, bailed out Orooj Rahman, Esq.  The New York City Police Department arrested Rahman on June 2 for allegedly hurling an ignited Molotov cocktail into a police vehicle.  Rahman allegedly distributed Molotov cocktails to Floyd-related demonstrators in Brooklyn on May 30.
• 
Judge Brodie heeded Obama's former adviser and, on $250,000 bond, sprang the alleged gasoline-bomb thrower.
• 
At least 13 Biden campaign employees donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which paid cash bail for protesters and rioters arrested during the recent unpleasantness.
• 
"Burn It All Down," an Essence headline insisted. "Until these things disgust you, we riot, we protest and do whatever it takes to get your attention – including burning it all down."
• 
In The New York Times – the so-called "Paper of Record" – reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones argued that "destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence." Does that include this Pulitzer Prize winner's windows?  Her home?
• 
"Please, show me where it says that protests are supposed to be polite and peaceful," CNN's Chris Cuomo demanded.
• 
Did Cuomo flunk high school civics?  The First Amendment guarantees "the right of the people peaceably to assemble."
• 
"Riots are, at their core, a choice made by those in power, not people who participate in them," The Atlantic's Amanda Mull said via Twitter.  "If you build a society that exhausts and abuses people and privilege [sic] capital over human life, I'm not sure which other imaginary ‘civil' options you expect people to exercise."
• 
"Burn that s** down.  Burn it all down," ESPN alumnus and NBA analyst Chris Palmer cheered via Twitter on May 29, above a photo of 189 affordable-housing units that were under construction until Minneapolis rioters incinerated them.
• 
But rather than a revolutionary, Palmer echoed landed gentry when rioters reached his California home.
• 
"They just attacked our sister community down the street," Palmer ranted via Twitter on May 31.  "It's a gated community and they tried to climb the gates.  They had to beat them back.  Then destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building.  Get these animals TF out of my neighborhood.  Go back to where you live."
• 
After learning that walls work and expressing the Palmer Principle (trespassers should "go back to where you live"), Palmer wagged his finger at his visitors, saying: "Tear up your own s***.  Don't come to where we live at and tear our neighborhood up.  We care about our community.  If you don't care about yours I don't give a s***."
• 
On June 1, BuzzFeed's Ajani Bazile published "19 Tips For Anyone Who Plans On Protesting." "Bring enough cash for food, transportation, or other necessities," Bazile recommended.  "Bring snacks and water to keep your energy up."
• 
... he also counseled: "If you are worried about the possibility of being tracked by law enforcement, don't post on social media while you're there, turn off Face/Touch ID on your phone, or bring a burner phone."
• 
On Election Day, remember all of this and vote as if your life, liberty and property were at stake.
      Deroy Murdock: Mattis 'should have picked up a couple of his history books' before denouncing Trump  (Fox 06/05/2020)
• 
"He begins by saying very nice things about the protesters, that they want equal justice under the law, we all want that.  Then he has this amazing sentence, 'We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers.'"
• 
"What?  Are you kidding me?  We are not just talking about a couple of people [who] broke away from peaceful protests, put a little bit of shaving cream of the windshield of a police car, something like that."
• 
"We're talking about massive looting, attacks on everything from Target to Macy's to Rolex."
• 
In response to Mattis' criticism that Trump does not even try to unite the American people, Murdock said the Republican is the first president in his lifetime who tries to unite the American people.
• 
"Mattis, as a member of the Cabinet, was at the State Of The Union — he was sitting in the front row — when Donald J.  Trump said this [in] 2018: 'I want to talk about what kind of future we are going to have, what kind of nation we are going to be.  All of us together as one team, one people and one American family,' That seems like an effort to try to unify us."
• 
"Then you look at the policies he supported.  For example, supporting historically black colleges and universities, providing federal funding, finding corporate sponsors to help with their apprenticeship programs.  I think the huge thing he's done is to try to unify the country."
• 
"Criminal justice reform.  This is something Black Lives Matter has screamed for, for years.  Obama and Biden didn't deliver that, guess who did?  Donald J.  Trump.  That seems like quite the effort to try and unify the country."
• 
In response to criticisms of Trump's demeanor, Murdock explained that Trump has the right tone for the times he is in.
• 
"Look, these are tough times and the other side is not polite to him.  We've seen the other side's behavior out in the streets over the last few days.  So he's supposed to be nice and sweet and gentle like Mr.  Rogers while these other people call him names, call him racist, call him Hitler, worse than Hitler, somebody actually called him.  I don't see a lot of politeness on that side."
• 
"One important thing also that General Mattis brought up in his very, very flimsy article.  He said, 'At home, we should use our military only when requested to do so on very rare occasions by state governors,' as opposed to federal governors, I suppose."
• 
"This is the Insurrection Act of 1807.  It's been used by 12 different presidents from Jefferson all the way to George H.W.  Bush.  One of those occasions was by the Democrat hero Lyndon Baines Johnson.  He actually brought in the military — guess what?  — to put down riots in Washington, D.C."
• 
"So General Mattis really should have picked up a couple of his history books."
      Deroy Murdock: Trump should deliver Oval Office address on rioting tearing America apart  (Fox 06/03/2020)
• 
President Trump should wield one of the biggest wrenches in his toolbox and do so with all deliberate speed.
• 
He should address his fellow Americans from the Oval Office on the burning and looting that are tearing this republic to pieces.
• 
"The biggest victims of the rioting are peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities, and as their president, I will fight to keep them safe," Trump said.
• 
"I will fight to protect you.  I am your president of law and order, and an ally of all peaceful protesters."
• 
The president should ask the major broadcast networks and the major news channels for time to speak before the East Coast goes dark.
• 
Dusk unleashes the thieves and thugs who have converted legitimate protests into a devastating free-for-all.
• 
If these major media organizations – many of which earlier accused the president of staying silent throughout this crisis – air his remarks, he can rally the entire American people, who seek his guidance.
• 
Conversely, if liberal media outlets silence the president as he works to unify this country, they will deserve scorn for censoring America's leader exactly when his leadership is most needed.
• 
Beyond that realm, the president should echo his beautiful and appropriate words from Cape Canaveral on Saturday, after SpaceX's successful, private, manned rocket launch.
• 
"The death of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis was a grave tragedy.  It should never have happened.  It has filled Americans all over the country with horror, anger and grief.  "
• 
"Yesterday, I spoke to George's family and expressed the sorrow of our entire nation for their loss.  I stand before you as a friend and ally to every American seeking justice and peace.  And I stand before you in firm opposition to anyone exploiting this tragedy to loot, rob, attack and menace.  Healing, not hatred; justice, not chaos are the mission at hand."
• 
"I understand the pain that people are feeling.  We support the right of peaceful protesters, and we hear their pleas.  But what we are now seeing on the streets of our cities has nothing to do with justice or with peace."
• 
"The main victims of this horrible, horrible situation are the citizens who live in these once lovely communities.  The mobs are devastating the life's work of good people and destroying their dreams.  Right now, America needs creation, not destruction; cooperation, not contempt; security, not anarchy."
• 
"We cannot and must not allow a small group of criminals and vandals to wreck our cities and lay waste to our communities.  We must defend the rights of every citizen to live without violence, prejudice or fear."
• 
"Those making excuses or justifications for violence are not helping the downtrodden, but delivering new anguish and new pain."
• 
President Trump also should present evidence of Antifa's role in this bedlam.  He should expose this hideous drama's villains.  Trump should cleave these domestic terrorists from George Floyd, whose lifeless body they defile as a human shield to perpetrate their nihilistic, far-left evil.
• 
Trump's Cape Canaveral speech was splendid.  But Americans need to hear the president of the United States address his people from the glory of the Oval Office.  This should happen as soon as possible.
• 
All upside.  No downside.  What the hell does President Trump have to lose?
      Deroy Murdock: Coronavirus crisis — Cuomo, de Blasio, Johnson bite the hands that heal New York  (Fox 05/08/2020)
• 
"If you don't have a health care crisis in your community, please come help us in New York, now," Gov.  Cuomo said March 30.
• 
Americans heeded his call.  On April 2, he announced that some 21,000 health care workers from coast to coast rushed in to aid their countrymen on the Hudson.
• 
"These are beautiful, generous people," Cuomo said, "and New Yorkers will return the favor."
• 
Cuomo just returned the favor.
• 
"We're not in a position to provide any subsidies right now because we have a $13 billion deficit," Cuomo said Tuesday.  "We are in dire financial need."
• 
Consequently, out-of-state medical personnel who earned wages back home while volunteering their talents for at least 14 days must pay New York state tax on such income.  Albany also expects full compliance with its dense tax paperwork.
• 
"Every day, President Trump resembles, more and more, Herbert Hoover, the president who ignored the Great Depression, who didn't care to put America back on its feet, who has been now remembered in history as someone who failed at the most basic responsibility, which is to protect the people he serves," de Blasio said.
• 
De Blasio called President Trump "a former New Yorker who seems to enjoy stabbing his home town in the back," ... "I'll give him another chance to show that there's a beating heart there...."
• 
"Are you going to save New York City or are you telling New York City to drop dead?"
• 
The remarkably self-absorbed de Blasio seems unaware of the Niagara Falls of assistance that Team Trump cascaded into New York City:
• 
They deployed the Army Corps of Engineers to erect temporary hospitals.
• 
In just nine days, the Corps created a 3,000-bed pop-up facility at Manhattan's Javits Center convention complex.
• 
It then fortified this installation with a 48-bed Intensive Care Unit.
• 
Trump dispatched the 1,000-bed hospital ship USNS Comfort to Manhattan.
• 
It arrived on March 30 to offer routine care, so onshore hospitals could focus on COVID-19 patients.
• 
But Comfort soon was retrofitted to treat virus victims.
• 
Of the 182 patients it welcomed, 70 percent were COVID-19-positive.
• 
Trump projected 1,000 military personnel into New York City to hammer COVID-19.
• 
Trump assigned 448 civilian physicians, nurses, and respiratory specialists to NYC's hospitals.
• 
Trump devoted $1.3 billion in FEMA funds to support New York.
• 
Trump gave FEMA 48 hours to provide New York City four large medical stations with 1,000 beds.
• 
Trump instructed FEMA to supply New York 250 ambulances and 500 emergency medical technicians.
• 
Trump, as of April 2, had steered 4,400 ventilators to New York.
• 
As of Monday, FEMA Region 2 (which includes New York) had received 478,535 surgical gowns, 875,890 face shields, 4.3 million surgical masks, 9.2 million surgical gloves, 12.8 million N95 respirators and more.
• 
The reliably partisan and relentlessly embarrassing de Blasio should thank Team Trump for this literal airlift and sealift of emergency support.
• 
Instead, he most likely will bash Trump daily, between now and Election Day.
• 
Samaritan's Purse has provided at least 333 New Yorkers with free care.
• 
And, since its personnel have labored in the Empire State for more than a fortnight, they must pay New York state taxes on salaries earned as they mended Gothamites.
• 
Unfortunately for Samaritan Purse's sake, it embraces traditional marriage, which makes it unfiltered evil to Johnson and other local leftists.
• 
So, despite claiming that "NYC should be a city for all of us," Johnson demands that Samaritan's Purse fold its tents and get lost.
• 
"It is time for Samaritan's Purse to leave NYC.  This group, led by the notoriously bigoted, hate-spewing Franklin Graham, came at a time when our city couldn't in good conscience turn away any offer of help.  That time has passed.  Their continued presence here is an affront to our values of inclusion, and is painful for all New Yorkers who care deeply about the LGBTQ community."
• 
So, a bunch of Christians waded into a disease-filled city chock full of gay people, treated 300+ patients — in cooperation with an historically Jewish hospital — without quizzing them about their sexuality or spirituality.
• 
And Johnson tells them to bugger off.  Who's spewing hate here?
• 
Johnson would have been more principled had he blocked Samaritan Purse's trucks at the Holland Tunnel upon arrival.  That stance would have been bold, albeit ugly.
• 
But accepting this group's aid for one month and then telling them to scram is just plain mercenary.
• 
This escapes Johnson.  Rather than thank these volunteers for serving 333 New Yorkers, some of whom might be gay, the openly gay Johnson bullies these good Samaritans like the bigot that he is.
• 
Samaritan Purse's Franklin Graham takes all of this remarkably in stride: "We were there to save lives.  We weren't there to argue with people."
      President Trump: Genteel?  No.  A conservative juggernaut?  Yes  (JWR 02/28/2020)
• 
Eastwood, 89, told ... that he liked "certain things that Trump's done," but wishes the president behaved "in a more genteel way."
• 
Yes, Trump should use Twitter more selectively.  And his name-calling often is counterproductive.
• 
But it is baffling for Eastwood to abandon Trump, whom he backed in 2016, because the filmmaker wants a "more genteel" president.
• 
Political gentility sounds lovely, but it must be a two-way street.
• 
Eastwood and others who share his concerns crave gentility, even as Democrats and their Left-wing media allies call Trump a black-hating white-nationalist who ... "could arguably be worse than Hitler."
• 
Even worse, at least eight artists have depicted, by turns, Trump's stabbing, shooting, rape, and decapitation.
• 
How genteel!
• 
The Trump-hating Left also displays its gentility by violently attacking conservatives and Trump supporters.
• 
Conservatives tried "genteel" with Mitt Romney, Baby Bush, and Daddy Bush.
• 
These "genteel" Republicans either lost to tougher Democrats or knuckled under and became their butlers: They brought Democrats fresh social programs, delivered piles of domestic spending, imposed new regulations, and adopted new entitlements.
• 
In a land of inescapable tradeoffs, Americans should focus on President Trump's public policy.
• 
If so, they will see a tough, energetic, and focused leader who delivers what conservatives and free-marketeers want, 90 percent of the time: Tax cuts, deregulation, energy independence, constitutionalist judges, dead terrorists, and more.
• 
As for the other 10 percent, Trump raised import taxes.  But now, they're yielding to new-and-improved trade deals with China, Mexico, Canada, South Korea, Japan, and — in production — the UK and India.
• 
Social spending is too high, but that was Democrats' ransom for freeing vital defense outlays.
• 
Trump should have driven harder bargains here, but he chose national security over fiscal discipline.
• 
Is having a 90-percent conservative president worth the trade-off in occasional Twitter outbursts and grade-school name-calling?
• 
I say: Hell, yes!
• 
Too bad all of this has eluded the Genteel Caucus, led by Clint Eastwood.
• 
See related Shakesperian Actors (Glenn McCoy, 06/21/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Which One? (Mike Lester, 06/13/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Gets Me Where I Want (Michael Ramirez, 02/25/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Trump Senate trial — Democrat impeachment managers voted AGAINST military aid to Ukraine  (Fox 01/27/2020)
• 
"If the president cared about national security, he would not have blocked military assistance to a vulnerable strategic ally in the attempt to secure personal political favor for himself," said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.
• 
"We will show that he betrayed vital national interests, specifically our national security, by withholding diplomatic support and military aid from Ukraine."
• 
President Trump's conduct "was inconsistent with and diverged from American national security and American values," according to Representative Zoe Lofgren of California.
• 
"Those within the U.S.  government responsible for America's security and for shaping and implementing U.S.  foreign policy were caught off guard by the president's decision.  Support for the aid and against the hold was unanimous, forceful, and unwavering."
• 
"Ukraine remains at war with Russia," Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York wept.  "It desperately needs our support."
• 
So, given how pivotal these Democrats say Ukraine is to America's national security — a virtual lynchpin of this republic's survival — surely these members of Congress did everything within their power to speed military aid to Ukraine.
• 
Not so fast, Jerrold, Zoe, and Hakeem!
• 
In fact, Nadler, Lofgren, and Jeffries are working tirelessly to dislodge President Trump for delaying aid to Ukraine when they themselves voted to stop such relief, dead in its tracks.
• 
On July 26, 2018, all three voted against the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, which included $250 million in security assistance to Ukraine.
• 
Despite Lofgren's assertions to the contrary, such funds turned out not to be "unanimous, forceful, and unwavering," with Lofgren herself among those undermining the very same unanimity that she ballyhoos.
• 
In its time of need, these three impeachment managers told Ukraine to go to Hell.
• 
Even worse, Nadler opposed $300 million in aid to Ukraine when he voted against the Fiscal Year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act.
• 
Astonishingly, Nadler's vote was on December 11, 2019, two days after he chaired a Judiciary Committee impeachment hearing and exactly one week before he was the House floor manager for the December 17 debate and December 18 votes on articles of impeachment.
• 
If Ukraine is a necessary condition for America's national security — so much so that President Trump's hold on this aid triggered Nadler to co-direct the effort to pry him from office — why didn't Nadler join 188 of his Democrat colleagues and vote Yea?
• 
All told, Nadler resisted $550 million in sorely needed military assistance to Kiev.
• 
This races past hypocrisy.  Rather, it's shocking, outrageous, and disgusting.
• 
Finally, while these three impeachment managers spurned this relief, President Trump on September 11 released to Ukraine the $391 million at issue, after a 55-day interval to confirm that newly elected President Volodymyr Zelensky would keep his anti-corruption promises, rather than re-direct these U.S.  taxpayer funds, say, to a numbered account in the Grand Caymans.
• 
The backing that President Trump transmitted, 19 days before the September 30 legal deadline, included Javelin missiles — perfect for the high-speed recycling of Russian tanks into white-hot scrap metal.
• 
In contrast, Democrat deity Obama sent Ukraine pillows, blankets, and hot cocoa.
• 
And President Trump is the bad guy here?
      Do it, Dems — but be prepared  (JWR 12/20/2019)
• 
House Democrats finally impeached President Donald J.  Trump.  Senate Republicans now need to make the Democrats' victory as Pyrrhic as possible.
• 
To add insult to impeachment, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ... is sitting on the paperwork that would trigger a Senate trial.
• 
This basically would leave President Trump indicted but unable to defend himself.
• 
Regardless, Senate Republicans inexplicably could turn the other cheek.
• 
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ... and Judiciary Chairman Lindsay Graham ... have signaled that they want a brief trial, with few if any witnesses or perhaps just a motion to dismiss, which could conclude this matter in mere hours.
• 
Big mistake.
• 
Hurried Senate action will lower the price of Democrats' divisive, 100-percent hyper-partisan charade to that of a game of ding-dong-dash
• 
If the Senate GOP does not make Democrats pay, big time, for their impeachment outrage, they will inflict this on the next Republican who dares to defeat their nominee.
• 
Democrats need to suffer serious consequences for what they frivolously imposed on America.
• 
It's time for them to endure the unmasking of their sordid, corrupt, international effort to torpedo Trump, since his candidacy.
• 
... witnesses likely will confirm that President Trump had legitimate reasons to suspect Ukrainian corruption, including intervention in 2016.
• 
Such testimony would justify his asking President Zelensky to investigate these shenanigans.
• 
If impeachment is all benefit and no cost for Democrats, why shouldn't they impeach every Republican president — including impeaching Trump again, as some Democrat zealots have suggested.
• 
If Republicans expect any credit for finishing this swiftly, "to spare America more grief and move on," they are sadly mistaken.
• 
Here is the sheet music from which Democrats and their liberal-media bootblacks will sing, should GOP senators adopt a quick motion to dismiss:
• 
"Republicans perpetrated the ultimate cover up!  The GOP-led jury acquitted Trump even before the trial started.  Servile Republican Senators reflexively do whatever Trump wants.  How sad that the thoughtful party of Ronald Reagan has become Trump's brain-dead slave ship."
• 
Since Republicans will get kicked in the teeth, no matter what, they might as well wipe the stupid grins from Democrats' faces.
• 
Senator Graham has argued that the Judiciary Committee will get to the bottom of this and hold the guilty to account.
• 
Yeah, right.
• 
Just like Judiciary did with those who falsely accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual harassment and gang rape.  How is that probe going?
• 
Instead, Republicans should follow the advice of Senator John Kennedy ... As he said ... "If they want a trial, by G od, we're going to have a trial."
      Joe Biden’s actions on Ukraine reek of extortion and obstruction of justice  (Fox 09/25/2019)
• 
The roaring controversy over President Trump, former Vice President Joe Biden, and their respective actions toward Ukraine sorely lacks some key language: the word "extortion" and the phrase "obstruction of justice."
• 
Hunter Biden reportedly earned some $50,000 per month for his services, although he had no expertise in gas production and didn't know Ukraine from Utah.
• 
He was experienced, however, in being the son of the vice president of the United States who, as luck would have it, "was serving as the Obama administration's point man on relations with Ukraine and rooting out bureaucratic corruption."
• 
"I was supposed to announce that there was another billion-dollar loan guarantee," the former vice president explained ... per the CFR's transcript.
• 
"And I had gotten a commitment from Poroshenko and from [then-Prime Minister Arseniy] Yatsenyuk that they would take action against the state prosecutor.  And they didn't."
• 
"I said, ‘I'm telling you, you're not getting the billion dollars,'" Biden continued.
• 
"I said, ‘You're not getting the billion.  I'm going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours.' I looked at them and said: ‘I'm leaving in six hours.  If the prosecutor is not fired, you're not getting the money.' Well, son of a b****.  (Laughter.) He got fired."
• 
Biden's actions reek of extortion and obstruction of justice.
• 
And President Trump is the bad guy?
• 
... just-announced impeachment inquiry — is fueled by merely an echo of a whistle.  In other words, hearsay.
• 
Conversely, Biden's incriminating words were neither overheard nor just transcribed.
• 
In fact, he said this on camera at an on-the-record CFR meeting.
• 
Video tape exists of Biden boasting about securing the dismissal of the man who was probing his son's possible graft.
• 
So, apparently it's a potentially impeachable offense for President Trump to raise Biden's possible obstruction of justice in a conversation with Ukrainian President Zelensky...
• 
Meanwhile, it's perfectly OK that the former vice president, as he personally crowed, blackmailed then-President Poroshenko into firing the top prosecutor who was investigating Hunter Biden's possible graft.
• 
Successfully sacking one's son's prosecutor via extortion: This is the textbook definition of obstruction of justice.
• 
... like a guy with a red-rubber nose and giant, floppy shoes who screams "STOP CLOWNING AROUND!" the Democrats, yet again, are doing what they do best: psychological projection.
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      Joe Rogan and the Freedom of Speech  (JWR 02/14/2022)
• 
"If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." — John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)...
• 
... the First Amendment only insulates speech from the government's reach.  It does not insulate it from private reach.  Stated differently, if your speech offends the government, today it cannot sue or prosecute you.
• 
But, if you work for a private entity, your boss can punish you for speech that transgresses regulations in the workplace.
• 
Is there a right not to be offended?  Of course not.  The freedom of speech, however, is a natural right.  It comes from within each of us.
• 
Its essence is that individuals have a natural right to think as we wish and say what we think and listen to whomever we choose, and we don't need the approval of the government or a consensus of the loudest.
• 
Freedom thrives on the clash and free flow of ideas.  Since 1969, we have succeeded in keeping the government out of the business of censoring and punishing speech; now we must keep the mob out.
• 
The Natural Law insulates the exercise of our rights from all incursions, not just the government.
      Perilous Times  (JWR 01/24/2022)
• 
These are perilous times.  They are made worse by the government's political reaction to lawless behavior, which is a greater threat to personal liberty than the behavior it seeks to punish.
• 
Last week, the feds obtained an indictment of 11 members of the Oath Keepers for their role in trashing the Capitol building and attempting to interfere with the functions of government on Jan.  6, 2021.
• 
The evidence of their guilt of trashing and obstruction is manifest.  The hooligans who invaded the Capitol were lawless by any rational standard.  But did they really agree to overthrow the government by force?
• 
The history of British monarchs staying on their inherited thrones is the history of the suppression of dissent.  The favorite tool for suppression was charging dissidents with treason.  Treason was whatever threatened the government's stability from the perspective of the government.
• 
The framers of the U.S.  Constitution were familiar with this history and sought to prohibit its repetition in America.  They did so by defining treason in the Constitution.
• 
"Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort."
• 
Treason is the only crime defined in the Constitution.  James Madison, who drafted the Constitution, insisted that the definition of treason be in the founding document so that neither Congress nor the president could manipulate it to their own ends as British monarchs and parliaments had done.
• 
Not deterred by the constitutional language they had sworn to uphold, the federalist Congress and President John Adams crafted a substitute crime in 1798 and called it sedition.
• 
It made criminal any "false, scandalous or malicious writings against the government of the United States."
• 
This was intended to suppress dissent, and evade the high bar established in the Constitution for proving treason.
• 
Thus, the same generation — in some cases, the same human beings — that had just written in the First Amendment that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech" did just that.
• 
And they used it to prosecute their political opponents, including infamously, Rep.  Matthew Lyon of Vermont who mocked President Adams' waistline.
• 
The Federalists were so accustomed to the use of this tyrannical tool that a lame duck federalist Congress and President Adams repealed it after Thomas Jefferson was elected president and while the anti-Federalists were waiting to assume control of Congress, lest it be used by the incoming government against them.
• 
In 1918, President Woodrow Wilson offered legislation to suppress dissent during World War I, and Congress enacted it.
• 
The socialist firebrand Eugene V.  Debs was convicted of sedition, a conviction upheld by the Supreme Court, for publicly denouncing the war.
• 
The statute under which Debs and others were convicted is essentially the same statute under which the Oath Keepers were indicted last week.  It also prohibits any conspiracy to overthrow the government by force.
• 
A conspiracy is an agreement by two or more persons to commit a crime, where at least one of those persons took a material step in furtherance of the agreement.
• 
But the essence of conspiracy consists of constitutionally protected behavior — speech and thought, and that makes it legally dubious and practically difficult for the government to prove.
• 
The Oath Keepers have insisted that they never intended to use violence and only wanted to make a political point — a point that the government hates.
• 
Prosecuting speech is dangerous business.  Violence is certainly not constitutionally protected, but hate speech is.
• 
Even the feds don't claim that the Oath Keeper defendants are somehow criminally liable for the behavior of others present at the Capitol.  Rather, they claim that 11 persons — 11!  — agreed to overthrow the government by force.
• 
The government should prosecute only crimes that have caused harm, not words and ideas that it hates, for they are protected by the First Amendment that the government has sworn to uphold.
• 
Whose words and ideas will the feds prosecute next?
      Voluntary Servitude  (JWR 09/27/2021)
• 
Can the president compel employers to enforce a federal program at their own expense?  In a word: No.  The 13th Amendment prohibits involuntary servitude.
• 
Compelling persons and entities to work against their will and without just compensation is the definition of involuntary servitude, otherwise known by its more descriptive name — slavery.
• 
One can see the utter disregard the Biden administration has for constitutional norms.  It wants the president, not Congress, to write rules of personal and corporate behavior.  It wants the Department of Labor, not the courts, to be judge and jury when those rules are disregarded.
• 
It wants private persons and entities to work for the federal government against their will and with no compensation, in violation of the 13th Amendment.
• 
All this can happen only if we let it.  But, because the 13th Amendment only prohibits involuntary servitude, the feds can surely enslave us when we are timid enough to consent.
      Twilight's Last Gleaming  (JWR 09/20/2021)
• 
Government is essentially the negation of liberty.  Liberty is the default position because we are born with our rights.
• 
Some liberty should be negated, like the liberty to harm another's person and property.  It should be negated from all — including the government.
• 
Government is a thief in the night when it takes — rather than protects — liberty or property.
• 
Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government?  Such a question would have been laughable 100 years ago.
• 
But today, the government treats us as if we work for it because we have permitted it to do so.  We supinely let the federal government right any wrong, regulate any behavior, tax any event, start any war, kill any foe, seize any property and crush any liberty as if our rights came from it, and as if the Constitution had no meaning or authority.
• 
This is the same government that can't deliver the mail, fill potholes, stop robocalls, spend within its means, abide by the laws that it has written or follow the Constitution — and Biden wants it to force vaccinate us!
• 
All modern presidents have misunderstood their obligations under the Constitution.  From Wilson to Biden, they have argued that their first job is to keep us safe.
• 
That obligation is self-assumed.  Their first job under the Constitution is to keep us free.  Even if the government keeps us safe but unfree, we have the duty to alter or abolish it.
• 
The alternative is the twilight of freedom and the coming age of voluntary servitude.
      Do We Still Have the Constitution?  (JWR 08/16/2021)
• 
We need resistance to tyranny in order to stay free.  Power unresisted continues to grow and to corrupt.
• 
History teaches that most people prefer the illusion of safety to the cacophony of liberty.
• 
The only reason we have civil liberties today is because generations of determined minorities — starting with the revolutionaries in the 1770s — have fought for them.
• 
Today, we are governed by dangerous people who are again threatening to take away our ability to make personal choices, and to use force to compel compliance.
• 
In doing that, they will not only have violated their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights; they also will have committed the criminal acts of nullifying our rights.
• 
We must remind them that by using the powers of state governments to do this, they will make themselves candidates for federal criminal prosecutions when saner days return.
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: COVID's lasting lesson – we can never take liberty for granted  (Fox 06/03/2021)
• 
"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." — Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826).
• 
No one knows if President Thomas Jefferson personally uttered those words.  They have been widely attributed to him, but they don't appear in any of his writings.
• 
If he did not literally utter them, he uttered the sentiments they offer.  They remind us not to take liberty for granted.
• 
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution presume that our liberties are natural and cannot be suppressed or taken away by the government absent due process.
• 
Are the governments we have established morally legitimate?  They are when they have, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, the consent of the governed, and when they defend our liberties.  Absent consent and defense of liberty, government is not legitimate.
• 
Jefferson argued that government exists only to secure our rights.  When it fails to protect our rights, or when it destroys our property, we have the right to alter and abolish it.
• 
These principles of personal liberty in a free society were mocked and attacked by the government during the recent pandemic, and most folks went along with it.
• 
How, in a land made prosperous by rugged individualism and personal sacrifice, not by government, did the people become sheep when their governors — without legal authority and in utter defiance of constitutional guarantees that they swore to uphold — signed orders that purported to deny the right to worship, work, travel, assemble peaceably and use private property as one sees fit?
• 
Why did so many folks who believe in personal liberty accept these illegal orders and cave to them?  Why did we wear medically useless masks on our faces when we, not the government, own our faces?  Why did we allow the government to close lawful businesses?  Why did police and prosecutors break their oaths to defend the Constitution in deference to these gubernatorial power grabs?
• 
The same Constitution that restrains the federal and state governments from curtailing fundamental liberties also guarantees those liberties.
• 
Stated differently, the 14th Amendment — which imposes the guarantees of the Bill of Rights on the states and prohibits the states from impairing those guarantees — also enables Congress to intervene when states fail to uphold basic, fundamental, constitutionally protected rights.
• 
Did the feds come to the rescue of any of us in beleaguered states where our liberties were curtailed by executive decree?  They did not.
• 
Did the courts, whose principal role is to apply and enforce the Constitution, invalidate the unlawful commands of governors or curtail the unconstitutional prosecutions of those who had the courage to defy them?  They did not.
• 
Did any legislative body — state or federal — use its powers to write laws to invalidate the unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral orders of governors?  They did not.
• 
The core thread running through all this is fear.  Fear of sickness and death.  Fear of bucking the tide.  Fear of exercising personal liberty.  Fear that the government might be right.
• 
The public took for granted that the governors actually had the authority they claimed they had and actually could become dictators in a crisis of fear — a crisis they created.
• 
Now that this is for the most part behind us, the question arises: Why did we let this happen?
• 
It happened because we take liberty for granted.  We repose the Constitution for safekeeping in the hands of men and women who, in the eternal conflict of personal liberty versus governmental power, side with power.
• 
What kind of a society is ours?  You can go to jail for fishing or barbering without a license, but if you are a governor, you can crush the liberty of millions and destroy the property of thousands with impunity.
• 
The next time this happens, will we cave, or will we resist?
• 
See related Now Giddyup! (Chip Bok, 01/01/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: The tyranny of the majority  (Fox 04/08/2021)
• 
"Which is better — to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or three thousand tyrants one mile away?" — Rev.  Mather Blyes (1706-1788)
• 
Does it really matter if the instrument curtailing liberty is a monarch or a popularly elected legislature?  This conundrum, along with the witty version of it put to a Boston crowd in 1775 by the little-known colonial-era preacher ... addresses the age-old question of whether liberty can survive in a democracy.
• 
Blyes was a loyalist, who, along with about one-third of the American adult white male population in 1776, opposed the American Revolution and favored continued governance by Great Britain.
• 
He didn't fight for the king or agitate against George Washington's troops, he merely warned of the dangers of too much democracy.
• 
No liberty-minded thinker I know of seriously argues today in favor of a hereditary monarchy, but many of us are fearful of an out-of-control hybrid democracy, which is what we have in America today.
• 
I say "hybrid" because, there remains in our federal structure a few safeguards against run-away democracy such as, the equal state representation in the Senate, the Electoral College, the state control of federal elections and life-tenured federal judges and justices.
• 
... the Senate as originally crafted did not consist of popularly elected senators.  Rather, they were appointed by state legislatures to represent the sovereign states as states, not the people in them.
• 
Part of James Madison's genius was the construction of the federal government as a three-sided table.  The first side stood for the people — the House of Representatives.  The second side stood for the sovereign states — the Senate.  And the third side stood for the nation-state — the presidency.  The judiciary, whose prominent role today was unthinkable in 1789, was not part of this mix.
• 
In his famous Bank Speech, Madison argued eloquently against legislation chartering a national bank because the authority to create a bank was not only not present in the Constitution but also was retained by the states and reserved to them by the Tenth Amendment.
• 
In that speech, he warned the creeping expansion of the federal government would trample the powers of the states and also the unenumerated rights of the people that the Ninth Amendment — his pride and joy because it protected natural rights — prohibited the government from denying or disparaging.
• 
Had Madison been alive during the presidency of the anti-Madison Woodrow Wilson — who gave us World War I, the Federal Reserve, the administrative state and the federal income tax — he would have recoiled at a president destroying the three-sided table.
• 
Wilson did that by leading the campaign to amend the Constitution so as to provide for the direct popular election of senators.
• 
Nor would Madison have stomached the efforts today by liberal Democrats to amend the Constitution to provide for the direct popular election of the president.
• 
Part of Madison's genius was to craft anti-democratic elements into the Constitution.  And some of them — like retaining state sovereignty — created laboratories of liberty.
• 
Ronald Reagan reminded the American public in his first inaugural address that the states formed the federal government, not the other way around.
• 
Reagan also famously said that we could vote with our feet.  If you don't like the over-the-top regulations in Massachusetts, you can move to New Hampshire.  If you are fed up with the highest state taxes in the union in New Jersey, you can move to Pennsylvania.
• 
But the more state sovereignty the feds absorb — the more state governance that is federalized — the fewer differences there are among the regulatory and taxing structures of the states.
• 
If Congress wants to regulate an area of human behavior that is clearly beyond its constitutional competence, it bribes the states to do so with borrowed or Federal Reserve-created cash.
• 
The states are partly to blame for this as well.  They take whatever cash Congress offers and they accept the strings that come with it.  And they, too, are tyrants.
• 
Blyes feared a government of 3,000.  Today, the feds employ close to 3 million.  Thomas Jefferson warned that when the federal treasury becomes a federal trough, and the people recognize it as such, they would only send to Washington politicians — faithless to the Constitution — who promise to bring home the most cash.
• 
And the majority will take whatever it wants from the minority that cherishes limited government, private property and personal liberty.
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: Who will keep our liberties safe?  (Fox 03/25/2021)
• 
What if liberty and democracy are opposites?  What if the principle underlying liberty is to restrain the government to maximize individual autonomy?  What if the principle underlying democracy is to unleash the government to give the people whatever they want?
• 
What if personal liberty is an individual birthright because we are created in the image and likeness of God?  What if just as God is perfectly free, we are perfectly free?  What if our personal liberties are integral to our humanity?
• 
What if personal freedom — which we are free to abuse — is God's greatest gift, after life itself?  What if, without freedom, we would not be fully human but subservient to whomever or whatever took our freedoms away or persuaded us to surrender them?
• 
What if government is essentially the negation of liberty?  What if some liberties should be negated?  What if those liberties that should be negated consist of the liberty to violate the natural rights of others by taking their lives, liberties and properties?
• 
What if government does this every day because it wants to tell us how to live?  What if no one consented to a government that takes property and freedom from the people it governs?
• 
What if the right to worship or not, to think as you wish, say what you think, to publish what you say, to associate — or not — with whomever you choose, to defend yourself using the same means as the government and bad guys, to enjoy the right to privacy, to keep the government off your property and back and out of your face, to travel wherever and whenever, to engage in commercial intercourse on private property freely and without the need for government permission are natural, personal rights that no government — whether by edict, legislation or referendum — can morally dismiss or discard?
• 
What if democracy offers the government tools to take our personal liberty and private property?  What if, under a democracy, the government grows and liberty shrinks?
• 
What if that's because the democratic government desperately wants to stay in power, and in order to do so, it takes wealth from some and gives it to others?  What if those from whom it takes wealth never consented to the takings?
• 
What if, in a democracy, the public treasury has turned into a public trough?  What if, in a democracy, those in power find ways around laws intended to limit their power?  What if the government is essentially the judge of its own powers?
• 
What if no matter which party is in power, the government acts as if it can right any wrong, regulate any behavior, tax any event, and insinuate itself into any controversy — whether authorized by the Constitution or not?
• 
What if the Constitution is the supreme law of the land?  What if it was written to establish the government and to limit it?  What if its amendments expressly guarantee that the government shall not interfere with the exercise of natural rights?  What if the government does so anyway?
• 
What if the government's excuse is always emergency or safety?  What if it promises during "an emergency" that it will bring safety in return for a surrender of liberty?
• 
What if the Ninth Amendment commands that the government may not deny or disparage natural rights, no matter the emergency?
• 
What if this liberty-for-safety-in-an-emergency offer is the Devil's bargain?  What if surrendering liberty does not lead to safety but only more government?
• 
What if — since liberty is a personal birthright — you can surrender your own liberty but you cannot your neighbor's?  What if the government takes liberty whether voluntarily surrendered or not?
• 
What if the theory of the Constitution is that the states voluntarily surrendered some of their sovereign powers to the federal government so that it can address federal issues that are spelled out in the Constitution?
• 
What if the theory of state sovereignty is that the people in each state voluntarily surrendered some personal liberty in return for the protection of natural rights?
• 
What if the only liberty surrendered is the liberty to impair the natural rights of others?
• 
What if no rational person has surrendered to government the liberty to walk the streets, to go to work, to operate and patronize lawful businesses and to control absolutely one's own face?
• 
What if the Fifth Amendment commands that the government cannot take property rights without paying the owner their fair market value?
• 
What if the government and its friends in the media have scared the daylights out of hundreds of millions of Americans so that they will peacefully surrender their rights and livelihoods during the government's emergency, and thus bring about the government's version of safety?
• 
What if state legislatures are utterly without power to interfere with our daily choices in the name of emergency and safety?  What if those same state legislatures cannot give to governors powers that they do not have?
• 
What if all the COVID-19 restrictions on personal autonomy directly defy the Constitution?  What if the government doesn't care?
• 
What if millions who lost personal autonomy don't care because they have accepted the Devil's bargain that somehow voluntary servitude will bring them temporary health and safety?
• 
What if they have forgotten about the safety of their personal liberties?
• 
What if democracy and liberty can only co-exist when the government is faithful to the Constitution?
• 
What if the history of American government is its infidelity to the Constitution?
• 
What if liberty taken or surrendered is not returned?
• 
What will we do about it?
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: Merrick Garland, the Justice Department and the coming war on privacy  (Fox 03/18/2021)
• 
Expect the next legislative step to be proposals that impose the legal obligation to report suspicious activities — and the failure to do would be a crime.
• 
This would turn the U.S.  into East Germany where thousands were prosecuted for failure to report their neighbors, friends and family; and thousands more suffered from prosecutions based on false reports.
• 
The government loves to give the impression that it has caught bad guys before they struck, thereby keeping us safe.  Don't believe it.
• 
The government's first task is to keep us free.  But when it violates the Constitution, it keeps us neither safe nor free.
• 
Who will keep us safe from the government?
      Silencing free speech — when the First Amendment is not enforced, this can happen  (Fox 03/04/2021)
• 
"In short, we do not need good laws to restrain bad men.  We need good men to restrain bad laws." — G.K.  Chesterton (1874-1936)
• 
Last week produced news about the suppression of speech on university campuses.  There, the suppression usually occurs through the power of intimidation before the speech is given.
• 
Yet, most public lectures on college campuses are public accommodations, meaning the landowner — the university — cannot bar the entry of audience members because of their political views, nor can it silence the speakers because of theirs.
• 
Ordinarily, the owner of private property can impose whatever regulations he wishes upon those who voluntarily come upon his land.
• 
But in our era of ubiquitous government, state legislatures have enacted laws that require that if you invite the public, you must take whoever shows up.
• 
And if you accept money from the state or the feds — and there are only a handful of colleges and universities that do not — you must abide the same First Amendment standards as the government.
• 
In the latter case, since the government cannot discriminate on the basis of ideas, then colleges or universities that accept funds from the government likewise cannot.
• 
The theory here is that the government's funds — dollars taken from taxpayers or money the government has borrowed, to be repaid by future taxpayers — ought not be used indirectly in ways that the Constitution bars the government from using directly.
• 
But the First Amendment is rarely enforced on college campuses today because colleges have largely become places of left-wing orthodoxy where it is acceptable to cajole or intimidate into silence speakers who are at odds with that orthodoxy.
• 
The usual excuse is the speaker will outrage the audience and that would threaten public safety.
• 
Yet, under the First Amendment, where the audience is voluntary, free speech trumps public safety.
• 
This clash happens when people come to public lectures not because they like the lecturer's ideas but because they hate them.
• 
The court held that the government cannot silence a speaker because it fears his words or the audience.
• 
It also held that it is the duty of the government to respect and protect the freedom of speech, not to nullify or avoid it.
• 
... the First Amendment and the natural right to say what you think compel the court to side with liberty, no matter how odious is the speech.
• 
The essence of humanity is personal liberty.  And the essence of government is the negation of liberty.
• 
Which is the greater threat to personal liberty, a speaker who harangues a crowd that came to be harangued or a government that fears free speech and issues edicts about what to say and when to say it?
• 
Will colleges and universities take note of this?  Don't hold your breath.
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: Trump, impeachment and the Constitution  (Fox 02/18/2021)
• 
The Constitution is the supreme law of the land.  It recognizes that we have natural rights that cannot be interfered with by the government absent due process.
• 
But its vitality as a guarantor of liberty is only as durable and reliable as is the fidelity to it of those in whose hands we have reposed it for safekeeping.
• 
Is the Constitution in good hands?  It is not.  In defiance of the Constitution, its keepers permit political prosecutions, suppressions of speech, thefts of liberty, invasions of privacy and the slaughter of innocents in the womb.
• 
These are perilous times.  Our freedoms are hanging by a thread — a thread that its keepers keep weakening.
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: The Supreme Court, Roe v.  Wade and the coming abortion wars  (Fox 02/11/2021)
• 
... there have been rumblings among Democrats to make it more difficult for the Supreme Court to invalidate or permit states to gnaw away at Roe v.  Wade.
• 
Roe v.  Wade is the 1973 Supreme Court opinion that essentially establishes — within the privacy of the patient-physician relationship — the right to choose to abort a baby in the womb.
• 
The opinion holds that during the first trimester of pregnancy, the states have no interest in regulating abortion beyond the health of the mother.  During the second trimester, the states can regulate the procedures used, but they may not ban or interfere with abortions.  During the third trimester, the states may ban or permit abortions.
• 
The Fifth Amendment prevents the federal government — which gives millions a year to Planned Parenthood — from impairing life, liberty and property of people without due process.
• 
The 14th Amendment prohibits the states from impairing life, liberty and property without due process, compels them to treat persons within their borders similarly — what is an unlawful killing for me is an unlawful killing for thee — and compels the states to guarantee privileges and immunities; foremost among which is the right to live.
• 
Coming our way is a massive effort by pro-abortion forces at the state and federal levels to shore up Roe — to insulate it from interference by the Supreme Court — and thereby make abortions more available and, in some states, performed at taxpayer expense.
• 
President Joseph R.  Biden has stated that he wants Congress to enact a statute that will put into positive law the right of every woman to kill her unborn child at any time, irrespective of what various states have enacted to preserve the lives of unborn children.
• 
Is the baby in the womb a person?  Biden does not want to answer that question.  I don't know how conversant he is in philosophy or constitutional law, or common sense, but he won't go near this.
• 
Last week, the Senate defeated a measure that would have protected the lives of babies who survive abortions.  ... The Senate vote was not only humanly repulsive — it permitted the states to permit the mother and the abortionist to let the surviving baby die — it violated the obligation of the government to uphold the Constitution.
• 
Is the baby in the womb a person?  Of course, she is.  The baby has human parents, and her body contains all the genomic materials to grow into human childhood and adulthood.
• 
The denial of personhood to babies in the womb is akin to the judicial denial of personhood to Blacks before the Civil War.
• 
In the very essence of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that our right to life is inalienable.
• 
The right to live is the highest right there is.  Any society that can impair the right to live by declaring any groups to be nonpersons has rejected the self-evident concepts of right and wrong and cannot long endure.
• 
Negating personhood is the most dangerous thing the government can do.  It is a one-way slippery slope.  Whose personhood will the government negate next?
• 
See related St. Joe the Devout (Mike Shelton, 01/26/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      The abuse of the Fourth Amendment and the consequences of that abuse  (Fox 02/04/2021)
• 
"The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness.  They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings, and of his intellect.  They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things.  They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations.  They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone — the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by civilized men." Justice Louis D.  Brandeis (1856-1941)
• 
When Justice Louis D.  Brandeis referred to the right to privacy as "the right to be let alone," it was 1928.
• 
The issue in the case was whether the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of searches and seizures without a warrant issued by a judge based on probable cause of crime includes surveillance.
• 
It would be 39 years before the Supreme Court accepted Brandeis' dissent as properly encapsulating the understanding of the framers when it characterized surveillance as a search.
• 
Stated differently, the language in the Fourth Amendment, which unambiguously prohibits the government from engaging in warrantless searches and seizures, was not interpreted so as to characterize government surveillance as a search until 1967, when the Supreme Court accepted Brandeis' rationale.
• 
Since then, it is commonplace that the government needs a warrant to engage in surveillance.  The warrant is a constitutional bulwark against fishing expeditions, and it requires the courts to defer to privacy.
• 
... the Defense Intelligence Agency — an arm of the Pentagon and one of 16 federal entities that spies on Americans — acknowledged publicly that it uses commercial software to monitor the movements and conversations of those on whom it has chosen to spy.  And because it does so without warrants, it spies on whomever it wishes.
• 
It claims that the language of the Fourth Amendment — which protects the right of all people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects — only restrains law enforcement and does not restrain the balance of the government.
• 
Yet, the whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is to recognize that personal liberty stems from our humanity.
• 
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he referred to our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable from our human nature, and as gifts of the Creator.
• 
The Bill of Rights, too, articulates that our rights are natural.  The Ninth Amendment expressly commands that the enumeration of certain rights — such as the freedoms of religion, speech and press — shall not be construed by any government to deny or disparage other rights retained by the people.
• 
Among the rights retained by the people — never given away to the states or the federal government — and thus protected by the Ninth Amendment, and since 1967 by the Fourth, is the right to privacy.
• 
Brandeis understood that true happiness can only come from the exercise of personal liberty, and James Madison understood this when he wrote the Fourth Amendment.
• 
This understanding, as recognized by the courts today, is that the right to privacy protects intellectual activities, beliefs, thoughts, emotions, sensations, and private communications about them.
• 
Who could be happy under a state of surveillance?  Privacy is natural — there are things we all do that are none of the government's business.
• 
Surveillance is totalitarian.  It is the manifestation of the tyrant's wish to know all about a potential opponent.
• 
The whole purpose of the Bill of Rights is to keep the government at bay — off the people's backs, as Justice William O.  Douglas wrote — thereby protecting our natural state of freedom so that we can pursue happiness.
• 
The Declaration of Independence underscores, and the Bill of Rights protects, the right to pursue happiness for individuals, not for governments.
• 
Who can be happy while being observed by the government?  A watched person changes behavior and loses liberty on account of being watched.
• 
The liberty to make unfettered choices, the right to shake a metaphorical fist in the tyrant's face, the personal power to ignore what the government expects are all dissipated.
• 
A watched person hesitates to exercise freedom.  The more the government gets away with surveillance without warrants, the more people will accept the servitude it brings.
• 
Personal freedom is the unfettered power to exercise natural rights without the approval of the government or the consent of any other person.  It is the means to happiness.
• 
Yet, because we live in a society in which we need the government's permission to do nearly anything, is it any wonder that the government wants to know everything about us?
• 
The government that spies continuously has large ears and insatiable eyes.  And on its face there is no smile.
• 
See related What Are YOU Looking at? (Glenn McCoy, 03/16/2015) cartoon from Government picture album
      Judge Andrew P.  Napolitano: Free speech, the First Amendment and our modern tech-filled world  (Fox 01/21/2021)
• 
The speech we love needs no protection.  The speech we hate does.  The government has no authority to evaluate speech.
• 
As the framers understood, all people have a natural right to think as we wish and to say and publish whatever we think.
• 
Even hateful, hurtful and harmful speech is protected speech.
• 
Yet, in perilous times, such as the present, we have seen efforts to use the courts to block the publication of unflattering books.
• 
We have seen state governors use the police to protect gatherings of protestors with whose message they agreed and to disburse critical protestors.
• 
We have seen mobs silence speakers while the police did nothing.
• 
And in perilous times, such as the present, we have seen Big Tech companies silencing their opponents.  I hate when they do that, but they have every right to do so.  They own the bulletin board.
• 
Twitter and Facebook can ban any speech they want because they are not the government.  And the First Amendment only restrains the government.  In the constitutional sense, free speech means only one thing — free from government interference.
• 
Punishing speech is the most dangerous business because there will be no end.  The remedy for hateful or threatening speech is not silence or punishments; it is more speech — speech that challenges the speaker.
• 
Why do government officials want to silence their opponents?  They fear an undermining of their power.  The dissenters might make more appealing arguments than they do.
• 
St.  Augustine taught that nearly all in government want to tell others how to live.  How about we all say whatever we want and the government leaves us alone?
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: What if the government has it wrong?  (Fox 05/21/2020)
• 
What if the government has it wrong — on the medicine and the law?
• 
What if there are as many credible scientists and physicians who disagree with the government as those who agree with it?
• 
What if the government chooses to listen only to scientists and physicians who would tell it what it wanted to hear?
• 
What if the government silences scientists and physicians, and even fires one, who attempt to tell it what it didn't want to hear?
• 
What if the government wants to stoke fear in the populace because mass fear produces mass compliance?  What if individual fear reduces individual immunity?
• 
What if government orders to nursing homes and assisted living facilities to accept the sick and contagious are insane?
• 
What if the government makes health care decisions not on the basis of medicine or human nature but statistics?
• 
What if we'd all be healthier and happier if we make our own choices with our own physicians rather than the government making choices for us?
• 
What if it is un-American for the government to tell you how to care for yourself?  What if it is equally un-American for you to follow the government when it intrudes into your personal choices?
• 
What if the Supreme Court has ruled many times that your health care decisions are private, personal and to be made between you and your physician?
• 
What if the Supreme Court has also ruled many times that your private health care decisions are none of the government's business?
• 
What if we never elected a government to keep us free from all viruses, but we did elect it to keep us free from all tyrants?
• 
What if the government — which can't deliver the mail, fill potholes, stop robocalls, or spend within its income — is the last entity on earth into whose hands we would voluntarily repose our health for safekeeping?
• 
What if the government won't admit that its understanding of science is colored by politics?
• 
What if — according to the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence — government's first duty is to safeguard our rights?
• 
What if there is no legal basis for the government to keep us at home or to close our businesses?
• 
What if the government gave itself the power to interfere with our personal choices?  What if that self-imposed power violates the basic constitutional principle that the government derives its powers from the consent of the governed?
• 
What if the Constitution was written to restrain the government?  What if all in government — local, state and federal — have taken an oath to uphold and comply with the Constitution?
• 
What if these decisions about what is essential and inessential are for individuals — and not for the government — to make?
• 
What if the government makes essential whatever serves its friends, enhances its wealth, maintains its stability and removes obstacles to its exercise of power?
• 
What if the Constitution — with its protections of our rights to make free choices — is an intentional obstacle to governmental power?
• 
What if America's founders and the Constitution's framers chose liberty over safety?  What if the government doesn't like that choice?  What if the government only nominally endorses it?
• 
What if — when the pandemic is over — the government remains tyrannical?
• 
What if we nullify the government that has nullified our rights?
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Coronavirus crisis — Does America still have a Constitution?  (Fox 05/07/2020)
• 
I have been taking some heat from friends and colleagues for my steadfast defense of personal liberties and my arguments that the Constitution — when interpreted in accordance with the plain meaning of its words, and informed by history — does not permit the government to infringe upon personal freedoms, no matter the emergency or pandemic.
• 
For those who agree with me, worry not.  We will persevere.  For those who trust the government, worry a lot.  You are not in good hands.
• 
The purpose of the Constitution is to establish the government and to limit it.  Some of the limitations are written in the Constitution itself.  Most of the limitations that pertain to personal freedoms are found in the Bill of Rights — the first 10 amendments.
• 
These amendments were ratified to restrain the federal government from infringing upon personal liberties.
• 
So, the rights to thought, speech, press, assembly, worship, self-defense, privacy, travel, property ownership, interstate commercial activities and fair treatment from government are plainly articulated or rationally inferred in the first eight amendments.
• 
The Ninth is a catchall, which declares that the enumeration of rights in the first eight shall not mean that there are no other rights that are fundamental, and the government shall not disparage those other rights.
• 
The Tenth reflects that the states have reserved powers to themselves.
• 
The Ninth was especially important to its author, James Madison, because of his view that natural rights –- known today as fundamental rights –- are integral to each person, and they are too numerous to list.
• 
In the next century, the anti-slavery crusader Lysander Spooner would explain it thusly: "A man's natural rights are his own, against the whole world; and any infringement of them is equally a crime, whether committed by one man, or by millions; whether committed by one man, calling himself a robber, ... or by millions, calling themselves a government."*
• 
Natural rights collectively constitute the moral ability and sovereign authority of every human being to make personal choices — free from government interference or government permission.
• 
Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence that government derives all its powers from the consent of the governed.
• 
And Madison understood the Ninth Amendment to declare that our personal choices are insulated from government interference so long as their exercise does not impair another's rights.
• 
Do governors have inherent power in an emergency to craft regulations that carry the force of law?  The answer is no.
• 
The Guarantee Clause of the Constitution mandates a republican (lowercase "r" ) form of government in the states.
• 
That means the separation of powers into three branches, each with a distinct function that cannot constitutionally be performed by either of the other two.
• 
Since only a representative legislature can write laws that carry criminal penalties and incur the use of force, the governor of a state cannot constitutionally write laws.
• 
The second constitutional issue is: Can state legislatures delegate away to governors their law-making powers?
• 
Again, the answer is no because the separation of powers prevents one branch of government from ceding to another branch its core powers.
• 
The separation was crafted not to preserve the integrity of each branch but to assure the preservation of personal liberty by preventing the accumulation of too much power in any one branch.
• 
Can a state legislature enact laws that interfere with personal liberties protected by the Bill of Rights, prescribe punishments for violations of those laws and authorize governors to use force to compel compliance?
• 
Again, the answer is no because all government in America is subordinate to the natural rights articulated in the Bill of Rights and embraced in the Ninth Amendment.
• 
We should rejoice that there is resistance to gubernatorial ignorance and arrogance that disregards the Bill of Rights.  We need resistance to tyranny in order to stay free.
• 
Power unresisted continues to grow and to corrupt.  History teaches that most people prefer the illusion of safety to the cacophony of liberty.
• 
The only reason we have civil liberties today is because generations of determined minorities — starting with the revolutionaries in the 1770s — have fought for them.
• 
Today, we are governed by dangerous men and women.  For they have taken away our ability to make personal choices, and they have used force to compel compliance.
• 
In doing that, they have not only violated their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights, they also have committed the criminal acts of nullifying our rights.
• 
By using the powers of state governments to do this, they have made themselves candidates for federal criminal prosecutions when saner days return.
      Judge Andrew Napolitano: Should Trump voluntarily talk to Mueller?  (Fox 08/09/2018)
• 
When federal prosecutors are nearing the end of criminal investigations, they often invite the subjects of those investigations to speak with them.
• 
The soon-to-be defendants are tempted to give their version of events to prosecutors, and prosecutors are looking to take the legal pulse of the subjects of their work.
• 
These invitations should always be declined, but they are not.
• 
Special counsel Robert Mueller — who is investigating President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice, pre-presidential banking irregularities and conspiracy to solicit or receive campaign aid from foreign nationals (the latter is what the media erroneously call collusion) — has made it known ... that he wants to speak to the president.
• 
Should Trump voluntarily speak with Mueller?  In a word: No.
• 
Giuliani wants to limit the subject of questions to the alleged conspiracy between Trump's campaign and Russians.  After all, he argues, this is the stated purpose given by the Department of Justice for starting the special counsel's investigation.
• 
And he wants to limit the number of questions and the time for all questions and answers.  He argues that the president's constitutional obligations transcend the needs of Mueller's probe.
• 
Mueller argues that he has an ethical obligation to follow whatever evidence of criminal behavior lawfully comes into his hands, about the president or his colleagues.
• 
As such, because he does not know in advance what Trump's answers to his questions will be, he cannot consent to any limitations on his follow-up questions.
• 
If I were Giuliani, I would tell Mueller that the negotiations are terminated and the president will not voluntarily sit for an interview with him.  There are paramount and prudential reasons for this.
• 
First, when prosecutors want to talk to a person they are investigating, the talk is intended to help the prosecutors, not the subject of the investigation.  So why should Trump engage in a process that could only help those pursuing him?
• 
Second, the prosecutors know their evidence far better than the president or his legal team possibly could know it, and these prosecutors know how to trip up whomever they are interviewing.
• 
So why should Trump give prosecutors an opportunity to trap him into uttering a falsehood in an environment where doing so can be a criminal act
• 
... President Trump does not use an economy of words.  Experience teaches that the undisciplined use of words by the subject of a criminal investigation is a prosecutor's dream when it takes place in an official inquiry.
• 
It is Giuliani's job to prevent that dream from becoming reality by convincing his client, perhaps through an aggressive mock question-and-answer session conducted by Giuliani himself, that no good for Trump could come from a Mueller interview.
• 
But there is an elephant in the room.  That elephant is a grand jury subpoena.
• 
The Mueller interview is voluntary.  If Trump agreed to it, he would not be under oath, and he could consult with counsel during it.  Also, he could leave it whenever he wished.
• 
A grand jury subpoena compels a person to testify.  The testimony is under oath, takes place without counsel present and can go on for as long as prosecutors and the grand jurors want to question the person.  And they can ask him any questions they want to ask.
• 
Of course, Trump could accept the subpoena and then invoke his Fifth Amendment-protected right to silence.
• 
However, he once publicly said, "If you're innocent, why are you taking the Fifth?"
• 
So such an invocation would be catastrophic politically, but it would legally insulate him from helping Mueller to prosecute him.
• 
Ronald Reagan quipped many times that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help."
• 
Mr.  President, beware of prosecutors bearing invitations.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Trump knows more about dealing with bad guys than Congress, hysterical media combined  (Fox 07/19/2018)
• 
Some in the Democratic Party and some of my colleagues in the media have even accused Trump of treason.  How misunderstanding they are.
• 
For 18 months, Trump has sought to develop a personal relationship with Putin unlike any relationship that any modern American president has had with him or his predecessors.
• 
The Democrats and Republican never-Trumpers doubt Trump's bona fides and even his intellect.
• 
"Who could cut a deal with a monster?" they have bellowed.
• 
Make no mistake; Putin is a monster.
• 
He has invaded Ukraine, bombed rebels in Syria, shored up fanatics in Iran, imprisoned political opponents on false charges and stolen billions from Russian oligarchs and the Russian people.
• 
To this litany of criminality, Trump has wisely asked: How have any of his monstrosities harmed the United States?
• 
Answer: None of this is morally sound, and all of it is profoundly unlawful, but none of it has harmed us.
• 
This realization has led Trump — in defiance of the advice from his own secretary of state, CIA director and national security adviser — to try to understand Putin and to negotiate with him.
• 
There is much to negotiate about.  We want the Russians to stay out of our computers and away from our elections.
• 
We want them to stop trying to reorganize the Middle East.
• 
And we want them to reduce their nuclear and long-range offensive weaponry.  Of course, they want the same from us.
• 
I don't know whether Putin can be reasoned with.  But I believe that if anyone can do it, Donald Trump can.
• 
Negotiations are often fluid.  They take time and patience, as well as threats and flattery, and they cannot be successful under a microscope.
• 
Stated differently, Trump knows how to negotiate, and his skills cannot be assessed midstream — because midstream is often muddy and muddled.
• 
His public praise of Putin and giving moral equivalence to Putin and our intelligence services were not to state truths but to influence Putin's thinking in order to bend Putin's will — eventually — to his own.
• 
But the neocons in Congress will have none of this.  ... They depend on the threats of foreign governments to animate taxpayer funding of their armaments.
• 
So they have jumped on a fluid long-term negotiation at its inception by mocking the president's flattery.
• 
They would have mocked Franklin Roosevelt for calling monstrous Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "Uncle Joe" as he bent him to his will.
• 
We have impatient media that hate the president, a bipartisan majority in Congress beholden to the military-industrial complex, and a president who knows more about negotiating with bad guys than any of them.
• 
And unlike the warmongers, the president is willing to talk to anyone if there is a chance it could result in peace.
• 
President Lyndon B.  Johnson often remarked that there are two things in life you never want to watch being made and only want to see when completed: legislation and sausages.
• 
We should add international peace to that short list.
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      Trump's Senate impeachment trial will likely end in acquittal - that's the right verdict  (Fox 02/03/2020)
• 
Trump did not commit "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors," as the Constitution requires for impeachment.  He was not even accused of any such offense.
• 
Instead, the House's first impeachment article charged that Trump "abused the powers of the Presidency by ignoring and injuring national security and other vital national interests to obtain an improper personal political benefit."
• 
In fact, however, politics-as-usual is an abuse of power for personal political benefit.
• 
Nearly all the politicians accusing President Trump are guilty of it themselves.
• 
They pander to their base, cater to special interests, place party before country, take dark money, horse-trade, collude, siphon taxpayer funds for pork-barrel pet projects, commit gerrymandering to rig elections, flip-flop on issues, misrepresent their records, conceal information, and just plain lie.
• 
"Abuse of power" does not justify the impeachment of President Trump.  If it did, it would impeach virtually every Democratic and Republican elected official in the United States.
• 
The second impeachment article is equally absurd.  It impeaches Trump merely because he resisted impeachment.
• 
Specifically, it charges "obstruction of Congress" because Trump refused requests for information during House impeachment hearings.
• 
Trump did this for two main reasons.
• 
First, the House neglected to duly authorize its own "subpoenas."
• 
Second, the House's impeachment hearings violated due process.
• 
This raises an obvious question: Is the former national security adviser obtaining a personal financial benefit from selling books and making paid speeches while ignoring national security or other vital national interests?
• 
This spectacle-driven impeachment shows how history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce.
• 
First, the impeachment of President Bill Clinton was a tragedy.
• 
Clinton sexually exploited a 22-year old intern inside the Oval Office.
• 
He lied about it under oath, committing perjury – a felony crime punishable with a prison sentence.
• 
Nevertheless, the Senate persisted to keep Clinton in the White House.
• 
Now, the impeachment of President Trump is a farce.  It even started with an inside joke.
• 
For theatrical effect, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., actually opened Congress's impeachment hearing with a comedic routine, delivering a funny impression of President Trump in a prank reenactment of the president's phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• 
Comedian Schiff's parody impeachment hearing begat Congress's parody impeachment articles.
• 
Schiff was even appointed lead impeachment manager so he could stage his show at the Senate impeachment trial.
• 
Tough crowd, the Senate.  It did not laugh at Schiff's show, and on Friday it voted against giving Schiff a do-over with a new season of witness hearings.  That was a wise decision.
• 
By distracting the president from his own job – and hijacking the attention of the public to promote a show trial when there are actual crises facing the nation – Democratic House members abused their power to obtain an improper personal political benefit at the expense of national security and other vital national interests.
• 
This show must not go on.
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      All Americans — including those arrested in the Jan.  6 riots — deserve due process  (Fox 02/10/2022)
• 
The right to due process, enshrined in the Constitution, includes the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one's peers.
• 
Those denied bail or unable to afford it can often be incarcerated for months awaiting trial, during which time they often lose their jobs, face eviction, and have their lives spiral downward — all before ever being convicted of a crime.
• 
In many of my speeches, I shared the heartbreaking story of Kalief Browder, a 16-year-old Black teenager who was accused of stealing a backpack and was incarcerated on Rikers Island for three years without trial.
• 
Two of those years were in solitary confinement.  Kalief was abused by guards and gangs and attempted suicide in prison.
• 
Finally, after Kalief was released, the trauma this teenager had experienced was too much for him to bear, and he ultimately took his own life.
• 
The injustice and tragedy of this case brought prominent progressives such as Kamala Harris together with civil libertarians like myself to call for reform, to insist that the Sixth Amendment guarantee of a speedy trial apply to everyone, regardless of the color of your skin or your socioeconomic status.
• 
I would add today that the Sixth Amendment should apply regardless of your political persuasion.  It is disappointing that progressives today will not apply the same equal justice under the law to the people accused of entering the U.S.  Capitol illegally on Jan.  6, 2021.
• 
During the months of arson, murder and other violence in 2020, Kamala Harris tweeted her support for the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which bailed out a woman charged with murder for stabbing her friend to death as well as a twice-convicted rapist charged with kidnapping and sexual assault.
• 
The protests of 2020 resulted in at least 25 deaths, thousands of injured police, and nearly $2 billion in damage to our cities.
• 
Yet we have heard nothing from Vice President Harris on the Jan.  6 detainees held for nearly a year without trial, some of whom have not been charged with any acts of violence against persons.
• 
Indeed, the sentences for the charges many face would likely fall short of the months they have already been jailed without conviction of a crime.  Many have been held for long periods in solitary confinement.
• 
I worked with Sen.  Cory Booker, D-N.J., to legislatively end solitary confinement for juveniles.  I applauded President Obama when he stepped in to stop this cruelty.
• 
It disturbs me that the outrage from the left seems to be selective.  Where is the ACLU when it comes to the prolonged and inhumane solitary detentions of people accused of crimes on Jan.  6, especially for those who are accused of no violence?
• 
A federal judge stepped in to confirm the abusive jail conditions and yet those on the left fail to lift a finger or pen a word to condemn this injustice.
• 
Their hypocrisy indicates that either they hate these people so much that they now refuse to acknowledge the injustice of prolonged incarceration without trial, or they simply don't care because these citizens are supporters of Donald Trump. 
• 
Many on the right also sit silently in fear of being accused of supporting violence.
• 
I condemned all violent acts on Jan.  6 and continue to do so.  But that does not mean we should destroy the lives of non-violent protesters by deliberately conflating them with the acts of others, denying them bail, and incarcerating them for nearly a year with no trial.
• 
That is not justice.  Our laws demand that even those accused of the most horrific crimes of mass murder are guaranteed due process.
• 
To abandon those principles for political purposes is to abandon the very bedrock of American jurisprudence.
• 
A true bipartisan criminal justice reform movement must defend the civil liberties of all Americans, regardless of race, religion, socioeconomic level, and political persuasion.
      Sen.  Rand Paul: Trump impeachment trial – here's my challenge to Democrats and Republicans  (Fox 02/09/2021)
• 
The trial is of dubious merit and even more dubious constitutionality.
• 
I've spoken out against those who tried to object to the seating of the electors, as I thought that was not the role of Congress.
• 
But where is the other side?  Where were they all last year when political violence ravaged our cities, when people could barely dine or walk the streets in many places?  When businesses burned and people were injured or killed by mobs?  They were silent.
• 
Where was the outrage from the left when their politicians, from Rep.  Maxine Waters, D-Calif., to Sen.  Cory Booker, D-N.J., asked people to "get up in the faces" of people they disagreed with politically?
• 
When they said to not let Trump officials have a moments peace, even if you see them out in public, dining in restaurants?
• 
Where were they when it was shown the political rhetoric of Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the rest of the socialist left inspired the shooter who fired at Republicans at our baseball practice, nearly killing Rep.  Steve Scalise, R-La.?
• 
And where were they when Sen.  Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stood in front of the Supreme Court last year, when he called out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh by name saying, "You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.  You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions"?
• 
This earned Schumer a rare direct rebuke from the chief justice, and scathing rebukes from senators and others in the GOP, but not a word from the Democrats.
• 
Their outrage is one sided and that's not how this works.  You either go after the Democrats who "incited violence" or you say that political speech always inspires great passion, and the speaker is not responsible for the actions of the listener unless clearly calling for violence.
• 
President Trump deserves the same standard as the other side.  He deserves the protections of our Constitution.
• 
Our system only works well if we understand the speaker is not responsible for the actions of the listener no matter if they are Republican, Democrat or other.
• 
I call on both sides to pay more attention to fealty to our oaths and pressure our own sides to be better.
 Peek  (01/24/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/10/2022) | Next sect (06/23/2018) | List bot 
      No Biden reboot coming from president who thinks he's 'outperformed'  (Fox 01/24/2022)
• 
Biden is not interested in making any course corrections because, after all, he has, by his own modest estimation, "outperformed what anybody thought would happen."
• 
Further, the president is convinced "we have made enormous progress" and everything is "getting better."
• 
That's what he told the country during his recent press conference, which was an eye-opener.  Turns out Joe Biden is either seriously delusional or utterly sequestered and misled by his team.
• 
Addressing his White House's effort to "shut down" the pandemic, as he promised to do, Biden said, "Am I satisfied with the way in which we have dealt with COVID and all the things that – that go along with it?  Yeah, I am satisfied.  I think we've done remarkably well."
• 
As to the performance of his embattled and unpopular vice president, Biden said of Kamala Harris: "I think she's doing a good job." Well, what could he say?
• 
When asked how his administration's report card might appear to voters as they approach the midterm elections, Biden said it "would look pretty good."
• 
The problem is, according to Biden, Americans are too dim to comprehend what a terrific job he is doing.  According to him, "We've passed a lot of things that people don't even understand what's all that's in it, understandably."
• 
"I have to make clear to the American people what we are for." Joe Biden thinks he has not done a good enough job explaining to people how wonderfully things are going.
• 
His new idea is to go "out on the road a lot, making the case around the country, with my colleagues who are up for reelection and others, making the case of what we did do and what we want to do, what we need to do."
• 
In addition to getting out more, Biden's new program includes "bringing in more and more – now that I have time-... experts outside, from academia, to editorial writers, to think tanks.  And I'm bringing them in, just like I did early on, bringing in presidential historians to get their perspective on what we should be doing..." ...
• 
He now has the luxury of this renewal because, as he says, "I've gotten the critical crises out of the way, in the sense of it moving – knowing exactly where we're going."
• 
Even as Biden is quite comfortable with the job he is doing, he is very disappointed in his Republican colleagues, who, he says, are out to block his every initiative.
• 
More concerning, it seems, is that the president cannot figure out the GOP agenda.  He challenges Republicans to outline "what are you for?"
• 
For the record, Republicans across the country are running on safe streets, stable prices, secure borders, school choice, strength overseas and getting the country back to work.  Does Biden seriously not know these are the topmost issues for voters today?
• 
Last November, the president underwent an annual physical exam, which showed him fit for office, but apparently did not take the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, which might squash widespread speculation about his mental abilities.  Why not?  Trump took such a test and passed with flying colors.  Why didn't Biden do the same?
• 
The obvious conclusion may be that Biden knows his mental capabilities are fading, he knows he will not run again and therefore a mid-course correction is not as important as sticking to his leftist guns.
• 
Second, the people who appear to have the most influence over this White House – Democrats like Sens.  Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, and Bernie Sanders, of Vermont – are zealots.
• 
They do not care about their party; they do not care about Democrats running in swing districts.  They are on a mission.
• 
Even as the political tide has begun to swing away from progressives, who have lost most marquee races in recent months to moderates, Warren and Sanders and their colleagues push the envelope.
• 
They know they have a limited amount of time to "transform" a country that does not seek to be transformed.
• 
It is unclear whether Joe Biden understands how badly his White House has been damaged; what is clear is he has no intention of changing course.
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Let’s Go Brandon (Antonio Branco, 10/23/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Presidential Portrait (Gary Varvel, 01/19/2022) cartoon from Government picture album
      Liz Peek: Biden wrong on inflation – president ignoring these realities Americans see every day  (Fox 07/26/2021)
• 
At a recent CNN Town Hall, President Biden once again dismissed rising prices as a temporary hiccup in his otherwise brilliant recovery plan...
• 
More astonishing, he again claimed that Democrats' proposals to spend trillions more in new entitlements and grandiose payoffs to special interest groups like the teachers unions will actually bring prices down.
• 
Uncle Joe promised during the town hall that if Congress passes the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and Democrats' $3.5 trillion wish-list mess of a bill, "We will, in fact, reduce inflation.  Reduce inflation.  Reduce inflation..." ...
• 
Like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Biden seems to think repeating something three times will magically make it happen.
• 
He proposed that the spending will provide "good opportunities and jobs for people who, in fact, are going to be reinvesting that money back in all the things we're talking about, driving down prices, not raising prices." Who knows what that means.
• 
In his recent six-month victory lap, Biden assured voters that, "The data shows that most of the price increases we've seen are – were expected and expected to be temporary."
• 
That is pure malarkey.  A year ago the Federal Reserve, which is charged with controlling inflation, estimated that PCE inflation (their preferred measure) would be 1.6% this year; their most recent forecast is 3.4% – almost double.
• 
Certainly the past year has been full of surprises, and we have to cut the Fed some slack.  But it is noteworthy that, even 12 months ago, while they expected our economy would grow at 5% this year – more than twice the long-term rate – they did not foresee much inflationary impact. 
• 
Now the Fed is projecting that inflation next year will drop to around 2%; what could go wrong?
• 
First, we have a shortage of workers, which is pushing wages higher.  The NFIB, an association of small business owners, reported recently that nearly half their members are unable to fill job openings, more than twice the historical average.
• 
Not surprisingly, a record number of small businesses are raising wages.  To cover their costs, almost half are also raising prices, the highest number since the start of 1981.  That is how inflation takes root.
• 
Second, the rate of growth in the economy may be tapering slightly, but it will be sustained at a high level by the extreme shortage of goods available.  Inventories are at their lowest-ever level relative to sales; businesses will continue scrambling to stock empty shelves.
• 
Third, home prices are soaring; last month the median U.S.  home price rose 23.4% from a year earlier.  Though the cost of a house is not included in inflation calculations, there is a spillover effect in the imputed cost of housing, which comprises 30% to 40% of the indices.
• 
Fourth, the Fed continues to ignore the powerful impact of consumer net worth, which has increased by tens of trillions of dollars over the past year, thanks to rising stock and home prices, and which leads growth by about two quarters.
• 
A key Democrat pollster is warning Joe Biden and his colleagues that consumers will not applaud their big spending plans if prices continue to rise.
• 
People paying more for cars, groceries and housing will connect the dots between their higher bills and the trillions being shoveled out by the government... even if Biden does not.
• 
And they will punish Democrats in the midterms.
• 
See related Inflation (Mike Shelton, 06/18/2021) cartoon from Economy picture album
• 
See related Inflarion (Dick Wright, 05/13/2021) cartoon from Economy picture album
• 
See related Economy (Gary Varvel, 02/09/2021) cartoon from Economy picture album
      Liz Peek: Pelosi, Democrats need Trump – Jan.  6 commission created for this one reason  (Fox 07/12/2021)
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently announced the formation of a select committee to investigate the Jan.  6 "insurrection," saying she did so with "great solemnity and sadness."
• 
The same kind of solemnity, we presume, with which she launched the impeachment trials of President Trump, along with souvenir pens.
• 
It's rubbish, of course.  Pelosi, D-Calif., can't wait to get started on yet another excoriation of the former president.  Why?  Because Pelosi doesn't just miss Donald J.  Trump, she needs Donald J.  Trump.
• 
Trump is the glue holding the Democrat Party together; the epoxy that unites the progressive Bernie Bros and moderates like Sen.  Joe Manchin, D-W-Va.  Trump's the guy who inspires turnout among Democrats; no Trump, no 81 million votes.
• 
It isn't just Democrat politicians that miss our former president; their partners in the media are dying without Trump.  Ratings for CNN and MSNBC have cratered; the audience for CNN's Jake Tapper has plummeted 75% from January.  Tapper can't wait for Pelosi's "insurrection" hearings.
• 
The Left's problem is that Trump is practically invisible today.  Liberals applaud Facebook, YouTube and Twitter for taking The Donald off their platforms, and it surely has reduced his impact. 
• 
But those social media giants have in fact done Democrats a huge disservice.  Instead of railing about Trump's latest disruptive Tweet, Pelosi and President Joe Biden have to talk about the chaos at the border, or their push to spend even more trillions of dollars, despite the worst inflation in decades.
• 
They have to explain why gasoline prices are up more than 30%, or why crime is soaring in Democrat-led cities.  They have to tell us why American kids are being brainwashed into thinking that all that matters is the color of their skin.
• 
Biden's far-Left agenda looks dead in the water thanks to some moderates in Congress whose constituents are alarmed at the prospect of higher taxes, giant budget deficits and immoderate payoffs to Democrat special-interest groups.
• 
What will Democrats sell to voters in 2022?
• 
That's where Nancy's commission comes in.  She wants to return to the 2020 playbook, in which Trump is the Bogeyman.  In particular, she wants to alarm the country that we are at mortal risk from violent extremists – I.e.  Trump supporters – of the kind that breached the Capitol on Jan.  6.
• 
She wants to play up the "insurrection" narrative, and has the FBI toiling to back her up.  The agency, displaying the kind of fervor conspicuously lacking in dealing with the BLM riots a year ago, has so far hunted down and arrested more than 535 people who approached or crowded into the halls of Congress.
• 
Make no mistake: the attack on the Capitol was horrendous and should never have happened.  But Pelosi's inquiry may raise uncomfortable questions, and could backfire.
• 
... people may demand to know who shot Ashley Babbitt, an unarmed Trump supporter who was the only person killed that day.  With cops being hounded from coast to coast for any questionable use of force, it is outrageous that federal prosecutors determined the killing was justified and declined to press charges, even as they refused to identify the shooter.
• 
Also, why were repeated requests to call in the National Guard ahead of the rally turned down?  The former chief of U.S.  Capitol Police told the Washington Post that security officials at the House and Senate rebuffed his early entreaties to call in the National Guard. Was Pelosi behind that decision?
• 
How did the FBI, which has been warning for some time about the threat we face from "domestic terrorists," not see the attack coming?  There was apparently ample social media chatter about the gathering; is the FBI politically corrupt and inept?
• 
The hearing could prove a minefield for Pelosi and her fellow Democrats unless the partisan makeup of the commission prevents an honest accounting, which it might.
• 
Pelosi, after all, has already written the conclusion, saying the committee's job will be to explore the "root causes of [the Jan.  6 uprising] – the White supremacy, the anti-Semitism, the Islamophobia, all the rest of it that was so evident." ...
• 
The commission isn't about uncovering important information about domestic terrorism or about the events of Jan.  6; it is about reviving Donald J.  Trump as the enemy and energizing struggling Democrats.  From all appearances, they need it.
• 
See related Witch-Hunt Continues (Antonio Branco, 06/01/2021) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Liz Peek: Biden flip-flops on US racism – here's what prompted the new White House message  (Fox 05/03/2021)
• 
After a year of slamming the United States as "systemically racist," President Biden now says, "I don't think the American people are racist."
• 
How can country be racist if its people are not?
• 
A nation is defined by its citizens; its people determine whether a country is optimistic, educated, hard-working, fair-minded and ... whether it is racist.
• 
Surely a country cannot be racist if its people twice elected a Black president or if they back policies demanding equality.  We have laws banning discrimination, we have jury trials that convict White cops who kill Black men, and we have schools, religious institutions, neighborhoods and political parties that are open to all.
• 
One indication that the U.S.  is not racist is this: even though Whites constitute 60% of all Americans, and presumably control many levers of power, they are not the most prosperous group, as measured by median household income.
• 
Indeed, it is Indian Americans who earn by far the highest incomes in the U.S., at more than $119,000, followed by Taiwanese Americans, Filipino Americans and Chinese Americans.  White Americans are only the ninth most prosperous group, with median incomes just shy of $66,000, according to Census Bureau data.
• 
Black Americans rank last, with median average income of $41,500, but it is hard to conclude this reveals bigotry, when other non-White ethnic groups fare well.
• 
In addition, studies from a few years ago showed Black immigrants earning 30% more than native-born Blacks; that suggests skin color is not the only issue.
• 
... Democrats have put race at the center of every issue; according to the Left, "systemic racism" should drive our policies on education, immigration, climate change and a host of other issues, including how to handle COVID-19.  If you disagree, you are a bigot and will be canceled.
• 
Scott said in his speech, "A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic.  And if they looked a certain way, they were inferior... Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them, and if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor."
• 
Americans know this indoctrination is toxic and will destroy our nation. 
• 
Race is important to Democrats, who count on receiving roughly 90% of the Black vote.  It is especially important to Biden; were it not for African Americans handing him the Democratic primary win in South Carolina, he would not be president.
• 
Hence, payback to the Black community figures prominently in Biden's ongoing spend-a-thon.
• 
Some Americans are speaking up.
• 
Oklahoma and Idaho are moving to ban teaching critical race theory in state schools and 39 GOP senators have warned incoming Education Secretary Miguel Cardona against rolling out that offensive and misleading dogma nationally.
• 
A father in one of New York's most prestigious private schools publicly denounced its "obsession with race" and bashed the administration for kowtowing to an "anti-intellectual illiberal mob," sparking a firestorm but also speaking for many parents.
• 
A bigger problem for Democrats, though, is the success and popularity of a Black conservative like Tim Scott.  The senator can speak to racism, which does exist in America as it does in every country in the world.
• 
But Scott also attributes his success to a "string of opportunities that are only possible here in America." Democrats do not want young Black kids to know that if they work hard and get a good education, the sky is the limit.
      Liz Peek: Biden's 100 days – here's how his divisive agenda enrages GOP and threatens recovery  (Fox 04/26/2021)
• 
In just three months, under Biden's presumed leadership, Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court, eliminate the filibuster, abolish the Electoral College, grant statehood to Washington, D.C., federalize voting laws, and enact a labor bill that would overturn right-to-work statutes in 27 states.
• 
Democrats want unlimited power and are mobilizing all possible means to get it.
• 
On the day he took office, Biden set about dismantling every policy initiated by his predecessor.  Most damaging, the president reversed President Trump's immigration measures, setting up a humanitarian and security nightmare at our southern border. ...
• 
As president, Biden has worsened race relations by frequently denouncing the United States as "systemically racist" and insulting the citizens of Georgia by foolishly declaring their legislators' voting bill as "Jim Crow on steroids."
• 
It almost seems as though Biden and the people around him don't like the United States very much.
• 
Biden's furious legislating is remarkable considering that Biden took office just as the country was getting back on its feet.
• 
All he had to do was to sit back and take credit for the rollout of the vaccines and rapidly recovering economy. He couldn't even manage that.  
• 
As Democrats push issues that surveys show are not top of the list of most voters' concerns, such as race and climate, and as Republicans address more pressing matters like restoring law and order and reopening the economy, that will shift, opening the door for the GOP to regain power and stop the Biden blitz. ...
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      Liz Peek: CPAC blasts cancel culture – could the attacks on Dr.  Seuss be the tipping point?  (Fox 03/01/2021)
• 
If you haven't heard, Dr.  Seuss is being canceled.  The same boneheads who claim that the "mister" in Mr.  Potato Head is overly "exclusive," that Aunt Jemima syrup encouraged racial stereotyping, that math is a vestige of White supremacy and that gender reveal parties are "transphobic," want you to find racism in the pages of "Hop on Pop."
• 
This is absurd, of course, and makes Democrats who applaud such virtue signaling look stupid.
• 
But the urge to condemn people who challenge the woke mob and cancel every icon of American life – the founders of our nation, the historical monuments that adorn our cities, the books we grew up reading – has reached a tipping point.
• 
Cancel culture has become so mindless and all-encompassing that the average American will soon say... Enough!  Dr.  Seuss could bring us to that point.
• 
We should ridicule those who support these ideas, because nothing brings down an inflated crusade or ego faster than mockery.  But the wholesale cancellation of people and ideas in our nation today is no laughing matter.
• 
Under the guise of increasing tolerance liberals have become utterly intolerant, and especially of opposing ideas.  We have seen an American president and many of his supporters scrubbed from autocratic social media platforms – actions that drew rebukes even from the reliably anti-Trump Emmanuel Macron of France and Germany's Angela Merkel.
• 
We see liberals like the Washington Post's Max Boot calling for cable companies to drop conservative news organizations.  We see longtime editors and writers at the New York Times felled because they stand up for free speech.
• 
Liberal critics just recently went after Hyatt Hotels for hosting CPAC; the hotel chain stood their ground, noting that they "believe in the right of individuals and organizations to peacefully express their view." Good for them.
• 
By way of background, Dr.  Seuss has our attention today because the Loudoun County Public Schools, which spend over $1 billion annually to educate more than 80,000 students in northern Virginia, has canceled its annual celebration of the beloved author's birthday.
• 
They did that, according to the school's spokesman, because "Research in recent years has revealed strong racial undertones in many books written/illustrated by Dr.  Seuss."
• 
For years, schools across the nation have held a Read Across America Day on March 2, the birthday of Dr.  Seuss.  The celebration included "read-ins" of Seuss' best-loved titles and other works.  Just a couple of years ago, the event featured first lady Michelle Obama reading "The Cat in the Hat" to youngsters.
• 
... a 2019 study that analyzed 50 books and more than 2,200 characters created by Dr.  Seuss and concluded that "of the 2,240 (identified) human characters, there are 45 characters of color representing 2% of the total number of human characters."
• 
The Washington Post's Valerie Strauss reports that, "Of the 45 characters, 43 exhibited behaviors and appearances that align with harmful and stereotypical Orientalist tropes."
• 
As is often the case, the perpetrators of this nonsense appear ignorant of the facts.  Theodor Seuss Geisel, who wrote under the pen name Dr.  Seuss, was an ardent liberal who supported FDR and passionately spoke out against fascism.  His work includes books that embrace environmentalism ("The Lorax") and racial equality ("The Sneetches").  To conclude that Seuss was a closet racist is preposterous.
      Liz Peek: Biden's early blunders – here's how he could hurt Democrats in 2022  (Fox 02/15/2021)
• 
Under cover of the impeachment circus, Joe Biden has been very busy, frantically extinguishing every last vestige of the Trump presidency.
• 
What took four years to build, Biden will destroy in four weeks.
• 
Overturned Trump immigration policies that stemmed the flow of caravans from Central America flooding our southern border.
• 
Biden is set to welcome 25,000 asylum-seekers, who had been in Mexico, into our nation.  Soon we will witness chaos at the border, as we did under President Obama.
• 
Canceled the Keystone Pipeline, nixing thousands of high-paying union jobs, even though the pipeline was shown by the Obama administration to have minimal environmental impact.
• 
Plus, Biden has "paused" new drilling leases on federal lands, which will especially kill revenues for New Mexico, which voted for Biden in November.
• 
... ided with teachers unions over the needs of families, and especially women, trying to earn a living.
• 
Biden's refusal to order teachers back on the job and indifference to the "science" saying that schools can open safely is payback for union support, but a slap at unemployed workers forced to stay home and care for their kids.
• 
Begun to actively undermine the Trump administration's extraordinary progress in the Middle East.
• 
Encouraged Democrats to jam through an absurd $1.9 trillion aid package with no GOP votes, destroying his campaign promise to work across the aisle.
• 
Buying votes and bailing out blue states with $350 billion of taxpayer funds will not play well in purple states like Georgia, and could prove dangerous to the economy.
• 
Biden is racing to show progressives in his party that he deserved their vote, and that his party will again merit their support in 2022.
• 
Liberals cynically imagine that all Biden has to do is throw enough cash around, and Americans will ignore the tent cities springing up at the border or the fired oilfield workers applying for food stamps.
• 
Biden's hasty decision to reverse everything Trump is foolish.  Seventy-four million Americans voted for Trump; it's safe to say the majority supported him because they approved of his policies, many of which proved startlingly successful.
• 
Biden appears to think he won a broad mandate to be, as he promised, the "most progressive president in history."
• 
He seems not to realize that, according to post-election polling, more Americans were happy that Trump lost than Biden won.  More people, in other words, voted against Trump than for Biden.
• 
Now that the impeachment battle is over, Trump will no longer dominate the news, and the country will turn its attention to Biden.
• 
Voters will be shocked to see how far he has strayed from his promise to heal the nation.  They will be shocked to see what a mess he has already made.
• 
See related Anybody Home? (Mike Shelton, 02/03/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
• 
See related Biden Executive Orders (Gary McCoy, 01/26/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
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      Liz Peek: Democrat fear-mongering allows Biden to destroy Trump’s legacy  (Fox 02/08/2021)
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The events of Jan.  6 were heinous and inexcusable; tragically, a police officer and four Trump supporters lost their lives.
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For Democrats, they were also extremely useful.
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The attack on the Capitol finally gave Democrats the ammunition they needed to portray President Trump's supporters as dangerous extremists.
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Up until Jan.  6, drawing that characterization had been challenging, since the country had not witnessed a single significant outbreak of violence amid all the giant rallies and marches – complete with guns!  – that for four years had celebrated the president.
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The effort to demonize Trump backers was set back further last summer when riots broke out across the country, fueled by charges of police racism and enabled by progressive mayors and governors who tolerated the looting and destruction.
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Those melees were not caused by the scary Right, but by the Left – the people who later came out to vote for Joe Biden.  In some cities, like Portland, those disturbances are ongoing.
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That was awkward, but Democrats breezed right through the smoke clouds left by burning cars and buildings, continuing to warn that it was right-wing conspiracy mongers who posed the greatest threat to the nation.
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And, the liberal media pitched in, hilariously dismissing the riots as "mostly peaceful."
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By that standard, Trump's Jan.  6 rally on the Elipse was "mostly peaceful," in that tens of thousands cheered the president's speech, while a few hundred slipped away to cause mayhem at the Capitol.
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But now, in the shadow of that day's events, we are told that the rioters of Jan.  6 were the tip of the iceberg, that armed militias stand ready to topple the government.
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The FBI helpfully warned in a bulletin that "Armed protests are being planned at all 50 state capitals... and at the U.S.  Capitol" in the weeks leading up to the (uneventful) inauguration.
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Yes, the same FBI that enabled the Russia-gate attack on President Trump.
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According to Democrats, murderous White nationalists lurk everywhere.  "Squad" leader Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, D-N.Y., affirms there are "White supremacist sympathizers" at the core of the House GOP caucus.
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A hysterical Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claims we have "an enemy within" the halls of Congress – representatives who have requested to carry firearms in the Capitol and, according to the House speaker, have threatened their colleagues.
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Deep breath: does anyone really think there are members of Congress lying in wait, ready to murder their fellow representatives?
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(Footnote: The only congressman actually shot in recent years was Louisiana Republican Steve Scalise, who was gunned down in 2017 by an angry left-wing activist while playing baseball.)...
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The reality is that Democrats, master directors, have staged a compelling scene, complete with impressive props like the tens of thousands of National Guard troops who remain in our nation's capital, for who knows what reason, at a cost of half a billion taxpayer dollars.
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The Democrats' fear-mongering is purposeful.  With Trump disgraced and his supporters denounced, his policies can be junked wholesale, and few dare object.
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Joe Biden is slicing through Trump's measures to protect our border, build our energy independence, ring-fence Iran, confront China and bolster our economy like a scythe through dandelions.  Resistance on both sides of the aisle is mute.
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Aiding Biden's wholesale slaughter of Trump's common sense policies has been the kerfuffle over Marjorie Taylor Greene, a newly elected GOP representative from Georgia who has in the past signed onto nutty and offensive conspiracy theories.
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Make no mistake: there are extremists on the right, and on the left, who can pose a threat to ordinary Americans.  Those who perpetrate violence must be brought to justice, like any other criminals.
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But Democrat elites are busy canceling and defaming President Trump and his supporters because they fear he will not disappear.
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Trump successfully challenged the liberal establishment, and his outreach to traditional Democrat constituencies terrifies his opponents.
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The Democrat Party is now in bed with Big Business, Big Tech and Big Labor, and many middle-class Americans know that those powerful forces do not represent them.
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The wholesale shipping of jobs overseas, the immigration policies that undermined wages paid to low-income Americans, the kowtowing to special interests and undermining of our traditional values are not their priorities.
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Those people voted for Donald Trump in 2016; more voted for him in 2020.  They will not be silenced, no matter how much scorn is rained upon their heads.
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They will not be bought off by $1,400 checks or by lofty promises of the "jobs of tomorrow" delivered by a president cheerfully canceling the jobs of today.
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They will not be fooled.  Instead, they will continue to despise the people who despise them, especially in the liberal media.
      Liz Peek: Biden's first 10 days – here's how he infuriated half the nation in record time  (Fox 02/01/2021)
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Joe Biden lied.  He lied about wanting to bring the country together.  He lied about trying to work "across the aisle." He lied about being a "moderate."
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After the blitzkrieg rollout of 40 executive orders that targeted President Trump programs, kowtowed to progressives (and enraged conservatives) on hot-button issues like taxpayer funding of abortion and showed Biden's disdain for our country's system of checks and balances, Republicans have zero excuse for cooperating with the new administration.
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Elections have consequences; the behavior of the winners has consequences, too.
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Even as Biden pretends to want Republican cooperation, his flurry of executive orders suggests he's not only determined to alienate those 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump, but he's in a rush to do so.
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How might Biden have brought the nation together?  By telling Pelosi and Schumer to stand down on impeachment, telling the country he wanted to look forward and not backward, and by focusing on getting the nation back to work.
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He could have left in place Trump policies that worked, such as those that slowed the flow of people illegally swarming across our border.  That would include the "leave in Mexico" arrangement for asylum seekers, which deterred the caravans from heading north.
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Biden should have agreed that the history-making Abraham Accords had successfully reoriented our Middle East priorities, creating a powerful alliance against Iran's belligerence, and sworn off the flawed Iran nuke deal.
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He should never have thrown 11,000 union members building the Keystone Pipeline out of work; he might have explained to the country that North American energy output was critical to our national security, and that pipelines are safer than trucks and trains.
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Perhaps most important, President Biden might have joined with Germany's Angela Merkel, Mexico's Manuel Lopez Obrador and other world leaders in denouncing Twitter's censorship of Donald Trump and his supporters.
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He could have calmed Republicans alarmed that the growing muscle of social media has been flexed to prevent dissent, limit dissemination of information unflattering to Biden and his family and to entrench viewpoints favored by the woke Left.
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Biden should have sent a powerful signal that the United States is still committed to freedom of speech, one of this nation's most essential founding principles.
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Unhappily, Joe Biden will be rewarded by the tech-corporate industrial complex that overthrew President Trump's many challenges to their power; Biden is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
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See related Let Them Learn (Gary Varvel, 01/28/2021) cartoon from Government picture album
      Liz Peek: Democrats' anti-Trump blitz goes too far – here's who they might inadvertently hurt the most  (Fox 01/18/2021)
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The viciousness of Democrats seeking to punish President Trump for "inciting violence" knows no bounds.  The unprecedented blitzkrieg impeachment in the House was just the beginning.
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Trump's critics want to silence his voice, bankrupt his businesses, cut off his political funding, banish his family and, for good measure, humiliate and censor the 74 million Americans who voted for him in November.
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Democrats are attempting to prevent anyone who worked in the Trump White House from getting a job, students are petitioning Harvard to revoke the diplomas of "enablers" like White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany and Sen.  Ted Cruz, R-Texas, corporations are stripping campaign donations from congressmen who challenged the election, and on and on.
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Some have tweeted #KillTrump, on that very same social media platform that banned the president for life because he purportedly inspired violence.
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The appetite for vengeance is insatiable, and it is the hallmark of an angry mob, not a political party.
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An angry mob that has been egged on by President-elect Joe Biden, who likened Cruz to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels for spreading the "big lie" about election irregularities.
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Biden, who vowed to bring the nation together.
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But the furor against the defeated president has little to do with his thin skin or his role in the terrible assault on the Capitol.
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It has everything to do with punishing an outsider who dared to expose the duplicity and sanctimony of our powerful elites.  He embarrassed them, and they want to extinguish him.
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The liberal media, Big Business, Big Tech, and all the woke establishment types who enjoy protections and privileges they would deny others, despise Donald Trump, as he despises them.
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It is not just that he exposed their hypocrisies; he did it effectively.  When Trump assailed the liberal media, he destroyed their credibility...
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When Trump took aim at China's malignant behavior, demanding fair trade terms and an end to their ongoing theft of intellectual property, he threatened Big Business, which is hugely vested in outsourcing U.S.  jobs and accessing China's emerging consumer class.
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This seismic political realignment has been dutifully ignored by Democrats and the liberal press, which continues to pretend that Scranton Joe represents the "little guy," even as his monster fund-raising from corporate America and Big Tech indicates otherwise.
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For Biden, the vicious hatred of Donald Trump is useful; it is the glue holding the Democrat Party together.
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As Biden takes office, the progressive left, emboldened by the victories in Georgia that handed Democrats control of the Senate, will make impossible and unpopular demands that will split the party.
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They will push, as incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed, to "change the world."
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So far, Biden, master of platitudes, has avoided declaring himself on hard issues, like packing the court or banning fracking.
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The Senate trial is scheduled to begin one hour after his inauguration, overshadowing his triumph and possibly derailing his first weeks in office.
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If Biden allows the bloodlust to continue, he will confirm critics' expectations that he is a weak and ineffectual leader.
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Democrats have won.  They are in charge and their actions in the next several months will decide how long they hold onto political power.
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Smearing and canceling Trump and his supporters may be satisfying in the short run, but it will not serve them well in 2022, when their slim House majority will be at peril.
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The president-elect should demand a cease-fire, beg his friends in the media to tone down hostilities, call an end to the impeachment process and perhaps even pardon President Trump, preventing any future prosecutions of the president for actions taken while he was in office.  Such conciliatory gestures might actually help the nation heal.
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President Trump is a beaten man, his reputation in tatters.  It is remarkable that Democrats will undermine their own president-elect by pursuing a Senate trial, which will serve only to prevent Trump from running again. 
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Maybe it isn't that Democrats hate Trump.  Maybe they fear him, still.
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      Liz Peek: Big Tech censors nation – here's how Republicans can fight back  (Fox 01/11/2021)
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This is not about Big Tech "protecting" Americans; this is about stifling dissent from those who do not buy into the Left's woke agenda.
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Millions of conservatives have abandoned Twitter and Facebook, migrating to Parler, which promises to be a neutral platform.
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But now, Apple has suspended the fast-emerging Twitter competitor from its App store, claiming Parler is not doing enough to squash "threats of violence and illegal activity."
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Google has done the same, claiming an "ongoing and urgent public safety threat," while Amazon has announced it will no longer host the platform on its web services, effectively shutting it down.
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It is a frightening and outrageous attack on free speech in this country, which was founded to protect just such freedoms.
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Republican lawmakers need to stand up to these tech giants; they can start by campaigning in 2022 to revoke the protections granted these firms by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.
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We get it: the Left feels empowered.  They have elected a Democrat president who will enjoy for at least two years a Democrat majority in the House and Senate.
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At the same time, President Trump will soon leave office a defeated man, subject of endless recriminations by Democrats and non-stop condemnation from the liberal media.
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Trump is threatened with impeachment once again by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose appetite for partisan nastiness appears insatiable. ...
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Big Tech is empowered too, having played an important role in the election of Joe Biden.
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The social media giants lean left politically; their campaign donations to Biden and suppression of negative articles about him and his son Hunter Biden were all in service to electing their favored candidate.
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But, it was also a smart preemptive strike against liberal Democrats who have rightly accused Twitter and Facebook's CEOs of abusing their immense power.
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It is important to note that the stories about Biden's son are not empty accusations; the New York Post ran well-documented pieces describing Hunter's shady activities – stories which have never been denied by Joe Biden or his son.  In response, Twitter shut down the account of the New York Post. ...
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For Americans who believe that free and fair elections are more than a campaign slogan, the silencing constituted unimaginable interference.
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Michelle Obama became the newest face of partisan rage and censorship when she recently called for Twitter, Facebook et al.  to permanently ban President Trump.  Imagine – silence the elected leader of the "Free World" who just received 74 million votes in November.
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Obama isn't just hoping to silence the president; she wants all those Trump-loving "deplorables" shut down as well.
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Given the relentless and increasingly dishonest bias of the liberal media, the availability of social media platforms is one of the few avenues left to push back against the Left's indoctrination of the nation.
      Warnock's Georgia win means politics of envy, grievance beat hope, prosperity message – here's how  (Fox 01/06/2021)
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To someone who loves this country, it is almost inconceivable that Georgia voters have elected to send Rafael Warnock to the United States Senate.
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Democrat Warnock, a Black preacher who has thundered from the pulpit that "America must repent for its worship of whiteness," has edged out Republican Sen.  Kelly Loeffler to win one of two Senate seats up for grabs in run-off elections.
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The politics of envy and grievance – of class warfare and racial hostilities — have won out over messages of hope, prosperity and opportunity for all.  How could this happen?
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Simply put, Republicans did not turn out in the numbers needed to beat an energized Democrat campaign.
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A campaign that was funded by massive contributions from liberals across the nation, spurred by dreams of a progressive future; a future driven by the prospect that taking control of the senate would allow them, as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said, to "change the world."
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Weeks ago angry Trump backers in Georgia began a #BoycottTheVote campaign...  Those disaffected Republicans were somehow convinced that not voting in the senate races would punish those who had "stolen" the presidential race from Donald Trump in November.
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Instead, that voter boycott will punish the nation.
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The race in Georgia should have been a referendum on the Democrats' agenda.  Voters should have chosen between GOP policies that have built our country up, creating jobs and opportunities, versus Democrat policies that aim to punish successful Americans.
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Policies that protect traditional rights and freedoms versus those that allow a censorious mob to decide what Americans can or cannot say.
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Policies that aim to make all neighborhoods safe, including those populated largely by minorities, versus attempts to defund the police and let criminals out of jail.
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In reviewing the Georgia election, critics will rightly award the liberal media a starring role.  The press acted as apologists for both Rafael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, instead of reporters.
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Georgia's Senate runoff contests were viewed by left and right as critical to the future direction of the country.
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Republicans see Democrat control of the senate possibly leading to fundamental and damaging changes in our nation.
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Given the chance, Democrats may push to change the Electoral College, pack the Supreme Court, allow Puerto Rico and Washington D.C.  to become states and other measures that would guarantee one-party rule and pave a progressive pathway to the future.
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Georgia voters have made a terrible choice.  If Jon Ossoff beats David Perdue, handing control of the Senate to New York Democrat Chuck Schumer and, consequently, all three branches of our government to Democrats, the damage will be complete.
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As for President Trump, his reputation and his extraordinary support among Republicans, as well as his chances of running in 2024, have been dealt a serious blow.
      Liz Peek: Georgia Republicans, vote against Pelosi and Schumer in Senate runoff races  (Fox 01/04/2021)
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Listen up, Georgia Republicans!  I get it – you're exhausted, angry and sick to death of ads warning that only you can fend off a Democrat Socialist Republic.
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Here's the bad news: those ads are true.  You have the terrible responsibility, in these last remaining hours, to decide the future of our country.
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Let's make this easy; do you want Democrats to massively raise your taxes?  And ... do you want your tax dollars bailing out New York and California, which have been demolished by crazy tough-on-business and soft-on-crime policies?
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There's more at stake than taxes.  If Jon Ossoff and Rafael Warnock win, and Democrats take control of the Senate on Jan.  5, many of the rights and freedoms you cherish are at risk.
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Moreover, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Schumer, two dishonest partisans who fought President Trump every moment of the past four years, will run the nation.
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Just as President Trump stemmed the downward slide of our great country into mediocrity, that responsibility now rests with you.
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... the House is set to adopt rules that would, its authors claim, "honor all gender identities" by forbidding the use of words like "mother" or "sister"; going forward, House members could only use terms like "parent" or "sibling."
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That kind of idiocy can spread like a virus.  Do Georgians want their speech censored by left-wing culture warriors?
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How about the 49% of you Georgians who live in homes that contain guns?  Do you know that Democrats are pushing a law through the House called the Gun Violence Prevention and Community Safety Act of 2020, which makes it very tough to buy or sell a gun and removes limitations on the civil liability of gun manufacturers?
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If that law were to pass, gun makers could be sued by victims of shootings; the law might well put U.S.  gun manufacturers out of business and make our Second Amendment rights a thing of the past.
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Democrats are also working to open our borders, with a House bill called the New Way Forward Act, which repeals criminal penalties for illegally entering the country.  It also ends mandatory detention for asylum seekers. 
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That bill is part of Democrats' long-term push to enable mass in-migration of Hispanics whose U.S.-born children automatically become citizens and, almost as automatically, future Democrat voters.
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Another push by Democrats could lead to so-called "reparations" payments to descendants of people brought to this country as slaves.
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It is hard to imagine a more divisive proposal; race relations are at a low point.  With Democrats pushing this kind of "grievance" agenda, they will only get worse.
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The For the People bill, which passed the House more than a year ago and is just waiting for a Democrat-led Senate, would allow criminals to vote, permanently expand absentee voting and voting-by-mail, prohibit purging voter rolls of "eligible" voters ... and in many other ways attempt to advantage Democrat candidates.
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Other ambitions include stacking the Supreme Court, welcoming reliably blue Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., as states, and abolishing the Electoral College.
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These attempts to profoundly change our nation could only succeed if the Democrats win control of the Senate.
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... they will make access to full-term abortions the law of the land, push criminal justice "reforms" the likes of which have set once-safe New York City's murder rate soaring, and eliminate "right-to-work" laws that make Georgia more competitive and has led to state unemployment of 5.7%, much lower than the national average of 6.7%.
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That's a hint of what's in store if Democrats take the Senate.
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Georgia – you can still save yourselves, and this great nation.  Please vote for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue.  We will thank you.
      Liz Peek: Trump’s four years – productive, contentious, energetic and … fun.  Let's review  (Fox 12/21/2020)
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It is hard to imagine that President Trump will soon leave office.  His presidency has been so big, so full of energy and purpose, that it seems almost impossible that it will come to an end.
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Trump supporters are angry, yes, that the election was unfair, and, many think, dishonest.
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They are also sad, knowing they may never again elect a president more dedicated to protecting their interests and so ready to take on the intolerant liberal mob.
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For four years, the president has tackled one issue after another, some big, some small – like the water rules – using common sense and sheer orneriness to buck the system.
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Not being a creature of the "swamp," Trump entered the Oval Office four years ago prepared to challenge everything.  For four years, he did just that, perpetually riling the Establishment.
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For example, Trump questioned why we allow tens of thousands of people to stream illegally across our southern border every year, which no country should permit.
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Rather than ignore the problem, Trump looked for solutions, ultimately demanding that Mexico keep asylum seekers in their country while they await their hearings, and working with governments in Central America as well.
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In the face of enormous opposition, Trump also began to build a wall, to narrow the places along our nearly 2,000-mile divide where gang members or coyotes could steal across.
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In his very first year, Trump also focused on undoing the damage done by the regulatory zeal of the Obama-Biden crew.
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Over the next three years, Trump never let up.  In 2019, the Environmental Protection Agency replaced Obama's signature climate bill, the massively disruptive Clean Power Plan (CPP), with the Affordable Clean Energy law.
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Trump is reviled by climate warriors, but protecting one of our greatest geopolitical competitive advantages – our abundant and cheap energy — was the right thing for our country.
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Some of the changes Trump made, on labor practices and immigration, for example, won't last; many will be challenged in court.
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But the outcomes of those legal battles will benefit from President Trump's appointment of more than 227 conservative judges to federal courts, more than a quarter of the total, including three associate justices of the Supreme Court.
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Those mostly young judges will make a lasting contribution to protecting our Constitution; given the extent to which our freedom of speech, in particular, is under attack today, nothing could be more important.
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Trump's achievements in foreign affairs include the historic Abraham Accords, which forged first-ever diplomatic relations between Israel and a number of Arab states, ring-fencing Iranian belligerence in the Middle East.
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Trump also took a harder line against ISIS, freeing our troops to crush the caliphate, which they did in short order.
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Most important, President Trump confronted China, exposing and demanding an end to their unfair trade practices, massive theft of American know-how and persistent human rights abuses.
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As for accusations that Trump has been soft on Russia, the charge is as dishonest as the Russiagate hoax.  Unlike Obama, Trump sent lethal weapons to Ukraine to help in their battle against Russia, closed consulates in Seattle and San Francisco, threw dozens of suspected Russian spies out of the country and imposed sanctions on Moscow.
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More important, Trump's enthusiastic backing of our oil and gas industries helped drive oil prices down, wreaking havoc on Russia's economy.  If the climate zealots succeed in hobbling our energy businesses, it will be a great gift to both Russia and China.
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Over four years, Trump brought home hostages, revamped important trade deals, rebuilt the military, boosted school choice, created nearly half a million manufacturing jobs before the virus hit, and pushed through major tax cuts.
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Trump has presided over a remarkably productive and, many think, extremely successful four years.
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Those years have also been, at times, chaotic and disruptive, marked by some false steps as well as unprecedented opposition from the liberal media and dishonest Democrats.
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For his supporters, patriots from all walks of life fed up with political correctness and the censorious Left, the Trump presidency has been a breath of fresh air.  It has also been – dare I say it?  – great fun.
      Liz Peek: Biden and China – 4 reasons he can't be trusted to protect US from Beijing  (Fox 12/07/2020)
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Robert Gates, secretary of Defense under President Barack Obama, has written that Biden has been "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades."
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While senator or vice president, Biden's bad impulses – like opposing the raid that killed Osama bin Laden – had little impact.  But, assuming he becomes president, his wrongheaded instincts will put our nation at risk, especially when it comes to dealing with China.
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Biden's inability to rein in an increasingly belligerent China starts with his naive confidence in the United Nations, which has done exactly nothing to punish Beijing for its military aggressions, its widespread theft of Western know-how or its illegal crackdown in Hong Kong.
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Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked tirelessly to expand China's influence at the U.N., even as it subverts it missions.  For instance, the Human Rights Council will soon include China, Russia and Cuba, all of which make a mockery of human rights.
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The U.N.  will not protect the United States, or Joe Biden, from China's aggression.  Xi knows that; Biden may not.
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The second reason Biden will not stand up to China is his fealty to Big Business and Big Tech, which funneled tens of millions of dollars into the president-elect's campaign.
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Why would corporate America, Wall Street and Silicon Valley abandon a president who lowered business taxes and rolled back regulations?
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Because Trump's trade battle with China was more pro-worker than pro-business; America's CEOs decided they'd rather suffer unfair trade terms, red tape and higher taxes than figure out how to manufacture goods here at home or forego access to Chinese consumers.
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Third, Joe Biden needs to reward progressives who supported his campaign.  To that end, the president-elect has committed to rejoining the Paris Climate Accord, a first step toward the Green New Deal.
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Obama didn't demand anything from China when he signed the U.S.  up for the Paris Accord; chances are, Biden won't either.
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Fourth, Hunter Biden's questionable business dealings in China put Joe Biden on the defensive.  The liberal press has ignored seemingly solid evidence that Hunter traded on his father's name and White House position and that Joe may have been involved in his son's activities.  China will not shy from using any compromising material they might have.
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For four years, President Trump and his national security team have educated Americans, and indeed the world, about China's misdeeds and alarming quest for world dominance.  The result has been a healthy and growing skepticism about China.
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Our intelligence agencies agree: China poses the greatest threat to our nation's security.  They also agree that Beijing backed Biden's candidacy.  President Xi likely considers Biden a weaker adversary than Trump; he is correct.
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President Trump celebrated his first meeting with President Xi by ordering a missile strike on Syria, signaling strength and unpredictability.
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Biden's first impulse will be to give up our energy independence, a major geopolitical asset.  No wonder Beijing is celebrating his win.
      Liz Peek: Liberal lies have created this moment – Trump can do this to secure his legacy  (Fox 11/23/2020)
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According to a new Rasmussen Poll, 61% of Republicans think it is "very likely" that Democrats stole the election.  Really, why wouldn't they?
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For four years, Democrats and their handmaidens in the liberal media have lied their heads off, spinning false narratives aimed at undermining President Trump.  Why would Trump supporters trust them now?
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The Russian collusion story, which the president rightfully deemed a "hoax," was the granddaddy of misinformation campaigns.  It led to the appointment of a special counsel and an exhausting investigation that ensnared and ruined the lives of entirely blameless people like retired Lt.  Gen.  Michael Flynn and his son.
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"It is now clear that Adam Schiff lied to his colleagues, that he lied to the media, and that he lied to the American public." Congressman Schiff, D-Calif., wasn't alone.
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Democrats in the House impeached President Trump for pushing officials in Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden's activities while he was our government's point person in that nation.
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Little did we know how appropriate Trump's request was.  In recent weeks it has become clear that Joe's son Hunter Biden did indeed participate in questionable activities in that corrupt country and that his father may have protected his interests.
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Democrats and their media partners denigrated the president from day one, telling tall tales of nefarious self-dealing and portraying the Trump White House as dangerously unstable.
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In 2018 the New York Times published to great fanfare the op-ed by "Anonymous," in which the author claimed he was one of "many" high-level employees in the Trump "administration [who] are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations."
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The Times claimed its author was a "senior official," and implied that President Trump posed such a threat to the country that it simply had to break its long-standing rule against running anonymous pieces.
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Never once did the mainstream media applaud Trump's many victories, like the return of hostages from abroad or trade concessions made by Beijing.  His breakthrough diplomacy in the Middle East was greeted with a polite yawn.
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The left-wing media joined Democrats like Michelle Obama in lying about Trump's immigration program, claiming it was his White House that initiated the policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
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Oh, the lamentations over "children in cages," until it turned out the worrisome photos were from 2014 and that it actually was the Obama administration that began the maligned practice.  So many lies, so much nastiness.
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But nothing – nothing – prepared Trump supporters for how powerfully the mainstream media, Twitter and Facebook were to jump on the scale to ensure Biden's victory.
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No one could have imagined that a documented story about Hunter Biden's shady dealings in Ukraine and China during the years that Joe Biden served as vice president would be banned – literally banned – on social media.
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It was impossible to foresee how all dissenting voices on COVID policy and practices, including from senior health experts, would be silenced in order to hurt Trump.
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Nobody expected that an unelected media magnate – Twitter's Jack Dorsey – would control what President Trump could say to the public.
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Trump supporters, cheered that 56% of the nation claimed they were better off than four years before, could not and do not believe that he could fail to win reelection.
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Unlike the Left, those folks understand why he was elected in 2016.  They know it was because people were fed up with the elitist globalism of Barack Obama and liked the unabashedly pro-US message from an outsider candidate.
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They were sickened by the treacly excesses of political correctness and hungry for a president determined to protect them from terrorists, tighten our borders and take on China.
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... nitwits and others in the smug intelligentsia who so despise Trump and the people who voted for him do not understand that millions of Americans love their country, and want a president who shares that enthusiasm.
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Tens of millions of Americans have lost faith in our institutions, our media and now in our elections.
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Those doubts are now fueling uncertainty about the election outcome – uncertainty encouraged by President Trump.  Unhappily, there appear to be enough instances of vote irregularities to feed suspicions, but not enough to overturn the results.
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Trump supporters will want the president to be their voice going forward.  Whether he chooses to run again in 2024, or whether he is content to be a senior party influencer, Trump is not going away.
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But now, to maintain his powerful voice and leadership, he needs to concede.  The Left is using his refusal to admit defeat as more proof that he is undermining our democracy.
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He cannot allow this to be his legacy; his presidency has been so much bigger than that.
      Liz Peek: Liberal media were big losers in election  (Fox 11/05/2020)
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We do not yet know who won the race for the Oval Office, but we know who lost: the pundits, pollsters and — especially — the liberal media that have infuriated half the country.
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The left-leaning newspapers, networks and social media giants for weeks broadcast predictions of a blue wave, spun the worst-case scenarios about COVID-19, withheld from the public damaging and credible information about Joe Biden's involvements with son Hunter's shady business deals, and ignored the former vice president's mental lapses.
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The anti-Trump media continued to proclaim the Democratic presidential nominee a "moderate" in spite of towering evidence to the contrary.  And they inexcusably suppressed comments by the president of the United States.
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These acts were purposeful and they had consequences.
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During the weeks leading up to Election Day, the steady drumbeat of polls and news stories downplaying the president's reelection chances discouraged his supporters.
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Many wondered if it was worth voting; they asked on Twitter and Facebook if the president had any chance at all of being reelected.
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Many Trump backers soured on his prospects; the money flowing to his campaign began to dry up.
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Meanwhile, the swell of upbeat expectations fattened Biden's coffers as donors on Wall Street and elsewhere began to see the Democrat as likely to win.
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Nobody wants to be left off the gravy train, after all.
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Given the huge money advantage in the final days of the contest, the Biden team was able to outspend the Trump campaign by a factor of two, throwing enormous resources into TV advertising in vital swing states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, and online ads as well.
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The one-sided coverage of this campaign in the anti-Trump media is no surprise.  They declared war on President Trump more than four years ago, and have never paused to reconsider their all-consuming enmity.
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How can so many smart media types get an election so totally wrong?  Because liberal journalists have never tried to understand Trump's appeal, or why so many millions of Americans are in his corner.
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Those on the left have demeaned Trump voters as "Deplorables," as Hillary Clinton did; Joe Biden called some Trump backers "ugly folks." Liberals hint that Trump backers are racist, or prone to weird conspiracy theories.
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Trump support turns out to come from nearly half the nation, from all walks of life, and it has built over the past four years.
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If Biden becomes president these folks will not disappear.  They will look for a candidate ready to take up the same battles and to look out for their interests.
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And they will look to get even with the dishonest liberal media and the social media giants that even now are censoring questions being raised about election irregularities...
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How to demand fairness from the dishonest liberal press and tyrannical social media platforms?  Nobody knows.
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Maybe Republicans in the Senate will try to strip Twitter and Facebook of their protections against lawsuits; maybe some new information platform will emerge that does not attempt to editorialize.
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Americans are an entrepreneurial and creative people; they will find a way.  Let us hope they do so before 2024.
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See related He's Crazy! (Glenn McCoy, 05/16/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
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See related Trump Press (Glenn McCoy, 08/12/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Liz Peek: Liberal media helping Trump win four more years.  Here's how  (Fox 11/02/2020)
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Our liberal media outlets are not putting their thumb on the scale; they are putting their shattered reputations, too.
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There is nothing more sinister or offensive to those who believe in freedom than censorship.
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Suppressing contrary views is the tool of socialist totalitarian regimes; witnessing it burrow into our national politics is harrowing.
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It is not just the media, it is also the toxic "cancel culture" enabled by woke elites in academia, Hollywood and corporate boardrooms who are intolerant of opposing views and punish those who do not conform.
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Voting for Trump is one way to push back.  ... Supporters of Donald Trump, to be sure, are motivated to vote for his reelection for many reasons.
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They believe his pro-business program of lower taxes and limited regulation will boost the economy better than Biden's regulatory zeal and proposed $4 trillion tax hike.
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They know that President Trump is willing to confront China in order to curtail Beijing's predatory behavior, including their gigantic theft of our business secrets and dishonest trade practices.
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Those voting for President Trump believe in America First, and know that Democrats are the party of America Second.
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Trump fans applaud his common-sense demands that our NATO allies pay their promised share of our mutual defense, and the extra hundreds of billions of dollars that they have already surrendered.
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They also applaud his breakthrough Middle East policy, which has brought together several Arab nations to make peace with Israel and to ring-fence Iran.
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Supporters of President Trump will vote for his policies because they think they are best for the nation.
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But they are also voting against Twitter, which has been "fact-checking" President Trump and also censoring doctors who do not agree with Dr.  Anthony Fauci's fluid pronouncements about COVID.
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Twitter also recently shut down the account of Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan for a post about the wall being built on the Southern border.
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Morgan wrote, "Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country.  It's a fact, walls work." That was deemed "hateful conduct."
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Just as Democrats overstepped by impeaching Trump, which pushed the president's fund-raising and approval ratings to an all-time high, the liberal media's excesses may achieve the very outcome they have worked so hard to prevent: four more years of President Trump.
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Wouldn't that be something?
      Liz Peek: 4 ways Trump can win the debate and the 2020 election  (Fox 10/21/2020)
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First, the president must remind the nation what he has accomplished in his first three and a half years in office, with specifics.
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Next, the president must be likable; he should smile.  There's an old adage that people will vote for the guy they most want to have a beer with.
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Third, the president should dial down his attacks on Joe Biden.  Attacking Joe Biden is like punching cobwebs, there's just not that much there.  Thanks to the liberal media's protection of the former V.P., the public is unaware of that Biden frequently lies about his education and background, about his involvement in the civil rights movement and numerous other issues.
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He is viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a decent guy.  Better for Trump to talk up his achievements and plans than browbeat Biden.
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Finally, the president should tell the audience what he plans to do in his next four years.  He should make a strong case that he can rebuild the economy, and engineer another surge in jobs and wages.
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He should talk up further peace initiatives in the Middle East and his ongoing efforts to rein in China.  The moderator has taken foreign policy off the list of debate topics but Trump will have many opportunities to turn the conversation in the direction he wants.
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Following these guidelines will not be easy.  Once again the moderator of the debate ... has deep ties to Democrats and will likely favor the former vice president.
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Winning the last debate will be challenging, but President Trump has survived a hostile press for years and has a great record to run on.
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According to Gallup, 56% of Americans say they are better off than they were four years ago.  He just needs to convince those folks to vote for better times ahead.
      Liz Peek: Facebook, Twitter's censorship brazenly protects Biden — endangers our democracy  (Fox 10/17/2020)
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In 2016 President Trump promised to drain the swamp.  Little did he know how tough that would be.
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The swamp is protected by the liberal media, Hollywood, the Justice Department, much of corporate America, academia, and now – most threatening of all – social media.  The same social media that is working overtime to elect Joe Biden president.
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It isn't just that Twitter and Facebook tried to squash a blockbuster New York Post story that could destroy Joe Biden's campaign; it is that they were so brazen about it.
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Both companies shamelessly blocked the spread of a Post story purporting to show that Joe Biden knew about his son Hunter Biden's questionable activities in Ukraine and China, and that he lied about it.
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Twitter and Facebook had no excuse; they simply didn't want Uncle Joe's image tainted, because they want him elected president.
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There really is no alternative, which is why they can manufacture absurd arguments to justify their misdeeds, content that it will not dent their business model or cost them money.  Make no mistake, at the end it is all about money.
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But that's where the brazenness comes in.  The social media firms know that virtually every institution in our country is stacked against President Trump.
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That includes the liberal mainstream media, for sure.  They didn't even bother to carry the Ukraine story until it became a row about censorship on the social platforms.
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... the excuses lofted by Twitter and Facebook don't hold up, especially when matched against the bogus anti-Trump stories allowed to roam free across the Internet.
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Many stories connected to the RussiaGate probe, repeated breathlessly on CNN and MSNBC and spread enthusiastically on Twitter and Facebook, proved entirely false.
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It isn't just the media.  The computer containing the compromising emails was first sent to the FBI, last December.
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Someone needs to explain why the FBI never followed up, especially since Senate Republicans held hearings about Hunter and Joe Biden's activities in Ukraine.  Wouldn't this laptop be significant to those investigations?
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Misbehavior at the FBI figures prominently in the center of many controversies, including dropping an investigation into possible influence peddling by Hillary Clinton enabled by her foundation, the dishonest set-up of General Michael Flynn, the lying to the FISA court and, most recently, according to CNN, in a three-year quest to determine if Trump received campaign funds illicitly from an Egyptian state-owned bank.
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Three years of pursuing a possible crime committed by the president, which was ultimately abandoned and shut down this past summer.  They found nothing, just as Robert Mueller found nothing.
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What other politically-motivated investigations of President Trump are underway?  Who is authorizing these wasteful political efforts?
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Our country is in danger, and I do not say that lightly.  If only one point of view is allowed, if the media suppresses contrary opinion, we are in trouble.
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It is astonishing that as of Friday afternoon seemingly no employees at any major liberal news outlet have stepped up to defend freedom of speech, and a free press.
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When the New York Times' token Republican never-Trumper Bret Stephens recently criticized the paper's discredited 1619 Project, the Times' union blew up in outrage and demanded he be shut down.  Yes — journalists wanting to suppress journalists.
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And yet they complain when President Trump rails against Fake News.
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Trump supporters have but one recourse: making sure they vote by November 3.  Reelecting Trump would be a service to our great nation, and sweet revenge as well.
      Confirm Supreme Court justice now – 4 reasons why Trump, Republicans should act quickly  (Fox 09/21/2020)
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Republicans have four excellent reasons to move as quickly as possible to confirm a new associate justice to the Supreme Court.
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First, the upcoming election will likely be close, and could well be contested.  The Supreme Court may ultimately determine the outcome, and the GOP needs to seat an additional (conservative) justice to guarantee the court is not deadlocked in the event of a dispute. 
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Second, the fight over filling Ruth Bader Ginsberg's seat will energize Democrat voters, which Joe Biden's campaign has failed to do.
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Republicans need to counter this surge of enthusiasm by showing their commitment to conservatives who have historically ranked Supreme Court appointments one of their top priorities.
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Third, as progressives take control of the Democrat Party, a court dedicated to upholding our Constitution becomes ever more important.
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Nothing will better protect religious freedom, our freedom of speech or our Second Amendment rights, among many other freedoms, than a conservative court.
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Fourth, it's payback time.  Democrats' heinous and unforgivable attacks on Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh can best be answered by confirming another conservative jurist.
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Make no mistake.  This battle is going to get ugly; just how ugly became clear almost immediately.  
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Let us be clear: Republicans owe Democrats nothing.  No courtesy, no respect, no accommodation.*
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If the GOP can ensure a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for years to come, they should move as quickly as possible to do just that. 
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For four years, Democrats have obstructed and undermined President Trump at every turn.
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They have continually challenged the legitimacy of this duly elected president, resorted to arcane maneuvers to prevent the White House from filling even non-controversial appointments, engaged the administration in endless litigation, and dragged the country through an extended, costly and ultimately fruitless investigation into the supposed ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.
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Not content with tying the nation in knots over Russia-gate, House Democrats then impeached the president on even more spurious charges.
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This overreach cost Democrats voter support and raised the president's approval ratings to a record high, for good reason.
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But nothing was more despicable that the accusations of sexual assault leveled against Brett Kavanaugh, a judge with a spotless reputation and impeccable credentials...
• 
The spectacle of Sens.  Cory "Spartacus" Booker, Kamala Harris and others destroying the reputation of Kavanaugh, based on completely uncorroborated testimony regarding activities decades in the past, the searching through the nominee's high school yearbook for clues, the description of a fine man as a "gang rapist" and the willingness of the media to promote even the most heinous allegations with no proof whatsoever... we remember.
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During that appalling show trial, Democrats ceded all decency.  They do not deserve any consultation whatsoever in naming the next Supreme Court justice.
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Republicans not only should proceed as quickly as possible with a nomination to fill Ginsberg's seat; they must do so.
• 
Given the increased use of mail-in ballots and recent rulings that might make such voting untrustworthy, there is every chance the Supreme Court will be called upon to officiate the results.
• 
In the event of a dispute, the worst possible outcome would be a tie vote, which would leave our bitterly divided nation adrift.  That is unacceptable.
• 
Moving quickly to fill Ginsberg's seat might also help the GOP keep control of the Senate, by spotlighting the importance of maintaining their majority.
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Let Democrats howl.  American voters intelligently put Republicans in control of the Senate; they have yet another chance to protect our Constitution from persistent undermining from the Left.  They must take it.
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Former President Barack Obama famously said, "Elections have consequences." Indeed they do.
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See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Liz Peek: Trump punches back at totalitarian left — here's why Mt.  Rushmore speech important  (Fox 07/06/2020)
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Which is more divisive?  Tearing down our nation's heroes and monuments, demeaning the accomplishments of a great country, casting patriotic Americans as relics from a bygone era, painting the United States as profoundly racist ... or railing against these things, as President Trump did at Mount Rushmore?
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In response to the president's Independence Day event, the New York Times thundered "Trump Uses Mount Rushmore Speech to Deliver Divisive Culture War Message."
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We ask the Times, who declared that war?  Who decided that our country's history is not something to honor, but rather a dark stain on our nation's conscience?
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Could it be the liberal elites like those running our universities and the New York Times who have decided that we are better off shouldering a collective guilt than celebrating our successes on the battlefield, in the laboratories, on the playing fields and every other place where Americans have triumphed?
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Who chose to divide our country and our politics by gender and by race?  Who declared our differences more significant than our common cause?
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It wasn't Republicans; it was Democrats who cultivated identity politics and ripped apart the fabric of this nation.
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The Left has been chipping away at our culture and our values for decades.  They deride religion, abhor tradition and sneer at patriotism.
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To what end?  What do they celebrate?  What statues will they erect?
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All wars incur casualties.  The culture wars threaten the optimism and positivity that have long driven this nation and attracted millions to our shores.
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They threaten the pride we take in our founding and in our founders, the freedoms we cherish and the aspirations we pass on to our children.
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The Times writes that Trump created a "straw-man version of the left that he portrayed as inciting mayhem and moving the country toward totalitarianism."
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There is no "straw man." Millions of Americans were horrified by the riots in Minneapolis, New York and elsewhere that spiraled out of control.  They are shocked that Democrat-backed groups call to defund the police while crime is surging across the nation.
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It is not the government that is demanding "complete subservience," as dictionaries define the term.  The intimidation is instead coming from the leftist mob, enabled by social media.
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When scores of people are losing their jobs because of years-old tweets or remarks that are racially insensitive by today's standards, when college-bound students find the doors slammed in their face because of un-woke social media posts, when a professor loses his post at Michigan State University because he shared data suggesting cop shootings are not racially biased, or the New York Times fires an editor because he publishes an opinion piece not conforming to the paper's liberal code, millions are intimidated, afraid to speak up.
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The Times says President Trump "signaled even more clearly that he would exploit race and cultural flash points"; isn't that what Democrats have done?
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Neither Biden nor any other senior Democrat has rebuked those destroying America's monuments, or denounced those who burned and looted neighborhoods in our most liberal cities.  They have also not condemned the intolerance of the Left.
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Everything about Trump's Independence Day speech offended liberals, including the setting.  CNN introduced the address with this: "President Trump will be at Mount Rushmore, where he'll be standing in front of a monument of two slave owners and on land wrestled away from Native Americans."
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In 2016, CNN described Bernie Sanders "taking in the majesty of the moment as he visited this monument to four great American presidents." When President Obama visited, CNN described it as "majestic."
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Mount Rushmore has not changed.
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In this "dark" speech so scorned by liberal commentators, President Trump proclaimed anew "the ideals of the Declaration of Independence," and vowed to "never surrender the spirit and the courage and the cause of July 4, 1776."?Perfect.
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See related What Do We Want? (Sean Delonas, 07/12/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Liz Peek: Left silences silent majority – but watch for this in November  (Fox 06/15/2020)
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The silent majority grows ever more silent.  Tens of millions of Americans are aghast at what is taking place in our country.
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Neighborhoods burned by angry mobs, an entire section of Seattle "occupied" by anarchists, the city council of Minneapolis voting to eliminate its police department, public monuments and statues trashed, popular TV shows canceled because they show law enforcement in a favorable light, over 700 cops injured during "mostly peaceful protests."
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Most Americans are horrified by these offenses, but fearful.  They know that objecting to the violence or challenging the overarching accusation from the Left – that our country is "profoundly racist" – is dangerous.  The woke mob will shame you and get you fired.
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No one will stand up for you; no one will protect you.  It is safer to remain silent.
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In 1969, Richard Nixon called on the "silent majority" to push back against anti-war activists protesting America's involvement in Vietnam.
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President Trump tweeted those words recently, suggesting correctly that most of the country opposed the chaos in our streets.
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The CEO of CrossFit, a Libertarian who refused to embrace Black Lives Matter, but who has no history of racism, was forced to resign from the firm he founded.
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Editors of prominent newspapers and magazines?have been forced to step down for the sin of bucking progressive dogma, or even publishing a contrary opinion.
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New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees was slammed for supporting the American flag.  Imagine.
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The silent majority doesn't believe a country that twice elected a black man president – by a majority vote – is racist; they don't think a country that celebrates the birth of Dr.  Martin Luther King is racist.
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Most important, they search their own hearts, and do not find racism.
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Those arguing the essential evil of America point to police brutality, epitomized by the ugly murder of George Floyd.
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"A solid body of evidence finds no structural bias in the criminal justice system with regard to arrests, prosecution or sentencing."
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In 2019, only 0.1 percent of black homicides were of unarmed black men killed by police.  The data shows that "...a police officer is 18?  times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer."
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Protesters, egged on by the liberal media, dismiss the facts; they celebrate emotion.  Videos of Floyd and others killed by cops have alarmed the nation and spurred widespread support for sensible police reforms.  As usual, however, the Left is going too far.
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Our nation has always been divided on many issues, including those concerning race and policing.  But today is different.
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There has never before been such a concerted effort to shut down dissent.  There have never been such all-out attacks on people, and not just their opinions.
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Today, if you fail to stand up for Black Lives Matter, an organization now committed to defunding the police, according to their website, you are not only pummeled for being wrong, you are tagged as a bad person.
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This is frightening.  We hold the liberal media and also those managing our major social media companies accountable.
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We also blame those kneeling reflexively to the faux arbiters of right and wrong.
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They embrace diversity but they are fundamentally intolerant, intent on scuttling the prized American tradition of free speech.
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If you doubt that Trump supporters are cowed by the hostility of the Left, ask yourself when you last saw a MAGA hat in Manhattan or a bumper sticker in Berkeley.  No one would dare.
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... if attacks on our cities, our cops and our public monuments continue, Trump will have the support of the silent majority in November.  They will make their voices heard.
      Liz Peek: Coronavirus and China – 4 ways US can start to avenge deaths of hundreds of thousands  (Fox 05/04/2020)
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People everywhere will demand that Beijing pay a price for the enormous loss of life and the incalculable damage done to economies around the globe.
• 
... Beijing suppressed evidence that COVID-19 was transmitted between humans, silenced whistleblower doctors alarmed at the spread of the disease, censored news about the outbreak on social media and perhaps worst of all, destroyed samples of the virus which could have helped develop an earlier therapy or vaccine.
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We must retaliate by hitting Beijing where it hurts that despotic regime worst: by undermining its propaganda campaigns and by crushing its illicit pathways to growth.
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The good news is that the Trump administration has already paved the way on both those fronts.  Unlike prior administrations, the Trump White House has not been afraid to call out China for its worst behavior.
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President Trump was elected in part to push back against China, and that he has done, at great risk to our economy and to his own reelection prospects.
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Against all odds, his team managed to ink a trade deal that would begin to right some of the wrongs, resetting uneven tariffs while also reducing the cheating by state-owned firms and the theft of American know-how.
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That effort opened the door to a more honest relationship with China.  COVID-19 blew the door off its hinges.  What now?
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Through our new measures, we must demonstrate that the United States can be trusted, and China cannot.
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That rules out defaulting on our debt, which some have suggested.  It also rules out more tariffs.
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The White House has claimed those taxes on imports were necessary to reset the trade rules for U.S.  producers; that's how they should be used, not as punishment.
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Instead, we first need to bring critical manufacturing back to the U.S.
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... using tax incentives or regulatory relief – whatever it takes — other industries should also be encouraged to move out of China, to diversify their sourcing or, better yet, relocate to the U.S.
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We have learned recently that far too many critical supply chains wind through China; we need to investigate and protect against those vulnerabilities.
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Second, we need to strictly limit access to our universities and labs by Chinese students and scientists.
• 
... Lieber lied about his longtime participation in China's "Thousand Talents" program and failed to disclose millions of dollars he received from the Wuhan University of Technology.
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During the same period, Lieber received $15 million in grants from the Department of Defense and National Institutes of Health.
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Two Chinese nationals who worked with Lieber were also charged, one with acting as an agent for a foreign government and the other for attempting to smuggle vials of biological research out of the U.S.
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For years, American scientists and our intel organizations have warned that visiting Chinese students and scholars have penetrated the goodwill and secrets of U.S.  universities, and then headed home with pockets full of secrets.  This must stop.
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Third, we must close down Chinese acquisitions of U.S.  properties and companies.  The EU, normally squeamish about confronting Beijing, has recently taken steps to prohibit Chinese state firms from buying European companies.  We must do the same.
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Fourth, we need an aggressive public relations campaign that will penetrate Beijing's suffocating lockdown of news and social media in the country and undermine President Xi Jinping's authority.
• 
Voice of America must help, and all efforts should be made to broaden its reach within China.
• 
Lately, VOA has come under fire from the White House for broadcasting material viewed as helpful to Beijing; that must stop.  The organization prides itself on being "independent" and not being a propaganda arm for the U.S.
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But if Beijing lies to its people, VOA's role is to counter the official narrative and to represent American values.  Otherwise, why should taxpayers pay their bills?
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None of this will be easy; the White House can count on Democrat resistance to every step.
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Common sense Americans believe in our leadership.  In November, they will choose a president who believes in it too.
      Liz Peek: Coronavirus reopening – Democrats resisting for this reason  (Fox 04/20/2020)
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Nancy Pelosi does not want Americans to go back to work.  She and other Democrats will loft every possible excuse to prevent the nation from reopening, claiming that Trump's intention of doing so is "deeply frivolous and wrong."
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They will insist that every single human being must be tested before a bricklayer, a piano tuner or professional golfer can safely earn a living, knowing that we are far from achieving that goal.
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Who would have thought that rescuing the country from massive unemployment and collapsing incomes would become a political hot potato?
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Who would have thought that Democrats would be willing to sacrifice the well-being of the nation in order to win an election?
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Only someone who has watched Democrats try to topple President Trump for three years with no success but ever-increasing desperation.
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Having failed to oust him by alleging conspiracy with Russia and then through a partisan and unfair impeachment, now they pray that a devastated economy will demolish his best argument for reelection.
• 
That could happen, especially if blue and purple state governors around the country keep the lid on activity, demand that small businesses remain shuttered, and enforce the general misery, all in the name of keeping us "safe."
• 
Trump's critics have jumped on him for the lack of available testing.  The president was not directly responsible for the chaotic approach to making test kits available, of course, but the buck indeed stops with the White House.
• 
The failures of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration can be laid at the president's door, and Democrats are eager to do that, all the while upping the supposed cost of the shortfall.
• 
Dr.  Anthony Fauci ... recently pushed back against Democrats' testing mantra, saying "The emphasis that we've been hearing is essentially ‘testing is everything' and it isn't."
• 
Fauci also said that early problems with testing had largely been resolved and that there would in fact be enough tests to start reopening society.
• 
"Every 1 percent hike in the unemployment rate will likely produce a 3.3 percent increase in drug-overdose deaths and a 0.99 percent increase in suicides, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the medical journal Lancet."
• 
With 22 million losing their jobs, and unemployment approaching Great Depression-era levels of near 20 percent, those projections suggest thousands could be at risk.
• 
Our policymakers must not only weigh the impact on Americans' health from the ongoing lockdown but must also examine the soaring costs of the rescue plans approved by Congress.
• 
Trillions are flowing out the door to protect unemployed individuals and small businesses from losing everything – losses that if prolonged could cripple our economy for years to come.
• 
Though the need for these emergency measures is undisputed, they cannot go on forever.
• 
Already the U.S.  has $18 trillion in debt outstanding, held by other countries like China as well as private investors.
• 
According to the Wall Street Journal, that amounts to 89 percent of GDP, the most since 1947.
• 
Given the health and economic costs of the ongoing lockdown, why are Democrats so opposed to a gradual reopening?
• 
Simple.  The coronavirus shutdown could undermine Trump's reelection prospects, and they don't want to give it up.
• 
The coronavirus must seem heaven-sent to Democrats.  Just as it bloomed, the economy was soaring and, despite being impeached by the House, President Trump's approval ratings were at all-time highs.
• 
The disease is challenging Trump and the capabilities of government like nothing that has come before.
• 
The president will almost certainly make mistakes as he walks the tightrope between keeping Americans safe and trying to reopen our society – errors that his critics will campaign on.
• 
See related Finally Got Him (Chip Bok, 03/31/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related Coronavirus (Sean Delonas, 03/012/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Coronavirus tipping point – Trump must balance these concerns to safely reopen the country  (Fox 04/13/2020)
      Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and so many others think they could manage the coronavirus pandemic better than President Trump, and they all have a plan to get us out of this  ()
• 
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden (or someone) penned an editorial for the New York Times entitled "Joe Biden: My Plan to Safely Reopen America."
• 
In it he offers novel advice such as "we have to get the number of new cases of the disease down significantly."
• 
Also: "If I were president, I would convene top experts from the private sector, industry by industry, to come up with new ideas on how to operate more safely."
• 
If nothing else, it is conceivable that four years of a Joe Biden presidency could put the country into a stupor.
• 
Warren wants the government to manufacture scarce goods (not just press private companies to do so), to prohibit debt collections from numerous types of borrowers, to increase Social Security benefits, to adopt an Essential Workers Bill of Rights, to police private sector pricing and on and on.
• 
Warren does not want to let this crisis go to waste.
• 
This is but one of many reasons that President Trump must quickly lay out a plan for reopening our economy.
• 
The longer we dither, the greater the impulse to adopt measures that will crimp our eventual recovery, and long-term growth.
• 
That is not the only impetus to begin relaxing the social distancing rules now in place.
• 
As Trump has said, "We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself."
• 
Too many businesses are failing and too many workers are unemployed.
• 
Much has been written about how rising unemployment can lead to higher levels of depression, suicide and drug use.
• 
Also, despite the excitement over the free-wheeling handouts coming from Congress, we know the country cannot be propped up indefinitely by the federal government.
• 
We have, as a nation, put our concerns about our debts and deficits on hold, but the trillions being spent to bolster businesses and workers will ultimately darken our already perilous fiscal future.
• 
We are at a tipping point; Americans want to get back to their prior lives, and back to work.
• 
At the same time, the doctors advising President Trump caution that relaxing the safety measures in place could cause the disease to surge again.
• 
There is extraordinary tension between these two voices.
• 
Skeptics, including many Trump supporters, have begun to question whether the White House medical advisers like Dr.  Anthony Fauci have the president's best interests at heart.  That is not helpful.
• 
Clearly, the social distancing recommended by Dr.  Fauci, Dr.  Deborah Birx and others is working; the curve is bending.
• 
Fauci and Birx are like corporate lawyers; their job is to say no.  They are not paid to advise on the economy.
• 
They are paid to squash this bug, and they can best do that by putting the entire nation in a deep freeze for the next 18 months.
• 
President Trump has announced he will shortly form a panel to orchestrate bringing the economy back to life.  That group will produce guidelines about how and when businesses can reopen and how to keep workers safe.
• 
They will have to find a way not only to protect employees but also business owners; if a store invites customers in and three weeks later one of those shoppers gets sick, the owner cannot be held liable.  If a production line starts up and a worker falls ill, he cannot hold that company responsible.  Otherwise, no business will consider it safe to reopen.
• 
Ideally, this gradual opening will be accompanied by more widespread testing or, better yet, a cure.
• 
Eventually, there will be a vaccine, though probably not before this time next year.
• 
President Trump carries an immense burden, keeping the country healthy and safe but also allowing some return to normalcy.
• 
The other day Trump said about the decision that may determine his political future: "I only hope to God that it's the right decision." So should we all.
      Democrats attacking Trump coronavirus response hurt economy – they shouldn’t politicize crisis  (Fox 03/12/2020)
• 
The coronavirus is a tragedy.  So is the response from opponents of President Trump.
• 
At a time when our leaders should come together and try to calm a frightened nation, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are putting politics above country.
• 
As much as Democrats denounce the president for his petty name-calling or supposedly racist opposition to illegal immigration – an approach, by the way, embraced by tens of millions of Americans and most Democrats in years past – the vitriol hurled at the president as our nation faces a serious crisis, not of his making, is horrifying.
• 
Schumer thunders that the president is guilty of "towering incompetence." Does he think his tirades won't hurt our nation?  Does he care?
• 
... Schumer gave a blistering attack in which he accused Trump of being "asleep at the wheel" and having "no plan."
• 
He lied that the White House had significantly reduced the resources available for fighting the disease, and railed that the president "has been slow to take action to confront the virus abroad."
• 
Huh?  What are we supposed to do, send the Marines into Milan?
• 
This attack came nearly a month – a month!  – after Trump, on Jan.  31, had declared a national health emergency, put travelers who had been in exposed areas under quarantine and closed our borders to people who had recently traveled in China, which Schumer opposed!
• 
In response to the travel ban, Schumer tweeted on Feb.  5, "The premature travel ban to and from China by the current administration is just an excuse to further his ongoing was against immigrants.  There must be a check and Balance (sic) on these restrictions."
• 
When the president acted, there were only six cases of the virus in the United States and no deaths.
• 
Most offensive, Schumer also complained that Trump "has been afraid to criticize President Xi or the Communist Party of China for silencing dissent and obscuring the truth about the Coronavirus, where it originated."
• 
There is no one in our government – on either side of the aisle – who has done more to confront China's dishonesty and corruption than President Trump.
• 
Where was Schumer in the decades where Beijing was orchestrating monstrous theft of our intellectual property and cyberattacking American institutions?  Schumer was AWOL.
• 
In battling the virus, Trump rightly kept the lines of communications open with the vile President Xi Jinping, even as he enacted the travel ban, a move that angered Beijing.
• 
An article in Xinhua News, the official Communist Party mouthpiece, described that travel ban as "killing people while they are ill" and complained that the measures had "a great economic impact on China."
• 
Trump was diplomatic about the thin-skinned Xi because the U.S.  needed China's help in providing critical information about the disease.
• 
Also, he wanted to prevent Beijing from following through on its inexcusable threat to exert "strategic control over medical products and ban exports to the United States" which, China boasted, could catch the U.S.  in "the ocean of new crown viruses."
• 
Did Schumer want the U.S.  cut off from critical Chinese-made medical supplies?
• 
Pelosi tweeted: "Bigoted statements which spread misinformation and blame Asians and the Asian American community for the #coronavirus make us all less safe."
• 
She encouraged McCarthy, who was directing Americans to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, to "apologize immediately."
• 
She, like Schumer, has undermined the president at every turn.  Even though she, like her Democratic colleagues, was all-in on a payroll tax cut when President Obama proposed one in 2009, she somehow now thinks it is "a tax cut for major corporations."
• 
We know why they are politicizing the Wuhan virus; it is likely to undermine the growth and wealth creation that has resulted from President Trump's tax cuts and regulation overhaul.
• 
Fair-minded Americans will hold the president accountable for how he handles this crisis.
• 
They will recognize that he didn't create it and that a brand-new disease that spreads like lightning is tough to beat.
• 
Nonetheless, the buck stops at his door.
• 
However, they will also recoil from the ugly blame game being played by Democrats.  And they should.
      Liz Peek: Queen Pelosi wants to rule the Senate and nation but voters will revolt  (Fox 12/23/2019)
• 
Pelosi scolded the pesky press for wanting to know why, for the first time in the nation's history, she did not follow the accustomed path of handing the articles of impeachment over to the Senate for an expected trial.
• 
Having to explain her bizarre decision was apparently beneath her; she cut off inquiries abruptly saying, "Any other questions because I'm not going to answer any more questions on this...  I'm not going to go there anymore."
• 
She stopped short of demanding "Off with their heads!" but from the look in her eye, it was only the cameras that restrained her.
• 
It's no wonder Queen Nancy didn't want to answer questions about her refusal to forward the articles of impeachment.
• 
There are no good explanations except one: she wants to extend her rule to the Senate as well as the House.
• 
She wants, she says, to determine how the GOP-led Senate will conduct the trial, ostensibly to make sure it's "fair."
• 
Never mind that she has no constitutional authority for influencing the Senate's procedures.
• 
Never mind that her insistence violates the very nature of a bicameral legislature.
• 
The Founding Fathers, who have been much quoted in recent days by Democrats attempting to justify their impeachment push, respected the separate duties and responsibilities – the checks and balances – of the House and the Senate.
• 
They created our system explicitly to prevent mob rule.  In short, they envisioned exactly what is transpiring today.
• 
To be clear: the House speaker does not rule the Senate; she rules the House.  Tyrannically, in this case.
• 
Responding to critics from across the aisle who questioned her motives, Her Royal Highness answered imperiously, "Frankly, I don't care what the Republicans say."
• 
Pelosi and court jesters Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler have botched impeachment by making the process so unfair, so non-transparent and dishonest that they failed to enlist American voters.
• 
She can hold court all she wants, railing about the terrible things the president has done to the country – like delivering record low unemployment, raising middle-class incomes, confronting China on their abusive trade practices, lifting millions off food stamps, creating hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs, rewriting NAFTA and so much more – but she cannot sway Republicans in the Senate who know she is simply kowtowing to the radical Left who are dividing her party.
• 
Queen Nancy seems to be under stress.  She and her jesters made a reckless bet.
• 
They impeached President Trump on such flimsy charges that the country has soured on the undertaking.
• 
Moreover, they lied about the process and the investigation in so many ways that it offended reasonable people.
• 
Most importantly, they claim that President Trump presents an immediate threat to our country and that the need to eject him from office is urgent.
• 
That was why, after all, they could not afford to wait until November, when voters will have the chance to decide the fate of the president.
• 
...  they are political hacks bent on undermining a president whom they don't like, whose manners they consider rough, who has taken aim at the swamp they inhabit, and who is fighting back by fulfilling the promises he made on the campaign trail.
• 
They are utterly terrified that he will be reelected.
• 
In the 48 hours following the partisan vote, the Trump campaign raked in more than $10 million...
• 
At the most recent Democrat debate, candidate and Sen.  Amy Klobuchar declared, "The president is not king in America."
• 
She is right, of course.  #But neither is Nancy Pelosi our queen.
      Pelosi guarantees Trump reelection – impeachment, the resistance anger Americans  (Fox 12/09/2019)
• 
Across the United States, tens of millions of Americans are furious that Donald Trump, a man they respect, has been bullied and bloodied by hate-filled, crazed political antagonists who mock him, lie shamelessly about his policies, obstruct his every move and, most disgusting of all, savagely demean his wife and children.
• 
Those same Americans are also furious that we have wasted three years pursuing fake accusations of collusion with Russia and now Ukrainian skullduggery; they wonder what might have been accomplished over these past three years if not for the constant undermining of Mr.  Trump and his administration.
• 
Pelosi has opened a door that may never close.
• 
For all the pious posturing, Democrats have drummed up at best a flimsy and half-baked prosecution of this president.
• 
The proceedings mean that their next leader will likely face similar trials.
• 
Once impeachment becomes a political cure-all, our long-stable government will be vulnerable to ongoing partisan attacks like the one we are witnessing today, and presidents may fall like dominoes.?
• 
I imagine that even the most cursory investigation of past presidents would yield, by the standards of today's Democrats, grounds for impeachment.
• 
Did not President Obama back the investigation into Trump's campaign, as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok's text exchanges seem to indicate?
• 
... Page wrote Strzok that "potus wants to know everything we're doing," referring to President Obama.
• 
Did Obama not endorse the pursuit of the Russia dossier, which was funded by the Clinton camp to undercut Donald Trump's run for the White House?
• 
Obama may not have been on the ticket personally, but he certainly knew that his legacy was at stake. 
• 
That could be viewed as "personal gain" – the same motivation that Pelosi says drove Trump's demand that Ukraine investigate Joe Biden.
• 
The push to impeach is driven by the sore losers of 2016, by a party and their media enablers who are terrified that the humiliation of 2016 will be visited upon them again in 2020.
• 
Pelosi's party has no answer, and no candidate with a plausible alternative, to a booming economy that has brought jobs, higher incomes and hope to millions of Americans.
• 
The most recent employment report, showing that we added an extraordinary 266,000 new jobs, reinforces their enthusiasm.
• 
How can Elizabeth Warren win when she wants to blow up an economy benefiting so many?
• 
And, make no mistake, Americans credit Donald Trump for the better times.
• 
They remember Obama gurus like Larry Summers telling them about "secular stagnation," that America's future was bleak and that manufacturing was dead in our country.
• 
They remember Paul Krugman forecasting a "global recession with no end in sight" and a stock market collapse if Trump were elected president.
• 
Democrats have spent the past three years "resisting" the Trump presidency.
• 
They have blocked legislation to secure our borders and to cut through the bureaucratic red tape that even Obama swore to dissolve.
• 
They have smeared fine men like Brett Kavanaugh, because they didn't like his opinions, have engaged a compliant press to print lies about the president and his inner circle and have offered up plenty of their own.?
• 
... wonder what might have been accomplished during the past three years if Trump had enjoyed bipartisan cooperation on matters of national interest.
• 
Even with the constant bad faith maneuvering of Democrats, Trump has managed to appoint 170 new judges, including two justices on the Supreme Court.
• 
He has undone significant suffocating legislation...
      $Trump also withdrew the U.S.  from the Paris Accord, which allowed China to continue fouling the atmosphere while hobbling U.S.  ()
• 
More important, he has taken on China's unacceptable trade practices and has forced the world to confront Beijing's criminal undertakings.?
• 
He has prioritized rebuilding our military, which was long overdue.
• 
He has browbeaten NATO into upping their financial commitments, something American presidents have tried and failed to do for 40 years.
• 
He has stood up for American interests around the world, and for that, the elites cannot forgive him.
• 
Is Trump without flaws?  No.
• 
He is thin-skinned and unpredictable, and sometimes picks fights that would be better ignored.
• 
But he has spent the past three years fending off the most vitriolic and hateful attacks and – perhaps most maddening – getting zero credit for any of his accomplishments.
• 
I have some sympathy for his frustration, and I imagine those who supported him in 2016 do as well.
• 
They will support him in 2020; count on it.
• 
See related The Adam Schiff Family (Michael Ramirez, 10/08/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      The way Dems see things, you are not responsible for anything.  And that spells disaster...  (Fox 06/26/2019)
• 
Good news!  According to Democrats, you are not responsible for anything.
• 
You're no longer responsible for your student debts, for taking care of your children, for putting aside money for retirement, buying health insurance, saving to put your kids through college.  Nothing.
• 
Someone else, someone who is working hard to fulfill their responsibilities and paying taxes, will provide all those things.
• 
Except that, eventually, we actually will run out of other peoples' money.
• 
Our society is demanding less and less of our citizens.  We don't even demand they obey our laws.
• 
If people come into our country illegally, we make sure they get free health services and even free college.
• 
If people jump turnstiles or misbehave in schools, we soften the rules so they can avoid punishment.
• 
Our standards of behavior are collapsing all around us.
• 
Forget outrage about bad language or bad manners; that is so last century.  Today, anything goes.
• 
But when people are not expected to provide for themselves, where there is no expectation of individual responsibility, that's when society begins to break down.
• 
The current crop of Democratic candidates is competing for voters by promising the earth and the moon.
• 
Forget a chicken in every pot; we're talking caviar and champagne...for everybody.
• 
Progressives don't even hear how nuts their arguments sound.
• 
Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., one of the loudest voices on the left, is crazy about Sanders' plan to wipe out $1.6 trillion in student debt and to provide free college for all.
• 
She appeared alongside the Democratic socialist at the roll-out of his new proposal, talking earnestly about a 17-year-old friend whom she had mentored while still in college.
• 
Her friend had won acceptance to several "prestigious" colleges, according to AOC, but no scholarship money.
• 
She decided she just had to attend her "dream" college, even though it meant taking on $250,000 in debt.
• 
According to AOC, that example illustrates how absurd our education system is.
• 
Sorry, that example illustrates how absurd AOC's world view is.
• 
Instead of realistically assessing the economics of following her dream, the young friend took on debt that is now undoubtedly a burden.
• 
But, let us remember, she made that decision, with AOC's help, presumably.
• 
She may regret her choice; but why should it now be the taxpayers' problem?
• 
She could have attended a local, affordable, community college, or a state university, which would have left her much better off financially.
• 
Not everyone can have everything they want.
• 
Following your dream is not a "right."
• 
People make choices in life, including whether they want to borrow to further their careers.
• 
There are plenty of problems with our education system, including its high cost, which has driven student debt higher.
• 
But let's not absolve the individual from responsibility.
• 
Among other choices: what to study.  Needless to say, earning a degree in computer engineering will allow quicker debt repayment that taking a course in poetry.
• 
One can be sympathetic with young people starting out, and especially with those who graduated during the lean post-crisis years when jobs were scarce and many did not find the employment they hoped for.
• 
The good news is that today jobs are plentiful, and graduates are finding work much more quickly than a decade ago.
• 
The student debt "crisis" – if ever there was one – is on the decline.
• 
Defaults are dropping and income for graduates (and everyone else) is rising.
• 
The real crisis is convincing Americans they have no accountability.
• 
That is an insult and, eventually, a disaster.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Need Help (Michael Ramirez, 07/02/2014) cartoon from USA picture album
      Liz Peek: It's time to stop apologizing, America.  The endless apologies are wearing us out  (Fox 03/20/2019)
• 
Stop apologizing for being successful, for believing in God, for loving your country, for respecting your rivals, for everything you did or said when you were a teenager, for speaking your mind and – for apologizing.
• 
Stop cowering before the radical correctness police whose legitimacy depends on depicting our nation as a cesspool of racism and inequity.
• 
Stop, for God's sake, trying to be "woke" when you have no idea what that actually means.
• 
This groveling needs to stop.  It conflates genuine misdeeds with thoughtless wanderings and promotes self-appointed morality guardians to a prominence they crave but do not deserve.
• 
Worse, most apologies demanded by the political correctness regulators prove useless.
• 
They do not want remorse; they want attention.
• 
The shaming of our nation does not discriminate.
• 
People on the left are just as vulnerable to attack as those on the right.
• 
Possibly more so since the ideological straightjacket is that much more confining.
• 
The endless apologies (and those are just examples on the left; people on the right have to apologize for their very existence) are wearing us out.
• 
Men everywhere are sorry for decades-old locker room comments or for remarks made in jest, which do not meet today's uber-sensitive standards.
• 
They have to apologize for having a Y chromosome.
• 
Well-meaning people in the United States are shocked to find themselves playing defense, having to defend capitalism, the Constitution, investing, the Electoral College, religion, ambition, and our way of life.
• 
Why all this groveling?  You can thank today's social media warriors, who happily crush anyone challenging today's liberal playbook.
• 
If you don't think climate change is an existential threat, likely to kill us all in 12 years, you are an idiot.
• 
Worse, you are a pawn of the hydrocarbon-using meat-eating-cow-farting- industrial complex, satisfying your appetites at the expense of the universe.
• 
If you don't agree that the United States systematically discriminates against women, you are anti-women.  There is no middle ground.
• 
If you don't think the United States is racist, you are in denial.  Or, more likely, you are racist yourself.
• 
If you disagree with O'Rourke, and don't think that capitalism is "unfair, unjust and racist", as he recently described it, you are a pig.
• 
It is time for Americans to stand up to the continued shaming.
      Liz Peek: At Kavanaugh hearing, Democratic anger boils over  (Fox 09/05/2018)
• 
Every now and then, it's worth recalling what it is they are so angry about.  It boils down to this: they are powerless, unable to enact a progressive agenda disliked by the majority of the country.
• 
Since Democrats are in the minority in Congress, they cannot legislate.  Since President Trump beat Hillary Clinton, they lost the ability to whip up diktats through White House executive orders.
• 
And if Judge Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed as an associate justice of the Supreme Court, Democrats won't be able to look to that branch of government to further their ends.
• 
The staged interruptions and complaints about the process by Democratic senators made a mockery of the calls for civility and bipartisanship that adorned the memorials for their late colleague, Arizona Republican Sen.  John McCain.
• 
Apparently, treating your ideological foes with courtesy is appropriate only if that graciousness flows right to left, not the other way around.
• 
The Democratic committee members say they are angry that they have not received more documents about the judge, and that some of the pages were delivered less than a day before the hearings were to commence.
• 
But it's all hogwash; the material provided was more than that received from the past five nominees combined.
• 
Kavanaugh has an extensive public record of decisions that Democrats are free to review.  They do not want to review them; they prefer to sulk and posture.
• 
After all, every single one of the Democrats on the committee has vowed to vote against confirming Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court – so what difference would a few thousand pages make?  The Democratic senators have made their minds up.
• 
The fury of Democrats has nothing to do with missing pages or hurried timetables.  It has everything to do with being sore losers.
• 
They still cannot accept that Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
• 
Doing so would demand coming to terms with why, under President Obama, the party lost not only the presidential election but also an unprecedented number of seats in the Senate, the House, in state legislatures and governors' mansions across the country.
• 
It would mean admitting that President Obama was a disaster for his party.
• 
They embraced environmental laws that could cripple the country's energy base, health-care mandates that were affordable only to those subsidized by the government, restrictions on law enforcement agencies that compromised our safety on our streets, regulations on small and big businesses that made them uncompetitive.
• 
They made it harder for entrepreneurs to succeed and create jobs, and they supported immigration programs that mocked the rule of law.
• 
The addition of Kavanaugh will almost certainly tilt the Supreme Court to the right, although over time judges can gravitate one way or another.
• 
For the moment, however, Kavanaugh is solidly conservative; he is, in particular, no fan of the endless spread and intrusion of Big Government.
• 
Kavanaugh's dislike of an overreaching government is catnip to conservatives, but anathema to liberals, who increasingly embrace a soft form of socialism, encouraging ever more federal control of our industries and our lives.
• 
The Supreme Court with Kavanaugh aboard would become a serious speedbump for progressives.
• 
And that, for sure, is why Democrats are so angry.
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      There is always tomorrow: Jordan Peterson offers four reasons to choose life  (The Australian, 06/23/2018)
• 
"...  Think very, very carefully before you go down that route, because (suicide) will absolutely devastate, in ways you can't imagine, the people you leave behind."
• 
"If you haven't talked to a psychologist, talked to a psychiatrist, if you haven't tried antidepressants, if you haven't revealed to your family that this is how you're feeling, if you haven't been to the hospital, well, explore any possible avenue before you take a final step."
• 
"For some people, antidepressants work.  They don't work for everyone.  I'm not claiming they are a panacea, but they certainly beat the hell out of suicide.  Even if they have some negative side effects — and they do, quite frequently they do — the negative side effects aren't fatal.  So try that.  You owe it to yourself to try everything else."
• 
"Consider that your life has intrinsic value," ... meaning you can't just opt out, because to do so will leave a "hole in the fabric of being itself".
• 
"Don't be so sure that your life is yours to take.  You don't own yourself the way you own an object ... you can't just casually bring (your life) to an end because, the fact is, suicide is wrong."
• 
... if you take your own life, it won't end the pain.  The pain will simply be transferred to other people, who then have to live their lives in agony.
      Jordan Peterson And The Left-Wing Smear Machine  (HotAir 05/25/2018)
• 
If you follow the news stream, it seems that virtually every right-thinking left-leaning (pun intended) journalist, blogger, and social media maven agrees: Peterson is an alt-right wolf in professorial sheep's clothing, a self-serving charlatan who dresses up old-school misogyny, racism, and elitism in faux-intellectual, fascist mystical garb.
• 
I don't buy it.  I've read and listened to enough Peterson to make up my own mind and that's not how I see him at all. 
• 
The hyperbolic uniformity of the leftist attack on Peterson is emblematic of the growing tendency to reduce left-of-center thought to the status of a rigidly simplistic ideology.
• 
The left isn't listening to Jordan Peterson, they're just trying to destroy him as efficiently and quickly as possible.
• 
That dynamic says a lot about the left, none of it very good.
• 
... I've seen the left's scorched-earth playbook in action before and it usually succeeds.
• 
Throw enough garbage at the wall and eventually, a few bits stick.
• 
Those become all the excuse a compliant media needs to silence the target.
      Toronto professor Jordan Peterson takes on gender-neutral pronouns  (BBC 11/04/2016)
• 
"I've studied authoritarianism for a very long time - for 40 years - and they're started by people's attempts to control the ideological and linguistic territory."
• 
"If the standard transsexual person wants to be regarded as he or she, my sense is I'll address you according to the part that you appear to be playing."
• 
... terms like "gender identity' and "gender expression" are too broad, are the "propositions of radical social constructionists," and are being used to bully opponents into submission.
• 
"There's only two alternatives to that.  One is silent slavery with all the repression and resentment that that will generate, and the other is outright conflict.  Free speech is not just another value.  It's the foundation of Western civilization."
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      ‘Cancel culture’ distorts history to portray US as evil nation that must be transformed  (Fox 08/08/2020)
• 
This has been the year of "cancel culture," with celebrities, politicians, and anyone who's ever held an opinion that is mildly divergent from the politically correct left coming under attack.
• 
Amidst all the public apologies, disavowals, and firings that this political correctness crusade has wrought, the biggest victim of all has been American history.
• 
And now the assault is poised to get worse.  A concerted effort to revise history to fit the modern social justice narrative and insert works of fiction in our education system — from kindergarten through higher education — is well underway.
• 
The 1619 Project, which describes itself as "an ongoing initiative of The New York Times Magazine," is the clearest evidence that this indoctrination has become institutionalized in the American education system — but certainly not the only evidence.
• 
Despite being labeled "so wrong in so many ways" by a group of Pulitzer Prize-winning historians, the 1619 Project is set to hit K-12 classrooms this fall.
• 
Soon, 6-year-olds will be learning a reframed version of America's founding, shaped to fit today's standards and train the next generation of social justice warriors.
• 
According to the project's makeover of U.S.  history, 1619 — not 1776, when American colonists declared independence from Britain — is actually "our nation's birth year." That's because 1619 was the year the first enslaved Africans arrived in the colonies.
• 
"Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years.  This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's very origin."
• 
"Out of slavery — and the anti-black racism it required — grew nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional: its economic might, its industrial power, its electoral system, its diet and popular music, the inequities of its public health and education, its astonishing penchant for violence, its income inequality, the example it sets for the world as a land of freedom and equality, its slang, its legal system and the endemic racial fears and hatreds that continue to plague it to this day.  The seeds of all that were planted long before our official birth date, in 1776, when the men known as our founders formally declared independence from Britain."
• 
In other words, the Founding Fathers were a bunch of evil white supremacists and the most important thing they did was to institute and perpetuate slavery.
• 
The pace at which our educational system has removed or revised history has been staggering.
• 
On many college campuses, American history courses have been replaced with mandatory "white privilege" courses or "diversity and inclusion workshops."
• 
The history courses that are taught often seek to indoctrinate students with the idea that America's lasting legacy is one of genocide and oppression, not freedom and liberty for all.
• 
History courses have been politicized with the clear objective of convincing the next generation that their nation is not one to be proud of, but a place they should be ashamed of.
• 
This narrative of an evil America lays the foundation for the embrace of far-left ideology that would upend our entire social and economic order with endless protests and other actions — even violent ones — to transform our "evil" country into an imagined utopian society.
• 
The repercussions of this massacre of our nation's history are real and significant — look no further than the images of young Americans tearing down statues and destroying vehicles of "oppression" like businesses that support capitalism and courthouses that carry out justice.
• 
People aren't going to protect what they don't understand.  The reason we see so many young Americans behave this way is that so many of them don't understand our history.
• 
Pride in America only happens when people know what they're proud of.  ... Why would someone take pride in a country when they've been taught is evil?
• 
We must not stand idly by while our education system is hijacked, and our children misled and brainwashed to hate our nation instead of loving it.
• 
... Americans must demand a say in what's being taught in our schools.
• 
Without action, our education system will continue to indoctrinate students with anti-American propaganda, and future generations will think our culture and way of life is nothing worth preserving.
• 
If that happens, we won't need to teach American Exceptionalism in schools, because America will no longer be exceptional.
      Opposition to Pledge of Allegiance by ‘social justice warriors’ signals alarming trend  (Fox 12/07/2019)
• 
... stop reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at meetings because the pledge isn't "inclusive" enough.
• 
... maintained that offering an oath of loyalty to a nation that "oppresses" its own people is unacceptable.
• 
While these college students sitting in taxpayer-funded classrooms wallowed in their "oppression," students at Hong Kong's Polytechnic University were under siege from the Chinese military for daring to stand up for human rights.
• 
The juxtaposition between real and imagined oppression w`ent unnoticed — or was intentionally ignored — as Grand Valley's students claimed anyone failing to see mass oppression in America is blinded by privilege.
• 
Ironically, the same students accusing others of being blinded by privilege fail to observe the glaringly obvious privilege they themselves enjoy: American Privilege.
• 
That is, the unique privilege of living in a country that actively protects the rights of its people to criticize their government without fear of repercussions.
• 
The growing idea that America is a land of oppression rather than freedom is the symptom of a culture that incentivizes victimhood by bowing down to anyone claiming to be disadvantaged.
• 
Most college freshmen arrive on campus as 18-year-olds, eager to fit in.
• 
They observe the social hierarchy and quickly note that those at the top are the individuals who can lay claim to being the most oppressed.
• 
That victim status offers immunity from foes, praise from peers, and garners special treatment from those in authority, namely school administrators.
• 
Oppression is the currency in today's social economy, and business is booming.
• 
However, the ultimate praise on campus is reserved for those who can claim oppression while simultaneously combating it themselves.
• 
... for these self-identified warriors, the actual presence of oppression and injustice isn't necessary to receive validation — all that's needed is the claim that it exists.
• 
Every superhero needs a villain, and upon hearing each day in class that the United States is a genocidal country with a predominant legacy of racism and bigotry, it's easy for these young, passionate minds to settle on America itself as their foe of choice.
• 
Soon the idea of being proud of such a country, let alone pledging allegiance to it, becomes unconscionable.
• 
While the problems these students claim to face are often fictitious, their proposed solutions are very real, and pose a serious threat to our society as a whole.
• 
Freedoms we assume to be unassailable – like freedom of speech, assembly, and religion – are now under attack.
• 
This year alone, we've seen students demand their freedoms be taken away, all in the name of inclusivity and social justice.
• 
... students increasingly view freedom not as a privilege, but as a burden to carry.
• 
These students are OK sacrificing their rights in exchange for the perceived feeling of emotional safety this offers.
• 
We cannot stand idly by while the next generation carves away at our freedoms in the name of social justice.
      Members of the next generation won’t preserve our freedom for the future and carry on our aspirational creed if they don’t think it’s anything worth  ()
 Prager  (03/22/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (08/08/2020) | Next sect (08/23/2021) | List bot 
      America Caught Between Russia and China Externally and the Left Internally  (JWR 03/22/2022)
• 
America is caught between an external and an internal threat.  The external is an economically aggressive and America-hating China and a nuclear-equipped, America-hating Russia; the internal is a non-nuclear, America-hating Left.
• 
(As I always note, "Left" is not the same as "liberal"; in fact, leftism poses a mortal threat to liberalism.  The greatest contemporary tragedy in American life is that most liberals are unwilling to acknowledge this and continue to vote for the Left.)
• 
To use one of the Left's favorite terms, the Left poses an existential threat to America.  Russia, unless it starts a nuclear war, does not.
• 
Every left-wing movement in the world despises America — and for good reason.  America has stood for everything the Left opposes.
• 
It is the most capitalist, most religious, and most nationalistic major democracy.  America's unique success has been the greatest possible rebuke to left-wing ideology.
• 
America must therefore be brought down.  Specifically, it must abandon its capitalist economy, its Judeo-Christian values and its nationalism (as expressed, for example, in Americans' celebration of the flag and national anthem; in Americans' celebration of national holidays such as the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving; in Americans' opposition to anything hinting of world government; and in Americans' belief that their country is "the greatest country in the world").
• 
... America finds itself today attacked by three anti-American forces: Putin and China externally and the American Left internally.
• 
If there is no nuclear war with Russia, by far the greatest of these threats emanates from the American Left.
• 
It has successfully de-Americanized and ruined every major institution it has touched: nearly all educational institutions from elementary schools through universities; virtually all major mainstream news media; the intelligence agencies ... the economy (the worst inflation rate in nearly half a century is the result of the cavalier spending of trillions of dollars and the Left's energy policies which, within a few months, transformed America from energy-exporting to energy-importing); and even medicine...
• 
The only way to save America from its internal existential threat is for liberals to understand that the threat to their core values emanates from the Left, not the Right.
• 
Just to cite two examples, it is not the Right that opposes liberalism's commitment to free speech; it is the Left that cancels people for saying anything the Left differs with — including stating obvious scientific and moral truths, such as that it is unfair to women to allow biological males to compete in women's sports.
• 
And it is not the Right that opposes liberalism's commitment to racial integration; it is the Left (holding the same position as the Ku Klux Klan) that calls for all-black dormitories on college campuses and all-black graduations.
• 
America cannot defeat Russia and China without the help of other nations.  And America cannot defeat the Left without the help of liberals.
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To put it in political terms, if America's liberals voted their values, the Democratic Party would not win another major election — and it would either become irrelevant or decide to return to its liberal roots.  Only America's liberals, working in common cause with conservatives, can save America.
      Ukraine: What Is in America's Interest?  (JWR 03/15/2022)
• 
One hopes that virtually all conservatives (and virtually all people across the political spectrum) regard the invasion as evil.  Whoever doesn't has a malfunctioning conscience.
• 
Yet, some people, on the Right as well as the Left, do not put the entire blame for the war on Putin.  Their chief argument is that Putin felt threatened by the possible expansion of NATO into Ukraine.
• 
That anyone outside of Russia would offer this argument is depressing.  Do the people who make this argument believe that Russia has a legitimate fear of an attack by a NATO country?  Or do they believe that Putin fears an attack by a NATO country?
• 
If Russia is ruled by a paranoid dictator without a conscience (as evidenced by his murdering Russian dissidents and the ongoing laying of Ukrainian cities to waste), his paranoia is not to be honored.
• 
To cite the example of Hitler again, he sought the annihilation of the Jews because he feared them; he constantly reiterated his paranoid belief that the Jews sought the destruction of Germany and of the Aryan race.  Paranoid dictators need to be confronted, not patronized.
• 
... in 1994, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons (inherited from the former Soviet Union).
• 
It signed an agreement called the Budapest Memorandum with Russia, the U.K.  and the U.S.  in which it agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons and delivery systems (bombers and missiles).
• 
In return, Ukraine was assured that Russia, the U.S.  and the U.K.  would refrain from threatening it and respect its "independence and sovereignty and the existing borders."
• 
One should also add that between 1932 and 1933, Soviet Russia murdered between four and six million Ukrainians in what the Ukrainians call the Holodomor (Ukrainian for "murder by starvation").
• 
Still, the argument goes, the Ukrainians provoked Putin by courting NATO membership.
• 
NATO notwithstanding, the primary "not in America's interest" argument goes like this: "What Putin is doing is wrong, but essentially it is none of our business.  The United States has no interest in Ukraine."
• 
To this argument, one can ask: Other than an attack on America, when and where does America have an interest?  And why?
• 
If a Russian dictator can invade and decimate another country in an act of unprovoked aggression and it not be in America's interest, what about China invading Taiwan, or Iran unleashing nuclear weapons against Israel, or North Korea doing so against South Korea?
• 
And, finally, what about the moral question?  Is morality "in America's interest" ?  I have supported the notion of "America First." But as a conservative and as a religious conservative, I do not believe in "America Only."
• 
We should not send NATO troops into Ukraine, but we should allow Poland to supply Ukraine with fighter jets.  Anyway, why is that different from our supplying Ukraine with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons?
• 
If Russia having nuclear weapons prevents us from even allowing a third country to send jets into Ukraine, the lesson is simple and clear: If you want to paralyze the West, develop (or steal) nuclear weapons.  Then you can destroy any country you choose.
• 
If conservatism means "America First," count me a conservative.  But if conservatism means "America Only," count me out.
      The Left is Evil — and Libs Keep Voting for Them  (JWR 10/19/2021)
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The left has never believed in free speech and has suppressed dissent wherever it has assumed power.  Free speech is a pillar of liberalism, and it has always embraced dissent.
• 
The left rejects the anti-racist ideal of color-blindness.  Colorblind is the liberal racial ideal.
• 
The left supports racial segregation — such as all-black dorms and separate black graduations.  Liberals have always advocated racial integration.
• 
The left has always loathed capitalism.  Liberals were always major advocates of capitalism — recognizing that only capitalism has lifted billions of people out of poverty.
• 
The left has always been anti-Israel.  Liberals have always been fervent supporters of Israel.
• 
The left has always held America in contempt.  Liberals loved this country.  A liberal wrote, "God bless America." No leftist would write such a song.
• 
Yet, it is liberals who keep the left in power.  Were it not for the liberal vote, the left would have no power.
• 
Why do liberals vote left?  Why do liberals vote for those who have contempt for virtually everything they, the liberals, hold dear?
• 
The question is all the more apt given that it is conservatives who protect virtually every liberal value.
• 
It is conservatives who seek to preserve free speech, racial integration, love of America, a strong Israel, and capitalism.
• 
So why do liberals vote for the left, for the very people who hold liberals and their values in contempt?  There are two primary reasons.
• 
One is brainwash.  Liberals are brainwashed from childhood into believing that the right is their enemy and that pas d'ennemis a gauche (there are "no enemies on the left" ).
• 
That is why there is no left-wing position, no matter how destructive or vile, that could move a liberal to vote Republican or identify with conservatives.
• 
The second reason is fear.  Liberals fear they will lose friends and even family if they do not vote Democrat or if they publicly criticize the left.  And this is not an irrational fear.
• 
America and the West are being destroyed by the left.  But this destruction of the universities, the high schools, art and music, journalism, and of freedom itself could not take place were it not for liberals.
• 
The fate of America and the West lies largely in the hands of liberals.  There are simply not enough leftists to destroy our most revered institutions.  They need liberals to serve as fellow travelers to accomplish their ends.
• 
Should the American experiment fail — and it may — that profile in lack of courage, the liberal, will have made it possible.
      Cui Bono?  Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal?  (JWR 08/31/2021)
• 
How does a leader decide what to do?  The most logical response is: "Cui bono?" — "Who benefits?" — from the decision.
• 
I'd be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan — conservative or liberal — would give to the question, "Cui bono?"
• 
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.
• 
The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21 and 11.
• 
No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.
• 
So, while America doesn't benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.
• 
The damage to the reputation of America — as an ally and as a strong country — is not easily overstated.
• 
The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn't bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump — whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO — was alleged to have done.
• 
On the other hand, "Cui bono?" has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.
• 
The effects on Americans' perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan.
• 
More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth.
• 
This is new.  And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military.  One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military?  (Perhaps that's the goal.)...
• 
It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.
• 
There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II.  And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world's real evils.
      What's Ripping American Families Apart?  Responses From the Bizarre World of New York Times Readers  (JWR 08/03/2021)
• 
... comments written by New York Times subscribers about how proud they were of their children for deciding not to have children of their own.
• 
Why did these parents take so much pride in their children's decision not to give them grandchildren?  Because of climate change.
• 
You read that right.  Better not to have grandchildren than to have grandchildren who will suffer and quite possibly die because of global warming.
• 
What could better prove the power of the media and the universities to pervert the mind than their having convinced people to be proud of the fact that they would never be grandparents?
• 
Narcissism: Many Americans were raised to believe they have innumerable rights but few obligations.
• 
Radical secularism: The belief that one is commanded to "Honor your father and mother" has died along with other core Judeo-Christian values.
• 
Naivete about life: Many Americans — especially among the religion-free and the well-educated — think life is supposed to be pain-free.  And when it isn't, it is someone else's fault (usually parents or white people).
• 
Incompetent psychotherapists: If most psychotherapists were ineffectual, their patients would only be wasting their money.  But many are not merely ineffectual; they do harm.
• 
Every time I speak to a parent whose child refuses to communicate with them, I ask the parent if their child discussed this issue with his or her therapist.  Nearly always, the answer is yes.
• 
And nearly always, the therapist encouraged the patient in their decision to sever relations with their parents.
• 
If you want to know how the left has screwed with people's minds, hearts and consciences, just read the comments sections accompanying New York Times articles.
• 
Then read comments accompanying Wall Street Journal articles.  You may not agree with them, but you will encounter nothing so comparably irrational or mean, let alone deranged.
      If America Is Racist, Why Have Millions of Blacks Emigrated Here?  Did Jews Emigrate to Germany...  (JWR 06/24/2021)
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If America is systemically racist, why have millions of blacks from Africa and the Caribbean come to this country over the past 50 years?
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Why would they and many millions more want to move from all-black societies to a white-dominated, racist one?
• 
This is a question every black and white leftist should be asked.  After all, no Jews moved to Germany in the 1930s.  And why didn't any?
• 
After all, many Jews were suffering terrible persecution and poverty in Russia and in Eastern Europe.
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Why didn't any of them move to Germany after 1933?  We all know the answer: Because Germany was systemically antisemitic.
• 
But with regard to their believing America is systemically racist and so persecutes blacks — LeBron James tweets that, like all blacks, "We're literally hunted EVERYDAY/EVERYTIME we step foot outside the comfort of our homes!" and Oprah Winfrey likens present-day America to "the days of Jim Crow when black men would be lynched and dragged through the town as an example for other people to see" — their not making any attempt to dissuade blacks from coming to America makes no sense.
• 
Truth is a liberal value and it is a conservative value.  But it has never been a left-wing value.  Truth is nothing more than whatever the left says it is at any given moment.
• 
That is why Lenin, the father of modern leftism, named the Soviet Communist Party newspaper "Pravda," the Russian word for "truth" — truth was what the Soviet Communist Party said it was.
• 
For Lenin, then, as for Rep.  Adam Schiff, The New York Times, Yale University and CNN today, truth is what they say it is.
• 
Their pravda is that America is a systemically racist country.  Their pravda is that all whites are racist.  Their pravda is that Donald Trump is a white supremacist and that everyone who voted for any Republican is a racist.
• 
Yet, there is a reality that Schiff and these others cannot deny: Vast numbers of blacks yearn to come to America.
• 
They do so because they have been influenced not by pravda, but by actual truth: America is the least racist multi-ethnic, multi-racial country in world history, and any black who seeks to improve his life and that of his family has a better chance of doing so in America than anywhere else.
• 
That's why it is not Africans who are foolish for wanting to come to America; it is America's left for thinking they are fools.
• 
See related LeBron James Sports Basketball (Sean Delonas, 06/02/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      The Single Best Thing Americans Can Do to Retake America  (JWR 06/08/2021)
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The single best thing Americans can do to counter the left-wing attack on America — against its freedoms, its schools, its families, its children, its governmental institutions, its sports, its news and entertainment media, its medical establishment, the CIA, the FBI, the State Department and the military — is to take their children out of America's schools.
• 
Other than in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), the vast majority of America's elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities teach your child or grandchild almost nothing important; prematurely sexualize them, thereby robbing them of their innocence; and harm them intellectually and morally.
• 
They rarely teach them, for example, art or music because they are too busy teaching them race-centered hatred of whites, of America and of America's values.
• 
In many elementary schools, your child is taught that gender is chosen and that there is no difference between boys and girls (in a growing number of schools, the teachers are told not to call their students "boys and girls"); they are taught about masturbation; and many children from first grade on attend "Drag Queen Story Hour," wherein an obvious man wearing women's clothing, garish makeup and a wig entertains them.
• 
Given that all this is well-known, why do any nonleft — meaning, liberal or conservative — parents send their children to an American school?
• 
Many parents do not want to know what their children are being taught and the consequent damage done to them.  They don't really believe school(s) will ruin their child, let alone their child's relationship with them.
• 
These parents should speak to any of the millions — yes, millions — of Americans whose children have contempt for America, for free speech and for their parents as a result of attending an American college or even high school.
• 
A second reason is they feel they have no choice.  If they remove their child from the local public or private school (most private schools are just as committed to anti-American indoctrination over education as public schools), what will they do with their child?
• 
They cannot necessarily even rely on Christian or Jewish schools.  Most of them are as "woke" as most secular schools.  And if they do find a school that teaches rather than poisons, they may not be able to afford the tuition.
• 
The only other option, then, is to home-school one's child.  The problem is that many parents assume this is essentially impossible.
• 
It is true that, at least at the outset, a working parent may have to cut back from full-time work, and it is true that no matter what the family's financial condition, there are challenges to taking one's children out of school and home-schooling them.
• 
But given the low intellectual state of most American schools, the damage they do to young children's innocence and the anti-American, anti-white, anti-Western indoctrination in most schools, if you are a parent of school-age children, what is your choice?_
• 
You are fooling yourself if you think the odds are that after attending American schools from kindergarten through college (not to mention through graduate school), your child will turn out well-educated, intellectually alive, rational, kind, happy, well-adjusted, grateful to be American and respectful of you and your values.
• 
Poorly educated students.  Ask your college son or daughter to diagram a sentence; identify Joseph Stalin, "The Gulag Archipelago" or the Soviet Union; name the branches of the American government; identify — or just spell — Ludwig van Beethoven; date the Civil War; identify the Holocaust; and name which sentence is correct — "He gave the book to my friend and me" or, "He gave the book to my friend and I."
• 
Angry young people.  Why wouldn't they be?  First, they graduate college with a huge load of debt, having received almost nothing useful for their money.
• 
Second, if they are anything other than a white heterosexual Christian male, they have been taught to regard themselves as victims of oppression.
• 
Third, their future is so bleak they may not even have one: They are threatened with extinction by climate change.
• 
The single best thing Americans can do to fight the left-wing destruction of the country is to withdraw from the "educational" system that is actively, deliberately miseducating them by the tens of millions.
• 
If millions of American parents did so, the country would turn around as fast as you could say "teachers unions."
• 
If they don't, their children will continue being used as guinea pigs in the left's sick and dystopian experiment.
      Affluence + Secularism = Boredom = Leftism  (JWR 04/27/2021)
• 
Most leftists come from the upper and upper-middle class.  This was true for the two founders of leftism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
• 
Marx was supported by his family and by Engels, who was a wealthy businessman and the son of a very wealthy businessman.
• 
All the Western spies for the Soviet Union were economically secure.  And the great funder of radical causes today is a billionaire — George Soros.
• 
Nearly all leftists are irreligious people.  And the breeding place of leftism, the university, is the most secular institution in modern society.
• 
These two facts produce a problem: Many people lack meaning in their lives.  And lack of meaning is another way of stating "boredom" — a boredom of the soul.
• 
People need meaning.  After food, that is the greatest human need.  As important as sex is, there are happy people who go without sex (loss of a partner, never having found a partner, vows of chastity), but there are no happy people who go without meaning (no matter how much sex they have).
• 
This need for meaning has traditionally been met by four things: religion, family, providing for oneself and one's family, and patriotism.  And all are fading.
• 
Let's begin with religion.  In America today, religion is in sharp decline.  ... more than a third of all Americans born after 1980 identify with no religion.  That is the highest percentage ever.
• 
Next comes family.  Marrying and making a family have always been sources of meaning to the great majority of people.  However, like religion, the American family is also in steep decline.
• 
As every criminologist knows, a lot of single men is a problem for society.  And as the ubiquity of women on the left and among the left's angriest protesters makes clear, a lot of single women is no blessing either.
• 
Another nearly universal source of meaning has been providing for oneself and one's family.  That's why, though the poor lack money and material wealth, they have never lacked meaning.  Figuring out how to feed one's family every day provides a person with a great deal of meaning.
• 
Finally, belonging to one's nation also provided meaning to most people in modern history.  But love of country largely died in Western Europe after World War II, and it is dying in America today.
• 
So, then, with the four primary sources of meaning dying — killed in large measure by leftist ideology — meaning must be found elsewhere.
• 
And that is where the left steps in.  Leftism has always been a secular religion.  It kills traditional religion and presents itself as a secular alternative.
• 
It certainly provides meaning.  "Anti-racism" and saving the world from a threat to its very existence (global warming) are two prominent life-filling examples.
• 
Therefore, the only way to prevent the left from destroying America and its core value of freedom is to make the case for Judeo-Christian religions, the importance of marriage and family, and the unique achievement of America as the world's first and greatest multiracial, multiethnic, multinational society.
• 
Americans should have been making that case in every generation.  Post-World War II, they forgot, or never really believed, that the land of the free is, as former President Ronald Reagan warned, always just one generation away from losing its freedom.
      Most American Schools Are Damaging Your Child  (JWR 03/07/2021)
• 
If your child attends almost any university in America (or Canada or anywhere else in the English-speaking world), the odds are that your child's decency, intellectual acuity, faculty of reason, character and moral compass will be damaged, perhaps permanently.
• 
The worse news is that sending your child to almost any elementary school or high school — public or private — is fast becoming equally toxic.
• 
More and more schools are being taken over by left-wing ideologues and by nonideologues who lack the courage to confront the ideologues.
• 
Once infected with leftism, these schools teach children to hate reason, tradition, America, Christianity, whites, excellence, freedom and masculinity.
• 
To cite one example, thanks to a million-dollar grant from Bill Gates through his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Oregon Education Department has announced that teaching there is "one right answer" in math — yes, in math — is an expression of white supremacy.
• 
In addition to perverting education, teachers and their unions have exhibited a contempt for children that has taken even conservatives by surprise.
• 
Why would you send your young child to a school that sponsors a "Drag Queen Story Hour" or that dwells on "nonbinary" gender identity?
• 
Do you think such things do not damage your child's innocence?  Do you want your child to be challenged about his or her sexual identity?
• 
Why would you send your child to any school that teaches The New York Times' "1619 Project" ?
• 
This project holds that America was not founded in 1776 but in 1619, with the arrival of the first black slaves in North America, and that the Revolutionary War was fought not to gain independence from Britain but to preserve slavery.
• 
... not only are these children alienated from their parents' values, but they are often also alienated from the parent(s).  One thing you learn when you become left-wing is to have contempt for those who hold other beliefs.
• 
Had these parents known how their children would turn out, they would never have sent them to college — or even to the high school they attended.
• 
It appears, however, that no matter how many people lose their children's hearts and minds to left-wing indoctrination, and no matter how much information accumulates about the perversion of education in American schools, parents continue to take risks with their children they would never take in any other sphere.
• 
If your child wishes to study STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) or law, college remains a necessity.  Otherwise, it isn't.
• 
As for elementary and high school, parents must either find a school that teaches reading, writing and arithmetic rather than America-hatred, or they should home-school their child.
• 
This, understandably, sounds terribly daunting.  However, it is becoming considerably easier to do so as home-school groups and quality home-school curricula proliferate around the country.
• 
Whatever your decision, never say you weren't warned.
      Not a crackpot conspiracy theory to wonder about the integrity of America's 2020 presidential election  (JWR 01/26/2021)
• 
Since the day after the 2020 presidential election, I have said I am agnostic with regard to whether the election was honestly or dishonestly decided.  The primary reasons for my agnosticism are the usual ones.
• 
In 132 years, no president has received more votes in his run for reelection and lost.  Yet Donald Trump received 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016 — and lost.
• 
Trump won 18 of the 19 counties both Democrats and Republicans regard as the "bellwether" counties that virtually always go with the outcome of presidential elections.  Yet he lost.
• 
He won four bellwether states — Florida, Ohio, Iowa and North Carolina.  Yet he lost.
• 
Republicans held onto all the House seats they were defending and gained another 13 seats.  Yet, Trump lost.
• 
Unprecedented efforts were made in some states to change election laws.  Mostly Democratic states sent out tens of millions of ballots or applications for absentee ballots to people who never requested them.  Voting began in some states six weeks before Election Day.
• 
People have submitted sworn affidavits at great personal cost and with possible perjury charges that they witnessed ballot tampering on election night.
• 
... there is one question I have never heard posed that trumps all other considerations: Would moral considerations prevent Democrats from cheating to oust Trump?  Or, to put the question in the positive: Would Democrats deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Joe Biden?
• 
The answer to the first question is no: Moral considerations would not prevent decent Democrats from cheating to prevent Trump's reelection.  The answer to the second question is yes: Decent Democrats would deem it morally obligatory to cheat on behalf of Biden.
• 
For four years, the media and their party, the Democrats, told us every day that Trump is a fascist, a dictator, a racist and a white supremacist; that he was an agent of the Russian government — a real-life Manchurian candidate.
• 
We were also repeatedly told by the lying media (Trump's accurate description of the mainstream media) that in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump said there are "very fine" Nazis...
• 
Yes, the media told us with a straight face that a man with a Jewish daughter, Jewish son-in-law and Jewish grandchildren said there are fine Nazis.  Biden said he decided to run for president because of this lie.
• 
So, then, here is the question: Why would anyone who sincerely believed Trump is a white-supremacist fascist dictator not cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming or remaining president of the United States?
• 
Let me sharpen this question: Isn't someone who could prevent a fascist, white-supremacist, Nazi-defending dictator morally obligated to cheat if he or she could prevent such a person from becoming president?
• 
To repeat, I have never said Biden did not win the election.  And even if there was considerable fraud, that doesn't mean the election result would have been different.
• 
But there are consequences to beliefs.  Unless Democrats knew they were lying for four years when they labelled Trump a fascist, racist, Nazi, dictator, etc., were they not duty-bound to cheat on Biden's behalf?
• 
So, then, when you have circumstantial evidence (not proof), combined with opportunity, desire, motive and, most important, no moral argument against cheating and a strong moral argument for cheating, it isn't a "lie," and it isn't a crackpot conspiracy theory, to wonder about the integrity of America's 2020 presidential election.
• 
• 
See related Voted Today... (Chip Bok, 01/06/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      Hatred of Trump Vs.  Hatred of the Left  (JWR 11/03/2020)
• 
One way in which today's presidential election can be summarized is this: It is a contest between those who hate Donald Trump and those who hate the left...
• 
When you put it this way, it shows how superficial the anti-Trump electoral argument is.
• 
We who are not on the left base our opposition to the Democratic Party on ideas, values and our love for America, not on antipathy toward an individual.
• 
And let me assure Democrats: Most Republicans had just as much contempt for former President Barack Obama and have as much contempt for Joe Biden as Democrats have for Donald Trump.
• 
But we don't obsess over personalities; we obsess over America.
• 
Leftists — and the naive liberals who do not recognize the left as the mortal enemy of liberalism — are obsessed with the president's persona.
• 
In their endlessly repeated, hate-filled descriptions of him, he is the apotheosis of evil: a dictator, narcissist, misogynist, racist, xenophobe, anti-Semite and white supremacist.
• 
Virtually every charge is either wildly exaggerated or outright false.  For instance, regarding Trump's alleged responsibility for the American deaths due to COVID-19...
• 
Do these people hold any other leaders in the world responsible for the COVID-19 deaths in their countries?
• 
Do these people hold New York Gov.  Andrew Cuomo responsible for the deaths in New York, the state that has had by far the highest death rate in America?
• 
If one cared about truth, one would hold Cuomo far more responsible for New York City's virus deaths than Trump for America's virus deaths.  But what is truth compared to hatred of Trump?
• 
To those who hate Trump because they regard him as such a defective human being, there is nothing good he can do.
• 
A particularly pathologic example is American Jewry, which is expected to vote 3 to 1 for Joe Biden.
• 
Presidential candidates since Bill Clinton have vowed to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital, which would entail moving our embassy there.  Israel was the only country in the world in which the United States had its embassy in a city other than the capital.  Only Donald Trump kept his promise by actually moving the embassy.
• 
His policies have led to peace between Israel and three Arab countries, with more likely to follow unless Biden and the Democratic appeasers of Iran and the Palestinians come to power.
• 
In addition, Trump did more for black America than any president since Abraham Lincoln — but, of course, that's only true if you think the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded, prison reform, opportunity zones, support for school choice and second chances for those convicted of crimes matter.
• 
But none of this matters to Trump haters.  Their only concern for blacks is that blacks be as angry at America as possible.
• 
Angry blacks are Democratic voters.  Blacks grateful to be Americans are Republican voters.
• 
Those who hate the left do so not because of dislike for any individual but because everything the left touches it ruins.
• 
In a nutshell, liberals build; conservatives build; leftists destroy.  And the Democratic Party is now the party of the left.
• 
So, while the Democrats and their media focus on Donald Trump, the rest of us focus on the left...
• 
That strikes me as the more moral concern.  Between Donald Trump's narcissism and the left's assault on liberty; left-wing elected officials standing by as leftists smash windows and burn cities; and the left's rewrite of American history to ensure that our children have contempt for America, a vote for Trump should be an easy call to make for anyone who loves this country.
      The Left's Moral Compass Isn't Broken ...  (JWR 09/16/2020)
• 
... in order to have a broken moral compass, you need to have a moral compass to begin with.  But the left doesn't have one.
• 
This is not meant as an attack.  It is a description of reality.  The left regularly acknowledges that it doesn't think in terms of good and evil.
• 
It all began with Marx, who divided the world by economic class — worker and owner or exploited and exploiter.  To Marx and to Marxism, there is no such thing as a good or an evil that transcends class.  Good is defined as what is good for the working class; evil is what is bad for the working class.
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Those of us still in thrall to Judeo-Christian morality believe that good and evil are universal.  In other words, whether an act is good or evil has nothing to do with who committed the act — rich or poor, male or female, religious or secular, member of one's nation or of another nation.  Stealing and murder are morally wrong, no matter who stole or who murdered.
• 
That is not the case for Marx and the left.  In Marx's words in "Capital" ("Das Kapital"): "Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development thereby determined.  We therefore reject every attempt to impose on us any moral dogma whatsoever as an eternal, ultimate and forever immutable moral law."
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Fifty-three years later, Marx's foremost disciple, Vladimir Lenin, architect of the Russian Revolution, proclaimed: "We say that our morality is entirely subordinated to the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat.  ... We do not believe in an eternal morality.  ... We repudiate all morality derived from non-human (i.e., God) and non-class concepts"
• 
This is how Marx's ideological heirs, today's leftists, view the world — with one important difference: Morality is not determined only by class, but by race, power and sex as well.
• 
It is left-wing dogma that a black person cannot be a racist.  Only whites can be racist.  And, indeed, all whites are racist.
• 
It is increasingly a left-wing position that when blacks loot, they are only taking what they deserve, or, as the looters often put it, looted goods are "reparations."
• 
Another nonmoral left-wing compass concerns power.  Just as right and wrong are determined by class (worker and owner/rich and poor) and race (white and people of color), good and evil are also determined by power (the strong and the weak).
• 
That explains much of the left's hatred for two countries in particular — America and Israel.
• 
One must automatically "believe women" because, on the left, it is not only morality that doesn't transcend race, power, class or sex; truth doesn't either.
• 
The left's moral compass is not broken.  The left simply rejects such a compass.
      Leftists Blame America.  Decent People Blame Themselves  (JWR 09/08/2020)
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As long ago as the 1970s, I came to a major realization.
• 
While watching fellow students at Columbia University demonstrate not just against the war in Vietnam but against America — "Amerika," as many spelled it, the "imperialist," "colonialist," "mass-murdering" country — I kept wondering what made these people so hostile to the freest country in human history.
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Then, one day, as a result of my having attended a yeshiva (an Orthodox Jewish day school) through high school, the reason became clear.
• 
Though it was Jewish, this worldview could also be called "Judeo-Christian." Students at traditionally Christian schools were immersed in essentially the same worldview.
• 
We were all taught that the most important battle we need to wage in life was with our own nature.  Jews and Christians learned from the same Scripture that "the will of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Genesis 8:21).
• 
Therefore, being a good person involved a constant battle with our flawed human nature: our urges, appetites and innate weaknesses.  This battle was also the only real route to a better world.
• 
Every individual had to work on him or herself to be decent, strong, courageous and self-controlled, and every parent had to work, first and foremost, on raising such people.
• 
One day, I came to realize that this was not how the vast majority of my fellow students were raised.
• 
They were raised to believe that the great battle in life was not with one's nature but with outside forces — with parents, in many cases, but most of all with society, i.e., America.
• 
All of us, whatever our political outlook, have to confront personal failure, loss, disappointment and unhappiness.
• 
When confronted with these challenges, religious Jews and Christians are taught to look inward for both the primary source of their problems and the primary solutions to those problems: What have I done wrong?  What can I change in my life to solve my problems?
• 
Of course, some nonreligious liberals and conservatives also have this attitude.  But most of them likely inherited it from religious parents or, at the very least, from parents who were raised in a religious home or a home that retained the remnants of such an upbringing, which was common in pre-1960s America.
• 
The left, which proudly rejects Judeo-Christian values, has adopted the opposite of the Judeo-Christian view regarding pain in life.  Leftists (as opposed to liberals) hold outside forces responsible for their pain.
• 
That is the reason for the litany of left-wing enemies: capitalism, patriarchy, misogyny, systemic racism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, sexism, xenophobia.
• 
The more oppressed women, gays, blacks, etc., see themselves, the more they are alienated from America and its values, and the more they gravitate left.
• 
America has been a great country because it was built on the belief that we must all fight against our natures (and fight for our country).
• 
It is difficult to overstate the damage the left is doing to this country by abandoning the fundamental Judeo-Christian teaching that we must fight our natures in order to lead a more decent and happy life and replacing it with the belief that we must battle America instead.
• 
This replacement inevitably leads to a population of unhappy, ungrateful and mean-spirited human beings — precisely the type of individuals you see rioting and looting, the type of elected officials who do nothing to stop rioters and looters, the columnists and academics who devote their lives to spewing hate-filled lies about America, and the Twitter mobs who comprise the toxic cancel culture.
• 
It will lead to what the left acknowledges it seeks: the end of America as we have known it.
      The Present Moment Has Set Blacks Back a Half-Century  (JWR 06/30/2020)
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According to the make-believe world of the left, we are experiencing a great moment in American racial history.
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For the first time, the story goes, more whites than ever are coming to realize how racist America is, how racist cops are and how systemically racist everything in America is.
• 
The bestselling book in America is about alleged "white fragility" — the term for any rational response to the irrational charge that all whites are racist.
• 
Take the left-wing mantra that all whites are racist.  If I wanted to obstruct Black progress, and especially damage Black children, I couldn't come up with a more effective idea.
• 
To believe from early childhood that you walk through life held in contempt by all of your fellow citizens who are white is to walk through life with much more than a chip on your shoulder.  It is more like a heavy boulder.
• 
It means that you will walk through life with two paralyzing burdens: anger and victimhood.  Either one is enough to ruin your life.  Combined they're devastating.
• 
It gives one an idea of how cynical the left is that it would want to cultivate both of these life-ruining emotions in as many Blacks as possible.
• 
Anger and victimhood not only ruin the individual's life but also destroy one's relationships with others.
• 
Everyone who has an angry individual in their family knows not only how unhappy that person is but also how much havoc they wreak on the rest of the family.
• 
The same holds true for the relative who sees him or herself as a perpetual victim.  Such people are both miserable and miserable to be around.
• 
And since victimhood is a major cause of evil — people who see themselves as victims usually think they are not nearly as bound by moral rules as others are — they are more likely to hurt others.
• 
The "protesters" who destroy and loot think their victim status allows them to destroy and loot.
• 
The man identified as the president of the greater New York Black Lives Matter, Hawk Newsome, recently told ... "If this country doesn't give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it.  All right?  And I could be speaking ... figuratively.  I could be speaking literally.  It's a matter of interpretation."
• 
... quoted a protest organizer: "If this young man was robbing, that means his state and his government failed to provide him with the resources he needs." When you feel you are a victim, you are allowed to rob.
• 
Take the constant, often absurd, charges of racism at the most benign comments.  If you say, for example, that you see nothing wrong with the picture of Uncle Ben on a box of rice, you will be accused of racism.
• 
As a result, most whites understand they can no longer speak truthfully or from the heart in the presence of a Black American.
• 
It is hard to imagine a worse recipe for genuine relationships between the races.
• 
Take the assault on merit-based advancement in the name of racial equality.  Will this help or hinder Blacks?  It will obviously help some Blacks in the short run.
• 
But over the long term, telling any group they needn't meet a universal standard of excellence can only harm that group — not to mention harm the way their success will be viewed by others.
• 
Moreover, it is difficult to imagine a more condescending view of a group than to argue that standards must be lowered for them to succeed.
• 
The damage the left is doing to America may be mortal.  When it is widely deemed OK to destroy statues of Abraham Lincoln, society is experiencing a moral earthquake which may eventually destroy it.
• 
But the damage the left is doing to so many Blacks — to their moral compass, to their happiness and to their relations with their white fellow citizens — is not in the realm of "may do." It is done.
      The Four Horsemen of America's Apocalypse  (JWR 06/09/2020)
• 
It takes a lot to build a civilization, and though it is much easier to destroy a civilization, it takes a lot to do that, too.
• 
But now we have four roots of evil that are guaranteed to do so.
• 
No.  1: Victimhood.
• 
The first is victimhood.  The more people who regard themselves as victims — as individuals or as a group — the more likely they are to commit evil.
• 
People who think of themselves as victims feel that, having been victimized, they are no longer bound by normal moral conventions — especially the moral conventions of their alleged or real oppressors.
• 
Every parent, for example, knows that the child who thinks of him or herself as a perpetual victim is the child most likely to cause and get into trouble.
• 
And criminologists report that nearly every murderer in prison thinks of himself as a victim.
• 
On a societal scale, the same holds true — and being on such a larger scale, the chances of real evil ensuing are exponentially increased.
• 
That millions of black Americans regard themselves as victims — probably more so today than at any time in the past 50 years — can only lead to disaster for America generally and for blacks specifically.
• 
While victims generally feel free to lash out at others, they also go through life angry and unhappy.
• 
No.  2: Demonization.
• 
The second of the four ingredients of this civilization-destroying witches' brew is demonization — demonizing a group as inherently evil.
• 
That is being done now with regard to the white people of America.  All — again, all — whites are declared racist.  The only difference among them is that some admit it and some deny it.
• 
Former President Barack Obama ... described America as having racism in its DNA.  That is as close to inherently and irredeemably evil as it gets; you cannot change your DNA.
• 
In that sense, not only are whites demonized, but America is, too.  Unlike traditional liberals, the left regards America as a moral cesspool — not only racist but, according to The New York Times, founded to be so
• 
The New York Times has created a history of America that declares its founding not in 1776 but in 1619, when the first black slaves arrived.  The American Revolution was fought, according to this malign narrative, not merely for American independence but in order to preserve slavery, a practice the British would have interfered with.  This "history" will now be taught in thousands of American schools.
• 
The combination of victimhood and demonization alone is dangerous enough.  But there are still two more horsemen galloping toward the looming apocalypse.
• 
No.  3: A Cause To Believe In.
• 
Most Americans throughout American history found great meaning in being American and in being religious — usually Christian.
• 
Since World War II, we have lived in a post-Christian, post-nationalist age.
• 
But people need something to believe in.  The need for meaning is the greatest human need after the need for food.  Leftism, with all its offshoots — feminism, environmentalism, Black Lives Matter, antifa — has filled that vacuum.
• 
No.  4: Lies.
• 
The fourth and most important ingredient necessary for evil is lies.  Lies are the root of evil.
• 
Objective truth doesn't exist on the left.  The universities have already declared "objective truth" as essentially an expression of "white privilege."
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The public self-debasement demanded of anyone who differs with the left ... happens almost daily.
• 
The only difference between this and what dissidents underwent during Mao's Cultural Revolution is that the self-debasement here is voluntary — thus far.
• 
Last week, when this Jew saw a store in Santa Monica with a sign reading "black-owned business" so as to avoid being destroyed, it evoked chilling memories.
• 
That's how bad it is in America today.
      Greta Thunberg: A Living Explanation of the Left  (JWR 12/31/2019)
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There are two primary reasons it is so difficult, if not impossible, to define leftism.
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One is that it ultimately stands for chaos:
• 
— Open borders.
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— "Nonbinary" genders.
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— Nonsensical and scatological "art."
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— "Music" without tonality, melody or harmony.
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— Drag Queen Story Hour for 5-year-olds.
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— Rejection of the concept of better or worse civilizations.
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— Rejection of the concept of better or worse art.
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— Removal of Shakespeare's picture from a university English department because he was a white male.
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— The end of all use of fossil fuels — even in transportation (as per the recent recommendation by the head of the U.N.  World Meteorological Organization).
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— The dismantling of capitalism, the economic engine that has lifted billions of people out of abject poverty.
• 
And much more.
• 
The other major reason it is impossible to define leftism is that it is emotion-based.
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Leftism consists of causes that give those who otherwise lack meaning something to cling to for meaning.
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With regard to chaos, here is what Greta Thunberg wrote at the beginning of the month: "The climate crisis is not just about the environment.  It is a crisis of human rights, of justice and of political will.  Colonial, racist and patriarchal systems of oppression have created and fuelled it.  We need to dismantle them all."
• 
Greta Thunberg, like all leftists, seeks to dismantle just about everything.  As former President Barack Obama said five days before the 2008 election, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."
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"Greta Thunberg's father has opened up about how activism helped his daughter out of depression ... how activism had changed the outlook of the teenager, who suffered from depression for 'three or four years' before she began her school strike protest outside the Swedish parliament.  She was now 'very happy', he said ... 'She stopped talking ... she stopped going to school,' he said of her illness."
• 
The fact is life is better, safer and more affluent, and offers more opportunities for more people, than ever before in history.
• 
Just about all emotionally stable, mature people should be walking around the West almost delirious at their good fortune.
• 
Americans in particular should feel this way.
• 
But leftists (again, as opposed to many liberals) are not usually emotionally stable and are certainly not mature.
• 
Feminism and "fighting patriarchy" (in an age when American women have more opportunities than ever before and more opportunities than women almost anywhere else in the world), fighting racism (in the least racist multiracial society in history), fighting white supremacy (which has almost disappeared from American life) and fighting on behalf of myriad other leftist causes — in other words, fundamentally transforming society — gives meaning to people with no meaning.
• 
None of that is morally or rationally coherent.
• 
But it is very emotionally satisfying.  Just ask Greta Thunberg's dad.
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See related An Inconvenient Truth (Antonio Branco, 12/02/2019) cartoon from General picture album
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See related Child Abuse (Antonio Branco, 09/24/2019) cartoon from General picture album
      Dennis Prager: 'No Safe Spaces' shows the left as 'a purely destructive force'  (Fox 10/22/2019)
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The left-wing of the American political spectrum is a "purely destructive force" that has taken over elements of academic life, including free speech on college campuses
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"There is an enormous distinction between liberal and left.  Liberals and conservatives have far more in common than either have with the left.  The left is a purely destructive force.
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"Whether it's America or Europe or anywhere else.  Liberals and conservatives may differ but they have similar values."
• 
... a "wake-up call" to the American people and claimed free speech is being trampled on to satisfy a political agenda.
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... most professors are biased against conservative students, ridiculing the way liberal students are shielded from ideas from conservatives.
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"The difference between kindergarten and college is the age of the 'kinder,'"
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"They're...  not protecting [people with safe spaces].  They're simply censoring.
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"They don't protect conservative students from 90 percent of the professors who teach them the following — this is the message, really in America today, to American young people.  Your past was terrible and your future is terrible."
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"It is a tough time to be a young person in the greatest country in the world."
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See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Higher Education (Antonio Branco, 08/24/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Pope Francis Rewrites Catholicism ...  and the Bible  (JWR 08/07/2018)
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After 2,000 years of teaching that a moral use of capital punishment for murder is consistent with Catholic teaching, the pope announced that the catechism, the church fathers and St.  Thomas Aquinas, among the other great Catholic theologians, were all wrong.
• 
And God and the Bible?  They're wrong, too.
• 
The notion that it is immoral to execute any murderer — no matter how heinous the murder, no matter how many innocents he has murdered, no matter how incontrovertible the proof of guilt — is an expression of emotion, not of reason or natural law or Christian theology or biblical theology.
• 
Regarding the latter, the biblical commandment to put premeditated murderers to death is unique.
• 
Putting murderers to death is therefore the first moral law God gives the world.
• 
Why this draconian penalty for murder?  Because the penalty is a statement about the seriousness of a crime, and the God of the Bible deems the wrongful, deliberate taking of a human life the pinnacle of injustice.
• 
Allowing all murderers to keep their own lives diminishes the evil of murder and thereby cheapens the worth of the human being.
• 
In God's words, "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for G od made man in his own image" (Genesis 9:6).
• 
It is precisely to preserve the unique worth of the human being that the Bible mandates putting murderers to death.
• 
... Pope Francis wrote, "today capital punishment is unacceptable, however serious the condemned's crime may have been."
• 
Unacceptable?  To whom?  It is acceptable to about half of American Catholics and about half of the American people.
• 
But it is unacceptable to the elites of our time, the people who have the most contempt for Catholicism and every other Bible-based religion.
• 
The death penalty, Francis wrote, "entails cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment."
• 
... opposition to life imprisonment is already the norm in many progressive countries like Norway, where someone murdered 77 people, mostly children, and received a 21-year prison sentence.
• 
The Pope also writes that no matter how serious the crime that has been committed, "the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person."
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Most of us think it is the murderer, by committing murder, who has attacked his dignity and inviolability, not the society that puts him to death.
• 
We also think it is the dignity of the murder victim that is attacked by rewarding the murderer with room and board, TV, books, exercise rooms and visits from family members and girlfriends.
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"I think when people willfully, wantingly, without any remorse take someone else's life, they forfeit their right to be among us."
 Ramaswamy  (08/23/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/22/2022) | Next sect (09/07/2020) | List bot 
      Vivek Ramaswamy: Biden's Afghanistan catastrophe – here are the 3 flawed assumptions that led to debacle  (Fox 08/23/2021)
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The first flawed assumption relates to speed: the Biden administration wrongly assumed there was no way the Taliban could seize power as quickly as it did.
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The second flawed assumption relates to strength of allegiance: the Biden administration wrongly assumed that the Afghan military would fight as hard for democracy as the Taliban troops would fight for their cause, naively concluding that the Afghan military would prevail simply because it was more numerous and better-armed.
• 
The single most effective deterrent to the Taliban would have been a credible threat from America to completely decimate the Taliban if the latter reneged on its prior agreements relating to America's exit.
• 
Yet when America's president obsesses over self-criticism, claims that America's history is "stained," and instructs military generals to teach our forces about White privilege, he lacks moral standing on the global stage to use extraordinary force against our enemies precisely at the moments where we need it most.
• 
The Taliban took a calculated risk to seize Kabul because they doubted that America would do anything about it.  They were right.
• 
That same factor accounts for why the Afghan military was less impassioned to fight for our cause than the Taliban was to fight for theirs.
• 
Why would they fight for a form of government that reflects the ideals of a country whose leader consistently criticizes itself?
• 
Taliban leaders had more conviction in their cause than President Biden appeared to have in the American vision.
• 
Taliban fighters were more inspired to fight for their cause than the Afghan military was to fight for ours – and that's why Afghan soldiers simply put down their guns even as they were armed with superior equipment and outnumbered the Taliban by nearly 5-to-1.
• 
Enemies like the Taliban increasingly understand this dynamic and exploit it to their advantage.
• 
Most importantly of all, there was a third flawed assumption whose implications will haunt future geopolitical conflicts: corporate America has now turned its back on America.
• 
Our technology companies are the most powerful companies in human history: even the Dutch East India Company could not control the acceptable bounds of thought or debate, as American social media companies do today.
• 
But there's a critical difference: while the Dutch East India Company consistently advanced the global interests of the Dutch Republic, America's top companies now actively betray American interests abroad.
• 
See Twitter's behavior last week.  Twitter consciously allowed the Taliban to use its platform to communicate in real-time with its followers as it staged a military coup, even as it maintains a permanent ban on America's 45th president from communicating with his own followers here at home.
• 
This tactically aided the Taliban to consummate their takeover of Kabul, but even more importantly, it lends the Taliban a patina of moral authority that the group otherwise lacked: a powerful multinational company has now signaled that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar is a more legitimate figure than President Donald J.  Trump.
• 
China heeded the lesson as it took further military steps in its pursuit of Taiwan in recent days – and they fully expect corporate America to stand by their side.
• 
Multinational companies like Disney and Nike consistently criticize social injustice here in the United States while staying silent about true human rights abuses in China, including its treatment of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Province – one of the greatest human rights atrocities committed by a major nation since the Third Reich.
• 
Over 1 million Uighurs have been consigned to concentration camps that include forced sterilization and Communist indoctrination, yet multinational companies that criticize "systemic racism" and "transphobia" in the United States say nothing about it.
• 
If their present behavior is any indication, these same companies will praise China as it proceeds to invade Taiwan in the years ahead – all the while eroding the moral standing of the United States to do anything about it as they criticize America's social injustices that pale in comparison to those of our enemies abroad.
• 
The winners of this game range from large corporations to the Chinese Communist Party.  The real losers of this game are the American people.  A solution is still achievable, and the first step is to see the problem with clear eyes.
      Vivek Ramaswamy: Woke, Inc: Why I'm blowing the whistle on how corporate America is poisoning society  (Fox 06/22/2021)
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Here's how it works: Pretend like you care about something other than profit and power, precisely to gain more of each.
• 
All great magicians master the art of distraction — flashing lights, smoke, beautiful women on stage.  Today's captains of industry do it by promoting progressive social values.
• 
Their tactics are far more dangerous for America than those of the older robber barons: Their do-good smoke screen expands not only their market power, but their power over every other facet of our lives.
• 
... the thing I was supposed to do was shut up and play along: Wear hipster clothes, lead via practiced vulnerability, applaud diversity and inclusion, and muse on how to make the world a better place at conferences in fancy ski towns.  Not a bad gig.
• 
I'm fed up with corporate America's game of pretending to care about justice in order to make money.  It is quietly wreaking havoc on American democracy.  It demands that a small group of investors and CEOs determine what's good for society, rather than our democracy at large.
• 
This new trend has created a major cultural shift in America.  It's not just ruining companies.  It's polarizing our politics.  It's dividing our country to a breaking point.
• 
Worst of all, it's concentrating the power to determine American values in the hands of a small group of capitalists, rather than in the hands of the American citizenry at large, which is where the dialogue about social values belongs.  That's not America, but a distortion of it.
• 
Wokeness has remade American capitalism in its own image.  Talk of being "woke" has morphed into a kind of catch-all term for progressive identity politics today.  The phrase " Stay woke" was used from time to time by black civil rights activists over the last few decades, but it really took off only recently, when black protestors made it their catchphrase in the Ferguson protests in response to a police officer fatally shooting Michael Brown.
• 
Basically, being woke means obsessing about race, gender, and sexual orientation.  Maybe climate change too.
• 
Today more and more people are becoming woke, even though generations of civil rights leaders have taught us not to focus on race or gender.  And now capitalism is trying to stay woke too.
• 
Sincere liberals get tricked into adulation by their love of woke causes.
• 
Conservatives are duped into submission as they fall back on slogans they memorized decades ago — something like "The market can do no wrong" — failing to recognize that the free market they had in mind doesn't actually exist today.
• 
Both sides are blinded to the gradual rise of a 21st-century Leviathan far more powerful than what even Hobbes imagined almost four centuries ago.
• 
This new woke-industrial Leviathan gains its power by dividing us as a people.  When corporations tell us what social values we're supposed to adopt, they take America as a whole and divide us into tribes.
• 
Corporations win.  Woke activists win.  Celebrities win.  Even the Chinese Communist Party finds a way to win.
• 
But the losers of this game are the American people, including both sincere progressives who are used as pawns and everyday conservatives who are silenced, our hollowed-out institutions, and American democracy itself.
• 
The modern woke-industrial complex preys on our innermost insecurities about who we really are as individuals and as a people, by mixing morality with commercialism.
• 
That might make us better consumers in the short run, but it leaves us worse off as citizens in the end.
      Vivek Ramaswamy: Big Tech's rise threatens country's future – beware the woke-industrial complex  (Fox 01/22/2021)
• 
Last month, Chinese leader Xi Jinping reportedly made China's wealthiest man Jack Ma disappear.  Here at home, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey made the president of the United States disappear.
• 
Both of these moves were shows of strength. And the parallels between them should shake every American to their core.
• 
Silicon Valley tech giants like Twitter and Facebook are now, undisputedly, the most powerful companies in the history of the world.
• 
The Dutch East India Company wielded a private militia, but it still couldn't control what people said and read.
• 
... our new class of unelected corporate monarchs now controls whether and how Americans can hear any democratically elected president in the future.
• 
This is the power of the 21st-century Leviathan, far more insidious than anything Thomas Hobbes imagined.
• 
It's the unholy marriage between big government and big business, through which corporations operate as the extended tentacles of the state.
• 
It's the birth of "woke capitalism" – a toxic new brew of profit-seeking and "wokeism." It's a cultural revolution perpetuated not just by politicians, but by the leaders of big corporations – especially in Silicon Valley.
• 
Don't private companies get to decide who uses their platforms?  Yes – if they're actually behaving as private companies.
• 
But in reality, today's corporate behemoths in Silicon Valley are effectively doing the work of big government under the cloak of private enterprise to evade constitutional constraints.  Here's how the game works.
• 
First, Congress endowed big tech with the special corporate privilege of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that immunizes technology companies from any liability in state court for censoring or otherwise regulating user content.
• 
Second, liberal congressmen threatened those same companies at hearings for the last year saying that if they fail to remove "hate speech" from White nationalists, they would be punished.
• 
Third, liberal lawmakers congratulated social media companies after they go on to censor content that Democrats don't like.
• 
Fourth, tech titans took their most aggressive actions of all just as Democrats are poised to have control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives for the first time in over a decade.
• 
And fifth – of course – Silicon Valley billionaires made staggeringly one-sided campaign contributions to those same Democratic candidates as a show of good faith, and to remind them where their bread is buttered. ...
• 
In 2020, "keeping money out of politics" ceased to be a liberal mantra.  Instead, blending profits with politics became the new progressive way.
• 
Consequently, we have devolved from a three-branch federal government to one with a headquarters in Silicon Valley and a branch office in Washington D.C., and with no pesky constitutional term limits for Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
• 
The great challenge for today's conservative movement isn't to simply dismantle big government.  It's to dismantle the powerful henchmen of big government in the private sector.
• 
They can fire you, tarnish your reputation, excise you from the Internet and cancel your identity.  You can either speak your mind freely or enjoy the comforts of modern life.  But you can no longer safely do both.
• 
Conservative solutions must be prudent, not merely reactionary.  Enacting regulations out of spite will only favor big business leaders who deftly capture the regulatory process.
• 
Instead, the right first step is to work through the last institutional bastion that we can trust – our court system – to recognize that state action dressed up as private business is still state action.
• 
The First Amendment applies to big tech censorship, a view supported  by certain Supreme Court precedents.
• 
Hopefully, victories in court against today's new class of state-like actors will spawn a cultural revival that steadily restores the voice of every American – in their places of work and their sites of worship, at the dinner table and on the Internet.
• 
No doubt this will be difficult for both populist conservatives and classical free-market conservatives to swallow.  But to borrow from Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz," we're not in 1980 anymore.
• 
The problem isn't just big government; it's the woke-industrial complex.  Defeating that monster should be the defining challenge of the new conservative movement.
• 
If we succeed, the prize is worth winning: a revival of true democracy and true capitalism in America.  To save both, we need to disentangle each from the other.
• 
The leaders who help the Republican Party understand this new reality will hold the keys to the GOP's future – and more importantly, our country's future as well.
• 
See related Jack (Gary Varvel, 10/19/2020) cartoon from Corporate picture album
 Rotberg  (09/07/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (08/23/2021) | Next sect (06/16/2019) | List bot 
      The power of public fantasies  (INN 09/07/2020)
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... the Third Reich reveals the power of public fantasies.  The liberal mind-set is not the default position."
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And so, it is beyond annoying, to read discussions of current American public affairs that seem stuck on the silliness ofname-calling and such when in fact the abuses of power reside more in the media, the university and the alliance of corrupt bureaucrats and corrupt politicians, than anything Donald Trump could dream up in his tweets or his reactions to the war against him by what I term the "Leftist-Islamist-Globalist Agenda" .
• 
What should be of interest is how the private fantasies of the Left and their Islamist and Globalist friends have been turned by those in power into very public fantasies which have formed the basis of 3 and a half years of non-stop slander.
• 
This political libel reflects not just a hatred of one man, but the hatred of the very basis of American liberal democracy and its Rule of Law.
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The knee-jerk welcome of the racist and anti-Semitic Black Lives Matter and corporate funding of a group so little understood by these donors, and the failure to admonish Antifa and its enablers in Democrat-ruled states and municipalities, shows the danger of the transition of private into public fantasies.
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These symbols in the public realm are but one aspect of fantastical thinking -"the power or process of creating especially unrealistic or improbable mental images in response to psychological need" .
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We have to be more concerned with the symbolic nature of the destruction of statues, the attacks on police stations and the budgets for policing, the idea that rioters are just protesters, the taking of the "knee" by athletes, and other symbols of the attack on liberal democracies.
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Even the symbolic nature of George Floyd's death as an example of so-called systemic racism must be challenged as it might also be construed as a symbol of the wasted life of a career criminal, high on very dangerous drugs like fentanyl, abandoning father of 5 children, and the lack of values of too many black males in America.
• 
Study the actual numbers of black men killed by whites, compared to black men killed by other black men or whites killed by blacks and the George Floyd matter loses some of its power.
• 
Symbols without truth, fantasies without understanding, all connote the triumph of power over goodness.
• 
More good would come from Floyd's death if it would be seen as a warning against the use of the horrible drug Fentanyl, currently killing thousands of young people, far more than the police could ever kill.
• 
The fact that America, with its "swamp" and "Deep State" was well aware that its fantasies were to be exposed,by the "other" , was the reason that even before his inauguration Trump was under attack both legally and illegally by the Deep State and other actors in government, academia and the media.
• 
The gap between their perception of his supposed authoritarianism and the fact that their methods were more authoritarian than anything he might do, can only be explained by studying the psychological needs of a Democratic Party (and its shills in media and the academy) now controlled by hard Marxists and radical environmentalists and anti-Israel propagandists.
• 
Public fantasies indeed.
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      The false god of Drag Queen Story Time for our children  (INN 06/16/2019)
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The leaders of what is nominally called an American Jewish institution ... recently invited a group, Drag Queen Story Time to come into the center and read to our children.
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This group does this activity all over the country from what I understand.
• 
It is, they argue, intended to widen the understanding and openness of our kids to their views on human sexuality.
• 
On their website they announce their vision is to "give kids unabashedly queer role models.  The kids are able then to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real."
• 
it is an unabashed attack on the foundations of our American culture.
• 
It's also an attack on our kids, their innocence and their delicate and vital world of figuring out what it truthfully means to be a boy or girl, father or mother, friend or acquaintance, husband or wife.
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The bottom line is that it is basically an attack on the God of the Bible.
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It is the worship, instead, of the God of Leftism. 
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Look all around us.
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Look at what has happened over a century as this false religion from Marx, Rousseau, Hegel, Woodrow Wilson, and now Barak, Bernie and AOC washed over Europe and now invades America with its value system.
• 
Read their poison like, "there is no such thing as Truth or God."
• 
The distinction between good and evil is gone in this new religion.
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Here, there are only narratives.
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To the man of the radical Left, there is no distinction between the morally good Israel and the Arabs intent on completing the Final Solution — each simply have their own subjective stories to tell.
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The distinction between man and animal — gone.  The 4 inch fish ... has as much right to water in the central valley of California as the poor farmer. 
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The distinction between adult and child — trashed.  It's why men of the Left call for voting rights from our clueless 16 year olds.
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It's why large numbers of American kids assault our teachers in school and mouth off to our wonderful police on our city streets.
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The distinction of one married man and one woman forming a family and raising a child — poof, gone for the progressive liberal Left.
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It's no wonder millions of our poor fatherless boys are growing up with such lack of control and virtue, giving us 50 murders over a typical weekend in the Leftist diocese of Chicago.
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How about the distinction between elevated and vulgar language?  — gone too, with these worshippers of this false God.
• 
That's why our public space is now wretchedly polluted with the most vile language spewing from adults.
• 
How are we doing there with the likes of the Robert DeNiros and crowds at the California Democrat convention, all shrieking "F** Trump!"
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Then there is the rejection of distinction regarding national borders.  ... We have utter anarchy at our sovereign borders with millions of people flooding into our American home...
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How about the distinction of private versus public property — constantly attacked by the adherents of this false religion?
• 
As Barak, AOC and Bernie have said, after a certain point you've made enough and the rest belongs to me, one of the enlightened Priests of the Leftist Temple on Capitol Hill.
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How is that Venezuelan collapse- drama going to play out in America?
• 
All of us understand there are similarities between men and women, that both deserve equal rights and opportunity, but there are also essential, deep and radical differences.
• 
We have learned from experience, our Biblical and Western heritage, history, science and common sense that embracing such distinctiveness is vital to maintain a healthy society and produce happy healthy men and women, boys and girls and families.
• 
Breaking or blurring the distinction is destructive. 
• 
Because of the disrespect for such distinction we essentially have society-sanctioned child abuse going on.
• 
Our kids are being told the lie that they are not girls or boys.  They are told they will decide that at some point later in life.  Before they can even figure out what a Mom and Dad, marriage and creation of families are all about, they are told to celebrate that there are 51 or 52 genders on FaceBook.
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Pre-pubescent children, doing what many kids naturally do, namely question their sex, are being encouraged to "transition," sometimes even being offered life-altering medicines or surgery by their lost and brainwashed parents.
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Our poor young men and women are bewildered and befuddled at the meaning of masculine or feminine.
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A guy channeling his God-given nature to be strong, assertive, physical, gentlemanly — to be a provider or protector, is now medicated with Adderall for his presumed ADD or reviled for his "toxic masculinity."
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Our poor young women, trying to exhibit femininity with modesty in dress and sexual matters, or pursuing natural inclinations like getting married, bonding to a man, having kids and building a marriage and home are told they are succumbing to the male patriarchy.
• 
And so no wonder we are left with the utter foolishness and harm perpetrated by these American Jewish teachers and leaders welcoming into our schools men attired in dresses and lipstick to read to our kids.
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In so doing they defy healthy and vital norms, boundaries and distinctions that have taken millennia in the West to refine and produce.
• 
They are proud it, but in so doing they defy science, logic, wisdom, knowledge, experience and the God-based ideas and values of the great American and Judeo Christian civilization that resides here on our shores.
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Shame on them and their assault on our culture and especially on our children.
• 
It's also the 75th Year Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion and its heroes.
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Embrace the blessing of our nature, your distinctiveness as men — not the falsehoods and destructiveness of the God of Leftism with its lack of distinctions and "gender fluidity".
• 
We may once again need you to charge down some new beaches with your unique male nature and abilities.
• 
See related It's OK (Sean Delonas, 02/24/2017) cartoon from Adult picture album
        ()
      I’m a pro-life conservative Republican college student who won’t let cancel culture silence me  (Fox 09/10/2020)
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Beginning the college year during the coronavirus pandemic is difficult enough for millions of students.  But the beginning of my freshman year at Transylvania University in Kentucky is being made even more difficult by an unwarranted attack against me by the cancel culture due to my conservative views.
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Even before starting college I was the subject of a lot of unwanted attention following media coverage of a school trip I took in January 2019 to Washington, D.C.  I wore a Make America Great Again hat.
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... I was confronted by a Native American activist who stood in front of me and began chanting and banging a drum.  I simply stood there and smiled, but some media accounts falsely portrayed me and my fellow students as aggressors who provoked a confrontation.
• 
I filed a lawsuit against The Washington Post and CNN.
• 
With that behind me, I recently began my freshman year at Transylvania University in Kentucky.
• 
But unbelievably, an official of the American Civil Liberties Union — a liberal group that claims to be dedicated to defending free speech — criticized the university last week for admitting me, saying my admission was a "stain" on the school.
• 
... Kentucky ACLU staffer Samuel Crankshaw wrote of me that "this kid clearly is a provocateur in training with no intention of learning.  He exists only to troll, intimidate and play victim."
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I have never met Crankshaw.  He knows nothing about me besides news stories regarding my trip to Washington and lawsuit.
• 
Yet still, he tries to cancel me and demand that I be denied admission to college.  Why?  Because he seems outraged that my conservative values don't align with his left-wing ideology.
• 
So should only liberals and those on the far-left be able to get a college education?  Should there be an ideological purity test required that bars conservatives and Republicans?
• 
That's a pretty frightening idea and sounds like something you would expect in a totalitarian state, not a democracy where we are all guaranteed free speech by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
• 
The ACLU claims to support free speech but, at least where Crankshaw seems to be concerned, that only applies if you share his ideas.
• 
While he works for an organization founded on inclusivity, he is quick to exclude differing opinions.
• 
If you are a conservative like me, watch out.  The intolerant left might come for you, too.
• 
As a graduate of Transylvania University, Crankshaw doesn't deem me worthy of sharing an alma mater with him.
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How would he have felt if he had been denied admission as a liberal?  I imagine he would have been rightfully outraged.  But he hypocritically wants my dreams of a higher education canceled.
• 
"I have previously written, as a long supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), about my concern over how the venerable group has changed under its current leadership, including a departure from its long robust defense of free speech." Turley wrote.
• 
"Recently, the ACLU has abandoned its famed neutrality and has not supported some on the right while supporting those on the left."
• 
... referring to Crankshaw's attack on me, Turley wrote that "it is far more alarming to see an ACLU official rallying people against a young man whose chief offense appears to be that he is publicly (and unapologetically) conservative and pro-life."
• 
Turley is right.  Colleges have a reputation of being toxic places for conservative, pro-life ideas like the ones I hold.
• 
But an alumni assuming I'll act in a certain way before even meeting me?  Well, that's a new low.
• 
Crankshaw will be sad to learn that, against his wishes, I feel that I am treated fairly as a student and am looking forward to learning and forming my own opinions over my next four years at Transylvania University.
• 
Sadly, I'm not the only young Republican being attacked for my political beliefs.  Conservative students on college campuses across America face attacks just for speaking out and exercising their First Amendment rights.
• 
If the threats to students like me don't come from the left-leaning administrators, the threats come from fellow students who call on campus leadership to cancel events or shut down student organizations that dare challenge their left-wing view of the world.
• 
The idea of "free speech zones" that some colleges and universities create in an attempt to address this problem is utterly ridiculous.
• 
Our entire country is a free speech zone, enshrined by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.  And no one has the right to cancel the Constitution or its First Amendment.
• 
Sen.  McConnell and President Trump are the exact leaders we need at a time when liberal mobs take glee in destroying our lives and erasing our voices.
• 
I don't advocate barring liberals or even socialists from going to college.  It is wrong for any of us to demean people who hold different beliefs.
• 
Now more than ever, we need more speech, not less.  We need to hear new ideas and to learn from others.
• 
And to those who are inclined to write my future for me, I say let me define myself.  I will not be canceled.
• 
See related Counterpoint (Glenn McCoy, 02/03/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Tolerance (Michael Ramirez, 02/06/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
 Schlichter  (04/18/22)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (06/16/2019) | Next sect (03/23/2019) | List bot 
      Defending American Democracy Requires We Start by Crushing the Public School Weirdos  (Townhall 04/18/22)
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If you think pierced mutants with blue hair and gender confusion have some sort of right to leverage their position as public school teachers to groom your kids with racist Marxism and sexual confusion, you hate democracy.
• 
Schools were not established so that narcissistic stange-os with galaxy-sized daddy issues could work out their personal psychodramas using our children's minds as props.
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They were established to teach our kids to read, write, do some math, and be useful citizens.  And that's what we, the People, want.
• 
And we, the People, get to make the decision about what gets taught in our classrooms.  The emphasis is on "our classrooms."
• 
The kids are ours.  The schools are ours.  And the curriculum is ours.
• 
Public education is not a vehicle to vindicate the feelz and thotz of the nimrods who teach in them.  It's to do the job we – the bosses – decree should be done, and nothing else.  Teach our kids their ABCs and how to count.
• 
And teach them about democracy, though the teachers clearly need a refresher.  Let me help.  Here's how democracy works.
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We citizens decide, and you government flunkies obey.  I would ask if you have any questions, but you shouldn't.  The chain of command is clear.  Citizen, followed by hireling.  In that order.
• 
I just love it when I see some mutated whiner on Tik Tok complaining that xe is not supposed to show videos if xis interpretative dance performance of "My Penis Confounds Me" to classrooms of second graders and how the mean old school board is cruelly repressing xis personal vision of a genderfluid future.
• 
Yes, exactly.  Yes, you are being repressed.  You may not use the classroom as your personal venue for your delusional and stupid obsessions.
• 
We call this "Democracy." And ground zero in the fight to defend it is our local elementary.
• 
Someone has to decide what gets taught in government schools.  If you think the citizens should make that decision, you support democracy.
• 
If you think government workers should make that decision, you support a fascist dictatorship of the weirdoletariat.
• 
Why do these leftist – and they are all leftists – hate democracy?
• 
Well, because in a democracy other people get a say and these goofs do not get to do whatever they please on our dime using our facilities to indoctrinate and groom our kids.
• 
Don't be fooled.  They are not for freedom.  They are for their freedom to run roughshod over the rest of us, unaccountable and occupying the alleged moral high ground.
• 
... we are not morally obligated to cater to the bizarre fetishes of unaccomplished drama royalty (I don't want to misgender anyone by using the term "queens") who got education decrees because getting a bachelor's in communications was too hard.
• 
Time to tighten up on the teachers as a prelude to tightening up on useless public employee across the government.
• 
Stop pretending teachers are, as a group, people worthy of our special respect and deference.  Everyone had some great teachers.  I remember a couple who made a difference for me.  Neither was a pinko with delusions of genderfluidity.
• 
But let's face it – most teachers are undistinguished time-serving hacks who drone along awaiting their pension.
• 
As a group, "educators" are not smarter than us, and their track record of actually educating is a trainwreck.  Do you think kids today are better educated than they were 40 or even 20 years ago?
• 
Maybe in terms of pronouns and privilege, but not in anything that's not nonsense.  For too long we gave teachers the benefit of the doubt.  No longer.  Now we need to give them orders and ultimatums.
• 
Ban teachers' unions.  Public employee unions are a disaster anyway, but teachers' unions are the worst.
• 
One lib teacher whining is insufferable.  Hundreds of thousands banding together and funding the Democrats in return for influence is an apocalypse.
• 
It gives the worst people the most power over the most important thing – our kids' future.
• 
When they called you a "terrorist" for participating in democracy, they gave the game away.  Activism works.  Now we need to take it to the next level by not just going to school board meetings but by running for the school board.
• 
And we have to withstand the lies and slanders when we act.  Ban CRT.  Ban gender weirdness.  Ban grooming behavior.  Get rid of porn and propaganda.  Impose pro-family, pro-American curricula in place of the Marxist dross masquerading as education nowadays.
• 
They will scream and they will shout.  They will call you "Nazis," "racists," and "transphobes." But guess what?  They are already calling you "Nazis," "racists," and "transphobes." Ignore their howls and protests; fire those who will not conform.  Be ruthless – for your kids' sake.
• 
Emphasize that the purpose of public education is not to provide a platform for damaged people to perform their creepy vignettes.  It is to teach and create good citizens.
• 
Our teachers are not getting paid to express themselves but to express what is normal.  All that weird stuff is narcissism and attention-seeking, and that attention goes to precisely the wrong people.  The people who should get attention in schools are the kids.
• 
Stay Involved.  When the high tide of this trend hits and the waters of weirdness starts to recede, we will be tempted to go back to not paying attention.
• 
Nope.  Watch them like hawks.  We need to stay activated to clean-out the abscess that is our education system and make sure the woke infection never returns.
• 
This is what democracy looks like – the citizens telling the government what to do no matter how sad it makes the government flunkies.  And when they oppose us, it only reaffirms that the left hates democracy.
• 
See related New Teacher (Antonio Branco, 10/17/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related What’s in a Name (Antonio Branco, 06/24/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
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See related Bark of the Beast (Antonio Branco, 10/29/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
 Schoen  (03/23/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/18/22) | Next sect (09/15/2020) | List bot 
      The Mueller report should be rejected and not believed – it's fatally flawed  (Fox 03/23/2019)
• 
Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally presented his report to Attorney General William Barr, after spending almost two years and tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on the effort.
• 
But whatever the report reveals, it is the product of a process and a special counsel team that were both fatally flawed from the beginning.
• 
As a result, the Mueller report should be rejected out of hand by every American who cares at all about the concept of fundamental fairness that our founders intended to be a primary guiding principle for our government officials.
• 
It's a sure thing that no one will be fully satisfied with the report – no matter what it says.
• 
For some opponents of President Trump, anything that might paralyze his administration and stymie his ability to make policy was most welcome – even an investigation based on a lie.
• 
For others, there was a genuine concern, fueled by the media, that there might actually be something to investigate.
• 
They were all for getting to the bottom of it – even if they were never told exactly what "it" was.
• 
Those who believe no special counsel was needed questioned whether the criteria for the appointment had been met.
• 
They were puzzled by Mueller's choices for his team, and they were uncomfortable with being kept in the dark about how broad a mandate Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein would give Mueller.
• 
There are several core principles underlying the special counsel regulations.
• 
... the appointment of a special counsel is only triggered when a determination is made that a criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted, when the Justice Department has a conflict of interest, and when the appointment would be in the public interest.
• 
... the investigation must be conducted by a special counsel team with a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making.
• 
But under Mueller, the special counsel process and team utterly failed to meet those fundamental principles.
• 
The decision to appoint Mueller was corrupted by people with a clear political bias and agenda, who hoped to accomplish through the Justice Department and the special counsel process what they could not accomplish through a fair election.
• 
Top Justice Department officials who were directly involved in the decision to appoint Mueller as special counsel hated President Trump with all their hearts and souls, and were committed to acting on that hatred.
• 
... some of the same high-ranking officials involved in Mueller's appointment were aware that information underpinning the rationale for that appointment was derived from an unreliable source.
• 
These officials also knew that the source – former British spy Christopher Steele – was funded by supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
• 
Yet they concealed these material facts from federal judges in order to get permission to spy on American citizens.
• 
The process of appointing Mueller as a special counsel was, therefore, improper from its inception.
• 
Any report derived from that process will be the fruit of a most poisonous tree.
• 
The special counsel process can only work if the special counsel's team is composed entirely of lawyers who have earned a reputation for the highest integrity and impartiality.
• 
Only then can the public have any confidence in the results of their investigation.
• 
Considering both the serious nature of any investigation of the president of the United States and the enormous power wielded by the special counsel team, fair-minded Americans would expect each member of Mueller's handpicked team to meet the highest standards of integrity and impartiality.
• 
This is required not only by the regulations, but more importantly, by the fundamental American value of fairness.
• 
Instead, for reasons known only to him, Mueller inexcusably decided to pick lawyers who abysmally failed these criteria.
• 
By doing so, Mueller absolutely guaranteed that any report issued by his team would never be accepted by anyone other than the most adamant Trump haters – and even then, only to the extent that it maligns the president.
• 
Especially in today's exceptionally polarized political climate, there can be no justification for selecting lawyers with deep ties to the Democratic Party to investigate a Republican president whose victory they considered illegitimate — at least not if Mueller cared at all about public confidence in his team's work.
• 
One can go right down the list of Mueller's legal staff choices and fairly ask what he possibly could have been thinking in selecting these people.
• 
If he had any respect at all for the American people or any interest in conducting an honest investigation – rather than just providing a vehicle for Hillary Clinton supporters to try to change the election results – Mueller would never have staffed his team with investigators whose primary qualification was their deep-seated hatred of Donald Trump.
• 
A nation conceived in liberty deserves far better than a special counsel report tainted by political bias and prepared to fit a political agenda.
• 
By definition, though, that's exactly what the Mueller report surely must be.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
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See related My Badge (Glenn McCoy, 12/07/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Scott  (09/15/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/23/2019) | Next sect (11/13/2019) | List bot 
      Sen.  Rick Scott: Riots, 'We hope they die' chants – I am mad.  Here's what I plan to do  (Fox 09/15/2020)
• 
I am mad that rioters think they can burn and trash businesses and property of hard-working Americans.  The government buildings burned were paid for with our taxes.
• 
Business owners have put in long hours trying to make a living and support their employees and their families.  No one has a right to burn or trash our businesses.
• 
I am mad when I hear rioters chant "Death to America." These are the same chants you hear in Iran.
• 
I am mad when I hear rioters chant "We hope they die" after two law enforcement officers were ambushed and shot in Los Angeles last weekend.
• 
I am mad that rioters are barging into restaurants and demanding we support their political point of view.  How dare they interrupt celebrations, terrorize seniors and hurt struggling businesses.
• 
I am mad when rioters try to tear down monuments of our Founding Fathers.  Were our founders perfect?  Of course not.  Neither are we.  Our goal should be to improve, not be perfect.  I am not perfect and neither are you.
• 
If you commit crimes against others, you should be punished to the full extent of the law.
• 
It appears the rioters have no plan or clear agenda; they simply want to tear down our country.  That will not happen!
• 
I am proud of this country.  We were the first country in the history of the world to try governance of, by and for the people.  No other country has done more to promote individual freedom than this country.  No one.
• 
What country do the rioters want to emulate?  Cuba?  Venezuela?  North Korea?  Communist China?
• 
... America, which is one of the few countries that guarantees individual rights, is the country the Radical Left wants to tear down.  I am mad and will do everything I can to protect this country.
• 
Life is unfair and terrible things happen.  Let's work to make it better.
• 
The Radical Left rioters are demanding we agree with them or they will tear down our country.  We should all be mad.
• 
It is time we all say that life is not perfect, but we can make it better by respecting each other and each other's faith, beliefs and property, treating others the way we would like to be treated, working hard, getting up when life is unfair and redoubling our efforts to succeed, voting for better government, and acting in the manner we would like our children and grandchildren to act.
• 
I don't see many of these rioters planning to move to some other supposedly utopian country.  So, stop screwing up ours.  If you don't like the way America is governed, run for office.
• 
Socialism sounds nice, but has never worked.  If someone believes in socialism, move to a socialist country.
• 
People die to get out of Cuba, Venezuela and Communist China.  The murderers in the Maduro, Castro and Xi governments will be excited to welcome you into their totalitarian countries.
• 
I am mad and my plan is to fight to save our country.  There is no Plan B.  There is no place to move to.
• 
We all have a responsibility to do our part to preserve what President Ronald Reagan called "this last and greatest bastion of freedom."
• 
We will not let the rioters ruin this country and the future for our children and grandchildren.
• 
We will not surrender America to fascist punks or woke elitists who despise everything we stand for.  It will not happen.
• 
See related Resist! (Antonio Branco, 07/09/2020) cartoon from USA picture album
      I've been blessed to live the American Dream – We can never let socialism replace it  (Fox 10/01/2019)
• 
The American Dream.  It's not something that's easy to define, but every American understands it instinctually.  It's part of our ethos.
• 
Our founders created the greatest country in the history of the world, where anything is possible.
• 
We have the freedom to get an education, raise a family, travel, pick a career, and live in peace.  Few countries are like America.
• 
It really is amazing.  And it's important to stop and think about it sometimes – what we have and what we could lose if we let Democratic socialists have their way.
• 
And make no mistake; Democrats want to bring socialism to our country. 
• 
Every day, we enjoy the freedoms inherent in this American experiment.  It's what we know, expect, deserve.
• 
But we shouldn't take it for granted.  Complacency is dangerous.
• 
We can't ignore the fact that our nation's freedom is never guaranteed, that everything we've built can be gone in an instant.
• 
I worry about future generations and the freedoms that they might lose if we allow socialism to flourish in our country, and it's time for you to worry about it, too.
• 
Right now, extreme liberals, both in Congress and in the campaign for president, are promoting a socialist agenda that would reverse the progress of our country and strip American families of freedom and opportunity.  We've heard their proposals.
• 
These are not serious proposals by the Democrats.  It's just virtue signaling to their extreme base.
• 
But we should be worried about what these proposals represent.  They represent the mainstreaming of a new socialist movement in our country.
• 
This new socialist movement thinks that the best way for American families to succeed is to grow government, raise taxes and plunge our country into more debt.
• 
These Democrats talk about being progressive, but they are actually regressive.
• 
They claim to be liberal when in fact the very policies they support would strip Americans of their liberty.
• 
We can look to the past and to countries across the globe to remind ourselves that socialism fails every time.
• 
As the saying goes, the problem with socialism is that eventually, you run out of other peoples' money.
• 
Socialism produces a weak economy that hurts everyone.  It deprives individuals of freedom and opportunity, kills innovation and would destroy the American experiment as we know it.
• 
Winston Churchill said it best when he said, "The inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."
• 
The success of our economy depends on free-market capitalism, which has been the greatest force for economic progress in the history of the world.
• 
Rather than restrict the freedom of Americans, we should embrace and thank God, for the opportunity capitalism gives us for limitless achievement.
• 
Socialism is the single most discredited idea from the last century, we cannot allow anyone to take us backward in this terribly damaging direction.
• 
Our children and grandchild deserve the opportunity to pursue their dreams in a free country – dreams that do not and cannot exist under socialism.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Potemkin Democrats (Taylor Jones, 01/31/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Socialism (Gary Varvel, 02/21/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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      Trump impeachment hearings are desperate Democratic attack on him – No reason to impeach  (Fox 11/13/2019)
• 
The U.S.  Constitution says this about impeachment: "The President ... shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."
• 
While the exact meaning of these words can be contested, there can be no doubt that they are real limitations on unchecked congressional power.
• 
They make clear our founders did not provide the awesome impeachment power as a tool to remove a duly elected president because of a political disagreement.
• 
President Trump has not been accused of anything for which he can be credibly impeached, but the dangerous ideology of the far left does not recognize legal limits or fundamental fairness.
• 
The president's opponents are determined to win at all costs to undo the results of the last election and to manipulate the results of the next one.
• 
The old Soviet Union was famous for show trials – fake trials where the result was already understood, where everything was just for show, and where the accused was already certain to be found guilty before the case was even presented.
• 
Ask yourself this: Regardless of the case the Democrats layout against the president, is there any chance at all that the Democratic House will not vote to impeach him?  Any chance at all?
• 
The conclusion of the Democratic majority in the House is predetermined and does not rely on – or have any connection to – evidence.
• 
Impeachment in this circumstance is a very dangerous action.
• 
It is founded on passion, hysteria, and yellow journalism – the very things that concerned our wise founders.
• 
An impeachment by the House on such shoddy grounds would be a dark day indeed.
• 
It would create a precedent that opens the door for the political removal of a president, undermining the validity of our elections and subverting the will of the American people.
• 
This is political theater, a desperate attempt to weaken a president who has deeply offended the powers that be in Washington.
• 
He refuses to play their games, and they will stop at nothing to ensure that he is defeated.
• 
Every day, President Trump is achieving things that make life better for the American people and fighting hard for them.
• 
It is time for responsible Democrats to stand up for law, reason and history by stopping this reckless excess.
• 
Sadly, restraint and calm judgment seem lost on Democrats as they hurtle forward, heedless of the damage they are doing to our republic.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
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      The Left Is the Culture War Aggressor  (JWR 04/06/2022)
• 
For too long, Americans have planted their heads firmly in the sand, hoping that the forces of the free market would militate against the cultural hijacking of corporate institutions.
• 
Instead, corporations built by entrepreneurs have been hijacked by woke employees and a feckless managerial class.
• 
The blowback will be real, and it should be real.  And if that means parents swearing off Mickey Mouse, increasingly they will.
      Putin Wakes up the Western Ostrich  (JWR 03/02/2022)
• 
After the end of the Cold War, foreign policy experts across the spectrum assured us that things had changed.  Wars of pure border conquest were over.
• 
Thomas Friedman suggested in his massive 1999 bestseller "The Lexus and the Olive Tree" that no two countries with McDonald's would go to war with each other; Francis Fukuyama stated in "The End of History and the Last Man" that we had reached the "end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government."
• 
The West set about proving these dubious theses by embracing what could be termed an ostrich foreign policy: a willingness to place security considerations last, and to pursue utopian goals with alacrity.
• 
When aggressive global competitors made clear that they did not buy into the West's vision of a grand and glorious materialist future combined with welfare statism — that they believed their own national histories had yet to be fully written, and that their centuries-old territorial ambitions were still quite alive — the West simply looked the other way.
• 
When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the West did nothing.  When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, the West did nothing.  When China abrogated its treaty with the U.K.  and took over Hong Kong in 2020, the West did nothing.  And, of course, President Joe Biden precipitously removed American support for the Afghan regime, toppling it in favor of the Taliban.
• 
The West decided that it would make a war-free future a reality by simply ending war.  Now, as the West is finding out, ending war is a game that requires two players.
• 
Russian President Vladimir Putin saw Western weakness as the impetus for his final grand strategic move: the destruction and occupation of Ukraine.
• 
And the West has been shocked back into reality: yes, opponents of American hegemony are territorially ambitious; yes, they want more than mere integration into world markets; yes, they are willing to murder and invade in order to achieve their goals.
• 
Times and technologies may change, but human nature remains the same.
• 
The West rose to meet Hitler's challenge.  It appears that the West is rising again to meet the challenge of Russian aggression.
• 
We can only hope that the West's newfound commitment to a very old idea — the idea that only a sense of Western purpose combined with some very hardheaded thinking about hard power can preserve freedom — lasts longer than Putin's invasion.
• 
If it doesn't, the reshaping of the world order will continue, to the lasting detriment of a West that is only now removing its head from the sand.
      Canada Goes Tyrannical  (JWR 02/16/2022)
• 
... the government would be extending laws designed to stop terror funding to now encompass crackdowns on political dissent: "Financial service providers will be able to immediately freeze or suspend an account without a court order.  In doing so, they will be protected against civil liability for actions taken in good faith."
• 
In plain language, this means that the government of Canada has now empowered banks to freeze accounts who give money to political causes the government doesn't like.
• 
... if Trudeau is able to invoke emergency powers to de-bank his political opponents — people he has labeled racists simply for opposing his vaccine mandates — where, precisely, does this end?  What's to stop powerful political actors from violating liberties on the same pretext?
• 
The answer, of course, is nothing.  And perhaps that's the point: from now on, dissent against Left-wing perspectives may be criminalized.  Watch what you say — your bank account is on the line.
• 
Over the course of the past century, the political Left made a promise: that if they were granted more and more centralized power, they would protect their citizens, particularly during times of emergency.
• 
That promise was always a lie, but the pandemic exploded that lie in particularly egregious fashion.
• 
This left the Left with two options: to abandon that article of faith, an idea central to their entire worldview; or to persecute heretics.  Trudeau, unsurprisingly, has chosen the latter.
• 
Emergency powers will be necessary until the people enthusiastically agree that their betters in government ought to rule them.
      The Attack on Joe Rogan Is an Attack on Dissent  (JWR 02/09/2022)
• 
... corporate overlords are absolutely gutless.  CEO Daniel Ek believed that picking up the exclusive license to Rogan's show would increase listenership and advertising dollars; he was clearly blindsided by the blowback, to the extent that he issued a mewling letter to the company's woke interns begging their forgiveness for their hurt feelings.
• 
... the media are not interested in freedom of speech as a principle.  They're interested in freedom of speech for themselves and no one else.  It's been fascinating to watch the evolution of our treasured Journalismers (TM) from guardians of the First Amendment to attack dogs on behalf of Big Tech censorship of their perceived enemies.
• 
Third, apologizing to insincere radical Left alligators is always a mistake.  Their goal is not a conversation.  Their goal is destruction.
• 
Rogan will survive all of this.  Perhaps Spotify ends up paying him a bag of cash to leave, and he takes his audience and goes elsewhere, tanking Spotify's stock price on his way out the door.  That would be precisely what Spotify deserves for their cowardice.
• 
But no matter what happens, the lesson will be learned by those who don't have Rogan's audience: shut up or face the whirlwind.  And most will shut up.
      The Big Government COVID-19 Lie  (JWR 12/22/2021)
• 
On Oct.  30, 2020, just days before the presidential election, Joe Biden tweeted, "I'm not going to shut down the country.  I'm not going to shut down the economy.  I'm going to shut down the virus."
• 
This was a lie.  It was a lie because nobody can shut down the virus.  Government does not have the power to end disease, as a general matter. 
• 
Which means that government should not aim for elimination; it can aim for some level of control.  That control must be balanced with countervailing concerns, ranging from suppression of economic freedom to the effects of social isolation.
• 
... why pursue useless — no, counterproductive — COVID-19 restrictions?  Because the big-government lie must be maintained.  It is an article of faith.  And faith requires reason-free sacrifice — it requires skin in the game, demonstration of devotion.
• 
To pursue irrational policy and then demand obeisance — this is the mark of the faithful.  And if you are not faithful, you are a heretic.
• 
On Oct.  22, 2020, in a debate with President Donald Trump, Biden said that "anyone who is responsible for not taking control ... anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America."
• 
This was incorrect.  The truth is that anyone who claimed that he could take control of a virus should be held responsible for the consequences of that lie.
• 
But that will only happen when Americans abandon the cultic worship of government and return to reality.
• 
And Biden and Democrats will fight such blasphemy with every weapon in their arsenal.
      Reality Remains Undefeated  (JWR 11/24/2021)
• 
This week, a 39-year-old black man in Waukesha, Wisconsin, plowed a maroon Ford Escape into a Christmas parade of children and older women.  Five people were killed and another 48 were injured.
• 
The motive of the suspect is unknown; if the media have their way, it will remain that way.  The media apparently only care about why suspects commit violent acts when motives can be credited to their political enemies.
• 
There is one thing we do know: the suspect should not have been on the street.  He had a rap sheet longer than the first five books of the Bible.
• 
His latest alleged crime took place on Nov.  5, when he was charged with resisting an officer, bail jumping, recklessly endangering safety, disorderly conduct and battery.
• 
... John Chisholm, the District Attorney of Milwaukee County, who had embraced criminal justice policies geared toward rectifying "the racial imbalance in American prisons."
• 
"Chisholm stuck his neck out there and started saying that prosecutors should also be judged by their success in reducing mass incarceration and achieving racial equality."
• 
Chisholm himself admitted the costs of his policies in 2007: "Is there going to be an individual I divert, or I put into a treatment program, who's going to go out and kill somebody?  You bet.  Guaranteed.  It's guaranteed to happen."
• 
Reality with regard to criminality isn't all that complicated: when you free criminals unjustifiably in a misguided attempt to achieve "group equity," innocents suffer.
• 
When you take cops off the street, freeing criminals to work their will, innocents suffer.  When you refuse to prosecute crime, criminals spot an opportunity.
• 
Voters can either continue to deny reality and pay the price, or they can wake up to the simple fact that reality always wins.
• 
Until they do the latter, the criminals — and the politicians who enable them — will be the only winners.
      The Narrative Is the Priority  (JWR 11/17/2021)
• 
According to the media, Kyle Rittenhouse was a white supremacist.  According to the media, Kyle Rittenhouse was an active shooter.  According to the media, Kyle Rittenhouse was a murderer.
• 
In reality, he was none of these.
• 
Kyle Rittenhouse was a 17-year-old young man who went to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in order to protect businesses and administer medical aid to those who needed it.
• 
He was chased down by Joseph Rosenbaum, a 36-year-old convicted child molester; he shot Rosenbaum when Rosenbaum grabbed for his gun.
• 
He was then chased down by Anthony Huber, 26, a man convicted of two felony counts of strangulation and suffering after pulling a knife on his brother and grandmother and choking his brother; Rittenhouse shot Huber when Huber tried to slam his skateboard into Rittenhouse's head.
• 
Finally, Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, a member of a radical Antifa offshoot, approached Rittenhouse with a pistol in his hand; Rittenhouse shot him in the biceps.
• 
All of this was on tape.  It was verified by witness testimony and physical evidence.  Yet Rittenhouse was brought to trial anyway.
• 
Members of the Left declared that Rittenhouse was a stand-in for American racism, despite the fact that all three of the people Rittenhouse shot were white.
• 
Even after the prosecution presented its case — a case so weak that the prosecution's own witnesses ended up supporting Rittenhouse's self-defense case — members of the media continued to maintain that an exoneration for Rittenhouse would be yet another stain on America's racial record.
• 
Meanwhile, last week, we learned that the Department of Justice had indicted one Igor Danchenko, a Russia analyst who worked with Christopher Steele on the infamous Steele dossier — a collection of bizarre misinformation about Trump treated as blockbuster material by the media.
• 
... Steele, at the behest of Hillary Clinton's hired guns at Fusion GPS, gathered false information from Clinton allies, and laundered it into a report — and then Clinton's team handed the Steele report over to the FBI, which promptly used it as the basis for a FISA warrant against Carter Page, a member of the Trump campaign.  The Clinton campaign then used the FBI investigation of Team Trump as a campaign point.
• 
The media, of course, went right along with all of this.  When the Steele dossier went public, members of the media treated it as though it were verified and credible.
• 
Jussie Smollett was not attacked by MAGA-hatted white thugs; the media treated his initial story with complete credulity.
• 
Christine Blasey Ford provided no supporting evidence for her allegations against Brett Kavanaugh; the media treated her as a groundbreaking heroine.
• 
The high schoolers of Covington Catholic did not mock a Native American man; the media treated them as evil white supremacists.
• 
No evidence was ever presented that Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd based on race; his case nonetheless became the point of the spear in our "national conversation" about racism.
• 
How many facts will die at the hands of media-crafted narratives?  As many as need to die in order to achieve political utopia for the Left.
      Punishing Achievement Is Punishing Everyone  (JWR 10/27/2021)
• 
Wealth taxes have been tried in a variety of countries, and they have regularly failed.  When France created a wealth tax, some 42,000 millionaires left; French President Emmanuel Macron eventually killed it.
• 
From 1990 onward, nine out of the 12 European countries that had a wealth tax followed Macron's lead and killed their wealth taxes.
• 
So, what's the point of a wealth tax if, in the end, it will fail?  The point is the punishment.  Biden and Warren are seeking to tax dollars that do not yet exist, because the people who have created those dollars are worthy of sanction.
• 
While Biden constantly blathers that he is a capitalist who doesn't seek to punish earners — only to make them pay their fair share — he's simply lying.
• 
Earners in America certainly pay their fair share: the top 1% of income earners pay approximately 40% of all income taxes while earning just 21% of all income; the highest quintile of income earners pay virtually all net taxes in America after income transfers by the government.
• 
This isn't about a "fair share." It's about disincentivizing wealth creation, demonizing it, treating it as a mark of sin.
• 
Unfortunately, we have mainstreamed such economic and moral idiocy.  When we speak of the wealthy as the "privileged," we betray our own unwillingness to speak the obvious: High-income earners provide more and better goods and services to people than lower-income earners.  That is why their income is high.  Income is a reflection of consensual transactions resulting in voluntary trades.
• 
Innovation and risk-taking must be rewarded in order for them to take place; to then attribute success to "privilege" or "luck" is to pretend that a free-market system is some sort of lottery.  It isn't.
• 
If we decide that it is somehow more altruistic and moral to receive government benefits than to take risks that result in economic success, we destroy the economic mechanism that has generated all of our prosperity — and the individuals who make that mechanism work.
• 
And that's the point.  What begins as a small tax on an upper crust doesn't stay that way.
• 
The original income tax contemplated in the United States was 1% applied to the lowest tax bracket, and 7% on those making $500,000 or more.
• 
Today, the top marginal income tax rate is 37%; income above $86,000 is taxed at 24%.
• 
Eventually, the agenda becomes clear: going after all earners, not merely those at the top.  When achievement is punished, there are no income barriers.
      America's Slow Suicide  (JWR 09/01/2021)
• 
... a simple truth: In the game of power, vacuums are filled, generally by those who are most aggressive.  And thus, surrender of the good means victory for the bad.
• 
Historically, America has understood this.  America has always been uncomfortable with the realities of foreign policy but has never shied away from its actual role as a player on the world stage.
• 
A powerful America was good, and a powerful America was necessary.
• 
Our hunger gives us a mission.  We must cure all inequality, even inequality caused by differences in behavior — the unavoidable condition of humanity — by spending trillions of dollars not yet created.
• 
We must rectify the imbalances of history — the unavoidable condition of humanity — by skewing all institutions toward "equity."
• 
We must abandon our prior foreign policy commitments — and our real foreign policy interests — in the name of quixotic attempts to "build back better" at home.
• 
We must rewrite the basic social compact in order to alleviate all natural differences between human beings.
• 
We must sacrifice our sons and daughters to our hunger.  We must teach them idiotic doctrines about complete human malleability, training them for confusion and chaos.
• 
We must indoctrinate them with the evils of our own philosophy, while teaching them that cultural diversity mandates that we overlook the far greater evils of other cultures.
• 
And, of course, we must snarl them in a web of debt not of their own making, condemning them to a future footing our bills.
• 
And then, in the end, we eat ourselves.  We turn on each other, recognizing that our mission has been lost and that our hunger can't satisfy us.
• 
We treat each other as enemies while downplaying the actual presence of actual enemies.
• 
And then we disappear.
• 
Or, alternatively, we don't.
• 
We realize that whatever our faults, whatever our shortcomings, we have a role in the world; that whatever our faults, whatever our shortcomings, we still are heirs to the greatest founding philosophy in world history; that whatever our faults, whatever our shortcomings, we are still citizens of the same body politic.
• 
The choice is still in our hands.  But if Afghanistan is any indicator, it's quickly slipping away.
      The Fight Over Identity  (JWR 08/18/2021)
• 
For thousands of years, human beings established their identities by learning how to adapt to the systems in which they lived, gradually changing those systems for the better after determining the flaws within the systems.
• 
This is how parents traditionally civilized children — by adapting them to their civilization.
• 
... the post-Enlightenment era tore away at the core assumption of such notions of identity.  Instead of adapting ourselves to the institutions around us and forming our identity within those institutions, human beings in the West began to locate their identity within — to look to their own sense of authenticity as the guide to fulfillment.
• 
In this view, identity was not formed in tandem with civilization, but in opposition to it: Only by rebelling against the strictures of a surrounding society, by breaking free of convention, could individuals finally achieve fulfillment.
• 
Furthermore, fulfillment would require not merely an interior sense of identity, but a sense of identity cheered and celebrated by everyone else.  After all, human beings still feel the need for acceptance.  To reject someone else's authentic sense of self-identification, therefore, becomes an act of emotional violence.
• 
We have now taken this view to its logical endpoint: total subjectivism, requiring the destruction of any and all conflicting viewpoints, or data.
• 
For decades, those who insist that identity is constructed in opposition to society's rules — rules that must be eliminated in order to achieve human flourishing — have suggested that authentic identity is more than mere aesthetics.
• 
... When you construct identity tabula rasa, seeing all history and science as obstacles to happiness, identity quickly flattens into aesthetics.
• 
When identity becomes pure aesthetics, society completely atomizes.  No free society can be rooted in utter subjectivity — someone must enforce silence from the top, bar dissenters and punish those who insist on objective data.
• 
And that's precisely what we are currently seeing from an authoritarian Left — an authoritarian Left that arrived with the promise of fulfillment and authenticity and has instead delivered emptiness and aesthetic pretension, enforced by institutional fiat.
      The Definition of Courage Has Shifted  (JWR 06/09/2021)
• 
Last Sunday marked the 77th anniversary of the D-Day invasion of Normandy.
• 
On that day, Operation Overlord began, launching the Allied invasion of Europe that would spell the beginning of the end of the Nazi regime.
• 
At least 4,400 Allied troops died in the Normandy landings, and another 10,000 were wounded.
• 
As the invasion started, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took to the radio airwaves to ask Americans to join him in prayer: "Almighty G od: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity ... let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be."
• 
Nearly eight decades later, President Joe Biden had nothing to say or tweet about the D-Day anniversary.  Breaking with bipartisan precedent, Biden remained silent on that topic.
• 
The next day, however, Biden did tweet something noteworthy about bravery: "To transgender Americans across the country — especially the young people who are so brave — I want you to know your President has your back."
• 
Bravery circa 1944: young men charging from the choppy seas of the English Channel onto the corpse-strewn beaches of Normandy, hellfire raining down upon them, to liberate a continent.
• 
Bravery circa 2021: young men identifying as women, and vice versa.  Our definitions of bravery have shifted rather dramatically.
• 
Our old definition of courage used to comport with the Aristotelian notion of virtue.  The virtue of courage — andreia, or manliness, in Greek — lay in recognition of serious risk in pursuit of a heroic telos, a final end.
• 
"The courageous man withstands and fears those things which it is necessary (to fear and withstand), and on account of the right reason," Aristotle explains in "Nichomachean Ethics."
• 
Now, courage lies in authenticity.  Authenticity has not been, until recently, conflated with courage.  In fact, authenticity very often cut directly against the virtue of courage: After all, wallowing in the solipsistic generally involves ignoring the demands of a higher noble goal.
• 
Higher virtue lies in finding our personal truths, and then demanding applause from the rest of the world.  Heroism lies in forcing the world to bow before our subjective ideas of truth and decency.
• 
Or perhaps there's another possibility.  Perhaps the new definition of bravery does serve some higher goal: the goal of tearing down the old definition of the good.
• 
It remains to be seen whether a civilization obsessed with tearing down its most powerful institutions can long remain civilized, or whether a civilization that discards old-fashioned courage in favor of the newfangled "bravery" of authenticity can long hold.  The early evidence is unpromising.
• 
When called upon to face true enemies of freedom, civilization requires men willing to charge beaches on behalf of higher truths, not men focused finding their "inner truths," many of which bear no resemblance to reality.
• 
To use the same terminology to describe both phenomena is a betrayal of true courage.
• 
See related Generations (Michael Ramirez, 06/05/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      For the Left, Bigotry Is a Tool  (JWR 03/24/2021)
• 
This week, a white man shot to death eight people in Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American.
• 
According to Atlanta police, the man said he was targeting brothels and blamed the women for his alleged sex addiction.
• 
So far, there is no evidence that the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus, making hate-crime charges unlikely at this point.
• 
Nonetheless, the establishment media and Democratic politicians quickly began reflecting the lie that the shooting was an anti-Asian hate crime, the latest outgrowth of a major uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes — all driven supposedly by "white supremacy."
• 
White House press secretary Jen Psaki connected the alleged increase in anti-Asian sentiment to former President Trump, stating that his "calling COVID 'the Wuhan virus' ... led ... to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair."
• 
The same sources decrying anti-Asian sentiment have spent years expressing anti-Asian animus in the form of discriminatory college admissions standards: President Biden's administration dropped a discrimination case against Yale University just a month ago, clearly thanks to the administration's position that affirmative action for black students outweighs Asian American success in a pure meritocracy.
• 
The same people blaming "white supremacy" for anti-Asian hate crimes have militantly ignored the location of the crimes — largely major metropolitan areas, with a large number of such crimes coming not from white Americans but from black Americans (a plurality of overall violent crimes targeting Asian Americans, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, were committed by black Americans in 2018).
• 
The same establishment media sources blaming Trump for anti-Asian hate cheer on the active closing of merit-based magnet schools in New York and San Francisco, thanks to those schools' disproportionate Asian American attendance...
• 
Here, then, is how the narrative works, according to the left: No matter the antecedent to any statement, the conclusion must be that America is systemically racist.
• 
When we are discussing Asian American economic success, Asian Americans must be treated as beneficiaries of a white supremacist system; when we are talking about hate crimes against Asian Americans, Asian Americans must be treated as people of color victimized by a white supremacist system.
• 
When a white person harms Asian Americans, ... intent doesn't matter — animus can be assumed.  When a black person harms Asian Americans, as NBC News reported, "experts say it's important to evaluate each case individually."
• 
All of this is morally base.  Anti-Asian animus is anti-Asian animus, whether it comes from woke school administrators or street criminals.
• 
To treat such animus differently based solely on the identity of the offender is to make obvious that you simply don't care about anti-Asian animus.
• 
For the left, it's just the latest club to wield against the broader American system, facts be damned.
      Wokeifying America's Military 3/17/21  (JWR 0/0/2022)
• 
This week, President Biden's military declared its first war ... on Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
• 
Carlson had committed the great sin of pointing out the oddity of the fact that the Biden White House had been promoting brand-new uniforms for pregnant soldiers, rather than America's military efficiency in the face of a rising Chinese military threat.
• 
This prompted spasms of apoplexy from top brass in the military itself: Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said that the Pentagon was filled with "revulsion" at Carlson's comments, adding, "We absolutely won't just take personnel advice from a talk show"; Army Sgt.  Maj.  Michael Grinston tweeted that women "will dominate ANY future battlefield we're called to fight on," calling Carlson's words "divisive"; Marine Corps Master Gunnery Sgt.  Scott H.  Stalker, the senior enlisted leader of the U.S.  Space Command, said that Carlson's opinion was "based off of actually zero days of service in the armed forces."
• 
Now, the military itself recognizes that pregnant women can't exactly staff front-line positions.
• 
And the military has reported in the past that mixed units underperform all-male combat units.
• 
But the content of Carlson's words was less important than the reaction to them, for it was unprecedented for top members of the military to unite in excoriating a civilian opinion journalist.
• 
Had it happened on former President Trump's watch, the media undoubtedly would have used it as an example of politics infusing traditionally apolitical institutions.
• 
Dark buzzwords like "authoritarian" and "fascist" would have been tossed around casually.  Yet when the military was mobilized to attack Carlson, the media cheered instead.
• 
We are watching in real time America's institutions being gutted on behalf of left-wing politics.
• 
Formerly apolitical institutions are being remolded top down to reflect the values of our New Ruling Class: those who speak the wokeabulary, who believe in the tyrannical and polarizing theories of Ibram X.  Kendi and Kimberle Crenshaw, who see their roles as the social engineers of their fellow Americans.
• 
This is true in our universities; it's true in our colleges; it's true at our corporations; and now it's true in the American military.
• 
No wonder we're told that our military will somehow be stronger for tossing out gender-neutral physical fitness tests, or paying for transgender surgeries, or forcing soldiers to read the asinine musings of critical race theorists.
• 
Our military is designed to deter and to defend, to kill people and break things.  If diversity facilitates that mission, that's wonderful.
• 
But to supplant the military's chief mission with the woke protocols of the political left is to undermine that chief mission.  The world is a dangerous, ugly, competitive place.
• 
If our masturbatory woke solipsism blinds us to that reality, the cost will be quite real — far more real than any supposed threat emanating from the musings of Tucker Carlson.
      Ben Shapiro: COVID-19 pandemic exposed an 'enthusiastic authoritarian streak' in our politicians  (Fox 12/09/2020)
• 
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed a troubling "authoritarian streak" among Democrats who have publicly violated their own rules while imposing crippling restrictions on businesses and communities across the country,...
• 
"When these political actors suggest that we must act out of an abundance of caution, they mean that they ought to enjoy abundance while benefiting from our caution."
• 
"Throughout the pandemic, one set of rules has applied to America's most ardent lockdown advocates, and another set of rules has applied to everyone else."
• 
"The message is obvious, Our intellectual and moral betters in politics are free to make their own rational calculations on COVID-19 risk.  The rest of us are to be locked in our homes until further notice."
• 
"You and your family are capable of making the same decisions Cuomo, Garcetti, Newsom, Lightfoot, and Adler do, You should be careful.  You should engage in social distancing, mask up when in close proximity with others and generally avoid social gatherings involving those with preexisting conditions."
• 
"But you can do all of these things and still live in a free society."
• 
"Our politicians don't believe that, because our politicians have seen how easily so many Americans were willing to indefinitely suspend their freedoms out of trust in our authorities.  Until the incentive structures change, our freedoms will continue to be throttled by people who have no problem exercising their own."
• 
"One need not be a COVID-19 skeptic in order to question whether the enthusiastic authoritarian streak revealed by those politicians can be curbed.  The longer we tolerate it, the more our politicians will normalize their power grabs."
• 
Until then ... the country will be ruled by "a political class incentivized to pursue tyranny rather than rational policy."
• 
See related Hello Citizens! (Mike Lester, 12/04/2020) cartoon from Government picture album
      When 'Unity' Means 'Shut the Hell Up'  (JWR 11/11/2020)
• 
... presidential frontrunner Joe Biden — who doesn't actually become president-elect until vote counts are certified — gave a preliminary victory address.
• 
In that address, he spoke of his mandate to govern: a mandate, he said, that extended to marshalling the "forces of decency ... fairness ... science ... hope." Which is a pretty vague mandate, as it turns out.
• 
But there was another overarching mandate Biden expressed: a mandate to come together, to unify as Americans.  "To make progress, we must stop treating our opponents as our enemy," Biden said.  "We are not enemies.  We are Americans."
• 
All of that is nice.  Who wouldn't like a country in which we could enjoy cultural events together without being lectured about the alleged evils of the country, in which we could attend family events without being castigated as bigots, in which we could disagree and still enjoy one another?
• 
Who wouldn't like an America in which our neighbors no longer see us as cancel-culture targets, in which we no longer have to fear our compatriots rioting and looting over supposed systemic injustices, in which our social interactions are not limited by our voter registration?
• 
Americans are right to have some rather serious trust issues with calls for unity in our polarized time.
• 
After all, former President Barack Obama pledged American reunification right up until he began treating tea partyers as unspeakable threats and political opponents as crypto-racists.
• 
Everything was hopey and changey right up until the time ... it wasn't.
• 
So, in order to earn our trust, Joe Biden would have to call his own side out for raising the temperature.
• 
And he has steadfastly refused to do so.  He hasn't called out Black Lives Matter for the suggestion that America is systemically racist; he has cheered it on.
• 
He hasn't condemned antifa; he has deemed it a philosophy rather than a dangerous movement.  And he certainly hasn't said a word about the continuing attacks on Trump supporters.
• 
We will wait in vain for Biden to chide former first lady Michelle Obama for declaring that 70 million Americans "voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division."
• 
Our bones will likely bleach before Biden tells Hillary Clinton that Trump supporters aren't deplorables.
• 
No, "unity" in the Biden formulation isn't a recognition of what we have in common; it's a demand that we silence ourselves in order to mirror Biden's priorities.
• 
Unity, you see, can be achieved one of two ways: through recognition of the other, through a determination to understand those who think differently than we do; or through ideological domination.
• 
It's rather obvious which pathway Democrats will choose.  After all, social ostracization is one of their most powerful tools.  Why disarm now?
• 
Americans can only come together when we share a common philosophy, history and culture.
• 
Democrats have spent years attempting to tear away those commonalities in favor of coalitional interest-group politics.
• 
They've declared American philosophy racist from inception; they've declared American history a litany of brutalities; they've declared American culture bigotry embodied.
• 
Now they want unity — the unity of absolute victory.
• 
Ironically, it's that very desire — the desire for monolithic control — that will be their undoing.
• 
Unless Biden is serious about unity — unless he's willing to cross the aisle and recognize the humanity of those with whom he disagrees, and to call out those on his own side who won't — Biden's term is likely to be contentious, polarizing and ultimately unsuccessful.
      If Trump loses 2020, it's on Trump although the Biden-Harris team is absolutely lackluster  (Fox 10/09/2020)
• 
Joe Biden is a terrible candidate.  He is 77 years old; he is incoherent; he has called a "lid" every other day of his campaign to avoid serious questioning.
• 
His running mate, Sen.  Kamala Harris, D-Calif., is so unpopular that she dropped out of the Democratic primaries before they even reached her home state.
• 
Were the election held today, by the RealClearPolitics statistics, Biden would win 375 electoral votes, picking up states including North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
• 
How is this happening?  How did a doddering fool, a career politician mostly famous for his incurable logorrhea, end up in the catbird seat one month before the 2020 election?
• 
The answer is simple: Joe Biden understands the nature of this election.  Donald Trump simply does not.
• 
To understand this election does not require a graduate course in political science: If the election is a referendum on President Trump, he will lose; if the election is a referendum on Joe Biden, he will lose.
• 
Trump is personally unpopular by every poll metric, and he has been consistently unpopular for years, but he was still able to win in 2016 because Hillary Clinton was even less popular.
• 
But Biden hasn't answered a single serious question.  He has been able to avoid nearly all questions by pointing at his opponent.
• 
Biden hasn't just run a lackluster campaign; he hasn't run any campaign.  He hasn't even walked a campaign.
• 
He has essentially grown into his couch in his Delaware basement, getting out only long enough to stand in front of an empty field or answer a few softball questions from a friendly pseudo-journalist.
• 
That's not just because the media hate Trump and sycophantically massage Biden, though they do.
• 
It's because Trump himself steadfastly refuses to recognize the central issue of the campaign: his own centrality.
• 
Trump loves being the center of attention, and he simply refuses to cede the spotlight.  ... The media hang on Trump's every word, and he appears to love that.
• 
But that symbiotic relationship between Trump and the media puts Trump at a dramatic disadvantage.  The more people think about Trump, the less they want to.
• 
Joe Biden has learned the lesson.  Biden has spent this campaign pointing at Trump.  Trump, who should be pointing at Biden, is too busy pointing at himself.
• 
Unless Trump somehow suppresses his ego enough to allow Biden to become the issue, Trump is likely to exit the political stage altogether come Nov.  3.
      In Seattle, Portland left's willingness to tolerate violence should frighten all Americans  (Fox 07/29/2020)
• 
"Mostly peaceful." So goes the characterization of demonstrations that have routinely turned into looting and rioting for months on end, from Portland to Seattle to New York to Los Angeles.
• 
"Protesters in California set fire to a courthouse, damaged a police station and assaulted officers after a peaceful demonstration intensified."
• 
... the Los Angeles Times noted, "The third night of countywide curfews followed days of massive, mostly peaceful protests ... Nearly 1,200 people were arrested Sunday after police officers clashed with demonstrators and looters shattered windows and emptied stores in Santa Monica and Long Beach."
• 
When anti-lockdown protesters descended on the Michigan state capitol, a columnist for The New York Times labeled them "armed rebels," despite a complete lack of violence.
• 
In truth, the category of "mostly peaceful" is a brand-new invention meant to obscure the simple fact that many of our cultural elites are fine with violence so long as those who engage in such violence have the proper goals.
• 
Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the pseudo-historical 1619 Project, celebrated when critics labeled rioting and looting "the 1619 riots" ; she added that destruction of property was "not violence."
• 
This week, Democrats grilling Attorney General Bill Barr could not be bothered to condemn violence, prompting Barr to rant, "What makes me concerned for the country is this is the first time in my memory the leaders of one of our great two political parties, the Democratic Party, are not coming out and condemning mob violence and the attack on federal courts."
• 
This should come as little surprise, given that those same cultural elites have cheered on massive protests in a time of a deadly pandemic, explaining that sometimes politics is just too important to stop a raging disease.
• 
Our journey back to the 1960s is nearly complete.  Too many Americans have rejected some of the key lessons of that time — that a breakdown in law and order costs lives, that political change does not require violence — in favor of a newfound sense of purpose.
• 
These Americans will pat the violent vanguard of revolution on the head, content that they will not pay the price, all the while maintaining that those who crave law and order stand for regressive autocracy.
• 
With Democrats and those in the media willing to run cover for violent leftists, the thin veneer of civilization disintegrates.
• 
When violence is excused as speech and speech by the opposition labeled violence, democracies die.
• 
With each passing day of silence by those who should know better — or worse, those propagandizing on behalf of those who engage in criminal activity — America draws closer to the brink.
      Ben Shapiro accuses Democrats of using unrest as 'a pressure tactic' against voters  (Fox 07/27/2020)
• 
Rioters in cities across America are engaging in a form of "political terrorism," and Democratic officials have show complicity through their response, "If you are burning cities because you're trying to apply pressure tactics ... then you are in fact engaging in a form of political terrorism."
• 
"And for cities to stand by and cave to that is not only the height of irresponsibility, it's incredibly dangerous and it makes them complicit in this act."
• 
"So why are the Democrats not doing anything about this?  Why?  All the cities are burning.  The answer is pretty obvious at this point.  For a lot of Democrats, they're willing to wink and nod at this so long as they think it's a political tool."
• 
"They believe that a feeling of chaos will drive Trump from office.  Trump's the president, feelings of chaos do not redound to the benefit of a sitting president, and so they are perfectly willing to go along with the chaos.  They are rooting for the chaos."
• 
... "this is the actual Democratic strategy.  It's all about Trump and if you just got rid of Trump, then the violence would go away.  This is the tacit threat.  The tacit threat is, 'Unless you give us what we want, the violence will not go away.'"
• 
"The day after Joe Biden is elected this all ends.  That is my prediction.  Why?  Because all this is is a pressure tactic being applied to law-abiding Americans — which is disgusting."
• 
"It's horrifying.  and that is what you're watching across the country."
• 
      Ben Shapiro hits back at rewrite of US history: 'historically ignorant, stupid and counterproductive'  (Fox 07/24/2020)
• 
"In order for a country to hold together, you have to have a shared philosophy, a shared culture and shared history, and all of those are under attack."
• 
"American history is being rewritten from a glorious history of an attempt to reach foundational ideals where we struggle, we fall, we get up, we push forward.  It's being rewritten that America was founded in racism and rooted in bigotry and all of the institutions of the United States are unchangeably horrible."
• 
... America's culture is "entrepreneurship and respect for other people's rights."
• 
"Those are supposed to go out the window in favor of a culture that really believes that we all have to say the same things in the same tenor and with the same level of passion in order to be accepted into mainstream 'woke' society."
• 
"The way that you battle back is pointing out that the United States is the most tolerant country in the history of the world and has spread its liberty and its prosperity to not only hundreds of millions of Americans at home, but to billions of people abroad.  The basic idea that America was rooted in all of the innate human sins, as opposed to the ideals that have been foundational to a country that has attempted to alleviate and vitiate those sins, is historically ignorant, stupid and counterproductive."
      Ben Shapiro: America is hitting the self-destruct button  (Fox 07/23/2020)
• 
America has worked to extirpate the nearly universal sin of bigotry in pursuit of the fulfillment of the declaration.  The story of America is 1776, not 1619; it's Abraham Lincoln, not John C.  Calhoun; it's Martin Luther King Jr., not Robin DiAngelo.
• 
It is particularly true today that American society does not deserve the scorn being heaped upon her head.  American society is decidedly not racist: According to Swedish economists from World Values, America is one of the most racially tolerant countries on Earth.
• 
American law has banned discrimination on race for two generations and more than half a century; in fact, the only racially discriminatory laws on the books cut in favor of racial minorities, who have been granted special privileges in arenas like college admissions.
• 
The police are no longer instruments of racial terror, contrary to popular media narrative: In many of America's largest cities, police forces are either majority-minority or nearly so, and police are not more likely to shoot and kill black Americans than white Americans.
• 
Black Americans occupy many of the most prominent positions in American society, from government to entertainment to education to finance.  Responsible individual decision-making is generally rewarded for all Americans, black and white.
• 
More and more Americans apparently believe that the American system is endemically racist — yet the system produces more wealth, freedom and opportunity than any on Earth for millions of citizens of every color, creed and religion.
• 
If a majority of Americans believe that society is racist — not just individuals but a vast swath of friends and neighbors, and America's institutions to boot — then it will be quite difficult for Americans to unify.
• 
No country can survive its citizens seeing one another as enemies rather than friends, seeing their country as a reflection of continuing evil embedded in its history.
• 
America, like every other nation, requires a common philosophy, culture and history to survive.
• 
And yet those elements are being consistently eroded by those who would rather collapse the American system in pursuit of some unspecified utopia.
• 
That utopia will not come.  All that will follow in the wake of the dissolution of our common bonds is chaos.
      Ben Shapiro on Fox News poll on nation's founders: Results are 'devastating to the future...'  (Fox 07/20/2020)
• 
... the fact that "only 63 percent of Americans describe the founders as heroes is devastating, that means that 37 percent of Americans do not describe the founders as heroes, they describe them as either villains or I don't know."
• 
... White voters (71 percent) are more than twice as likely as Black voters (31 percent) to consider the founders to be heroes.
• 
"If you look at the Black community in the United States, according to this poll, a plurality of Black Americans believes that founders were villains rather than heroes, which is devastating to the future of the country."
• 
"If you believe that the country was neatly founded on sin and evil, it's going to be very difficult to reach the sort of national unity that we require in order to move forward and I think that is something the radical left has been promulgating."
• 
"We have to share history and believe that we are all part of the same great stream of American history, trying to justify those founding principles, falling short, but eventually succeeding."
• 
"If we don't believe in those things, the country falls apart."
• 
"The Declaration of Independence is now bad, the Constitution of the United States is now bad, American history is now the 1619 project as opposed to the 1776 project."
• 
"All of this spells doom for our country of unity and essentially just means that the only thing holding us together is government power."
• 
"This is just the final flowering of a program that began decades ago, to basically rewrite America's history and to suggest that America has not progressed at all, even since the civil rights era, which is, of course, an absolute lie."
• 
... thinks "the fact that President Trump is president" has "devastated the left."
• 
"They literally thought they were going to be in charge for the rest of time after Barack Obama's presidency."
• 
... adding that he thinks "that has generated an awful lot of radical feeling on the left and that it flowered here, in the lead-up to the election."
• 
"My suspicion is that if Joe Biden is elected, you're going to see a lot of this go away, at least for a little while, while the left stops humoring its own radicals."
      Bari Weiss vs.  NY Times 'woke' groupthink – the Great Culture Purge of 2020 marches on  (Fox 07/15/2020)
• 
The mildest sign of unwillingness to become an "ally" in the Great Culture Purge of 2020 ends with your neck in the guillotine.
• 
Have we finally reached the glorious age in which Absolute Truth is known with such fulsome certainty that our cultural betters should be trusted to wish dissenters away into the cornfield?
• 
Of course not.  We're just watching the latest cultural revolution in real time.
• 
Which leaves those who wish to not be purged with two simple choices: Stand up together against this round of Maoist purification, or hang separately.
      Ben Shapiro: Is America falling apart?  It can seem that way in this totalitarian moment  (Fox 06/17/2020)
• 
America feels like it's falling apart.  That's because it is.
• 
There are two ways to achieve unity in any group.  The first is to set up a few serious standards of conduct, policed with the absolute minimum of compulsion, and then allow freedom in all other matters.  This was the founding vision for our federal government.
• 
In this vision, we agree not to infringe upon one another's life, liberty and property, and we create a government capable of preventing or prosecuting such infringements.
• 
Then, so long as we abide by those simple standards, we are free to pursue our own paths.
• 
Diverse ways of life can coexist within this broader group membership.  Governance becomes largely a matter of localism – places with homogenous values setting further standards for their group membership.
• 
The founding vision for unity presupposed a flawed human nature: People were capable of sin individually but capable of the greatest sin when backed with the power of federal force.
• 
The founding vision for unity also presupposed an agreement on the nature of rights and liberty: No man had a right to demand anything from his neighbor.
• 
Furthermore, the founding vision for unity presupposed that our strongest bonds would exist outside of government – in our families, our communities, our churches.
• 
The founding vision has now been abandoned in pursuit of something more fulfilling: a communitarian vision of reality in which the will of the mob is perceived as virtuous; in which every man has the right to protect himself from the vicissitudes of life and the cruelties of history by demanding redress from his neighbors; in which our strongest bonds are forged at the most centralized level.
• 
This second path toward unity requires purification.  This path seeks homogeneity in place of diversity, top-down standards in place of localism.  Standards for membership are not weak or broad – membership cannot be obtained simply by avoiding encroaching on others' life, liberty or property.
• 
Membership can only be obtained and maintained through strict compliance with an increasingly arcane set of rules and standards.
• 
Politically, this means a demanding legal regime with heavy coercion.  Culturally, this means braying mobs of ideological enforcers, casting out unbelievers into the cornfields.
• 
This second model of governance is promoted by the political left today.  In this view, diversity of viewpoint cannot be allowed; unity of viewpoint in all things is the predicate for all serious change.
• 
Once the group has been purified, change will require only the snap of a finger.  No more gridlock; no more conversation.  The collective can be activated quickly and powerfully.
• 
This second model of governance is totalitarian in nature, and it is toward that model we are now moving as a society.
• 
Politically, those who deny that the collective ought to have the power to override individual rights must be punished; culturally, they must be exiled.  They must be deemed unworthy.
• 
To stand up for individual rights in this climate means to be labeled a defender of privilege.  To deny the systemic evil of the United States means to betray your moral unworthiness.
• 
The great irony is that the second model of unity – the totalitarian purification rituals we watch before us – will never achieve unity.
• 
It will achieve further division, as more and more people fall short of ideological purity, or refuse to bow before the ideological demands of the perpetual revolutionaries.
• 
We could agree to live with one another, as individuals under the broader rubric of rights.  If we don't, we won't be living with one another at all.
      Ben Shapiro: George Floyd aftermath – These points we agree on drowned out in the chaos  (Fox 06/10/2020)
• 
With the death of George Floyd – a heinous atrocity virtually every American decries – unity should have prevailed.
• 
Americans hate police brutality; Americans care about black lives; Americans despise looting and rioting; Americans want to protect citizens but preserve the ability of the police to stop crime.
• 
Instead, the country seems to be falling apart.  That's because of the utterly chaotic political and media response to the Floyd tragedy: a response that demands agreement but, most of all, requires compliance.  You must kneel.
• 
You must kneel because you cannot understand.  You simply cannot.  If you have to ask for a definition of systemic privilege, we are told, it's because your white privilege has blinded you to reality.
• 
If you point out that not all inequality is inequity, we are told, it is because your latent racism is leeching into your worldview.
• 
If you defend America's history, philosophy and culture – or, God forbid, her flag – you must apologize.
• 
And, if Drew Brees is any indicator, your wife must also apologize, and your second cousin once removed.
• 
You may not understand what is being demanded of you.  You may see the wave of conflicting messages emanating from the press and wonder just what you're supposed to do.  But the chaos is the point.  You are supposed to be confused.
• 
Confusion is a political weapon.  Clarity is a shield.  If our media and political class can prevent clarity, they can prevent unity; if they can obscure, they can demand acquiescence.
• 
Thus, we hear messages that are obviously in direct conflict with one another.  And, we are told, our inability to square those messages means that we must listen to the woke priesthood that can untangle these Gordian knots.
• 
Thus, we hear that silence is violence, that being non-racist simply isn't enough and you must actively fight racism.
• 
But we also hear that speech is violence, that if you oppose policies the political left supports, your words are a form of violence and you must be silenced.  The only safe path, therefore, is parroting the messages of those initiated in the religion of "wokeness."
• 
Thus, we hear that individuals ought not to be held responsible for the sins of those in their racial group, and that's why it's so wrong for the police to engage in profiling.
• 
But we also hear that white Americans bear full responsibility for the sins of both modern racists and historic racists, and ought to atone on behalf of their race and their country.  And if you refuse, you must be considered racist.
• 
Thus, we hear that the police are the greatest threat to black Americans, and that's why they must be defunded.
• 
But we also hear that police absence, a product of racism, created the conditions that originally led to higher crime rates in black communities.
• 
Thus, we hear that the rioting and looting were exaggerated by the media, or that they were largely the product of white Antifa members.
• 
But we also hear that rioting and looting are the justified outgrowths of centuries of black rage.  You cannot, therefore, oppose rioting and looting too strenuously, lest you be labeled a racist.
• 
Thus, we hear that COVID-19 is so extraordinarily dangerous that anti-lockdown protesters were endangering the lives of other Americans; in fact, they were racist...
• 
But we also hear that protesting racism is so extraordinarily important that we can freely ignore all restrictions surrounding COVID-19 – and, indeed, that we have an obligation to do so.
• 
Thus, we hear that journalists ought to be treated with the utmost respect because they are doing a difficult job and pursuing facts and the truth...
• 
But we also hear that journalists are actually activists and thus have a duty not to be objective...
• 
In the end, our republic runs only so long as we're able to hold some semblance of a logical conversation with one another.
• 
But the republic isn't running.  Instead, we are battered with logically incoherent nonsense, a variety of messages that carry only one consistent bottom line: Shut up.  Believe.  Repeat.
• 
The chaos of the moment isn't a bug; it's a feature.
• 
And the more confused we are, the less we can possibly hold together, despite the fact that nearly all Americans agree on the most important issues.
      Ben Shapiro: George Floyd's death, riots and the liberal media's nonsensical, dangerous game  (Fox 06/03/2020)
• 
Members of our political class have decided that instead of rallying against obvious evil, Americans must be categorized as enlightened or benighted based on their answer to one question: Was America and is America rooted in racism and bigotry?
• 
If you answer in the negative, you are complicit in racism and bigotry, say our media, academic leaders and high-ranking members of the Democratic Party.
• 
If you answer in the affirmative, you may be categorized among the woke, the aware, the sensitive and the decent.
• 
So Americans are left with a choice.  We can either think of one another with charity and accuracy, acknowledging the sins of America's past while recognizing that America remains a beacon of freedom and decency.
• 
Or we can continue to follow the path of those who would tear us apart.
• 
To follow the latter course isn't sensitive or moral.  It places the very existence of our common republic at risk.
      Ben Shapiro: Biden assault allegations – media's double standard matters and this is why  (Fox 04/29/2020)
• 
The media ignored the original allegation for weeks.  Now, even while reporting on the new developments, they've found ways to downplay their importance.
• 
Thus, The Washington Post –democracy dies in darkness!  – wrote an article headlined "Trump allies highlight new claims regarding allegations against Biden."
• 
Normally, headlines are designed to convey information about the underlying story.
• 
This headline was apparently written in English, translated to Swahili and then to Punjabi via Google Translate and then back to English before printing.
• 
Other news outlets skipped the revelations altogether.  The New York Times, which ran a comprehensive piece two weeks ago attempting to debunk Reade's case, completely ignored the new information.
• 
As of this writing, Biden has not been asked a single direct question about Reade by a television reporter.
• 
Meanwhile, members of the media cheer their audacity in asking President Donald Trump questions like, "If an American president loses more Americans over the course of six weeks than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War, does he deserve to be reelected?"
• 
Why does any of this matter?  Not because Biden should be convicted in the court of public opinion without evidence.  He shouldn't.  The standards of due process should apply evenly, regardless of partisanship.
• 
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh should not have been subjected to thousands of hit pieces, magazine covers and twisted accusations that his anger at rape accusations he disputed was mere evidence of his privilege.
• 
Christine Blasey Ford should not have been celebrated nationwide as a symbol of truth-telling without any corroborative evidence.
• 
BelieveAllWomen was always an idiotic slogan.  Only now are members of the media admitting it.
• 
That's why this matters.
• 
Biden's candidacy will survive Tara Reade: Democrats aren't dumping Biden overboard based on a 27-year-old accusation of questionable veracity, and they certainly won't do so when running against Trump, who has his own checkered history.
• 
But the media's pathetically hypocritical standard on due process and sexual assault allegations won't survive.  Neither will their credibility.
• 
The same media who laureled Democrats for cashiering Kavanaugh and now spend their days studiously avoiding any talk about Tara Reade deserve every ounce of skepticism the American people can muster.
• 
... the media have spent so many years burning through their credibility that they have little left.  That's their own fault.
• 
If they wish to restore their credibility, they could start by apologizing for their Kavanaugh coverage – and by providing some fact-checking about their own political motivations.
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
      Oil crisis amid coronavirus – for AOC and the left, it's just another political opportunity  (Fox 04/23/2020)
• 
"You absolutely love to see it.  This along with record low-interest rates means it's the right time for a worker-led, mass investment in green infrastructure to save our planet."
• 
This tweet was too dumb even for her – an extraordinary bar, given her past commentary – and she deleted it.
• 
... the Boston University economics major's faux pas merely underscores an uncomfortable truth regarding this pandemic and its aftermath: For the most partisan, every crisis is an opportunity to push political priors.
• 
The most obvious agenda item for those on the political left has been the growth of government.
• 
"For the first time, many Americans are looking to government for their very economic survival.  In time, that could make them look at government differently."
• 
Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote ... that the "unequal impact of the pandemic and economic collapse are forcing us to rethink the assumptions of our system."
• 
The New York Times termed the coronavirus a "new frontier in the fight for civil rights" and quoted race hustler the Rev.
• 
Jesse Jackson, who is calling for a government commission to investigate the "racism and discrimination built into public policies" that result in racial health disparities.
• 
Precisely this attitude – that every crisis is a new weapon in the war for more expansive government, and in favor of a complete rethinking of the constitutional bargain – will lead more and more Americans to view shutdown orders with skepticism.
• 
It is one thing to lock down populations on a bipartisan basis with clear goals – goals like preventing coronavirus patients from swamping the health care system.
• 
Most Americans will go along with that, and most Americans are willing to grant policymakers the benefit of the doubt.
• 
But when politicians begin to reveal ulterior motives for such shutdowns, Americans begin to ask questions.
• 
When politicians simultaneously take measures that obviously do nothing to combat the coronavirus ... Americans begin to wonder whether their politicians are trustworthy.  And when politicians meet such questions with hysterical accusations that the questioners simply don't care about human life, Americans grow even more suspicious.
• 
Crises require trust in authority.  But authorities must earn our trust with well-founded, sensible policy.  They must be transparent about what they are doing and why they are doing it.
• 
When authorities instead suggest openly that their agenda isn't solely curbing the coronavirus but remaking America along the lines of their own political priors, they lose our trust.  And they should.
      Ben Shapiro: AOC preaches economic nonsense leading to exploitation, tyranny and loss of our rights  (Fox 01/22/2020)
• 
So, how does AOC magically turn economic freedom into economic tyranny?
• 
By suggesting that true freedom lies in collective control of the means of production: "If you're a billionaire, that means that you control a massive system.  ... It means that you have a massive labor force under your control, and to be ethical if you're a billionaire today, the thing that you need to do is give up control and power."
• 
But to whom would such power and control be given?  AOC suggests that major companies be turned into worker cooperatives — companies whose workers own and control the business.
• 
But, of course, that doesn't solve her problem: If workers own and control the business, they are properly classified as capitalists.
• 
They will have to make decisions to make the business competitive, which means keeping wages competitive, for example.
• 
This is precisely what has happened with one of the world's biggest worker collectives, the Spanish Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, whose worker-owners have "learned to think like the shareholders of any other global business."
• 
In fact, most companies begin with a few workers who pool their capital and labor: Facebook, for example, handed out stock options to employees, resulting in a $23 billion valuation for their initial employees when the company went public.
• 
Does that make those workers evil capitalists?
• 
In the end, what AOC truly wants is government control.  ... When AOC claims that capitalists merely leech off the true value of labor, she suggests that labor can be measured without reference to the market.
• 
How would AOC measure the value of such labor?  Presumably through appeals to "fairness."
• 
There is only one problem with this method: It simply doesn't work.
• 
Consumers determine the value of products; producers do not.
• 
In fact, the greatest guarantee of the sort of poverty AOC decries is the destruction of the same system she decries.
• 
But according to AOC, we have nothing to fear from government, and "the government is us."
• 
The fact that Coates, one of the most prominent writers on the evils of Jim Crow, nodded along should demonstrate that those on the left do not understand the consequences of their own philosophy.
• 
The government is not "us," because we are not a collective.  We are individuals with rights.
• 
But in AOC's world, we have no rights — we have only our role as members of a collective controlled by those who agree with her.
• 
That is real exploitation and tyranny.
• 
See related In the Red (Antonio Branco, 02/19/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Ben Shapiro: For Democrats, every day is a perpetual test of one's submission to the 'Woke Police'  (Fox 01/15/2020)
• 
It must be difficult to live in an environment in which every day is a perpetual test of one's submission to the "Woke Police."
• 
It must be difficult to know that no past act stands in favor of the accused — that each day must be lived fresh — and that all past omissions stand against the accused.
• 
But the intersectional revolution requires continual struggle and continual sacrifice.
• 
In Arthur Koestler's "Darkness at Noon," communist lackey Rubashov is jailed and charged — of what crime, it does not matter.
• 
The Soviet Union is purging members of the older generation and Rubashov is told that he must confess in order to uphold the sanctity of his own cause.
• 
Eventually, Rubashov does exactly that.  "There is nothing for which one could die, if one died without having repented and unreconciled with the Party and the Movement," Rubashov says in his confession.
• 
"Therefore, on the threshold of my last hour, I bend my knees to the country, to the masses and to the whole people."
• 
The choice between dying honestly, in repudiation of his own cause, was simply too much.
• 
In the end, all revolutionaries will have to determine whether they, too, will bow before the cause — even if they go unjustly to the guillotine.
• 
Because there is one basic rule of radical revolutions: Those who are first to launch them are often just slightly delayed in feeling their wrath.
      Anti-Semitism is on the rise but the left [and its media allies] play a dangerous game  (Fox 01/02/2020)
• 
... it's not a mere lack of focus and time preventing the media from taking anti-Semitism in New York seriously.
• 
It's the identity of the attackers.
• 
... correctly noted "that the victims are most often outwardly identifiable, i.e., religious rather than secularized Jews, and the perpetrators who have been recorded on CCTV cameras are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic."
• 
This throws the media — and many left-leaning Jewish organizations — into spasms of confusion, since it cuts directly against the supposed alliance of intersectionality so beloved by the political left.
• 
White supremacists attacking left-leaning Jews fits a desired narrative.
• 
Black teenagers beating up Hasidic Jews in Williamsburg doesn't.
• 
And so the left ignores the "wrong" type of anti-Semitism.
• 
The same media that will ask whether President Donald Trump's executive orders designed to protect Jews on campus are "ackshually" anti-Semitic will ignore the fact that former President Obama sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years — the same Jeremiah Wright who railed against Jews and Israel routinely during those years; who said Jews kept Obama from talking with him after the election; and who avers that "Jesus was a Palestinian."
• 
Democratic candidates who suggest that Trump has emboldened anti-Semites will make pilgrimage to Rev.  Al Sharpton, who was instrumental in not one but two anti-Semitic riots.
• 
The same commentators who will police Republican references to George Soros for hints of anti-Semitism completely excuse open anti-Semitism when it comes from Reps.  Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
• 
It's deemed completely vital by our intelligentsia to survey white Americans for signs of white supremacy and, by extension, signs of anti-Semitism.
• 
Those same intelligentsia will patently ignore the fact that anti-Semitic attitudes among black Americans far outweigh similar attitudes among other racial groups, according to repeated polling by the Anti-Defamation League.
• 
Anti-Semitism grows when the victims become secondary and the perpetrators become primary.
• 
If you're only concerned about anti-Semitism from white supremacists but utterly blithe about Jews being beaten in the streets of one of the nation's largest cities by suspects who clearly are not white supremacists, you're part of the problem.  And that goes for those who govern New York, from De Blasio to Cuomo.
      Freedom From Consequences Isn't Freedom  (JWR 06/26/2019)
• 
"Are you truly free if you graduate hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt?  Are you free if you cannot pursue your dream because you don't make enough to cover your student loan payments?  We will #CancelStudentDebt because there is no freedom without economic freedom."
• 
This is an Orwellian redefinition of the term "freedom."
• 
Freedom has traditionally meant the ability to make your own decisions — and to live with the consequences of those decisions.
• 
But Sanders' rhetoric here is merely the latest in a long line of such redefinitions from the American left.
• 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt suggested that "true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence" — and proceeded to make more Americans dependent on government than ever before in American history.
• 
He declared "freedom from want" in January 1941, in the midst of a second Great Depression of his making — the prior year, the unemployment rate in the United States was 14.45 percent.
• 
The mere declaration, as it turned out, did not end want.
• 
And the redefinition of freedom as government-sponsored dependency did not end in prosperity or freedom.
• 
Nonetheless, the suggestion that freedom lies in prosperity — not that freedom is the precondition for prosperity — still retains draw.
• 
That's mainly because the human heart will always embrace the notion that our shortcomings spring not from choice but from circumstance.
• 
Sometimes that's true.  But in a free country, it's far more often untrue.
• 
Still, that notion relieves us of responsibility while making demands of others.
• 
After all, if freedom lies in lack of college debt, then those who demand that you pay your debts are curbing your freedom.
• 
Canceling student debt may mean a more carefree life for those who voluntarily took on debt, but it means a more burdensome life for those who have paid off their debts, who didn't go to college or who haven't yet been born.
• 
And carefree doesn't mean free.  It simply means that someone else may be taking responsibility for your decisions.
• 
Going to college is often seen as an important step toward adulthood.
• 
Responsible financial decision-making is a far more important step.
• 
Disconnecting the two just continues the infantilizing of American adults.
• 
See related Free Fish (Glenn McCoy, 01/21/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Shaw  (03/21/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/06/2022) | Next sect (07/22/2020) | List bot 
      The ghost of Soviet KGB disinformation in America  (INN 03/21/2019)
• 
After the 2016 Presidential Election, when their candidate of choice lost to Donald Trump the inner circle of the United States government known as ‘Deep State' has been pursuing a disinformation campaign at the highest level in order to take down, at any cost, the current duly elected President of the United States.
• 
The premise is built around the allegation that Trump, and those surrounding him, colluded with Russia to win the election.
• 
There is much speculation that Robert Mueller's team will come up empty handed of any evidence implicating Donald Trump with Russian collusion.
• 
But undoubtedly the Russians, or more precisely the former Soviet Union, have impacted the American psyche and are winning the disinformation campaign they launched over fifty years ago against both the United States and Israel.
• 
Unfortunately, this disinformation campaign is being conducted by Americans against Americans.  In doing so, they are doing the Soviet bidding.
• 
When you hear the new radicals of the Democratic Party bang on against their own country and its leaders, when they adopt the propaganda of radical regimes, when we hear allegations against Israel couched in anti-Semitic terms, you can be sure that they are ideologically colluding with the ghost of the Soviet KGB.
• 
To quote former KGB chairman ... "We could nurture a virulent strain of American-hatred, grown from the bacteria of Marxist-Leninist thought...We have only to keep repeating our themes that the United States and Israel were ‘fascist, Imperial-Zionist countries bankrolled by rich Jews."
• 
"Islam was obsessed with preventing the infidel's occupation of its territory, and it would be highly receptive to our characterization of the US Congress as a rapacious Zionist body aiming to turn the world into a Jewish fiefdom."
• 
Who can say that what we are hearing from Ilhan Omar and others do not accurately reflect the KGB playbook from way back in the 1960's?
• 
This is the emerging dialogue being heard in the US Congress.
• 
This is the indoctrination coming out of American campuses.
• 
It is the language we are beginning to hear from the new graduates of the campus industry of Soviet-style indoctrination, graduates that are emerging as the new generation influence and opinion makers.
• 
It began in the early 1960's after the Arab armies failed to destroy Israel.
• 
The Communist Soviet Union entrusted the KGB to embark on a global campaign to destabilize the United States and Israel through propaganda and terrorism.
• 
Many leading Cuban, African, and Palestinian revolutionaries were brought to the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow.
• 
An integral part of the Soviet disinformation campaign in support of the Palestinian cause was to use language against Israel that we are familiar with today.
• 
In the early 70's, the KGB launched Operation SIG, an international smearing campaign to fan the flames of Arab resentment against the United States and Jews represented by Israel.
• 
It was launched in the Arab world to portray America as an imperialist Jewish fiefdom financed by Jewish money and run by Jewish politicians with the aim of America and he Zionists subordinating the Islamic world.
• 
... a conversation in which the KGB chief, Andropov, said, "We need to instill a Nazi-style hatred for the Jews throughout the Islamic world and turn this weapon of emotions into a terrorist bloodbath against Israel and its main supporter, the United States.  No one within the American-Zionist sphere of influence should any longer feel safe".
• 
Surely the echoes of this threat are alive and growing on the campuses of America, on the streets of America in pro-Palestinian (read ‘anti-Israel') rallies, and, more worryingly, in the halls of Congress...
• 
You can hear it in statements such as "Israel has hypnotized the world.  May Allah awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel."
• 
The old Soviet KGB campaign is alive and revived in the current US Congress.
• 
Nothing effective has been done to counter this surge of anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-Semitic ideology which is wrapped up and protected under the brand of intersectionality politics making it impenetrable to any form of criticism by intimidation campaigns that carry the same Soviet-style accusations of racism and oppression of minorities. 
• 
One thing is certain.  The enemies of traditional America and Israel feel they have the tailwind to progress their agenda and to fundamentally change political thinking and policy within the United States government.
• 
And it will be done following the old Soviet-KGB playbook.
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      Power to illusions: Let me confuse you with the facts  (INN 07/22/2020)
• 
"Historians of the future will have a hard time figuring out how so many organized groups of strident jackasses succeeded in leading us around by the nose and morally intimidating the majority into silence." Thomas Sowell
• 
Except...  no one is silent.  They're tripping over each other proclaiming America a racist country.
• 
And not because one George Floyd and 19 violent, black criminals died (in 2019) at the hands of white-supremacists, the men in blue, who killed many more whites that year.
• 
Yes, there is racism in America.  That is not the same as calling America a racist country.
• 
America is a racist country because the Black Lives Matter movement, not only exists, but has managed to amass millions in funding, position itself on everyone's lips, streets, in corporate offices and policies for hiring, and infiltrate the psyche of every uninformed millennial and intimidated passerby.
• 
What really goes on in the "systemically racist" America and why do all Americans need to kneel and repent for their collective sin?
• 
And why does every individual and organization need to plaster a large black square in support of ending this horrendous record of discrimination towards African Americans?
• 
The United States of America acted in the following ways, detailed below, towards the 13% black minority.
• 
{Read the list at article link - it's quite impressive!}
• 
Now, wouldn't every country and every minority welcome this?
• 
Imagine re-reading all of the aforementioned while subbing the word "white" for "black" each time.
• 
The pageantry of BLM virtue-signaling by useful idiots should be over.  It's run its course.
• 
Fabricated racism, the priceless possession of today's liberal, exists to seed outrage, division and dissatisfaction for the purpose of one and only intended goal — the anti-Trump vote at the ballot box.  They know that grandpa Biden needs all the help he can get.
• 
The BLM enthusiasts care nothing for months-long Covid-spreading by their rioters, their country's actual track record, their fellow Americans, their safety, livelihood and well-being.  And absolutely nothing for black lives or anyone's lives.
• 
They've turned 2020 into the Year of The Empowered Criminal while granting BLM's platform of tyrannical Marxism and rabid antisemitism exclusive moral authority, unequivocal legitimacy and very sharp teeth.
• 
These enthusiasts were able to achieve a huge cultural shift by their relentless physical and emotional intimidation of society.
• 
Monument toppling was a mere test run for their Stalinist-inspired reputation and career toppling.
• 
Fear-based subjugation of politicians, journalists, editors, schools, businesses and general populace into BLM groupthink requiring total devotion to the cause is now complete.
• 
The palpable danger of job/income loss and public lynching for the crime of non-compliant heresy on social media or in "polite company" , is breeding a society of obedient sheep intent on preserving their own paycheck and survival, to hell with facts, truth and morality.
• 
To wonder how a mere 15% of official Nazis could enlist the other 85% of German populace into the holy grail of complete continental dominance and an obliteration of an entire race is to exhibit cluelessness about human nature and the ultimate power of fear.
• 
We are the implicitly consenting participants in this apocalyptic cultural destruction by liberal kneelers and their first-prize-for-victimhood holders.
• 
Our freedom of choice and moral compass have been hijacked; our minds manipulated to give power to illusions.
• 
And we know it.  And that means all of us - white and black.
 Sowell  (01/12/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (07/22/2020) | Next sect (08/21/2020) | List bot 
      Is Truth Irrelevant?  (JWR 01/12/2021)
• 
It is amazing how many people seem to have discovered last Wednesday that riots are wrong — when many of those same people apparently had not noticed that when riots went on, for weeks or even months, in various cities across the country last year.
• 
For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically.
• 
Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars.
• 
Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty.  That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well.
• 
One of the most grotesque distortions growing out of this carelessness with the facts has been a removal of Abraham Lincoln's name and statues from various places, on grounds that he saw black people only as property.  Such criticisms betray an incredible ignorance of history — or else a complete disregard of truth.
• 
As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln knew that there was nothing in the Constitution which authorized him or any other President to free slaves.
• 
But he also knew that a military commander in wartime can legally seize the property of an enemy nation.
• 
Defining slaves as property gave President Lincoln the only legal authority he had to seize them during the Civil War.  And once they were seized as property, he could then free them as human beings.
• 
Gross distortions of history, in order to get Abraham Lincoln's name removed from schools tells us a lot about what is wrong with American education today.
• 
Many schools are closed because of the corona virus and the teachers unions.  And many schools in minority neighborhoods failed to teach children enough math and English, back when they were still open.
• 
So it is incredible that school authorities have time to spend on ideological crusades like removing names and statues from schools.
• 
Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — have become indoctrination centers.
• 
The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people's rights that accompanied those riots.
• 
At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes — which are automatically called "privileges" and never called "achievements," regardless of what the actual facts are.
• 
Facts don't matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing Lincoln.
• 
Any "under-representation" of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias.
• 
But those who argue this way cannot show us any society — anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history — that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors.
• 
In America's National Hockey League, for example, there are more players from Canada than there are players from the United States.  There are also more players from Sweden than from California, even though California's population is nearly four times the population of Sweden.
• 
Californians are more "under-represented" in the NHL than women are in Silicon Valley.  But no one can claim that this is due to discriminatory bias by the NHL.  It is far more obviously due to people growing up in cold climates being more likely to have ice-skating experience.
• 
This is one of many factors that produce skewed statistics in many endeavors.  Discriminatory bias is among those factors.  But it has no monopoly.
• 
Yet who cares about facts any more, in this age of indoctrination?
      Thomas Sowell tells Mark Levin left-wing ideology 'falls apart like a house of cards' when you...  (Fox 06/30/2020)
• 
"I think many, if not most, of the people who were in the movement that created the Soviet Union were probably idealists wanting a better world.  They had no idea what kind of world they were in fact creating."
• 
Sowell said that he has "no idea" what the proponents of the existence of "institutional racism" mean and that they themselves do not know "what they mean."
• 
"In a sense that you can't ask them a factual question and get a factual answer.  For example, one of the things I came across in writing a previous book was the poverty rate between blacks and whites.  If I remember the numbers correctly, something like 22 percent of blacks were in poverty, 11 percent of whites were in poverty.  They're like ‘well, that shows the racism.'"
• 
Sowell said that the poverty rate was 7.5 percent among black married couples.
• 
"In other words, they not only have a lower poverty rate than blacks as a whole, they have a lower poverty rate than whites as a whole."
• 
Sowell said he believes young people are influenced throughout their lives in the public education system, which leans to the left.
• 
"You hear the same narrative and they are not taught how to test things against facts.  They're just taught to repeat these slogans and when you try to talk to them in terms of facts, they think that you are trying to confuse them."
      The dangers of the 'social justice' vision  (Fox 03/16/2019)
• 
... demonstrated facts in the world of reality raise the crucial question as to whether the redistribution of income or wealth can actually be done, in any comprehensive and sustainable sense. 
• 
Where, instead, there is simply a humanitarian desire to see the less fortunate have better prospects for a better life, the ‘social justice' argument is both unnecessary and an impediment to joining forces toward that end with others who do not happen to share the implicit assumption of that particular social vision.
• 
The undeniable fact that life has never been remotely "fair" – in the sense of presenting equal likelihoods of achieving economic prosperity or other benefits – has led many people to conclude that human biases are the reason.
• 
There is no question that human biases have contributed to unfair prospects.
• 
But it is a complete non sequitur to say that human biases are the sole, or even primary, causes of unequal prospects, without hard evidence to support that conclusion.
• 
... the insistence on believing that human biases are the primary cause of disparities in outcomes ignores a vast range of evidence to the contrary.
• 
This is not to say that nothing can be done to offer more people more opportunities.
• 
But how it is done can be either helpful or harmful, depending on how well we understand and deal with the world as it is, rather than according to some vision that might seem more attractive, for whatever reason.
• 
Despite the inability to confiscate and redistribute human capital, nevertheless human capital is – ironically – one of the few things that can be spread to others without those with it having any less remaining for themselves.
• 
But one of the biggest obstacles to this happening is the ‘social justice' vision, in which the fundamental problem of the less fortunate is not an absence of sufficient human capital, but the presence of other people's malevolence.
• 
For some, abandoning that vision would mean abandoning a moral melodrama, starring themselves as crusaders against the forces of evil.
• 
How many are prepared to give up all that – with all its psychic, political and other rewards – is an open question.
• 
Certainly there have been many examples of times and places where money or other physical wealth has been confiscated by governments or looted by mobs.
• 
But, physical wealth is a product of human capital – the knowledge, skills, talents and other qualities that exist inside the heads of people – where it cannot be confiscated.
• 
Confiscating physical wealth for the purpose of redistribution is confiscating something that will be used up over time, and cannot be replaced without the human capital that created it.
• 
While it is possible to hire teachers and buy books, it is not possible to purchase a cultural past that will prepare and orient all people toward the acquisition of the skills, habits and attitudes that are decisive for human capital.
 Spakovsky  (08/21/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (01/12/2021) | Next sect (03/25/2019) | List bot 
      Hans von Spakovsky: Trump suggests we may need to redo presidential election.  Is that possible?  (Fox 08/21/2020)
• 
"You can't take millions of ballots, send them haphazardly all over the country, or all over a state, and expect it to come out properly....  It'll end up being a rigged election or they will never come out with an outcome.  They'll have to do it again, and nobody wants that."
• 
"And I don't want that," the president added.
• 
As Trump correctly stated ... problems with all-mail elections are "not a political issue, it's really about a correct vote."
• 
"Win, lose, or draw, we have to get it right ... we have to have honest voting," the president said.
• 
This should be something all Americans should agree on, regardless of political party.
• 
Yes, we have to have honest voting.  Neither the president nor the electorate at large wants to have a chaotic election with problems caused by the misdelivery of ballots, fraud, and rejection of absentee and mail-in ballots.
• 
These problems would cause a long delay in determining the winner of the presidential race, resulting in a lack of public confidence in the validity of the outcome of the election.
• 
... the vulnerabilities of voting through the mail.  Such ballots are voted outside the supervision (and protection) of election officials and outside the observation of poll watchers.  They are the easiest ballots to steal, forge, alter and falsify.
• 
Mail-in ballots also make voters — particularly elderly and low-income voters — subject to coercion, intimidation, and pressure by candidates, campaign staffers, party activists and political consultants.
• 
Mail ballots also make elections subject to the efficiency and effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the U.S.  Postal Service.
• 
In New York's recent primary, one in five ballots was rejected — an enormous and unacceptable disenfranchisement rate for voters.
• 
The president also expressed his concern ... about "millions and millions of ballots sent all over the place, sent to people that are dead."
• 
The way to avoid that kind of chaos is for election officials to open the same number of polling places as they have opened in prior presidential elections, with all of the health safety protocols recommended by experts, so Americans can vote in-person.
• 
Those who are too sick or disabled to vote in-person, or most vulnerable to COVID-19, should be able to vote by absentee ballot.
• 
But we don't need all voters to cast their ballots by mail, because that opens the door to too many problems.
• 
The rest of us should keep our right to vote in-person and to see our ballot dropped into a ballot box.
• 
That's far preferable to hoping a mail carrier delivers the ballot in time, and taking the risk that the ballot will be otherwise intercepted, changed or altered on its way back to election officials.
      Hans von Spakovsky: How history will view Trump's impeachment  (Fox 02/06/2020)
• 
Trump joins two former presidents, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, in being impeached by the House of Representatives before being acquitted by the Senate.
• 
The House failed to produce credible evidence that the president committed any "high Crimes and Misdemeanors" or engaged in any action that justified his impeachment by the House, let alone his conviction and removal from office by the Senate.
• 
Impeachment was to be used only in the direst of circumstances to remove a president clearly guilty of such serious, substantial misconduct that he posed a danger to the nation, and who was clearly unfit to continue in office until the next election when the public could make its own choice.
• 
House Democrats did not come even close to meeting that standard.
• 
It seems highly likely that Pelosi and company will be viewed in the same manner as historians now view the "radical Republicans" who impeached Andrew Johnson, and who came within one vote of convicting and removing him from office.
• 
Republicans personally hated Johnson, who became president after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and they virulently disagreed with Johnson's decision to implement Lincoln's conciliatory policies toward the Southern states.
• 
... in inflammatory rhetoric reminiscent of that heard from some Democrats today, radical Republicans claimed that Johnson was a "wild-eyed dictator bent on overthrowing the government."
• 
Schiff was just as inflammatory when he called Trump a "despot" and the type of tyrant the Founders feared, while Nadler called Trump a "dictator."
• 
Last time I checked the news, I didn't see any stories about despotic activities by this president, such as a refusal to follow court orders or the abuse of federal law enforcement power to spy on and investigate political opponents.
• 
The latter is something only the prior administration did.
• 
Liberals can certainly criticize the president for some of his policies that they may disagree with, but claiming he is a despot and a dictator is so over the top, so far from reality, that it helped destroy whatever credibility the House managers may have had at the start of the impeachment process.
• 
Their wild exaggerations made it pretty clear this was a partisan, politically driven impeachment.
• 
... during the impeachment proceedings, Johnson was subjected to "torrents of personal abuse" and other claims that Johnson characterizes as "nonsense." Seem familiar?  It should, because Trump was also subjected to "torrents of personal abuse" by House managers during the impeachment trial.
• 
Included among the impeachment articles adopted by the House in 1868 was a charge that President Johnson had "challenged the authority" of Congress and had criticized Congress with "intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues."
• 
Sounds an awful lot like the House's claim in the impeachment resolution that Donald Trump "impeded" the House and engaged in "unprecedented, categorical, and indiscriminate defiance" of Congress.
• 
Although it was not in the impeachment resolution, Schiff and his compatriots spent an enormous amount of time going after the president for firing the U.S.  ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch (who was appointed by President Obama), as if that was an abuse of power.
• 
This despite the fact that ambassadors serve at the pleasure of the president.
• 
Historians almost universally condemn the Johnson impeachment as "rash, reckless, and unwarranted ... no "constructive purpose was served by this vendetta, and the only political consequence was the discrediting of those who conducted it."
• 
Now that the process is over, at least for now, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that this impeachment, which Democrats started talking about doing as soon as Trump was inaugurated, was the result of personal and political "vendettas" against the president.
• 
Given that some polls show that Trump is now more popular with the public than at any time during his presidency, Democrats may also end up suffering the "political consequences" of their abuse of the impeachment process and the "discrediting of those who conducted it."
      Trump killing of Soleimani and action against Iran legal – Despite Democratic complaints  (Fox 01/11/2020)
• 
Nine other terrorists traveling with Soleimani were also killed in the U.S.  drone strike near the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq last week.
• 
Imagine how much better off we would be if U.S.  forces had been able to kill Al Qaeda leader Usama bin Laden and nine of his fellow terrorist leaders while they were planning the horrific Sept.  11, 2001 attacks that killed nearly than 3,000 people.
• 
Can anyone seriously argue that preventing those tragic deaths would not have been the right thing to do if a past president had the opportunity?
• 
We'll never know how many more people Soleimani would have murdered if he had lived longer, but it's a safe bet that the number would be a big one, and that Americans would be among the dead.
• 
President Trump should be applauded for eliminating this very real threat.
• 
... the "power of the President is at its zenith under the Constitution when the President is directing military operations of the armed forces, because the power of Commander in Chief is assigned solely to the President."
• 
No law and no congressional resolution – such as the one passed Thursday by the House – "can place any limits on the President's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response.  These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make."
• 
You can be sure that if Trump had done nothing and Soleimani had gone on to stage a nightmarish terrorist attack that claimed hundreds or even thousands of American lives, the president's critics would be screaming at the top of their lungs that Trump was incompetent and derelict in his duty for failing to prevent the mass murder.
• 
The simple fact is that the authority of Congress to declare war does not limit the ability – in fact, the responsibility – of the president to direct the armed forces to respond either defensively or offensively to terrorist threats.
• 
... the nonbinding resolution puts members of the House in the embarrassing position of seemingly defending a terrorist mass murderer.
• 
It may give the rest of the world – including our most dangerous enemies – the impression that our government is in disarray and doesn't want to respond to attacks on our embassies, our citizens and our armed forces.
• 
This, in turn, could invite further attacks. 
• 
Soleimani was unquestionably a legitimate target – someone who could have and should have been taken out years ago by a past president in the interests of our national security.
• 
Had that happened, an untold number of innocent civilians and members of the U.S.  armed forces whose deaths were caused by Soleimani would still be alive today.
• 
... Trump's critics should be willing to sit down with the widows, widowers, orphans and parents who lost loved ones because of Soleimani's barbarism and explain to them why it was a good thing than an earlier American president did not rid the world of this monstrous mass murderer.
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      Deep State perpetrators of the Russia hoax need to be exposed.  It’s not time to move on  (Fox 03/25/2019)
• 
President Trump and his administration have been vindicated.
• 
After 675 days, 500 witnesses and $25 million, Robert Mueller and his team of 20 attorneys concluded there was no collusion.
• 
They were victims of a leftwing mob — led by Democrats and goaded on by willing accomplices in the mainstream media.
• 
"It was all a malicious, preposterous lie given wall to wall media coverage despite zero evidence.  This should never again happen to an American president."
• 
Now is time to expose the Deep State perpetrators of the Russia Hoax.
• 
They tried to stage a coup to overthrow a duly elected president.
• 
Their actions were traitorous and they must be held accountable.  Justice will not be served until that happens.
• 
"It's a shame our country had to go through this.  It began illegally and hopefully somebody is going to look at the other side.  This was an illegal takedown that failed."
• 
Investigations should be commenced to determine who was responsible for perpetrating this great lie on the American people.
• 
The actions of CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the rest of the Mainstream Media have brought great shame and disgrace to the journalism profession. 
• 
On the other hand – we should honor the journalists and talk radio hosts who refused to bow down to the angry leftist mob...
• 
Their names and reputations were dragged through the mud, subjected to all sorts of slander – but defiantly they stood.  They are a credit to their profession.
• 
The Democrats and the mainstream media tried to convince the American people that our president was a traitor — the most heinous of charges.
• 
So the least they can do is say, "I'm sorry."
• 
Those news agencies who refuse — should have their White House credentials revoked and their reporters expelled. 
• 
A message must be sent that the American people will not tolerate a fourth estate weaponized to take down their political enemies.
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Fake News (Mike Lester, 11/27/2016) cartoon from Media picture album
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      The Sinking of the West  (JWR 01/24/2022)
• 
There was no orderly evacuation from the Costa Concordia, just chaos punctuated by individual acts of courage from, for example, an Hungarian violinist in the orchestra and a ship's entertainer in a Spiderman costume, both of whom helped children to safety, the former paying with his life.
• 
The miserable Captain Schettino, by contrast, is presently under house arrest, charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship.
• 
His explanation is that, when the vessel listed suddenly, he fell into a lifeboat and was unable to climb out.
• 
Seriously.  Could happen to anyone, slippery decks and all that.  Next thing you know, he was safe on shore, leaving his passengers all at sea.
• 
On the other hand, the audio of him being ordered by Coast Guard officers to return to his ship and refusing to do so is not helpful to this version of events.
• 
... First Officer William Murdoch.  In real life, he threw deckchairs to passengers drowning in the water to give them something to cling to, and then he went down with the ship — the dull, decent thing, all very British, with no fuss.
• 
In Cameron's movie, Murdoch takes a bribe and murders a third-class passenger.  The director subsequently apologized to the First Officer's hometown in Scotland and offered ?5,000 toward a memorial.
• 
On the Titanic, the male passengers gave their lives for the women and would never have considered doing otherwise.
• 
On the Costa Concordia, in the words of a female passenger, "There were big men, crew members, pushing their way past us to get into the lifeboat."
• 
... Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine: "There is no law that says women and children first.  That is something from the age of chivalry."
• 
In fact, "women and children first" can be dated very precisely.  On February 26th 1852, HMS Birkenhead was wrecked off the coast of Cape Town while transporting British troops to South Africa.
• 
There were, as on the Titanic, insufficient lifeboats.  The women and children were escorted to the ship's cutter.  The men mustered on deck.
• 
They were ordered not to dive in the water lest they risk endangering the ladies and their young charges by swamping the boats.  So they stood stiffly at their posts as the ship disappeared beneath the waves.
• 
Today there is no social norm, so it's every man for himself — operative word "man," although not many of the chaps on the Titanic would recognize those on the Costa Concordia as "men."
• 
From a grandmother on the latter: "I was standing by the lifeboats and men, big men, were banging into me and knocking the girls."
• 
We are beyond social norms these days.  A woman can be a soldier.  A man can be a woman.  A seven-year-old crossdressing boy can join the Girl Scouts in Colorado because he "identifies" as a girl.
• 
It all adds to life's rich tapestry, no doubt.  But I can't help wondering, when the ship hits the fan, how many of us will still be willing to identify as a man.
• 
The Costa Concordia isn't merely a metaphor for EU collapse but — here it comes down the slipway — the fragility of civilization.
• 
Like every ship, the Concordia had its emergency procedures — the lifeboat drills that all crew and passengers are obliged to go through before sailing.
• 
As with the security theater at airports, the rituals give the illusion of security — and then, as the ship tips and the lights fail and the icy black water rushes in, we discover we're on our own: from dancing and dining, showgirls and saunas, to the inky depths in a matter of moments.
• 
Today the wealthiest nations in human history build cruise ships rather than battleships, vast floating palaces dedicated to the good life — to the proposition that, in the plump and complacent West, life itself is a cruise, sailing (as the Concordia's name suggests) on a placid lake of peace and harmony.
• 
... the Titanic metaphor — of a Western world steaming for the iceberg but unable to correct course — has become a little overworked, the easiest cliche for any politician attempting to project urgency.  But let's assume they're correct, and we're heading full steam for the big 'berg'.
• 
When we hit, what's the likelihood?  That our response will be as ordered and civilized as those on the Titanic?  Or that we will descend into the hell of the Concordia?
• 
The contempt for "women and children first" is not a small loss.  For soft cultures in good times, dispensing with social norms is easy.  In hard times, you may have need of them.
• 
See related Captain Speaking (Sean Delonas, 01/18/2012) cartoon from World picture album
      America Sticks Out Its Tush  (JWR 01/03/2022)
• 
America has literally lost the plot.  On the last soundstage, all parts are interchangeable: Men become women, and the grizzled butch coaches of college athletics can't wait to put 'em on the ladies' track team.
• 
Women become men, and then pregnant men, and then threaten the hospital for the humiliation of having to give birth in a "maternity ward" .
• 
At dark on the streets of US cities, wispy, spindly, elderly eternal "college" boys cheer on hefty psycho-trannies with purple hair and hirsute cleavage as they light up precinct houses.
• 
Indulgent prosecutors release them without bail - or, if bail is still quaintly required, Seth Rogen or a Joe Biden staffer will cover it.
• 
Stories with less helpful narratives - Democrat Congresswomen getting carjacked, or blacks slaughtering blacks every weekend in Chicago, or black criminals (sprung from the big house by woke DAs) mowing down white grannies at a Christmas parade - are instantly memory-holed.
• 
Even real people adjust their actual lives to conform with the needs of the greater narrative: Thus the Vice President of the United States, the first in history to announce her pronouns on Twitter, purports to have celebrated "Kwanzaa" during her childhood in, um, a high-caste Indian household in, er, Quebec.
• 
The same Democrat party that enslaved blacks for decades and then discriminated against them for another century now demands the incineration of the entirety of American history with the exception of its own glorious inviolable self.
• 
Kate Smith, for example, never owned slaves or ran a segregated lunch counter or served as a Grand Kleagle, as did Joe Biden's mentor for whom everything in West Virginia is named.
• 
But she did ninety years ago make a record with the word "darkies" in the lyric, so she cannot be permitted to sing "God Bless America" to a stadium of kneeling superstars.
• 
America's hideously unwatchable knee-taking corporate sports franchises boycott entire US states over "bathroom bills" but kowtow before a genocidal politburo if one of their lads accidentally puts in a good word for the people of Hong Kong.
• 
Thoroughly Modern Milley and the other beribboned buffoons of the planet's most lavishly funded dysfunctional military take twenty years to lose to goatherds with fertilizer and write off a two-billion-dollar ship because a five-admiral chain of command can't command its men to put out a fire in a timely manner ...or even call the municipal fire department in a timely manner.
• 
But they can design third-trimester flight suits for heavily pregnant fighter pilots.  And, in a year or so, no doubt for heavily pregnant Navy Seals...
• 
The rah-rah right finds the scale of America's global humiliation in Afghanistan a bit of a downer, but not to worry because it sets up the GOP (Send Money Now to sendmoneynow.com) pretty nicely for the midterms...
• 
The "national security" right swivels smoothly from the Fall of Kabul to saber-rattling over Taiwan and the Ukraine, fully confident that the same military that managed to return Afghanistan to the Taliban with more territory than they ever controlled before is now fit and rested and ready to threaten the Red Army on its own turf and a Chinese Communist Party that makes all the most basic American needs, from batteries and microchips to aspirins and underwear.
• 
Covid fits naturally into such a world.  What matters is to strike the correct attitude and ignore your lyin' eyes.  So half the population staggers around in tatty moth-eaten cloth masks hanging off the ends of their noses agreeing with Fauci that an open southern border taking in millions of maskless unvaccinated persons testing positive at a higher rate than the natives is absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the pandemic, no sir...
• 
Also, it's important to follow "the science" , even if it was "the science" that created this thing by doing gain-of-function research at the Chinese Communist lab the virus managed to escape from.
• 
And you can't blame the Chinese because that would be racist, and racism toward Asians is totally unacceptable, except in US college admissions and daylight sucker-punching in midtown Manhattan.
• 
Unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people, and double-vaccinated people are a threat to triple-vaccinated people, and people who submit to annual booster shots are a threat to people who submit to quarterly booster shots, who in turn are grossly irresponsible by going to Christmas dinner at the homes of people with fortnightly booster shots...
• 
... when a forty-nine-year-old New York Times editor dies of a heart attack, The New York Times announces his sudden death, but not that it came less than twenty-four hours after tweeting gleefully that he's gotten his third vaccine shot and that Omicron should now feel free to "hit me with your wet snot".
• 
To come back to where we came in - the dearth of children in the remnants of Christendom - ex-Pope Benedict observed a decade and a half ago: "Children, who are the future, are seen as a threat for the present; the idea is that they take something away from our life.  They are not felt as a hope, but rather as a limitation of the present."
• 
Whether that was true then, it has certainly been the guiding principle of the last two years.  It has been obvious for at least eighteen months that children have been the principal victims of public health policy over a virus that is statistically harmless to them.
• 
The toll on mental health has been enormous, and the damage will be with us for years.  It is almost too perfectly symbolic of the inverted demography of the post-Christian west: elderly adults sacrificing their infants to ward off the evil spirits of Omicron.
• 
William Kilpatrick is correct that it is hard to hold a "clash of civilizations" when one party to the clash is obsessed with flaying misgenderers and torching its entire civilizational inheritance.
• 
Our enemies know, even if that LGBTQWERTY flag flying over Washington's lost billion-dollar embassy a month before the Fall of Kabul hadn't advertised the fact to the world, that Woke America is for losers: it's what fills the void when you have trashed your history, right up to the day before yesterday.
• 
We do a lot of history at this website, in part because our own moment is so bloody stupid and because the disinclination even to try to understand a man of the past in the context of his times is the apotheosis of a totalitarian triumphalism that will eventually prove violent and murderous.
• 
Mr Kilpatrick is right, too, that we cannot win a clash of civilizations until we have settled matters on the home front.  So, at the dawn of another Year Zero, I renew my old credo: Unless you're prepared to surrender everything, surrender nothing - and don't waste your time with alleged rock-ribbed politicians who have surrendered far too much already.
• 
In the meantime, China, Russia and the mullahs have the advantage on us: They do not take refuge in fatuous platitudes belied by a thousand years of history that "diversity is strength".
• 
See related Diversity Is Our Strength! (Sean Delonas, 12/01/2019) cartoon from Terror picture album
      The Very Model of a Modish Loser General Staff  (JWR 03/22/2021)
• 
Having failed to get anywhere with the Taliban, the Pentagon is now going after Tucker Carlson.  Who ought, in theory, to be an easier target.
• 
It began last week when Tucker noted that Joe Biden had emerged from his basement for "International Women's Day" and held a White House event touting the US military's recent achievements on that particular front - including such brilliant innovations as better maternity flight suits for pregnant pilots.
• 
Given that the brass no longer even try to win wars (our present negotiating position with the Taliban has dwindled down to: "Whatever you want - as long as we're allowed to stay running around this barren sod for another decade or two"), one might suppose it's relatively unimportant (except to the grim toll of wounded and dead, and their grieving families) whether the twenty-first century's endless unwon wars are lost by male, female or transgender soldiery.
• 
Accepting that it's obviously far better for us to lose two-decade wars as diversely as possible, it still seems a very weird thing to be boasting about...
• 
In response to Tucker pointing out the bizarre priorities of the world's wokest military, the Pentagon went full shock-and-awe on him...
• 
"I like generals!" enthused Trump at the dawn of his administration.  After being on the receiving end of John Kelly and Mad Dog Mattis, he wouldn't say that today.
• 
This is no reflection on the men and pregnant women on the frontlines (for whom Alan Clark's famous formulation of the Great War, "lions led by donkeys", might have been created) but on the fellows who run the joint, and have run it into the ground.
• 
We're supposed to be excited because the newly appointed Lloyd Austin is the first African-American to serve as Defense Secretary.
• 
Of more relevance is that until two months back he was a board member of Raytheon, the high-tech armaments contractor that develops ever more advanced technology to ensure that we lose to inbred goatherds with fertiliser even more expensively.
• 
In other words, Lloyd Austin is business as usual, whatever his identity-politics points.  Meanwhile, China's winning the real war without a shot being fired.
• 
... observing the "very palpable evolution of America's soldiery into yet another victim group" - which is quite an achievement for a body that accounts for forty per cent of all military spending on the planet.
• 
Back on the ground, the Taliban now control more territory than at any time since October 2001, but as long as Raytheon gets its "ten per cent for the big guy" there's no reason we can't string that out till the fiftieth anniversary.
• 
Meanwhile, since January 6th all the experts agree the real war is on the home front - so thank God we can still take down retired thirty-year Naval chaplains.
• 
As Tucker pointed out on Friday, if they take the Afghan approach with him, in five years he'll bestride the fruited plain like a colossus.  Allahu Tuckbar!
      The Preparedness of the 24/7 Surveillance State  (JWR 04/06/2020)
• 
There is a reason the epicenter of Covid-19 moved first to Western Europe and then to America - because the west is the most afflicted by diversity unto death.
• 
Even the Mexicans have figured out that, while open borders are useful for exporting drugs and low-skilled Mexicans into America, the cost-benefit analysis changes when it comes to importing diseased Americans and death into Mexico.
• 
Are we ready to do serious cost-benefit analysis?
• 
The most significant change after 9/11 - "the day the world changed" - was the doubling of the rate of Muslim immigration to the west.
• 
Will we do the same now?  More open borders, more flights from Shanghai and Beijing, more transfer of what's left of western manufacturing to the Chinese Communist Party, more shrieks of "Raaaaacist!" at any questioning of Beijing's official lies, never mind whether any advanced nation needs mass immigration or unscreened self-identified "refugees" ...
• 
The changes we make this time will be existential.
• 
We are suffused in death not only because of Chinese lies but because of those we tell ourselves, suppler and more beguiling as they are.
• 
"Preparedness" does not mean merely PPE and ICU, but requires also addressing borders and immigration and political correctness, and diversity unto death.
• 
In much of the western world, we are shutting down the economy and daily life, because our rulers could not bear to shut down their own virtue-signaling diversity bollocks.
      Pitching the Wuhan  (JWR 03/25/2020)
• 
... it reads: "Huge congratulations to the American epidemic and long live the epidemic in little Japan#
• 
... China is the most racist country on earth.  But it's even more racist to point that out, according to the decadent halfwits of the American media.
• 
Their position - on an increasing range of subjects - is to throttle free speech ever tighter, to demand that every story be discussed within an ever narrower range of leftie parameters.
• 
Political correctness, yea unto death, led to ... Florence's mayor urging Italians to hug a Chinaman, and New York City's Health Commissar (and her deputy) tweeting just a month ago:
• 
"Today our city is celebrating the #LunarNewYear parade in Chinatown, a beautiful cultural tradition with a rich history in our city.  I want to remind everyone to enjoy the parade and not change any plans due to misinformation spreading about #coronavirus."
• 
Gee, thanks, Ms Health Commissioner.  Now you're Italy.
• 
In Washington, Nancy Pelosi is holding any kind of economic relief bill hostage to diversity bollocks.
• 
In Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, three's a crowd literally: gatherings of more than two persons are now forbidden.
• 
Across the so-called "free world", millions of actual citizens are under de facto house arrest, while their depraved political class insist that we still need open borders and that a health system that can't provide care to its own populace nevertheless has to make it available to the entire planet.
• 
The best way to save the western world from the Chinese virus would be to quarantine its entire politico-media class.
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      Thank Private Property  (JWR 11/24/2021)
• 
Happy Thanksgiving!  But beware the "tragedy of the commons." It almost killed off the pilgrims.
• 
When they came to America, the pilgrims decided to share everything.  The governor of Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, wrote that the pilgrims thought "taking away of property and (making it communal) ... would make them happy and flourishing."
• 
Food and supplies were distributed based on need.  Pilgrims would not selfishly produce food for themselves.
• 
In other words, they, like Sen.  Bernie Sanders and many American young people today, fell in love with the idea of socialism.
• 
The result was ugly.  When the first harvest came, there wasn't nearly enough food.  Many pilgrims died that winter.  If the Wampanoag American Indians hadn't helped them, all might have starved.
• 
It was the tragedy of the commons.  No individual pilgrim owned crops they grew, so no one had an incentive to work harder to produce extra to sell to others.
• 
Since even slackers got food from the communal supply, they had no incentive to work hard.  Many didn't.
• 
Strong men thought it was an "injustice" that they "had no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that was weak and not able to do a quarter the other could."
• 
Women had to cook and clean for other women's husbands, and they "deemed it a kind of slavery."
• 
The shared farming, Bradford concluded, "was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit."
• 
When the Pilgrims ran out of food, they "began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could, and obtain a better crop ... that they might not still thus languish in misery."
• 
Their solution was private property.  They split up the collective farm and gave every family a plot of land.
• 
That was a big success.  "It made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been," wrote Bradford.  "The women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn." Before, they "would allege weakness and inability."
• 
Thanks to individual plots of land, food shortages turned into a surplus that became the feast we now call Thanksgiving.
• 
"All men have this corruption," Bradford observed.  In a common, everyone wants to take as much as they can.
• 
Private property created prosperity.
      The New Censors  (JWR 06/24/2020)
• 
Do you say what you think?  That's risky!  You may get fired!
• 
You've probably heard about a New York Times editor resigning after approving an opinion piece by Senator Tom Cotton that suggested the military to step in to end riots.
• 
Many Times reporters tweeted out the same alarmist wording, "Running this puts Black NY Times staffers in danger."
• 
Really?  How?
• 
They learned this tactic from so-called woke professors and fellow activists at expensive colleges.
• 
Last year, Harvard students demanded that law professor Ron Sullivan resign as a resident dean.  Why?  He'd agreed to be part of Harvey Weinstein's legal defense team.
• 
A female student said, "I don't feel safe!" although Sullivan had been a dean for many years.  Sullivan resigned.
• 
At UCLA, business school lecturer Gordon Klein rejected a request to give black students different treatment on their final exam because of George Floyd's death.  Klein pointed out that since the class was online, he had no way of knowing which students were black.
• 
He also told students: "remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the color of their skin."
• 
The activist group Color of Change ... launched a petition to have Klein "terminated for his extremely insensitive, dismissive, and woefully racist response."
• 
UCLA quickly caved.  Klein is on mandatory leave.
• 
Now that many former college radicals have jobs at elite media companies, they demand that newspapers not say certain things.
• 
When, in response to looting during George Floyd protests, the Philadelphia Inquirer ran the insensitive headline, "Buildings Matter, Too," 44 staff members claimed that "puts our lives at risk."
• 
Their letter didn't give any evidence as to how it threatened their lives ... but they won.  The editor resigned.
• 
When activists decide that certain words or arguments are "offensive," no one must use those words.
• 
"...  We have to challenge dogma.  What if we were still with the principle that you couldn't speak out against the King?!  That's the history of the Middle Ages."
• 
That's when authorities arrested Galileo for daring to say that the earth revolved around the sun.
• 
"That's the condition that all humans lived under until just the last 300 years, and it was a much less happy place."
• 
"Then we came to an idea that we improve society by having frank and sometimes difficult conversations about policy issues, philosophy, about how we're going to get along and live together."
• 
Life has been much better since people acquired the right to speak freely.
• 
When entitled leftists declare themselves the sole arbiters of truth, it's crucial that we all speak up for free speech.
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      Trump's abandonment of the Kurds is a recipe for endless war, not a strategy to end one  (Fox 10/11/2019)
• 
President Trump has defended his shameful abandonment of our Kurdish allies in Syria, declaring that "I was elected on getting out of these ridiculous endless wars" that have left America "bogged down, watching over a quagmire."
• 
Listening to the president, Americans might think that we still have large numbers of U.S.  troops fighting on fronts across the Middle East.  We do not.
• 
The days when we deployed hundreds of thousands of troops in the Middle East are long gone.
• 
Today, we have 14,000 troops in Afghanistan, about 5,000 in Iraq and just 1,000 in Syria.
• 
That is a grand total of about 20,000 troops in all three countries.
• 
By contrast, we have about 37,950 U.S.  troops in Germany, 12,750 in Italy, 53,900 in Japan, and 28,500 in South Korea — a total of over 133,000.
• 
In fact, we now have three times more troops deployed in Spain (3,200) than we do in Syria.
• 
Moreover, the vast majority of these U.S.  forces are engaged in a noncombat mission known as "train, advise and assist."
• 
U.S.  allies do most of the fighting, while American troops provide intelligence, operational planning, fire support and airstrike coordination from behind the front lines.
• 
We have helped train and equip about 174,000 Afghan troops, 64,000 Iraqi troops and 60,000 Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) troops, made up predominantly of Kurdish fighters.
• 
They are the ones engaged in ground combat with America's enemies.
• 
Trump likes to say he "defeated" the Islamic State.  Actually, the bulk of the fighting was done by our Kurdish allies, trained and supported by U.S.  Special Operations forces.
• 
"Over four years, the SDF freed tens of thousands of square miles and millions of people from the grip of ISIS.  Throughout the fight, it sustained nearly 11,000 casualties.  By comparison, six U.S.  service members, as well as two civilians, have been killed in the anti-ISIS campaign."
• 
The Kurds bore the burden of the fight and the brunt of the casualties, and they drove the Islamic State from its physical caliphate.
• 
But the terrorists are far from defeated.
• 
They still have tens of thousands of fighters and vast financial resources.
• 
If we take our boot off their necks, they will come roaring back — just like they did in Iraq on President Obama's watch.
• 
Who is going to stop them?  Since Trump has reduced the U.S.  military presence in Syria to just 1,000 troops, that means we are depending on the Kurds to keep the Islamic State down.
• 
But if we allow Turkey to wipe out our Kurdish allies, who will be left on the ground in Syria to fight the Islamic State?  Answer: No one.
• 
Is Trump ready to deploy American ground forces to do the job?
• 
His abandonment of the Kurds is a recipe for endless war, not a strategy to end one.
• 
It gets worse.  Without U.S.  support, the Kurds will have no choice but to turn to Russia, Iran and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad for protection.
• 
The cry that America is fighting "endless wars" is a canard.
• 
Our force levels in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are a shadow of their former selves, and U.S.  forces are not doing the fighting but rather arming and training allies who are doing the fighting for us.
• 
That is the right strategy.
• 
But after watching Trump abandon our allies in Syria to be slaughtered, why would anyone step forward to help America in the fight against Islamist radicalism?
      The president can't have it both  ()
• 
If you don't want American forces fighting "endless wars," then you can't betray your allies.
      Senate Dems' unprecedented threat against the Supreme Court  (JWR 09/04/2019)
• 
In 2017, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., accused President Trump of showing "a disdain for an independent judiciary that doesn't always bend to his wishes" after Trump criticized a federal judge who ruled against his administration.
• 
Senate Democrats, by contrast, have launched an unprecedented attempt to actually bend the Supreme Court to their wishes — threatening to restructure the court if the justices do not rule as they see fit.
• 
What is not acceptable is openly threatening the court with political retribution if it does not rule a certain way.
• 
That is precisely what these Senate Democrats did.
• 
"The Supreme Court is not well," they wrote.  "And the people know it.  Perhaps the Court can heal itself before the public demands it be 'restructured to reduce the influence of politics.'"
• 
As all 53 Senate Republicans wrote in a letter to the court last week, "the implication is as plain as day: Dismiss the case, or we'll pack the Court."
• 
Talk about disdain for an independent judiciary!
• 
Can you imagine if Trump issued such a preemptive threat?  Heads would explode.
• 
And in contrast to Trump's impulsive Twitter rants, the Democrats issued their threat in a carefully crafted legal brief submitted to the court.  They thought this through and decided that blackmailing the Supreme Court was a good idea.
• 
The Democrats accused the Supreme Court of being too political, but their plan to "reduce the influence of politics" on the court is to have senators order the justices how to decide or face political consequences?  What utter hypocrisy.
• 
The Democrats justify their unprecedented intimidation tactics by pointing out that since 2005, the court has issued 78 5-to-4 or 5-to-3 opinions in which Republican appointees provided all five votes in the majority.
• 
Give me a break.  In each of the cases to which they object, the liberal bloc voted in unison as well.  Were they behaving as a "partisan" minority?
• 
Senate Democrats would have no problem with these 5-to-4 decisions if they had been decided by a liberal majority.
• 
Their complaint is not with the rise of "political influence" on the court, but rather with their lack of political influence on the court.
• 
The judicial left has gone off the deep end because it is losing its battle for an activist liberal court.
• 
In 2016, over a quarter of Trump voters said that the Supreme Court was the most important factor in their decision to support him.
• 
... now that Democrats have threatened to pack the court with liberal judges if they win the White House and the Senate, the Supreme Court will once again be front and center.
• 
For the president, this is a massive stroke of luck.
• 
See related Who Are You Voting for? (Glenn McCoy, 08/03/2016) cartoon from USA picture album
      Marc Thiessen: If Omar and Tlaib can boycott Israel, why can’t Israel boycott them?  (Fox 08/21/2019)
• 
... accused Israel of denying her and fellow congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., entry because they are "the first two Muslim American women elected to Congress."
• 
... accusing Israel of implementing "Trump's Muslim ban"
• 
Sorry, it's not a Muslim ban; it's an anti-Semite ban.
• 
Israel's decision to bar the two U.S.  lawmakers was a mistake, because it has given them a much bigger platform from which to attack Israel.
• 
But let's be clear: There is nothing outrageous about Israel's decision to bar entry to politicians who advocate its destruction.
• 
If Omar and Tlaib can boycott Israel, why can't Israel boycott them?
• 
Omar says Israel's decision interferes with her ability to do her work "as a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs."
• 
Maybe so.  But the problem is not that Israel barred entry to a member of that committee, but rather that there is an anti-Semite sitting on that committee.
• 
Omar has said that when she hears people call Israel a democracy, "I almost chuckle." She has said "Israel has hypnotized the world"; has declared her hope that Allah will "awaken the people and help them see the evil doings of Israel"; supports a boycott of Israel, a country she has compared to Nazi Germany; accused her House colleagues who support Israel of pushing "for allegiance to a foreign country"; and declared that support for Israel is "all about the Benjamins."
• 
How is it that she continues to sit on the congressional committee that helps set U.S.  policy toward Israel?
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., actually defended Omar's "allegiance to a foreign country" remark, saying "I don't believe it was intended in an anti-Semitic way."
• 
I'm sorry, what other way could Omar have intended it?
• 
Like Omar, Tlaib has accused her colleagues of dual loyalty — a classic anti-Semitic trope — declaring "they forgot what country they represent."
• 
She advocates a one-state solution, which means she opposes the very existence of the state of Israel.
• 
Tlaib wrote for Louis Farrakhan's publication, the Final Call, which regularly publishes anti-Semitic screeds.
• 
... she invited a Palestinian activist to her swearing-in who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah and has equated Zionists with Nazis.
• 
Omar and Tlaib showed their true colors when they chose not to join a bipartisan congressional delegation to Israel earlier this month in favor of a trip organized by Miftah, a rabidly anti-Semitic group that has accused Jews of using "the blood of Christians in the Jewish Passover," has published neo-Nazi propaganda questioning "the Jewish ‘Holocaust' tale" in quotes and has celebrated terrorists who murder Israeli children.
• 
And, as though to prove Israel's point, after being denied entry, the two lawmakers shared a cartoon on Instagram by an anti-Semitic cartoonist who placed second in an Iranian newspaper's 2006 Holocaust cartoon contest.
• 
The fact that Democrats tolerate, and even embrace, Omar and Tlaib is appalling.
• 
And it points to a larger problem.
• 
There is anti-Semitism on both the right and the left.
• 
On the right, anti-Semitism manifests itself in skinheads marching in Charlottesville chanting "Jews will not replace us!"
• 
On the left, anti-Semitism manifests itself in Democratic members of Congress who compare Israel to Nazi Germany.
• 
But while right-wing anti-Semites remain on the political fringes, where they belong, on the left anti-Semites have found their way into the halls of power and are being defended by the Democratic Party's leaders.
• 
How sad that so many prominent Democrats are condemning Israel's decision to bar these anti-Semites more vigorously than they have condemned their anti-Semitism.
• 
See related I'm ... Anti-Semitic (Bob Gorrell, 02/13/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Yes, it feels like there are 'endless' wars for our military – But here's the hard truth  (Fox 02/08/2019)
• 
"Great nations do not fight endless wars," President Trump declared in his State of the Union address.
• 
Just a few days before Trump's address, his own party delivered the president a stinging rebuke when Senate Republicans passed a resolution opposing his Syrian and Afghan withdrawals by an overwhelming bipartisan 68-to-23 vote.
• 
When ... will these wars end?  When will we be able to declare victory and go home?
• 
These are fair questions, and they deserve serious answers.
• 
In traditional wars, defining victory is easy.  Victory comes when the enemy surrenders and lays down its arms.
• 
But this is not traditional war.  We are not fighting nation-states with defined borders and armies, navies and air forces.
• 
We are fighting radical Islamist terrorists who are engaged in what Usama bin Laden called "a war of destiny between infidelity and Islam."
• 
They will never lay down their arms.  In this war, victory for the United States is every day that passes without a terrorist attack on American soil.
• 
And that daily victory is made possible because the men and women of the U.S.  military are hunting the enemy in faraway lands.
• 
America's enemies have a very clear definition of victory.  For them, victory comes when we give up the fight before they do.
• 
"Americans don't realize we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting."
• 
That is how the terrorists see Obama's withdrawal from Iraq in 2011 and Trump's planned withdrawals from Syria and Afghanistan: America defeating itself by quitting.
• 
It is understandable that, after 18 years, Americans want the war to end.  But what we want is irrelevant.
• 
We don't get to decide unilaterally that the war is over.  The enemy gets a vote.
• 
Just because we have tired of fighting doesn't mean that they have.
• 
Here is the hard truth: We don't get to choose when the war ends, but we do get to choose where it is fought.
• 
Trump deserves enormous credit for taking the gloves off in the fight against the terrorists.
• 
"When I took office, ISIS controlled more than 20,000 square miles in Iraq and Syria.  Today, we have liberated virtually all of that territory from the grip of these bloodthirsty monsters."
• 
But the Islamic State is not defeated.  It still has tens of thousands of fighters under arms and ... as much as $400 million it smuggled out of Iraq, money that can be used to sustain its movement and plan attacks across the world
• 
In Afghanistan, U.S.  intelligence estimates there are about 20 terrorist groups ... who would immediately gain an uncontested sanctuary from which to plan new attacks if America withdraws.
• 
... a 2017 intelligence assessment, renewed last year, "says a complete withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan would lead to an attack on the United States within two years."
• 
Right now, the U.S.  military has its boot on the terrorists' necks.
• 
They are focused on survival, not on launching faraway attacks.
• 
Take that boot away, though, and the terrorists will get up, dust themselves off, regroup, rebuild and go back to trying to kill Americans in the United States.
• 
In his address, Trump praised the heroism of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.
• 
"They did not know if they would survive the hour.  They did not know if they would grow old.  But they knew that America had to prevail."
• 
The same is true today.  Great nations do not quit before they prevail.
 Thomas  (04/18/2022)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (10/11/2019) | Next sect (03/14/2022) | List bot 
      Elon Musk and free speech  (JWR 04/18/2022)
• 
Americans who subscribe to "traditional values" have had to put up with a lot from the left in the name of the First Amendment.
• 
From vulgarities on TV (self-described First Amendment defenders said things like, "If you don't like, it change the channel" ), to sexual scenes in movies ("If you don't like it, don't go" ), to the ready availability of pornography on the internet ("use blockers if you don't want to view it" ), to books that offend parental values in public schools, to flag burning during protests, cries of "censorship" have been hurled at defenders of deportment and tradition.
• 
Now comes Elon Musk and suddenly everything has changed.  Musk wants to buy Twitter and add to the diversity of opinions that can be expressed on this popular and influential platform.
• 
At first the Twitter board welcomed him to the company, but they quickly changed their minds and have now inserted a "poison pill" they hope will keep him from taking over.  It's complicated, but they would limit the number of shares that Musk could purchase.
• 
Why does it appear the only speech that wins the approval of the left is speech with which they agree?
• 
People mostly agree on limits involving libel, slander and the old one about not crying "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire, but what is happening now is different.
• 
Twitter (and Facebook) have "standards" which, if violated, can get one suspended or in the case of Donald Trump, banned from their platforms.
• 
They define "hate speech" but it is often arbitrary, and the company in too many cases, seems to bow to the wishes of leftist organizations.
• 
That the allegations of censorship have shifted from the right foot to the left was evident in a recent Washington Post column by Max Boot.
• 
Boot lamented that a billionaire like Musk could potentially have influence in deciding Twitter's content.  The irony is that his paper is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos.
• 
During the turbulent years leading up to the founding of the nation there were views expressed for and against the Revolution.  Even so, George Washington said, "If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."
• 
In an Aug.  8, 1950, message to Congress regarding the internal security of the United States, President Harry Truman wrote: "Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."
• 
The response to speech one does not like is more speech, not less.  That's what freedom of speech ultimately means...
• 
See related Unabomber II (Mike Shelton, 01/19/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
• 
• 
See related Hang Em' High-Tech (Antonio Branco, 01/11/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
      The real cause behind the rise in crime  (JWR 02/08/2022)
• 
Few wish to stand for what is right in contemporary society because they fear condemnation from people and "groups" that will tag them with negative labels.
• 
If we don't like the direction in which we are headed, it is time to yell "stop," then turn around and take a different road.  The one we are now on will lead to our destruction.
• 
The late Bishop Fulton J.  Sheen correctly forecast in the mid-20th century what was to come when he said: "The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision.  It is a silent acquiescence to evil.  The tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction."
• 
Crime is first a moral issue.  Failure to address it on that level ensures it will only get worse.
      Afghanistan's ripple effect  (JWR 08/24/2021)
• 
In coming after the West, terrorists don't have to initially "take over" a country.  They only have to sow fear and chaos, wreck economies and erode freedoms.
• 
As we've seen after 20 years in Afghanistan, they are patient and we are not.  Through immigration, a higher birth rate and achieving positions in Western governments, they intend to methodically rule the world.
• 
They count on the West's weakness and exhaustion to help propel them to victory.  After only seven months in office, President Biden has shown himself to be a weak and failed president.
• 
What our enemies make of it will have serious repercussions far beyond however long his administration lasts.
      Will CIA soon stand for 'Central Insanity Agency'?  Team Biden weakening America from inside out  (Fox 05/06/2021)
• 
The Central Intelligence Agency is always looking to recruit new agents and advertising is one way it has done so in the past.
• 
The difference this time is in a newly created series of recruitment videos that reflect the spirit of the age in which we live, rather than appealing to abilities and patriotism.
• 
The videos seem to suggest that the super-secret agency has been infiltrated, not by spies from Russia, China, or Al Qaeda, but rather a subtler and nearly invisible enemy.
• 
That would be the infiltration by woke liberals, whose primary goal appears to be the undermining of every tradition and institution — from Disneyland's Snow White ride (the famous kiss scene by the Prince has been deemed sexually aggressive because Ms.  White is unconscious and cannot give consent, so it will be re-imagined) — to America's foremost intelligence agency.
• 
The latest CIA video features a Latina officer who identifies as a "cisgender millennial." Even the word "cisgender" is so new that my spellcheck does not (yet) recognize it.
• 
The video is part of a new series called "Humans of CIA" designed to attract a more "diverse pool of candidates."
• 
"I am a woman of color.  I am a mom.  I am a cisgender millennial who has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.  I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise."
• 
Really?  What else could it be?
• 
WebMD defines anxiety disorders: "They're a group of mental illnesses that cause constant and overwhelming anxiety and fear.  The excessive anxiety can make you avoid work, school, family get-togethers, and other social situations that might trigger or worsen your symptoms."
• 
Forget the other stuff.  Why would the CIA be fine with an agent suffering from such a malady?
• 
Sen.  Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said: "If you're a Chinese communist, or an Iranian mullah, or Kim Jong-un ... would this scare you?"
• 
Donald Trump Jr.  joined the mock fest when he tweeted that the agency has gone "full woke.  China and Russia love this" and are "laughing their asses off." ... "wokeness is the kind of twisted PSYOP (psychological operations) a spy agency would invent to destroy a country from inside out."
• 
Such operations have traditionally been used to influence the reasoning and emotions of people, a strategy now full-blown in America.
• 
The late historian Will Durant had the definitive statement about what happens to nations that ignore traditions and policies which have worked in the past: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."
• 
An even higher authority preached: "For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching.  They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.  (2 Timothy 4:3 NLT)...
• 
The Biden administration is weakening America from inside out, especially by ignoring the crisis at our southern border.  Wokeness is spreading at least as fast COVID-19 ever could.
• 
Unlike the virus, there is no vaccination for this moral and intellectual pandemic.
• 
The CIA has had problems in its past, but none as serious as this.  If they continue to succumb to wokeness, the "I" in its acronym will stand for insanity.
      Cal Thomas: First, Biden, Dems spent money they didn't have.  Now come the taxes  (Fox 03/18/2021)
• 
The front-page headline in Monday's Wall Street Journal said: "Biden weighs how to pay for Agenda." Who purchases something they know they can't afford, and then worries about paying for it later?  Only government.
• 
We are already hearing the mantra Democrats have used for decades to justify tax hikes: The rich must pay their "fair share."
• 
They never tell us what is fair, or the amount of confiscation they wish to impose.  It is always a moving target.
• 
Unrestrained by a Republican majority in either house of Congress or a Republican president, Democrats have the votes to push legislation through, at least until the 2022 election, showing little concern for voter anger.
• 
It doesn't matter to them that the Trump tax cuts produced tremendous economic results for businesses that then create jobs and hire workers.
• 
Democrats cling to the false notion that more spending and higher taxes solves everything.  If it did, would it not have by now?
• 
They never speak of individual responsibility, liberty, or the proper role of government.  Oh, how we need term limits, but that would mean career politicians would have to vote for them, which they will never do.
• 
Democrats will likely begin with raising corporate taxes, because they have been successful in portraying corporations as evil and greedy.
• 
Trouble is, those corporations hire people and employees also pay taxes, contributing to economic growth.
• 
If corporations must pay more in taxes, they are less likely to hire and layoff current employees.  Anytime is a bad time to raise taxes but raising them while people are still struggling with the consequences of government shutdowns is immoral.
• 
Voters not addicted to government will have to demand more fiscal responsibility.  As with nations of the past, massive debt and high taxes have contributed to national decline.
      Cal Thomas: Biden's immigration mess – no nation can survive if it fails to control its borders  (Fox 03/12/2021)
• 
... former President Trump recently said: "The spiraling tsunami at the border is overwhelming local communities, depleting budgets, crowding hospitals, and taking jobs from legal American workers.  When I left office, we had achieved the most secure border in our country's history.  Under Biden, it will soon be worse, more dangerous, and more out of control than ever before.  He has violated his oath of office to uphold our Constitution and enforce our laws."
• 
He is right, but the Biden administration seems unwilling to do anything about it.  No nation can survive if it fails to control its borders.
• 
Our nation is unique in the world.  We are a nation of laws.  We are a nation with a rich history.
• 
If we abandon what our forebears fought to preserve, what will be left but a shell of a once-great country?
• 
Too many schools remain closed, but the border is increasingly open.  Does this make sense?
• 
Some House Democrats are supporting bills that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke our laws to get here.
• 
Democrats will make sure they quickly become voters to solidify their hold on power.
• 
We had better decide what kind of country we want to be, or we will become a country others want us to be.
• 
That was clearly not the vision of our Founders, of the many presidents who succeeded them, or even recent Democratic presidents and presidential candidates.
• 
Until now.
• 
      What happened to boundaries?  (JWR 03/04/2021)
• 
All games must be played within boundaries.  No one would think of erasing them.  If they did, how could they ever expect an orderly contest?
• 
Boundaries are rapidly being erased in American culture.  It seems everything has been sacrificed to opinion polls, campaign contributions from certain advocacy groups and editorial support from major newspapers.
• 
What are the consequences to a society that embraces an "anything goes" mentality?  Who among us wants to publicly oppose anything for fear of being labeled a bigot?  The standard for what is acceptable and what is not is now subjectively determined.
• 
So, please, tell me if you can: do any standards exist and if they do, based on what?  If you believe they don't, on what is this belief based?
• 
Denying a standard is in itself a standard, is it not?
      Rush, explained  (JWR 02/23/2021)
• 
Limbaugh's devoted fans believed their values helped build and sustain America through wars, economic downturns and other challenges.
• 
They see those values under siege from a secular progressive generation that tolerates everything but them.
• 
Many had served in the military to defend once traditional values and the freedoms many now take for granted, as if freedom is automatically and effortlessly achieved.
• 
These people go to church and take their children to Sunday school.  Some enroll their kids in Christian schools or home school them because they dislike what is taught in public schools.
• 
They believe their country is losing all moral standards, is becoming increasingly corrupt and in danger of extinction if things don't turn around.
• 
Shouldn't these concerns explain why they wish to issue warnings because they love the country and don't want it to fail?  Limbaugh was their spokesman in these and other matters.
• 
In 2015, Obama told a gathering of wealthy Californians at a fundraiser that conservatives "cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
• 
While running for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton famously characterized "half of Donald Trump's supporters belong in a basket of deplorables" characterized by "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic" views.
• 
You see how this works?  If you don't bend the knee to them and their way of thinking, you are somehow less of an American than they are.
• 
They think they have the right to set standards, which constantly shift and thus are not standards, while they obliterate conservative and religious standards, which are fixed.
• 
Conservatives got tired of either being ignored, or having their ideas, values and beliefs demonized and so when Limbaugh, especially, and other conservative commentators and outlets came along, accurately describing, defending, even promoting their beliefs, they flocked to them.
• 
The major media, which must make money to exist, had an opportunity to understand "these people," a term used by some on the left to collectively describe them as if they were aliens from another planet.
• 
Instead, they effectively told them "we don't want your business," so they took their "business" to Limbaugh and others.
• 
Instead of reaching out to understand, employ conservatives in the media and comment fairly on their beliefs, the secular progressives in and out of the media doubled down on their rejection of them.
• 
This made the rejected even more loyal to Limbaugh and those who followed him.
• 
One definition of "The Establishment" is: "the existing power structure in society; the dominant groups in society and their customs or institutions; institutional authority."
• 
This is what Rush Limbaugh challenged and why his listeners loved him.  He was right and those critical of him never understood.  They still don't and neither do they care to.
      Cal Thomas: Twitter, Facebook ban Trump and free speech is tested again  (Fox 01/12/2021)
• 
Twitter and Facebook have permanently banned President Trump from their social platforms.
• 
Trump has hinted he may announce an alternative social media platform, possibly one created by him.
• 
"As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me.  Twitter may be a private company, but without the government's gift of Section 230 they would not exist for long.  I predicted this would happen.  We have been negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future."
• 
Twitter removed the tweet from Trump's @POTUS account within minutes of when it popped up, and then shut down the account "due to the risk of further incitement of violence."
• 
When Trump posted the same message to his campaign Twitter account, "the company permanently suspended that account too."
• 
Trump has now also been banned from Instagram, Snapchat and Twitch, and Parler, "the alternative social media platform favored by conservatives, now finds itself virtually homeless on the internet as Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOGL) have all booted it from their platforms in a span of a little more than 24 hours."
• 
The late writer Nat Hentoff ... once told me the answer to speech you don't like is not less speech, but more speech.
• 
Banning offensive speech encourages radicals in their extremism.  We no longer talk to each other.
• 
Too many read and listen only to what supports their point of view and demeans people who believe differently.  This is unhealthy for a free society.
• 
In another display of the double standard, the two social media giants still allow the Iranian leadership and people associated with the Chinese Communist Party to maintain their accounts.
• 
Trump voters deserve to have their concerns addressed, or the cynicism and division will only get worse, as will the potential for more violence.
• 
The best way to lower the temperature would be to create a forum that would fairly and accurately examine all claims of voter fraud and ballot manipulation.
      Cal Thomas: Government's assault on faith and conscience is far from over  (Fox 12/01/2020)
• 
In totalitarian societies, governments suppress the church and religious worship.  That's because dictators believe citizens should worship them as the highest authority and not a Higher Authority, which they view as a threat to their power and position.
• 
What is it that causes so many Americans to place their faith in government over faith in God, or even faith in themselves?
• 
False gods of wood, iron, bronze and gold could not answer the prayers of ancient peoples, so why, when government fails to answer the "prayers" of so many today, do people continue to put their faith in it?
• 
What is it that causes so many Americans to place their faith in government over faith in God, or even faith in themselves?  False gods of wood, iron, bronze and gold could not answer the prayers of ancient peoples, so why, when government fails to answer the "prayers" of so many today, do people continue to put their faith in it?
• 
When government sets itself up as the ultimate authority on all things, including the right to gather and worship freely, other liberties can quickly be at risk.
• 
If the First Amendment is to be challenged, even watered down when it comes to faith and practice, why not impose stricter controls on speech and the press, as is done in totalitarian states?
• 
Once the principle that government endows rights is established, it is a very short step for government to take them away.
• 
In China and elsewhere around the globe, dictators view God as a challenge to their rule.  They demand total fealty, or those who seek to go over their heads with appeals to Heaven must be arrested, jailed and in some instances murdered that the almighty state be preserved.
• 
One of the founding principles that brought Pilgrims from England to America was the freedom to worship God as their consciences dictated.  The Constitution guarantees that right.
• 
In more recent years the term "separation between church and state" penned by Thomas Jefferson in a private letter to a friend, has come to mean the right of the government to define the meaning of "church"...
• 
One of the founding principles that brought Pilgrims from England to America was the freedom to worship God as their consciences dictated.  The Constitution guarantees that right.  In more recent years the term "separation between church and state" penned by Thomas Jefferson in a private letter to a friend, has come to mean the right of the government to define the meaning of "church."
• 
... noted that in the eyes of God when one has broken one of the Ten Commandments, one has broken them all.  Breaking one law, they have noted, defines one as a lawbreaker.
• 
It is a good analogy when considering our liberties.  If one is threatened, all are potentially at risk.
      On which issues would Biden be willing to compromise and find common ground with Republicans?  (Fox 11/10/2020)
• 
In an address to the nation last Saturday, President-Elect Biden claimed he has been given a "mandate for action on COVID, the economy, climate change (and) systemic racism." He called for healing and unity.
• 
Biden reportedly plans to issue a slew of executive orders, reversing those by President Trump.  It is his right to do so, but how does that promote healing and unity?
• 
For Democrats, healing and unity often means bowing to their policy wishes.  It never seems to work in reverse.
• 
Does Biden have a mandate on COVID?  Would Americans, including businesses owners, accept a national lockdown that could cripple the economy?
• 
What about open borders and lifting the ban on immigrants from nations that have experienced and, in some cases, promoted terrorism?  Does Biden have a mandate for that?
• 
Will he be anti-Israel, as some believe Obama was?  Will Biden undermine peace agreements brokered by Trump between Israel and three Arab/Muslim states?
• 
Was Trump's impeachment by Nancy Pelosi's House a contribution to healing and unity?
• 
The Biden economic plan includes tax increases and more spending.
• 
Biden also said, "the purpose of our politics isn't total, unrelenting, unending warfare."
• 
You wouldn't know it from the way Democrats behave, starting with their slander of Robert Bork during his hearing to become a justice of the Supreme Court — ditto Brett Kavanaugh — through the presidential election of 2000, which many Democrats then and now claim illegitimately elected George W.  Bush, to the 2016 election when they claimed Hillary Clinton should have won based on the popular vote and mounted a four-year political assault against the president.
• 
Biden's bromides sound comforting, but Democrats do not practice what they preach.
• 
"We may be opponents, but we are not enemies.  We're Americans," he said.  No credit to Abraham Lincoln.
• 
Speaking of Lincoln, who Democrats like to cite as a great Republican president ... After the 1860 election and before he was sworn in, the owner and editor of the New York Herald, James Gordon Bennett, called on Lincoln not to assume office: "A grand opportunity now exists for Lincoln to avert impending ruin, and invest his name with an immortality far more enduring that would attach to it by his elevation to the Presidency."
• 
Trump critics planned to impeach him before he was inaugurated and publicly said so.
• 
Biden says he wants to bring us together?  On which issues would he be willing to compromise and find common ground with Republicans?
• 
To win the approval of Democrats and their media acolytes, Republicans must lose elections and forfeit their principles.
• 
The mystery is why so many Americans vote for Republicans in one election and Democrats the next.  Too many it seems vote mainly on personality and superficialities, not substantive policies.
• 
It was the media's job to dig under the superficial and reveal the true Joe Biden (and Kamala Harris, who could likely become president sooner than later).  They failed, becoming an extension of the Democratic Party and anti-Trumpers.
• 
If Biden's policies fail don't expect Democrats to admit it; they will blame Republicans.
• 
Meanwhile, we are a bipolar nation, unlikely to unify.
• 
See related Unmasking (Glenn McCoy, 04/04/2017) cartoon from Media picture album
      Another day older and deeper in debt  (JWR 09/08/2020)
• 
It isn't that we don't have sufficient warnings and examples from the Founders to contemporary political leaders about the dangers of debt.
• 
It is that the politicians and those who elect and benefit from their largesse refuse to heed those warnings.
• 
... consider this succinct quote from Ronald Reagan: "We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend too much."
• 
Who can credibly argue with that?  It's true in our personal lives, but unlike the government individuals can't borrow money without end to prop up their lifestyles.
• 
Again, Reagan cut to the heart of the spending and debt problem when he observed: "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size.  Government programs, once launched, never disappear.  Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!"
• 
Thomas Jefferson said: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt."
• 
Alexander Hamilton warned: "Nothing can more affect national prosperity than a constant and systematic attention to extinguish the present debt and to avoid as much as possibl(e) the incurring of any new debt."
• 
George Washington said: "Avoid occasions of expense ... and avoid likewise the accumulation of debt not only by shunning occasions of expense but by vigorous exertions to discharge the debts, not throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear."
• 
Then there's James Madison: " I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a Republican Government a greater curse than any other."
• 
Can anyone credibly challenge these warnings?  If not, why aren't we obeying them?
• 
See related National Debt Clock (Gary Varvel, 12/27/2019) cartoon from USA picture album
      Cal Thomas: Republican optimism vs.  Democratic pessimism  (Fox 08/25/2020)
• 
... an excerpt from Donald Trump's inaugural address on Jan.  20, 2017: "The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.  Their victories have not been your victories.  Their triumphs have not been your triumphs.  And while they celebrated in our nation's capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land."
• 
Trump brought back those who had been struggling under the slow-growth Obama-Biden administration.
• 
Contrast Trump's address with the gloom and doom projected by Joe Biden and his supporters in his professionally produced speech last Thursday night:
• 
"Here and now I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst.  I'll be an ally of the light, not the darkness.  It's time for us — for we, the people — to come together.  And make no mistake.  United we can and will overcome this season of darkness in America."
• 
Cliches.  Bromides.  Meaningless.
• 
When he was vice president, Biden and President Barack Obama had a chance to get out in front of the pandemic, which they now blame on Trump.  Instead, they did nothing to replenish the stockpile of masks and other needed protective equipment.
• 
They can't say they weren't warned.  On Nov.  1, 2005, President George W.  Bush delivered a speech at the National Institutes of Health: "Scientists and doctors cannot tell us where or when the next pandemic will strike or how severe it'll be, but most agree: At some point, we are likely to face another pandemic."
• 
The country the Democrats describe is not the real America.  We've come through far greater challenges in the past because of the optimism and tenacity of our citizens.
• 
Ronald Reagan used to say America's best days were ahead.
• 
Republicans should say if the Biden/Harris/Sanders/Ocasio-Cortez gang assumes power, they will transform America into the darkness they now falsely claim envelops us.
• 
If they win, their pessimistic rhetoric will become all too real.
      Law[lessness] and [dis]order in Seattle and elsewhere  (JWR 08/13/2020)
• 
What would you think if local politicians decided to cut the size of their fire department while buildings in their city were ablaze?
• 
What about a general who orders his soldiers to stop fighting and surrender to the enemy?
• 
Something similar has occurred in the once tranquil city of Seattle, Washington, where in the midst of riots and over the objections of the mayor and police chief, the city council has voted to defund the police and reduce by 100 the number of officers on the force.
• 
This decision could be seen as a victory for mob rule and could encourage more cities to take a knee before criminals.
• 
Last weekend, overnight, rampaging looters streamed into Downtown Chicago by caravan and then proceeded to smash their way into businesses along the Magnificent Mile, stealing high-end merchandise and anything else they could get their hands on.
• 
Why don't reporters investigate who organized the raid?  Where did these people come from?  Who, what, when, where and why?
• 
Aren't those the questions every good journalist should ask?  Journalism was once a proud profession.  What happened?
• 
Deep beneath the lawlessness spreading like coronavirus across the land is a moral and spiritual drought that politicians do not have the power to fix.
• 
In previous generations, fiery preachers would remind citizens of the consequences of living unrestrained and unaccountable lives.
• 
They called it "sin," but that diagnosis has virtually disappeared, along with the generation of Billy Graham, and we are left with the current moral desert.
• 
We can't say we have not been warned by history and experience about the dangers inherent in unrestrained living.
• 
America's second president, John Adams, said, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
• 
Which begs the question as to what happens to our Constitution and our nation when a growing number of those among us become immoral and irreligious?
• 
That great sage, Benjamin Franklin, remarked at the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia: "I agree to this Constitution ... and I believe, further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other."
• 
Franklin's basic philosophy of sound government was that personal and national freedom are in jeopardy if the people become wicked and immoral.
• 
He believed that when such behavior becomes widespread and people fear for their lives and property, demands for a police state become almost inevitable so that order might be restored.
• 
Given what is occurring in Seattle and elsewhere, it would appear we are edging closer to the day when Franklin's prophecy is fulfilled.
      By any other name  (JWR 07/30/2020)
• 
Politicians and various social justice groups have long used labels that have nothing to do with the real intent of legislation, or an organization, to dupe the public.
• 
Numerous "civil rights" bills have been passed by Congress over the years that have nothing to do with civil rights, but how many members are brave enough to point that out and vote against them?
• 
Which brings me to the Black Lives Matter movement.
• 
How many mainstream reporters have bothered to delve into the background and founding principles of the rapidly spreading organization to which even white CEOs are contributing gobs of money in what appears to be an attempt to protect themselves and their businesses from any potential charge of racism?
• 
... the founding principles of BLM include a guaranteed minimum income for all black people, free health care, free schooling, free food, free real estate, gender reassignment surgery, free abortion...
• 
Washington, D.C.'s local BLM chapter has even called for "no new jails"...  BLM also demands reparations and wants to create a "global liberation movement" that will "overturn U.S.  imperialism (and) capitalism."
• 
"Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a newly surfaced video from 2015 that she and her fellow organizers are 'trained Marxists'."
• 
"Cullors, 36, was the protege of Eric Mann, former agitator of the Weather Underground domestic terror organization, and spent years absorbing the Marxist-Leninist ideology that shaped her worldview."
• 
Driving through what appeared to be a mostly white neighborhood in Washington, D.C., last weekend I was surprised, though I probably shouldn't have been, to see quite a view "Black Lives Matter" signs on front lawns and on cars.  A few friends have posted the BLM sign on their social media pages.
• 
I wonder if any of these people know the background and goals of the movement, or the radical ideology behind it.
• 
There are a growing number, especially among the young, who have been "educated" in our once-great universities by some professors who support the BLM movement and promote similar or identical ideologies.
• 
Part of what they are taught is that America began as a white, slave-owning patriarchy and that slaves actually built America.  They quickly absorb this, then come home to tell their parents they are part of the problem.
• 
This is a major reason school choice is important if the nation is to be preserved.
• 
Black lives matter because like all lives, everyone is endowed with unalienable rights.  But the BLM movement might be more harmful than helpful to African Americans.
• 
BLM's foundational principles and goals seem closer to those of China and the former Soviet Union.
• 
If more people understood that, they might wake up and realize that the United States, as Ronald Reagan used to say, is only one generation from losing it all.
      Rioters are seditionists, not protesters  (JWR 07/28/2020)
• 
These protesters, who appear to be mostly spoiled, mostly white, and mostly young, have likely been radicalized in their universities and on social media.  They are destroyers, not builders.
• 
Elected leaders who refuse to stop them are as guilty of abetting a crime as the driver of the getaway car after a bank robbery.
• 
The president is right to put a stop to this just as he would be right to order the military to oppose an outside enemy seeking to destroy the nation.
• 
If these anarchists are allowed to get away with their crimes, there will be more anarchy.
• 
Peace through strength is not just a slogan to be invoked when fighting foreign enemies and terrorists.
• 
It is also a policy that will deter this spoiled mob that has no gratitude for a nation that has given them everything and to which they have returned little.
• 
They should be arrested, prosecuted and locked up so that order may be restored.
      Trump, Republicans push back against cultural revolutionaries and this is what they get for it  (Fox 07/11/2020)
• 
One reads and hears this from every media outlet and Democrats in Congress.  President Trump is dividing America.  Talk radio is divisive.  The right-wing is undermining our "unity."
• 
What is really meant by the divisive slur is that conservatives decided not to take it anymore.  They are pushing back and the biggest push-backer of all is the president.
• 
Only the latest example: The president last Saturday gave what was mostly a Fourth of July patriotic speech in South Dakota.  He reminded us of what used to be widely accepted as traditional American principles.
• 
Predictable media reaction was summarized by a Wall Street Journal editorial.  — The president was accused of "stok(ing) a culture war" (Los Angeles Times) delivering a "divisive culture war message" (The New York Times), "push(ing) racial division" (Associated Press), and delivering a "dark speech" (The Washington Post).
• 
... is it just the latest example of groupthink in a media industry that constantly promotes "diversity," but not ideological diversity?
• 
On his radio program ... Rush Limbaugh asked how it is divisive when one tells the truth?  Ah, but therein lies the problem.
• 
We live in an era when truth is subjective, if it exists at all.  There is no truth, except the "truth" of the left.
• 
Where is it written that the left gets to control the political and cultural agenda and conservatives must bow to its ideology when, in fact, it is liberalism that has brought the nation to near cultural ruin?
• 
Which ideology is responsible for 60 million abortions, the welfare state and entitlement mentality, the promotion of any human relationship that can be conjured up in the most twisted of minds, family breakup, drugs, the teaching of a false American history, failing inner-city public schools and much more?
• 
When conservatives oppose these cultural revisionists, they are called divisive.  Conservatives have little to defend.  They should be holding the left accountable for the destruction caused by their ideology.
• 
On a related topic, why do "reporters" never ask demonstrators where they come from?  Do they hold jobs?  Who made their signs?  Are they being paid to be there, and if so, by whom?
• 
If they are from out of town and staying overnight to demonstrate and pull down statues the next day, who is paying for their hotel and food?
• 
Democrats tolerated Republicans when they mostly surrendered to their legislative demands and judicial rulings.
• 
When Republicans began to realize they no longer had to take it lying down, that's when allegations of "divisiveness" began.
• 
Karl Marx wrote: "Revolution in general – the overthrow of the existing power and dissolution of previous relations – is a political act.  Socialism cannot be realized without a revolution.  But when its organizing activity begins... its soul comes forward, then socialism casts aside its political cloak."
• 
We are experiencing the result of a new American revolution, one that seeks to impose socialism – and worse — on the nation.
• 
It is not divisive to push back against those who would "fundamentally transform America" into their political and social image, as Joe Biden has promised to do if he becomes president.
• 
Pushing back against this toxic tide was once known as patriotism.
      Cal Thomas: Forgetting our history – this happens when we reject the values that built a nation  (Fox 06/16/2020)
• 
"Americans are now expected to kneel for 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and disavow American history while swallowing whole a false, malicious new history that claims America has been a force for evil at home and worldwide since it was nothing more than a sparkle in a racist colonialist's eye."
• 
Regimes in China and Iran, which violently repress even peaceful demonstrators, are mocking us and claiming we are no better than they when police and the National Guard put down street violence.
• 
These are the inevitable consequences when a nation forgets who and what it is and when some of its citizens reject the values that built and sustained it.
• 
Have we forgotten that the evil of slavery and Jim Crow laws throughout the South have been mostly corrected and, in some cases, atoned for in blood and legislation?
• 
Perfect we have not yet become, but our journey is advancing, not retreating, or "sheltering in place."
• 
The current anarchy started with justifiable outrage over the killing of George Floyd.  After peaceful demonstrations, things turned violent.  Political correctness and censorship of speech quickly followed as mob rule became the norm.
• 
TV programs about the police have been canceled before a single complaint.  "Gone with the Wind" is gone from HBO Max.  Career journalists are being fired for writing headlines that "offend" certain employees who claim words can lead to physical harm.
• 
Rioters and looters seem to think of themselves as second American revolutionaries and morally superior to the Founders, some of whose statues they are pulling down and others they are defacing.
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has called for the removal of Confederate statues from the Capitol.  The irony is that most, if not all, of these notable men were Democrats, a party opposed to Reconstruction after the Civil War and the authors of Jim Crow laws.
• 
Their racist descendants opposed civil rights legislation in the 1960s.  Will these purists tear down the Richard Russell Senate Office Building, named for the senator from Georgia who opposed all such legislation?
• 
Yes, reforms are needed as they always are in a pluralistic nation with competing ideas, especially because of our racial history.
• 
But tearing things down, including history, does not help others rise.  No life is improved, no family stabilized.
• 
"Out of many, one" is our national motto.  We seem to be practicing it today about as much as the unofficial one, "In God we trust."
• 
Unfortunately, the tribalism unleashed on the land appears to have become out of one, many, and we are fighting each other with a zeal that would be better directed at real enemies.
• 
As Abraham Lincoln observed in his first inaugural address: "We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection.  The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
• 
If only it were so today.  The shame is ours that it is not.
      Nearly 3,000 African-Americans were murdered in US in 2018 – without police, more could die  (Fox 06/13/2020)
• 
"Do you understand that the word dismantle, or police-free, also makes some people nervous?  ... What if in the middle of [the] night my home is broken into?  Who do I call?"
• 
Bender equivocated: "I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors ... and I know that that comes from a place of privilege.  Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done."
• 
Does Bender seriously believe doing away with the police and replacing them with her "model" will deter criminals, especially violent ones?
• 
Shouldn't the emphasis be on controlling criminals and fighting crime more than handcuffing and putting new restraints on all police officers, who put their lives at risk every day?
• 
How would such a "model" work?  Will these new personnel have the power to arrest suspects?  Will they be allowed to shoot back if fired upon?  If suspects flee, can they be chased and tackled?  Suppose they resist arrest?  Will this new authority permit force to subdue them?
• 
How many people will want to join such a force?  It is difficult enough to recruit police officers given the increasing number of restraints on them.
• 
That everyone now seems to be "armed" with cellphones capable of making videos that might be edited and used to intimidate officers also doesn't help.
• 
Perhaps Bender should spend time in Chicago where last weekend 18 people were gunned down in 24 hours – or Brooklyn, where seven people were shot within 10 minutes in three separate incidents.
• 
Living in a mostly white city within a mostly white state appears to have blinded her to the people (African-Americans) who are most victimized by crime.
• 
According to FBI crime statistics, in 2018, 2,925 African-Americans were murdered in the U.S., and about 2,600 of the murderers were African-American.
• 
Given these figures, it would appear that the problem goes deeper than racism and that dismantling the police – something that is now being considered by Democratic mayors in several other cities – invites more crime.
• 
In 1968, during demonstrations and riots in major cities, some young people began calling police officers "pigs."
• 
Politicians and protesters demanding police departments be defunded, or even eliminated, might wish to ask themselves who they will call when threatened by criminals.
      We have been forewarned by history and contemporary Chinese leaders.  Are we listening?  (JWR 05/07/2020)
• 
The destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union two years later lulled the West into a false sense of security.
• 
Many appeared to believe that an age of unending peace and prosperity had been ushered in.
• 
While terrorism would become a stateless threat, most people probably thought it to be an aberration and at least manageable.
• 
If people paid much attention to the Chinese brand of communism, most saw it as less of a threat than the Soviet Union with which we had seven-decades of tensions culminating in a near nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
• 
China seemed content to stay within its borders.  Unlike Moscow, Beijing did not appear to have expansionist goals.
• 
"China expects, when it moves to take control of Taiwan, the U.S.  will not take any military action, even though President George W.  Bush said, 'We will do whatever it takes to prevent such an event.' To reduce the chances it would be underestimated, China gave the U.S.  its war plan against Taiwan, which included nuclear strikes against American targets."
• 
"Yet, the main gathering threat derives from China's stealthy strategy of geopolitical and economic dominance.  This is a strategy rooted in four thousand years of imperial history and the more recent brutal lessons of Marxist-Leninist power politics."
• 
"War with the United States is inevitable ... the Chinese armed forces must control the initiative ... we must make sure that we would win this modern high-tech war that the mighty bloc headed by the U.S.  hegemonists may launch to interfere with our affairs."
• 
"China has entertained the threat of nuclear strikes against west coast cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle."
• 
The U.S.  has a number of economic options to punish China should Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be proven correct in his assertion that there is "no doubt" the virus originated in Wuhan.
• 
With China's strong economy backing up its increasingly powerful military, there doesn't appear much else the U.S.  can do to deter China from fulfilling its aspirations other than to consider a military confrontation.
• 
Reflecting in 1946 on the reluctance of Britain and the West to take seriously the threat posed by Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Winston Churchill said: "There never was a war in all history easier to prevent by timely action ... but no one would listen.  ... We surely must not let that happen again."
• 
We have been forewarned by history and by contemporary Chinese leaders.  Are we listening?
      Cal Thomas: Amid coronavirus, Greatest Generation still has lessons to teach us  (Fox 04/28/2020)
• 
Some of us complain about having to line up to get into supermarkets, wear masks or practice social distancing.
• 
Those earlier generations had ration books and did without a lot of food and conveniences they had once enjoyed.
• 
And they endured it for 15 years, from 1930 when the Great Depression began to really grip the country to V-J Day in 1945.  Some experienced hard times for several years after the war ended.
• 
Part of this complaining, I think, is that those of us who have benefited from their sacrifices have never had to experience what they did.
• 
That was one of the motivations behind their "doing without," wasn't it, so their children and grandchildren wouldn't have to?
• 
That has been a blessing and a curse.  Never having been required to sacrifice for anything and told we should always expect more and better of everything, we feel our right of entitlement has been unfairly stolen from us.
• 
Not knowing what sacrifice looks like we are unable to react to it in a positive way, a way that is more likely to lift us from our current circumstances, or at least sustain us in them.
• 
Those previous generations would shake their heads at how we are reacting to current economic challenges.
• 
They dealt with smallpox and polio.  Did they read in their newspapers and hear on radio people saying America would never be the same again?
• 
No, they heard Franklin Roosevelt say, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and Winston Churchill telling the British people, "Never give in.  Never give in.  Never, never, never, never — in nothing, great or small, large or petty — never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense."
• 
President Trump is trying optimism, saying America will come back stronger than before the pandemic, but he is being drowned out by voices of pessimism and defeatism that would be foreign to those two previous generations.
• 
To paraphrase the song, if we can't make it in America, where can we make it?
• 
Kudos to those governors who are carefully reopening some businesses in their states.  Results will take a while to determine whether their decisions have been good or bad, but these leaders are behaving in ways that those who have gone before would admire.
• 
Attitude is key.  That's what my parents and grandparents taught me, not so much in words, but by their example.
      The dark hole of debt  (JWR 03/31/2020)
• 
It is not cognitive dissonance — the impossibility of holding two or more contradictory beliefs simultaneously — to favor the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill passed by Congress and signed by President Trump while at the same time worrying about what the increasing national debt (nearing $24 trillion and counting) will do to the country.
• 
Are we mortgaging our future for the sake of temporary relief from the economic side effects of the coronavirus pandemic?
• 
Historically, debt has been a major contributor to the decline of great nations.
• 
It is why James Madison warned: "If Congress can employ money indefinitely, for the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may appoint teachers in every state, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public treasury.  ... Were the power of Congress to be established in the latitude contended for, it would subvert the very foundations, and transmute the very nature of the limited government established by the people of America."
• 
We are ignoring the prophetic nature of Madison's statement at our peril.  The philosophy of individual freedom is under assault.
• 
If Madison's warning isn't warning enough, how about this one from 18th-century Scottish lawyer, writer and historian Alexander Fraser Tytler: "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.  From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."
• 
... whoever first said it correctly summarized the cycle of the world's great civilizations: "From bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back into bondage."
• 
America, you have been warned by the ghosts of the past, but how many are listening and heeding those warnings?
      Cal Thomas: Coronavirus has a lesson to teach us – It's about China  (Fox 03/24/2020)
• 
If anything good can come from the coronavirus pandemic, it is the revelation of America's over-reliance on China, especially when it comes to drugs.
• 
"Basically, we've outsourced our entire industry to China.  That is a strategic vulnerability."
• 
... China knows "exactly what they're doing and they're incredibly good strategists...  They select their industries for the future, and they've got a plan."
• 
China has threatened to restrict drug exports to the U.S.  following President Trump's accusation that the regime withheld news of the virus, which surfaced in Wuhan last December.
• 
That's called leverage and Beijing could use it anytime they choose.  It has recently threatened to do so.
• 
For too long U.S.  businesses have outsourced to China, exploiting their cheap labor to maximize profits.
• 
"The pace of companies moving production out of China is accelerating as more than 50 multinationals from Apple to Nintendo to Dell are rushing to escape the punitive tariffs placed by the U.S."
• 
If President Trump could promise to bring back jobs from overseas, as he did and has, why couldn't he do the same with drugs and other essentials made in China?
• 
Many of the profits earned by China from U.S.  businesses have gone to support its vast military and expand its reach in other parts of the world.
• 
The U.S.  views China's rapid expansion warily but seems unsure of what to do about it.
• 
We had better pay attention to China's plans and take countermeasures, or "made in China" could eventually be stamped on the United States.
      Democrats have always needed a boogeyman to run against – Here's who it is in 2020  (Fox 03/01/2020)
• 
The Russians are like the devil.  Each gets blamed (or credited) with more than they are responsible for.
• 
Intelligence officials recently went to Capitol Hill where ... "they briefed the House Intelligence Committee about Russia interfering in the presidential race in an effort to get Trump re-elected."
• 
The initial presumption was that Russian President Vladimir Putin favors Trump's reelection.
• 
Why would he when he has someone more closely associated with his ideology than Trump?
• 
That would be the self-described Democratic Socialist, Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
• 
But wait.  Following closely on this unspecific leak to (where else?) The New York Times, we now hear that Russia wants Sanders as the next president.
• 
Perhaps it's out of gratitude because he and his wife honeymooned in the Soviet Union.  Ah, nostalgia.
• 
The intelligence briefing was classified, but as with charges that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, no details have emerged that prove the Russian "collusion" narrative.
• 
Other than disinformation campaigns on social media (and plenty of disinformation has and will continue to be generated here at home through mainstream media) we have still not heard any specifics on how Russia managed to change a single vote in 2016, or how they supposedly intend to do so this time around.
• 
The reason Democrats are again raising the prospect of Russian interference is to undermine the credibility of this year's election should Trump win again, as seems increasingly likely.
• 
Democrats have been unable to stomach, not only his 2016 election but also his economic successes.
• 
They fear their party will lose what remaining but dwindling appeal it might still enjoy.
• 
That's why in the debates among Democratic presidential candidates one hears of an America that isn't recognizable to most citizens.
• 
For them, America is a bad country, a place of racism, sexism, inequality and misery only they can fix, though previous Democratic presidents who have made similar diagnoses of America's "faults" have done nothing to repair the damage to which they have arguably contributed
• 
This Russian interference claim seems like a setup and an invitation for the House to conduct even more investigations and possibly new articles of impeachment after the election, assuming Democrats maintain their House majority.
• 
Democrats have also demagogued Republicans for not helping the poor and for being racist.
• 
That is a harder sell with the African-American unemployment rate at record lows and wages rising for virtually all groups.
• 
Russia has become the default boogeyman of the left.
• 
That is what makes Bernie Sanders the ideal candidate for Russia and the other socialist-communist states he has praised, because in his heart he is at one with them.
      The Trump peace plan is doomed to fail  (JWR 01/30/2020)
• 
Has anything changed in the last 20 years, indeed, since 1948 when the Arabs rejected the idea of a Jewish state and launched the first of numerous wars, spawning terrorist attacks?
• 
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas rejected the Trump plan before it was announced, calling the president a "dog" and another name not fit to print.
• 
The flaw in the Trump plan is that it is designed, like all the others, by people whose thinking is radically different from Arab and Muslim leaders.
• 
Let's start with the Palestinian Charter, which says in Article Nine: "Armed struggle is the only way to liberate Palestine and is therefore a strategy and not a tactic.  The Palestinian Arab people affirms its absolute resolution and abiding determination to pursue the armed struggle and to march forward towards the armed popular revolution, to liberate its homeland and restore its right to a natural life, and to exercise its right of self-determination and national sovereignty."
• 
One of the requirements in the Trump peace proposal is for the Palestinians to reject violence, including violence by Islamic Jihad and Hamas.
• 
Neither terrorist organization has accepted Israel's right to exist and is unlikely to do so now.
• 
The president spoke of the importance of peace for the younger generation.  But young people are being educated like those who have gone before.
• 
... found that "Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence" and that "The new Palestinian curriculum, which includes new textbooks for grades 1-4, is significantly more radical than previous curricula.  To an even greater extent than the 2014-15 textbooks, the curriculum teaches students to be martyrs, demonizes and denies the existence of Israel and focuses on a "return" to an exclusively Palestinian homeland."
• 
How likely are those who believe and teach such things to do a 180 and start teaching peaceful co-existence with Israel?
• 
For years, sermons by Muslim clerics, Arab media and the actions of terrorists have been rooted in what they believe is a religious mandate to eradicate Israel and even the United States.
• 
One still hears such things from Iranian leaders who think ushering in Armageddon will reveal the Islamic Messiah.
• 
How does the secular West convince radical Muslims to reject the command of their god?
• 
Then there's the failed formula of Israel relinquishing land to its enemies in exchange for peace, another component of the Trump plan.
• 
It has been a one-way street for Israel, most recently in Gaza, which predictably became a terrorist base for Hamas.
• 
There are plenty of good intentions in the Trump proposal, including a promise of prosperity and jobs for the Palestinian people.
• 
They could have had both long ago.
• 
Jobs and prosperity, however, do not supersede what many of them believe to be orders from Allah.
• 
Peace is not, or should not be, a goal.
• 
Peace is a byproduct of victory in war, or a decision by one's enemies to change the way they believe and act.
• 
That Palestinian leaders will change their beliefs and desire to eliminate Israel is as likely as Democrats changing their minds about Trump's presidency.
• 
One wishes it were not so, but history — even recent history — proves otherwise.
      Cal Thomas: America's Expiration Date — Will US collapse in 2026?  (Fox 01/21/2020)
• 
Must nations, like a library book, be renewed if one wishes to keep it beyond the date stamped in the back?
• 
If you are too young to remember libraries and borrowing books, think of the date stamped on milk cartons, which indicate its sell-by date beyond which the milk can turn sour.
• 
In my new book, "America's Expiration Date: The Fall of Empires and Superpowers ... and the Future of the United States," I examine eight empires that believed their economic strength and military power were enough to sustain them well into the future and in the case of the Roman Empire, eternally.
• 
Nations are made up of people.  While modes of transportation, hairstyles, clothing and other things change, human nature remains the same.
• 
A nation's strength and sustainability require more than economic and military success.
• 
There are issues of character and virtue that are stronger supporters and sustainers of any nation.
• 
As the Psalmist asked, "If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?" He isn't talking about money and a military.
• 
The book is inspired by the late British diplomat Sir John Glubb, who found a pattern to the decline of nations.  He said that pattern has not changed in the 4,000 years of history he studied and that the average age of great nations is 250 years.
• 
Rome was an exception, but even Rome followed the same path to self-destruction.
• 
The final stage before collapse is what Sir John calls "decadence."
• 
This includes uncontrolled immigration without assimilation.
• 
No nation can be sustained if it forgets its identity and fails to absorb new immigrants, requiring they learn the native language and understand the native history while leaving behind the agendas and issues of the country from which they came, while obeying the laws.
• 
In the past, immigrants came to America to become fully American.
• 
Now, in too many cases, we are becoming hyphenated Americans and have devolved into "tribes" that don't know or even speak to each other.
• 
Massive national debt is another cause of the decline of superpowers.
• 
The U.S.  currently is $23 trillion in the red (and counting).  Neither political party will do what is necessary to reverse course, though both parties know entitlement reform is a key to the restoration of financial stability.
• 
A third contributor to national decline is military overreach.
• 
The U.S.  has troops all over the world.  In some cases – especially in Afghanistan and now increasingly in the Middle East – the wars seem never to end.  They are costly in blood and money and victory continues to elude us.
• 
The loss of a shared morality and abandoning God are perhaps the greatest contributors to decline.
• 
We live in an "anything goes" culture in which everything is to be tolerated, except those who disagree, who are denounced as intolerant and bigots.
• 
A nation that does not have a transcendent sense of purpose beyond just existing will not exist for long.
• 
Sir John Glubb calculated that the average age of empires and superpowers is 250 years.  On July 4, 2026, the United States will be 250 years old.
• 
We have been living off the inertia of past generations.
• 
Ronald Reagan used to say we are only one generation away from losing it all.
• 
Nations, like library books, must be renewed by each generation and sometimes within a generation if they are to survive or exist beyond mere shells of their former selves, like the United Kingdom, which is no more united, much less still a kingdom in its historic sense.
• 
There is still time to turn things around, but that time is growing short.  I offer some positive suggestions in the book for how this might be done.
• 
It will be up to us now living to determine whether those alive on July 4, 2026 will be celebrating a renewed national life, or mourning as at a funeral.
      Yes, Democrats will 'debate' each other.  But Trump [and his rivals] should be asked about THIS  (Fox 01/14/2020)
• 
Politicians, including the president, should be asked serious questions during this year's election campaign, instead of the media's fixation on impeachment, polls and the horse race.  Here are a few that come to mind:
• 
1.  Government is bigger than ever, far larger and more intrusive than our Founders anticipated and warned us about.  Nonpartisan organizations have come up with proposals to rid government of programs that have outlived their usefulness, or don't work, or never worked.  Would you be willing to identify them and if elected (or reelected) terminate them?
• 
2.  The national debt is $23 trillion and the deficit is at record highs.  Everyone knows Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs are mainly responsible.  There have been serious reform proposals, but politicians won't touch them for fear they will be smeared as anti-senior citizen.  Do you have the courage to lead on this issue?
• 
3.  President Trump has wanted to pull American troops out of areas where wars never seem to end, but circumstances have prevented him from fully doing so.  He has also tried, with some success, to get our allies more involved in "policing the world." Should the U.S.  be policing the world and if so, why?  If not, why not?
• 
4.  How do you see the moral state of the union?  Abortion remains legal virtually everywhere; same-sex marriage, which was once illegal and considered immoral by some, is now the norm.  Should government be addressing these issues, or should it be left to churches and individuals?  Are there lines anymore and if there are, who gets to draw them and based on what standard?
• 
5.  We have gone a long way from President John F.  Kennedy's inaugural admonition not to ask what your country can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your country.  The idea of individualism, personal responsibility and accountability for one's actions has appeared to have given way to grievance, envy and entitlement.  Is there a cause for this?  How can it be cured?
      It's war: Are we in it to win it?  (JWR 01/09/2020)
• 
"We are not seeking war with Iran, but we are prepared to finish one."
• 
In an appearance at the White House, President Trump said: "As long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon."
• 
Iran's theocratic leadership believes war is the path to revealing the "12th Imam," their version of the Christian second coming.
• 
The Mullahs of Iran are true believers who it appears are willing, even eager, to die for their cause, or more accurately have others die in their place.
• 
Here is the formula the "no more war" crowd doesn't get or refuses to accept.
• 
Iran and its proxies kill U.S.  troops, along with Iranian and foreign civilians and we are supposed to take it.
• 
If America responds to Iran, as President Trump has done (unlike Obama and Clinton), we are the enemy of peace and guilty of "escalating" the conflict. 
• 
Perhaps feckless European nations, Saudi Arabia and other countries will see clearly now that we have been at war with these fanatics at least since 1979 when Iranian college students belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line seized the U.S.  embassy in Tehran and held 98 people hostage for 444 days until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan when the hostages were released.
• 
Maybe the Iranians feared Reagan would do then what Trump has done now, which is to punch back when attacked.
• 
Yes, Iran must not be allowed to create nuclear weapons.  Most in the West and Israel believe that.
• 
The question is how to stop them.
• 
There are multiple ways, short of armed conflict.  There will not be an invasion of Iran, but cyberattacks, computer viruses, targeting missile sites and increased sanctions are all options.
• 
So is supporting those inside Iran who hate their government and wish to replace it.
• 
Perhaps Iran's retaliatory attack was about "saving face" for the Iranian regime.
• 
Since no Americans were killed, and President Trump has said that is a red line for him, this could be the end of the latest conflict.
• 
It will most assuredly not be the end of this war.
• 
But no one should be under any illusion that what the U.S.  and the West does short of surrender will affect the stated goals of the fanatics, who are in it to win it.
• 
The ultimate question is, are we?
      Cal Thomas: Why is socialism still so seductive to Americans?  THIS is the surprising reason  (Fox 01/02/2020)
• 
Like swallows returning to Capistrano, socialism makes an appearance on a regular cycle.
• 
Sanders has the luxury of condemning millionaires and billionaires from his comfortable life as a multi-millionaire.
• 
Sanders appears to favor capitalism for himself, but he's against it for everyone else.
• 
Socialism is a false doctrine.  It sells itself to new generations who know little about it.
• 
They promote it by promising "free stuff," along with envy of the successful.
• 
Why does socialism continue to have appeal in America?
• 
Part of the reason is adherents claim it is fairer than capitalism.  It isn't fair, socialists say, that some people make more money than others.
• 
Socialism and its twin sister liberalism have always been about feelings, rather than outcome
*.
• 
That so many liberal programs have failed to achieve stated objectives does not matter to the left.
• 
Apparently, it is intent, not success, that counts.
• 
When liberals or socialists fail, they simply go on to new errors.
• 
President Lyndon Johnson promised to end poverty in America, but ... "After the 1960s, official poverty stabilized at 10 to 15 percent.  In fact, what the War on Poverty and the new flood of benefits DID do was the opposite of prevent — they established a new kind of poverty, a permanent sense of downtroddenness.  They washed away hope."
• 
"The public didn't understand that the freedom of markets was necessary to make companies like (General Electric) grow.  America was, through its own social welfare measures, gradually heading toward socialism, and Americans didn't even know it."
• 
"Just as the 1960s forgot the failures of the 1930s, we today forget the failures of the 1960s.  Part of the trouble is what schoolbooks and history books omit."
• 
As with much of the media, bias is not only expressed in how and what is covered, but even more in what is omitted.
• 
Count on modern history textbooks to recall America's "original sin," slavery, a stain that can never be allowed to go away, rather than the much-improved lives and jobs experienced by contemporary African-Americans.
• 
If neither Sanders nor Warren become president, that won't mean socialism will have lost.
• 
There's another generation not yet born that could likely be seduced by it.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Cal Thomas: Democrats can’t stand Trump’s successes – So it’s time to impeach  (Fox 12/13/2019)
• 
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was asked by reporter James Rosen if she hates President Trump.  She responded with an "if looks could kill" fire in her eyes and denounced Rosen for his question while claiming she doesn't hate Trump.
• 
The man asked about Biden's son and how he managed to get a lucrative job with a Ukraine gas company while lacking any experience in the field.  Biden called him a "damn liar."
• 
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley testified before the House Judiciary Committee that although he didn't vote for President Trump and is not a Trump supporter, he doesn't believe the president has committed impeachable offenses.
• 
For his honesty, "My home and office were inundated with threatening messages and demands that I be fired from George Washington University."
• 
While some blame President Trump for the rhetorical escalation, that is too simple an explanation.
• 
I think the real problem for Democrats in general and the far left, which dominates the party, in particular, is that the president is winning.
• 
He has stolen success from failed Democratic policies, and the only response Democrats have is impeachment.
• 
They must destroy his presidency or risk their own destruction.
• 
If the hatred seems bad now — and it is — imagine what it will be like should President Trump have the opportunity to name another justice to the Supreme Court.
• 
It will make the hatred directed at Brett Kavanaugh seem tame.
• 
Government has become a god to the left.
• 
If they aren't controlling it, they become out of control.
• 
If they aren't addicting more people to government, they are losing them, as those who have been dependent on government become more independent and self-reliant.
      Cal Thomas: Trump’s support of Israel’s West Bank settlements is right decision  (Fox 11/21/2019)
• 
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced U.S policy toward Israel's "settlements" is reverting to one held by the Reagan administration; that is the right of Israelis to settle in the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria "is not, per se, inconsistent with international law."
• 
This is good news, not only for Israel and its right to national security and sovereignty, but after seven decades of enemy attempts to eradicate the Jewish state it says to the world, "time's up."
• 
Israel's enemies have had the most generous offers to live in peace, including the relinquishing of land captured by Israel after many aggressive and unprovoked wars and terrorist attacks.
• 
With ongoing propaganda statements by Israel's enemies, the firing of rockets into civilian areas from Gaza and elsewhere, and ongoing sermons attempting to justify the violent overthrow of Israel and the murder of Jews, a reality check is long overdue.
• 
Israel, under all of its prime ministers, has gone more than halfway trying to make peace.
• 
The responses have been as if no outreaches were ever made.
• 
Israel and the West have a right to question the sincerity of those Arab and Muslin nations when they continue to denounce and defame Israel and the Jewish people as illegitimate occupiers of "Palestinian" land.
• 
As long as such denial continues, there can be no opportunity for peace and Israel is well within its rights to defend itself against such ominous and ongoing verbal, theological and military threats.
• 
It is and always has been wishful thinking to believe that people motivated by hate, a mandate from Allah to conduct what would amount to genocide against Jews, and revisionist history as to the original owners of "occupied land" would miraculously change their minds and agree to reverse decades of provocations and proof of their ultimate objective.
• 
This has always been the danger when Westerners believe all humans are alike and given the right incentives can be persuaded to act in ways consistent with Western values and practices.
• 
Now if the European Union, whose hatred of Israel goes back to the shameless days of Nazi anti-Semitism and is now resurging, would only see the light and end its recently announced policy to require "goods from illegal settlements in the Israeli-occupied territories to be labeled as such," perhaps some real steps forward might occur.
• 
As long as a religious motivation for wiping out Israel persists, there will be no peace, and no two-state solution.
• 
It is why the Trump administration's position on the legality of settlements in Judea and Samaria is not only correct, but a necessary contribution to Israel's security and any true peace, or at least stability.
      Al-Baghdadi's death is a big deal.  Democrats ought to ditch the partisanship and laud his demise  (Fox 10/29/2019)
• 
Only extreme partisans intent on denying President Trump any credit for any success would be critical of the operation he ordered that resulted in the death of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
• 
These extreme partisans include Speaker Nancy Pelosi who, while praising the "heroism" of the special unit that conducted the raid on al-Baghdadi's location in Northern Syria, could not bring herself to say anything nice about the president.
• 
Instead, she said the House should have been notified in advance.
• 
Why?  Does the House command troops?
• 
Pelosi lamented that Russia was informed, but that was because Russian weapons and troops were in areas over which American helicopters flew in order to reach their target.
• 
... the president reminded forgetful Americans of the type of organization al-Baghdadi led.
• 
He recalled prisoners dressed in orange jumpsuits, who were shown on videos with knives at their throats and later beheaded.
• 
He also said, "Baghdadi was vicious and violent, and he died in a vicious and violent way — as a coward, running and crying."
• 
Some commentators on various TV networks kept referring to al-Baghdadi's "ideology."
• 
His was more than an ideology.  Communism is an ideology.  Fascism is an ideology.
• 
What motivated al-Baghdadi and other ISIS fighters was religion.
• 
When one believes he is on "a mission from God" ... there is little to stop him, other than death.
• 
Radical Islamists believe their death in fighting us "infidels" is a guaranteed ticket to Heaven.
• 
How does one deter that, other than by helping them punch their ticket?
• 
Radical Islam is a virus.  It is not contained within borders.  It does not have a capital that can be bombed.
• 
That is why its evil nature must always be exposed and its goals thwarted.
• 
Yes, others will sign up and those currently ISIS members will likely be even more motivated by revenge.
• 
Still, others may see the cowardly behavior of al-Baghdadi and be motivated to either quit the organization, or not join it in the first place.
• 
Americans have a short attention span and need to have their memories jogged from time to time about the multiple threats that confront all free people who wish to maintain their freedom, which is never cheap.
• 
Our troops deserve praise, as does the president for making this happen.
• 
There will be more terrorist leaders, but at least this one has bitten the dust.
      Cal Thomas: Should billionaires be taxed out of existence, as Bernie Sanders wants?  (Fox 10/24/2019)
• 
He was the Sen.  Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., of his day.
• 
Charlie Chaplin, the iconic actor and at the time a well-known political leftist (some said communist), delivered a speech in San Francisco in 1941 prior to America's entry into World War II.
• 
"(Chaplin) plunged into a speech extolling the Russians – their ideology (by saying that if communism produces men of such heroic stature, he'll take communism, etc.).  He resented the organized efforts for the last 20 years to present Russians as ogres both here and in England – and by God, if any man can't get along on $25,000 a year, he is a cockeyed liar and a traitor to his country."
• 
According to some estimates, Chaplin had a net worth equal to $400 million when he died in 1977.  Never mind.
• 
At the latest Democratic presidential debate, the millionaire Sanders and hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer had an exchange that came from a question about Sanders saying billionaires should be taxed out of existence to help close the "wealth gap."
• 
Sanders responded by ticking off his familiar litany of misery – half a million people living on the streets (he didn't mention that many are in cities and states run by Democrats), the cost of education and student debt (he didn't mention the many options for receiving an education that would substantially reduce student debt), 87 million uninsured, or underinsured (wasn't ObamaCare supposed to fix that?), adding, "you also have three people owning more wealth than the bottom half of American society."
• 
Sanders called that a "moral outrage," though on his moral scale, abortion on demand is not a problem.
• 
For his part, Steyer sought some moral cover for his wealth, agreeing with Sanders and adding that corporations have "bought this government for the last 40 years."
• 
Don't those four decades include the Clinton and Obama administrations?
• 
We've heard it all before.  The left would take from the prosperous and do what?
• 
Past welfare and redistribution programs haven't liberated the poor.
• 
If they had, there should be fewer poor people.  Wasn't that the stated goal?
• 
Why didn't it happen?  The reason is the government is a bad charity.
• 
What astounds is that younger people who buy into the "wealth gap" nonsense (because that is what they have had drummed into them by teachers and Democratic politicians) have little understanding of economics.
• 
There is no fixed amount of money from which all must draw.
• 
If there were it would be unfair for some to take (earn?) more than others.
• 
Wealth is a bottomless well.  No one is destined to live permanently in the lower class.
• 
The reason envy, greed and entitlement continue to surface in most election cycles is that it appeals to human emotions.
• 
Charging the rich with not paying their "fair share" in taxes is a distraction from the real issue: government spends too much. 
• 
"The Charlie (Chaplin) you once knew has been buried with honors — and a new one has been born.  Let's hope the new one has everlasting life — for he will cling to it as long as that political philosophy remains popular."
• 
Sanders and Steyer seem to believe the Chaplin philosophy remains popular among some voters.
• 
Don't include them, though, because they're rich and you won't see them sending a check to the Treasury.
• 
See related Socialism (Bob Gorrell, 04/18/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      San Francisco has a new definition of political insanity – [You won't believe this one]  (Fox 08/27/2019)
• 
The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of insanity, is San Francisco's Board of Supervisors' adoption of new "person first" language guidelines meant to "change the public's perception of criminals."
• 
The words "convicted felon," "offender," "convict," "addict" and "juvenile delinquent" are out.
• 
These individuals will henceforth be referred to as a "justice-involved person."
• 
Someone previously called a "criminal" will now be referred to as "a returning resident," or "a formerly incarcerated person."
• 
... the intent is to keep people from being "forever labeled for the worst things that they have done.  We want them, ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from."
• 
A noble objective, to be sure, but language has — or used to have — a purpose beyond interpersonal communication.
• 
Like so much else today, language has now been appropriated to advance political agendas.
• 
The encroachment of euphemisms on common sense is everywhere.
• 
Illegal immigrants have become "undocumented workers."
• 
Babies in the womb lose their humanity when they are labeled "fetuses."
• 
Euphemisms are most used to hide a more accurate description of behavior or status in order to avoid conflict, or not injure someone who might be offended or hurt.
• 
It fails to communicate anything meaningful, while claiming to do so.
• 
George Orwell called it "Newspeak," or "doublespeak."
• 
Too often, euphemisms are used to make bad behavior appear good, or at least tolerable, and to allow one to avoid responsibility and accountability.
• 
They are interpreted according to one's personal wishes.
• 
As Humpty Dumpty told Alice in the Lewis Carroll classic: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less."
• 
The English language once conveyed meaning.  Properly written and spoken, it suggested one was educated and capable of conversing in polite company.
• 
Today, it is often used to cover up true intentions.  Consider how often "racism" is misapplied.
• 
The proper use of language can also be redemptive.
• 
That used to be a major goal, along with punishment, of penitentiaries — the word being derived from "penitent," suggesting the possibility of changing one's life after admitting wrongdoing and repenting so as not to repeat bad behavior.
• 
Is anything "bad" today, or has that also become subjective?
• 
In our muddled language and culture, one dare not suggest anyone has done anything wrong lest negative labels be attached to them.
• 
Such labels are unevenly applied.  The political left often retains them to attack the right, but should the right seek to use words that accurately describe the conduct or status of another they are condemned as old-fashioned, rigid, judgmental, or worse.
• 
"Wardrobe malfunction," has been a recent favorite, a euphemism for showing off what were once considered "private" body parts.
• 
If you are unemployed, you are "between jobs" or a "consultant."
• 
"Underserved community" means the politicians aren't getting all the money they want.
• 
A corollary: you are no longer poor, you are "economically disadvantaged."
• 
Instead of applying euphemisms, San Francisco should be seeing to the homeless ("previously housed individuals"?) and the filthy streets that now require maps so people can avoid stepping in human waste.
• 
Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but the city seems to have lost its mind there too.
      Cal Thomas: NY Times rewrites history as propaganda for left-wing Dems  (Fox 08/23/2019)
• 
The newspaper's executive editor ... recently called a staff meeting to announce "The 1619 Project," named for the year the first African slaves were brought to Virginia.
• 
"The goal of the 1619 Project," says a statement from the newspaper "is to reframe American history."
• 
More like rewrite it.
• 
This is the stuff of totalitarian regimes where the media serve as a propaganda organ for the state, or in this case the surging left wing of the Democratic Party.
• 
No more America beginning with the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers and the Constitution.
• 
Africans had no say in these, though Jefferson's brilliant line about all of us being created equal would resound nearly a century later in a Civil War that led to the freeing of slaves and the long road to achieving Jefferson's noble statement.
• 
... it appears the newspaper's ultimate goal is to change what is taught in public schools so that children will no longer think highly of their country because of the "stain" of slavery – a stain that has been more than paid for in blood and federal programs, which have attempted to lift some descendants of slaves out of poverty.
• 
"The basic thrust of the 1619 Project is that everything in American history is explained by slavery and race..."
• 
One excerpt reveals the drift: "If you want to understand the brutality of American capitalism, you have to start on the plantation."
• 
Never mind that "brutal" capitalism has lifted more boats than any other economic system.
• 
We are led to believe that America is evil, soulless, that those at the top have always exploited those at the bottom.
• 
There's appears to be advocacy for bigger government, reparations and never-ending guilt for things we today had nothing to do with.
• 
Is this what we want to impose on our children?
• 
The Times' attempt to shape history to fit its own biases is not journalism.
• 
If public schools follow its lead, they will begin to resemble schools in countries where freedom is not the prevailing tenet and antithetical to what the founders gave us.
      When evil is revealed and we refuse to see, act  (JWR 08/08/2019)
• 
A manifesto thought to be linked to the El Paso killer was posted online just before the assault on Walmart shoppers and, according to the Washington Post, maintains that he has held "his white supremacist ideology for many years, predating President Trump and his 2016 campaign, which he says did not influence his reasons for carrying out the attack."
• 
The Dayton shooter described himself on social media as a pro-Satan "leftist" who hoped to vote for Sen.  Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for president.
• 
One question no one is asking: why is evil rampant in our country?
• 
I don't mean obvious evil like the all too frequent mass murders.
• 
There are other evils, which seem to have come from the "pit" and are roaming among us uncontrolled.
• 
We seem to tolerate everything these days and oppose controlling what once was called evil behavior.
• 
Bad behavior is now considered good and good behavior is thought to be bad. 
• 
Those who practice good behavior are often labeled with words that end in "-phobe."
• 
Societal norms have been undermined.  Normal is what individuals think is true for them.
• 
If this sounds like a sermon, maybe that's what we need to hear.
• 
On March 30, 1863, Lincoln issued a Proclamation for a Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer because of the Civil War, which was tearing America apart.
• 
This passage contains a message for us:
• 
"And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land, may be but a punishment, inflicted upon us, for our presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole People?  We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven.  We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity.  We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown.  But we have forgotten G od.  We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.  Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the G od that made us!"
• 
"It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."
• 
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn reached a similar conclusion when he considered how communism had managed to dominate his native Russia for seven decades.
• 
In his 1983 Templeton Prize address, Solzhenitsyn said: "More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: 'Men have forgotten G od; that's why all this has happened.'
• 
"Since then I have spent well-nigh 50 years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval.  But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men have forgotten G od; that's why all this has happened.'"
• 
These men were on to something.
• 
Blaming others hasn't worked.  We've tried that and more.
• 
Why not try G od?
      Dems' hatred for Trump will never be over — Let them run on that and we'll see how it turns out  (Fox 07/30/2019)
• 
Democrats' hatred is so deep for the president, who refuses to submit to their demands – the usual scenario for Republican presidents – that they feel compelled to continue their attacks, if for no other reason than to raise 2020 campaign money.
• 
Mueller claimed they were hired because of their experience and he did not know their politics.
• 
Think of it this way: if you put the names of 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans into a hat, what are the odds only the names of Democrats would be drawn?
• 
Federal Election Commission records examined by CNN analysts found one of the Mueller attorneys contributed more than $56,000 to Democrats before the 2016 election and two lawyers contributed the maximum of $2,700 to Hillary Clinton's campaign.
• 
Mueller wants us to believe they conducted their investigation into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia without political bias.
• 
Imagine if the situation was reversed and a special counsel had hired only Republican attorneys to investigate a sitting Democrat president.
• 
"The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess.  Christopher Steele's dossier was central to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia.  Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms.  The report ignored Mr.  Steele's paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians.  It also ignored Fusion's paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job."
• 
Mueller said an estimated 200 times this and other related matters were "out of my purview," when they should have been central to it.
• 
In the case of the Democrats' hatred of President Trump, it'll never be over.
• 
Let them run on that next year, along with promises to reverse the current economic and jobs boom, and they will deservedly lose.
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Allegiance Pledge (Gary Varvel, 05/09/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Cal Thomas: Bribing Palestinians under Trump-Kushner peace plan won’t work  (Fox 06/27/2019)
• 
... the plan includes $50 billion in economic incentives if the Palestinian leadership will simply recognize Israel's right to exist, promise not to engage in terrorist actions and seek a peace agreement with the Jewish state.
• 
Kushner, who is Jewish, should have some particular insight into the conflict that eludes secularists.
• 
Some Palestinians and some Muslims in neighboring countries believe they have a religious mandate to wipe out Israel, killing as many Jews as possible, because Israel is an illegal occupier of "their" land and Allah has ordered it.
• 
Evidence that Kushner's plan is likely to experience the same fate as those that have gone before is contained in a study of textbooks used by Palestinian schoolchildren.
• 
... the latest texts teach students to be martyrs, demonize and deny the existence of Israel, and focus on a return to an exclusively Palestinian homeland.
• 
Even math books use martyrs to teach arithmetic.
• 
In upper grades ... "The strategy of violence and pressure (in place of negotiations) is advocated as the most effective action to achieve Palestinian goals.  ... And in these upper-grade textbooks, the concept of ‘eternal war' is instigated through the abuse of Islamic terminology."
• 
Real history is replaced with Palestinian and Islamic reinterpretations and even reinventions of history.
• 
One example: ... Palestinians are being taught that they have always occupied the land.  In fact, even their name – Palestinians – is a modern invention.
• 
"Leading up to Israel's independence in 1948, it was common for the international press to label Jews, not Arabs, living in the mandate as Palestinians.  It was not until years after Israeli independence that the Arabs living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip were called Palestinians."
• 
"The Palestinian national anthem is taught in third-grade," ... and "instills the spirit of fighting, revenge and sacrifice."
• 
And then there's this from the same third-grade text: "Jerusalem is a Palestinian city and capital of the State of Palestine.  The Palestinian flag will be hoisted on the city's walls after the liberation from Israeli occupation, God willing."
• 
Add these incitements to the sermons from Palestinian mosques and media in which Israel and the Jewish people are degraded and their enemies are encouraged to destroy their state and evict or murder their people.
• 
How does a Jewish-American who will be doubly hated for his citizenship and his religion bribe Palestinian leaders into reversing their religious mandate and political goals?
• 
At a news conference last Sunday, Abbas appeared to reject Kushner's plan, saying, "We will not be slaves or servants."
• 
The Kushner plan is a miscalculation similar to those made by previous administrations.
• 
Aside from abandoning the land-for-peace formula, which never worked, this plan appears to differ only in the amount of money being offered.
      After Mueller’s ‘last word’ many voters are going to think Trump is being persecuted.  Are they wrong?  (Fox 06/04/2019)
• 
... Mueller said this about indicted Russian hackers who attempted to influence the outcome of the 2016 election: "These indictments contain allegations and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant.  Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."
• 
Moments later, Mueller said about President Trump and allegations (mostly by Democrats and the media) that he obstructed justice: "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.  We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime."
• 
So it's innocent until proven guilty for the Russians, who are never going to be tried in the United States, and an insinuation of guilt until he proves himself innocent for the president of the United States?
• 
... Attorney General William Barr said he believes Mueller could have come to a conclusion as to whether the president obstructed justice.
• 
When he didn't, Barr said he concluded he did not, based on the evidence.
• 
That Mueller had nothing to say about what Trump dismisses as the "phony" Steele Dossier, which led to a FISA warrant allowing the FBI to spy (Barr's word) on the Trump campaign, or the role of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party in paying for the dossier, further corrupts the law and establishes a double standard as the only standard by which some politicians and members of the establishment live.
• 
... most of the attorneys on his team were registered Democrats.  A handful donated money to Clinton's 2016 campaign.
• 
Just how much confidence should be placed in a report put together by such people can be answered by asking about the confidence one might place in a report about a Democratic president and a team of Republican lawyers.
• 
Additional information is likely to be forthcoming from U.S.  Attorney John Durham, named by Barr to investigate the origins of surveillance of the Trump campaign.
• 
This is likely what the left and the media fear most.
• 
While they are unable to counter the good economic news, their only hope to keep Trump from being re-elected is to remove him from office on charges of obstruction and corruption, or drive down his approval numbers in hopes of defeating him.
• 
In his farewell remarks, Mueller said his more than 400-page report is the last word.
• 
Some in Congress from both parties want him to testify.
• 
Mueller said he has nothing to add to the report, but there is more to say and Mueller should be required to say it.
• 
House Democrats may not want to have Mueller appear because Republicans will ask tough questions.
• 
Could this be why they are desperately trying to change the subject by seeking Trump's taxes and bank records dating back to before he became president?
• 
At some point, many voters are going to look at this as persecution of the president, which can only add to his prospects in 2020.
• 
See related The Torch Has Passed (Antonio Branco, 05/30/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Trump Interrogation (Sean Delonas, 02/10/2018) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related The Mueller Team (Glenn McCoy, 12/15/2017) cartoon from Politics picture album
      Cal Thomas: Democrats remain undeterred in their pursuit to evict Trump from the White House  (Fox 04/23/2019)
• 
Objectivity ... long ago left the building in Washington and so the report by Special Counsel Robert Mueller is being read and interpreted through mostly biased eyes.
• 
Democrats, who had counted on Mueller to prove that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, were initially as crestfallen as they were on election night 2016.
• 
Still, they are undeterred in the pursuit of their ultimate goal: evicting the president from the White House in a political coup unprecedented in American history.
• 
The special counsel was established to investigate collusion, though not by Trump's political opponents during the 2016 presidential race, who allegedly funded the infamous Steele dossier, which purported to describe Trump cavorting with prostitutes and other sick behavior during a visit to Moscow.
• 
After more than two years of investigations, subpoenas, witness testimony and millions of dollars wasted, Mueller's report concluded, "The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."*
• 
As for obstruction of justice, how does one obstruct something that is not a crime?*
• 
Predictably, Democrats are not satisfied.  Out of desperation and exasperation, some are alleging a cover-up by Attorney General William Barr.
• 
Others want to immediately begin impeachment proceedings.  For which high crime and misdemeanor?*
• 
... the fallback position for some on the left: "Forget collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice."
• 
Say what?  "The most concrete takeaway from the 448-page Mueller report is its damning portrait of the Trump White House as a place of chaos, intrigue and deception, where aides routinely disregard the wishes of a president with little regard for the traditional boundaries of his office..."
• 
Maybe so, but bad behavior and disobeyed presidential orders are not impeachable offenses.  Let voters decide.
• 
Imagine how President Trump must have felt.  Not only the establishment, which includes Democrats and Republicans, but the major media were constantly assaulting him starting before the election and ever since.
• 
Some critics have accused him of paranoia, but as the saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." And out to get Trump they are.
• 
"President Trump has every right to feel liberated.  What the (Mueller) report shows is that he endured a special counsel probe that was relentlessly, at times, farcically obsessed with taking him out."
• 
"It is increasingly clear that the only scandal here is the Obama administration's repeated failure to act against Russian cyber meddling, and instead, how they prioritized spying on a political opponent — the Trump campaign — and used a phony DNC-funded dossier as justification."
• 
When President Obama was asked about Trump's charge that the 2016 election might be rigged against him, Obama responded: "No serious person out there ... would suggest somehow that you could even rig America's elections."
• 
Add this "witch hunt" to the long list of reasons many Americans hate Washington.
• 
The left doesn't want Americans to focus on the administration's successes, because they are incapable of doing better.
• 
They can only repeat their familiar scenario of higher taxes, bigger and more controlling government and "free stuff" for all.
• 
The president and his allies have threatened a counterattack to expose corruption at the Justice Department, which created this fiasco.
• 
They should begin immediately.
• 
See related Trump Witch Hunt (Sean Delonas, 03/10/2019) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
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      Fight for your country?  Ukrainians will but Americans torn in new poll.  That's a problem  (Fox 03/14/2022)
• 
In World War II, Winston Churchill famously declared, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." It appears that there may be even fewer to count on if a recent poll is accurate.
• 
The Quinnipiac University poll asked Americans, "What would you do if you were in the same position as Ukrainians are now, stay and fight or leave the country?" Only 55% said that they would stay and fight for this country.  That included only 40% of Democrats.
• 
Overall 38% of Americans said that they would flee.  It appears that this country is facing an existential crisis of faith, and we should have a frank discussion about why so comparably few Americans are now willing to pledge their lives in defense of this country.
• 
It is important to note that, while the results were shocking overall, many did say that they would stand and defend the United States from any invader.  When asked this question, 68% of Republicans and 57% of Independents say that they would fight.
• 
However, more than half of Democrats (52%) said they would flee before fighting for their country – 8% did not have an answer, a shrug that is equally alarming.
• 
We should be alarmed by this poll because it shows a deep disconnection with this country and its protection.
• 
If you are not willing to defend this country, citizenship becomes a status of convenience; an opportunistic association that can be shed as easily as it is acquired.
• 
The poll shows a crisis within the Democratic Party, but also our country at large, with people losing their connection to our common article of faith, the Constitution.
• 
That did not occur overnight.  There have been unrelenting attacks on our institutions and core values for years that ignore our countervailing successes.
• 
There has been a growing agnosticism regarding this country as many challenge our foundational institutions and values.
• 
It is captured in words of leaders like Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who questioned the very need for the Supreme Court when it was not ruling in line with her own views: "How much does the current structure benefit us?  And I don't think it does."
• 
Our Constitution created an experiment in self-governance that remains a work in progress.  However, it does not guarantee that you simply get what you want or you can "throw out" the Constitution like ... unwanted trash.
• 
President John F.  Kennedy, a Democrat who was decorated for his bravery in World War II, famously declared in 1961: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty."
• 
The question is whether Americans are willing to answer the same call today.
      Popular Supreme Court a threat to democracy?  Liberals panic over latest poll  (Fox 01/02/2022)
• 
"The consequences for ... popular democracy could be dire." Those ominous words from Eric Levitz in the New York Magazine are enough to chill one to the bone after a year of alleged insurrections and plans for a conservative coup.
• 
Indeed, the magazine itself has disclosed a Republican strategy to kill Americans with COVID-19.
• 
... Levitz explained, "If the Court's right-wing majority finds that it can continually push the boundaries of conservative judicial activism without undermining its own popular legitimacy, then the consequences for progressivism and popular democracy could be dire."
• 
First, Levitz is saying that the goals of the left would be scuttled if the court or its members are popular.
• 
For over a year, many in the media and Congress have launched unrelenting attacks on the court and pushed an agenda to pack the court to create an instant liberal majority.
• 
They know that court-packing is widely detested by the public (as it once was by President Biden and many on the left).
• 
In order to achieve such a goal, the justices must be demonized like much else in our age of rage.
• 
It is also worth noting that the stated goal is "popular democracy." The term is often associated with "direct democracy," where citizens have unfiltered and direct say in government decisions.
• 
It was the model expressly rejected by the Framers in favor of our system of representative democracy.
• 
In Federalist 10, James Madison wrote: "Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
• 
Instead, he created a system by which public passions could be filtered or expressed through a smaller group of representatives, officials who could temper and refine popular impulse.
• 
In addition to our system of representative democracy, we have institutions designed to resist popular impulse or demands.
• 
The U.S.  Supreme Court is the principal example.  Justices were given life tenure to insulate them from such pressures and intimidation.
• 
The court is designed to stand against majoritarian demands and what Madison called "the tyranny of the majority."
• 
That system has served us well.  It was the counter majoritarian role that allowed the court to strike down bans on interracial marriage, decriminalize homosexuality and protect the rights of the accused.  Those were unpopular acts, but the court followed the Constitution rather than the polls.
• 
Levitz assumes that if the justices or the institution were unpopular, it would compel different outcomes or changes on the court.
• 
Ethical jurists on both the left and the right reject that notion as the very antithesis of the rule of law.
• 
The left once celebrated the independence of the court in ordering relief that was denied or blocked in Congress like desegregation.
• 
... extreme groups like Demand Justice have run their own billboards targeting justices like Stephen Breyer to push them to retire.  With the support of many law professors, they are also demanding that Congress pack the court to create an instant liberal majority.
• 
As in the 1960s, Democratic politicians are issuing direct warnings to the justices to rule "correctly," or face consequences.
• 
Professors have declared that "our Constitution isn't working" because they are not seeing the outcomes that they deem to be correct.
• 
Senators and commentators are now calling for "revolution" and "rebellion" to achieve what cannot be achieved in a system that has worked for over two centuries to preserve stability and freedom for our country.
• 
... Rep.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., asked why we should preserve an institution if it is not going to vote consistently with her views and those of the Democratic Party: "How much does the current structure benefit us?  And I don't think it does."
• 
That brings us back to Roberts and his pesky popularity.  You cannot achieve a revolution without people getting really angry.
• 
Yet, despite a steady drumbeat in the media, it is not working.  Indeed, the Gallup poll shows the diminishing power of the mainstream media, which has largely abandoned half of the country with its embrace of "advocacy journalism."
• 
Levitz is one of the writers who previously denounced reporters who have been critical of Biden and openly editorializing "against the White House's policy."
• 
The result is that all of that advocacy journalism is just "singing to the choir" – independents and conservatives left a long time ago as our media have become more of a series of hardened silos for echo journalism.
• 
With the courts and the public not responding, it is hard to bring about the "revolution" promised by members and commentators.
• 
You need an angry populace to tear down institutions that stand in the way.  You need to destroy the legitimacy of the court itself.
• 
... all the attacks in the media have not "eroded public reverence for the judiciary." The scary thought for Levitz is that, if conservative justices are respected, there is little hope for forcing the court to yield to demands of "progressivism and popular democracy."
      Kyle Rittenhouse must be protected from campus mobs  (Fox 11/30/2021)
• 
... students and groups at Arizona State University are planning a rally against Rittenhouse and demanding that he be expelled.
• 
Demands for such extrajudicial punishments may seem legitimate to critics of the verdict with leaders like Biden calling Rittenhouse a "white supremacist" before any investigation was completed and legal analysts calling the entire trial "white supremacy on steroids."
• 
Students groups like MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicanx de Aztlan), Students for Socialism, Students for Justice in Palestine and the Multicultural Solidarity Coalition are organizing a rally this week to "get murderer Kyle Rittenhouse off [the] campus."
• 
He is not on campus since he was enrolled as an online student (Indeed, he may not be currently enrolled for any classes at ASU).
• 
Students and faculty are being called to the rally to "protect students from a violent, blood-thirsty murderer."
• 
In addition, ASU student Taskina Bhuiya started a Change.org petition to denounce the verdict and to call for Rittenhouse to be "held accountable for the crimes he has committed."
• 
Without a sense of irony, the petition declares, "ASU should be a safe and inclusive place for all students, which will be disrupted if Kyle Rittenhouse is allowed to attend this school."
• 
Inclusive unless you are an acquitted individual who must be "held accountable." Hundreds have signed the petition insisting that "Rittenhouse should pay for his crimes."
• 
The campaign reflects a growing sense that the legal system is only worthy of respect (or even protection) if it rules in the way that we demand.
• 
It is the same mentality that has led members of Congress, law professors, and others to demand the expansion or restriction of the Supreme Court because it now has a conservative majority.
• 
Universities have long been dominated by liberal faculty but a new orthodoxy has emerged.  Conservative students often feel that access to education is conditioned on their silent adherence to compelled values and language.  That is if they are even allowed to attend such schools in the first place.
• 
We saw a similar campaign to block Nick Sandmann, who was wrongly accused of racist attacks on a Native American activist, from attending Transylvania University.
• 
The fact is that Rittenhouse cannot be expelled or kept off ASU's campus due to such mob measures.  He would quickly prevail in court.  However, the rally and the rhetoric magnify the risk to his safety by those who demand "accountability" regardless of any verdict.
• 
We have seen faculty members join such mob efforts, even attacking others on campus, blocking speakers, destroying political signs, or encouraging attacks on student journalists.
• 
University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis defended the murder of a conservative protester and said he saw "nothing wrong" with such acts of violence.
• 
Other faculty members have made similarly disturbing comments such as "detonating white people," denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer, strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.
• 
It is less common to hear professors today speak out for the rights of conservatives or others who are being targeted by campaigns on campus.  The risk is simply too great that they will be "tagged" as intolerant, racist or reactionary.
• 
It is common for former felons (including violent offenders) to take classes or give lectures on campuses without such protests.
• 
It is not clear whether any school will admit this acquitted teenager given the protests at ASU and other universities.
• 
If admitted, Rittenhouse has every right to attend ASU in person and has every right to expect that he can do so safely.  If ASU cannot muster the integrity and courage to reaffirm those rights publicly, it has abandoned a core defining element for higher education.
• 
Colleges often sit in cringing silence as individual students are targeted and harassed.  It is not clear whether Rittenhouse will seek to continue at ASU or other universities.  However, his education should not be treated as a vehicle for collective extrajudicial punishment.
• 
See related Lemmings 2021 (Mike Lester, 11/22/2021) cartoon from USA picture album
• 
See related Verdict (Mike Shelton, 11/17/2021) cartoon from Usarit-verd picture album
• 
      Adam Schiff, Steele dossier and the death of shame in American politics  (Fox 11/17/2021)
• 
The famous philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal once declared that "the only shame is to have none."
• 
The problem with shame is it assumes a sense of guilt over one's actions.  In the age of rage, there appear fewer and fewer actions that are beyond the pale for politics.
• 
Take Adam Schiff and the Steele dossier.  While even the Washington Post has admitted that it got the Russian collusion story wrong in light of the findings of Special Counsel John Durham, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff, D-Calif., is still insisting that he was absolutely right to promote the discredited Steele dossier.
• 
Schiff was one of the greatest promoters of the Steele dossier despite access to briefings casting doubt about Steele and the underlying claims.
• 
However, Schiff recently has attempted to defend himself by claiming that Steele was a respected former spy and that he was lied to by a Russian source.
• 
Some of us have spent years being pummeled for questioning the obvious problems with the Steele dossier, including the long-denied connection to the Clinton campaign.  Schiff was the main voice swatting down such criticism and his endorsements were treated as dispositive for media from MSNBC to the Washington Post.
• 
... Schiff ignored repeated contradictions in Steele's dossier as well as evidence that the dossier was paid for and promoted by the Clinton campaign.  In 2017, even fired FBI agent Peter Strzok admitted that "we are unaware of ANY Trump advisers engaging in conversations with Russian intelligence officials" and "Steele may not be in a position to judge the reliability of his subsource network."
• 
Schiff would have had access to some of this intelligence.  Indeed, while the Clinton campaign was denying that it funded the dossier, American intelligence knew that that was a lie.
• 
... Schiff attempts to portray the sole problem with the Steele dossier as Russian analyst Igor Danchenko.  That is simply not true.  Schiff was long aware that there were allegations of misleading or false information given by the FBI to the secret court.
• 
Schiff was aware that President Barack Obama was briefed in 2017 that Hillary Clinton was allegedly planning to manufacture a Russian collusion scandal – just days before the start of the Russian investigation.  The dossier was riddled with disproven allegations.
• 
... Schiff states that he merely sought to investigate allegations.  However, Schiff was one of the most active members fueling the Russian collusion allegations.
• 
Indeed, when the Mueller investigation found no proof of Russian collusion, Schiff immediately went public to claim that he had evidence of collusion in his committee files.  It was meant to keep the scandal alive.  Schiff has never produced his promised evidence of collusion.
• 
... Schiff insists that he was just doing his due diligence in pushing for an investigation, the claim is not only undermined by his refusal to acknowledge obvious flaws in the dossier for years but his opposition to the investigation by John Durham.
• 
Indeed, while Schiff insists that he is glad to see people like Danchenko prosecuted, he opposed the continuation of this and other investigations.
• 
Schiff told MSNBC that ongoing investigations would constitute "tearing down our democracy" and would serve as a way to "delegitimize" a president.
• 
Schiff denounced the Durham investigation as a "politically motivated" effort and resisted demands from Trump to issue a report before the election.
• 
Schiff raised the termination of the Durham investigation by Attorney General Merrick Garland before Durham could issue any indictments or reports.
• 
"The appointment is not consistent with the language of the statute that he's relying on and can be rescinded, I think, by the next attorney general.  I would presume the next attorney general will look to see if there is any merit to the work that John Durham is doing."
• 
So Schiff is now heralding indictments by Durham despite the fact that, if he had gotten his way, there would have been no Durham and no indictments.
• 
The Russian collusion scandal was not some harmless political ploy.  Lives were destroyed.
• 
Carter Page, who was never charged with a single crime, was labeled a Russian agent and pilloried across networks and print media.  A fortune was spent on investigations by Congress, two special counsels, and inspectors general investigations.  Hundreds of people faced questioning and many spent their savings on legal representation.  A presidency was derailed, agencies like the Justice Department and the FBI were whiplashed by scandal, and Congress dropped a myriad of other issues to focus on various investigations.
• 
In the wake of those costs, Schiff offers little more than a shrug.
• 
Many have long marveled at the incapacity for shame in politicians.  That missing emotion was most famously captured by lawyer Joseph Welch in the Army-McCarthy hearings in 1954: "Have you no shame, sir, at long last?  Have you no shame?"
• 
The answer is that we now live in a post-shame era where the only shame is yielding to the impulses of decency or decorum.
• 
The Russian collusion scandal served its purpose and Adam Schiff would be the first say that there is no shame in that.
      Jonathan Turley: Oregon, others ditch standardized tests — it's our kids who will be hurt most  (Fox 08/11/2021)
• 
With states like Oregon now eliminating the need to demonstrate proficiency on basic subjects with standardized tests, American education faces the perfect storm.
• 
Despite record taxpayer spending on public schools, too many government-run, union-controlled schools are still failing students — particularly minority students — in teaching the basic subjects needed to succeed in life.
• 
Too many schools are graduating students without testing barriers for graduation.  Then too many may go to colleges and universities that have also eliminated standardized testing for admission.
• 
At every stage in their education, they have been passed along by educators without objective proof that they are minimally educated.  That certainly guarantees high graduation rates or improved diversity admissions.
• 
However, these students are still left without any marketable skills as they enter an increasingly competitive job market and economy.
• 
Any failures will come down the road when they will be asked to write, read, or add by someone who is looking for actual work product.  They will then be outside of the educational system and any failures will not be attributed to public educators.
• 
If we truly care for these students, we cannot rig the system to just kick them down the road toward failure.  It is like declaring patients healthy by just looking at them and sending them on their way.
• 
We have the ability to measure proficiency and we have the moral obligation to face our own failures in helping our kids achieve and succeed.
• 
See related Math (Mike Lester, 02/17/2010) cartoon from USA picture album
      Facebook says mentions of COVID-19's possible origins in Wuhan are now allowed.  How generous  (Fox 05/27/2021)
• 
Read the headline above a couple times.  There was a time when such a headline would only appear on the satirical outlet The Onion but it is actually true.
• 
Facebook has long banned anyone who discussed the evidence that a worldwide pandemic killing millions and destroying the global economy may have been released from a government lab in Wuhan, China.
• 
Facebook would not allow the theory to be discussed as "debunked" despite widespread criticism that the social media giant was, again, engaging in corporate censorship.
• 
The false claim that this theory was "debunked" was pushed by various media platforms as part of the criticism of then-President Donald Trump and his administration.
• 
Since February, Facebook has been banning posts claiming the virus was man-made or manufactured "following consultations with leading health organizations, including the World Health Organization" who had "debunked" the claim.
• 
Now, Facebook has declared "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made from our apps.  We're continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge."
• 
Putting aside the lack of a basis for the earlier ban, the statement reflects that assumption that, of course, Facebook should be the arbiter of what can be discussed by users.
• 
... Facebook is running a campaign to convince young people to accept "content modification" as part of their evolution with technology.
• 
... the underlying portrayal of the public is the same: they are unwitting dupes who must be protected from harmful thoughts or influences.  It is safer for them to have these members and these companies determine what they can hear or discuss.
• 
Facebook's announcement is meant to assure that it will not abuse its power as the overseer of any political or social discussions.
• 
It is similar to the benign dictator pitch where a government argues that, despite authoritarian powers, it uses such powers in a benign and tolerant fashion.
• 
There was a time when the assumption was that the Internet is a forum for largely unimpeded free speech.
• 
Yet, companies like Facebook started to assert the right to monitor those exchanges and decide if it approves of the views or representations being made.
• 
What began with censoring out violent threats soon morphed into "misinformation" or "harmful" thoughts on subjects ranging from climate change to COVID-19 to election fraud.
• 
We would never tolerate a company like Verizon intervening in telephone conversations to correct or cut off arguments.
• 
However, Facebook now regularly censors views and is running a glitzy ad campaign to get people to love the company for its paternalistic limits on what they can see and discuss.
• 
Facebook and other companies have turned a rolling ocean of free speech on the Internet into a swimming pool of censored and managed expression.
• 
Worse yet, according to its ubiquitous commercials, Facebook wants us to love it for the loss of free speech.
• 
So rejoice, America.  Facebook and its censorship board will now allow us to discuss whether China is responsible for the release of this virus... for now.
• 
      Facebook vs.  Trump – Big Tech has allowed for the creation of a state media without the state  (Fox 05/05/2021)
• 
Facebook, Twitter and other companies now openly engage in what they like to euphemistically call "content modification." The decision reflects the convoluted logic of censor's free speech review board.
• 
The company – and the board – start from the assumption that it can and should censor views deemed "misinformation" or dangerous.  The starting position therefore is that censorship is justified and that content neutrality is dangerous.
• 
The board's position on the standardless policy on permanent bans ignores that its temporary suspension policy is equally standardless.
• 
The company cited the response to Trump's speech by third parties as opposed to a specific call by Trump to commit violence.
• 
It does not take the same position when similar words are used by figures like Rep.  Maxine Water, D-Calif., during protests.
• 
The company declared that it would censor any content "in the voice of Donald Trump."
• 
What is most alarming is that Facebook, Twitter, and other companies have been defended by Democratic leaders, writers and academics.
• 
They declared that "in the great debate of the past two decades about freedom versus control of the network, China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong" and "significant monitoring and speech control are inevitable components of a mature and flourishing internet."
• 
Democratic leaders like Sen.  Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., have warned Big Tech companies that they are watching to be sure that there is no "backsliding or retrenching" from needed "robust content modification."
• 
Many commentators on the left have become unabashed enablers of not just censorship but corporate censorship.
• 
The common rationalization is that these companies are not subject to the First Amendment so there is no free speech issue.
• 
The First Amendment is not synonymous with broader values of free speech.  Private companies can still destroy free speech through private censorship.
• 
This is particularly the case with companies that not only run platforms for communications but received immunity from lawsuit under the view that they would be neutral providers of such platforms.
• 
Imagine if your telephone company took it upon itself to intervene in phone calls to object to something you just said or ban you from further calls for spreading misinformation.
• 
Some of us believe free speech is a human right that is defined by values beyond the confines of the First Amendment.
• 
The alliance between political figures and these companies is particularly chilling.  Big Tech has allowed for the creation of a state media without the state.
• 
Governments can now outsource censorship duties to Big Tech, which benefits from government support ranging from immunity to taxation laws.
• 
The internet was once the greatest creation for free speech in history.  It is now being converted into a managed space for corporate-approved viewpoints.
• 
See related Marching (Mike Shelton, 01/11/2021) cartoon from Corporate picture album
      Prince Harry and 'bonkers' First Amendment – take this threat to free speech seriously  (Fox 05/17/2021)
• 
On a show appropriately called the "Armchair Expert," Harry declared the First Amendment "bonkers" and expressed frustration about how it protects the media in its "feeding frenzy" over his life.
• 
Harry's criticism of the First Amendment can be dismissed as the unfamiliarity of a royal refugee.  However, it is actually far more serious than that. 
• 
Harry and his American wife Meghan Markle have attacked media rights in England and succeeded under the laws of the United Kingdom.  They are now joining a growing anti-free speech movement in the United States.
• 
It was a surprise for many to hear Harry lash out at the First Amendment.  After all, Harry and Meghan are so woke, they are virtual insomniacs.
• 
Indeed, the First Amendment is now more often treated as a danger than a guarantee to a fair and just society.  Experts have explained how to evade its limitations to silence others.
• 
Democratic leaders now openly call for corporate censorship and the banning of books and authors.  Academics join in the canceling of colleagues who express dissenting views of subjects ranging from climate change to gender identification to racial justice.
• 
Thus, it is not as risky for the Harry to declare "I've got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers." Rather, millions are likely to wait in rapt anticipation to hear more of what Prince Harry will say about correcting our Constitution.
• 
The United Kingdom has a strikingly different approach to free speech and particularly press rights.  The British media are subject to harsh laws giving the government far greater powers to control or punish publications.
• 
One American who seems to have embraced the more restrictive laws on expression and the media is Meghan Markle.  Recently, Piers Morgan, the former co-host of ITV's "Good Morning Britain," was canned after he committed the unpardonable sin of declaring on air that he didn't believe a word of what Markle told Oprah in her now famous interview.
• 
Markle and others reported TIV and Morgan to United Kingdom's "Ofcom," or Office of Communications, for violation of its "harm and offense rules."
• 
Ofcom enforces a chilling set of regulations that allows a severe penalties for expressing any views deemed "harmful or offensive" or assertions that could "materially mislead" others.
• 
Markle also recently prevailed in a highly damaging court victory against the press.  The case involved the publication of details from a letter that Meghan wrote to her estranged father after she married Prince Harry in 2018.
• 
The lawsuit would have failed in the United States under the freedom afforded to the press, but prevailed in Great Britain.
• 
Under our system, public disclosure of embarrassing private facts has an exclusion for "newsworthy" stories.  ... The court explained that "regrettably or not" such media coverage of public figures are protected and "it would be unwise for a court to bar their expression in the newspapers, books and magazines of the day."
• 
Keep in mind that this letter was given or leaked to the media – a common factor in some of our most important investigative journalistic works.  While Meghan could accuse her father or others of a privacy violation, she went after the media...
• 
Markle rejoiced in the victory and declared, "The world needs reliable, fact-checked, high-quality news ... We all lose when misinformation sells more than truth, when moral exploitation sells more than decency, and when companies create their business model to profit from people's pain."
• 
What Harry and Meghan achieved in the challenge was a direct assault on core press freedoms.  ... That is why the "bonkers" interview with Harry is not just some tabloid tripe.  Harry was raised in a system that rejects core press freedoms and Meghan is an enthusiastic convert to that system.
• 
It is ironic that they left what Harry described as the "toxic" media environment of Great Britain to come to a country with greater protections for the press.
• 
However, the couple took little time in seeking to challenge the core values of the free press in this county.  That is not just bonkers, it is bollocks. 
• 
See related Kissed a Prince! (Mike Shelton, 01/15/2020) cartoon from World picture album
      Trump impeachment trial – No, impeachment is not insulated from free speech arguments  (Fox 02/08/2021)
• 
"The First Amendment does not apply in impeachment proceedings." If there is a single line that sums up the sense of legal impunity in the second Trump impeachment, it is that line from a letter sent by law professors to deny any basis for the former president to challenge his impeachment on free speech grounds.
• 
The scholars call any such arguments "legally frivolous" but only after misstating the argument and frankly employing a degree of circular logic.
• 
The scholars start by stating the obvious: that there is no First Amendment "defense" that bars the impeachment or conviction of a president.
• 
The scholars go to great lengths to contest an argument not in dispute in stating "Congress's power to impeach is not limited to unlawful acts."
• 
Constitutional rights and values are always relevant to an impeachment.  While many subscribe to the "anything goes" school of impeachment, these senators are performing a constitutional, not just some political, function pursuant to a stated standard for removal.
• 
As such, they need to weigh the gravity of conduct and the implications of any conviction for the future.
• 
Ironically, some of these scholars have emphasized that this is a purely political process where senators have free range in determining what they consider to be a basis for conviction.
• 
Yet, Trump's objections of constitutional and prudential concerns are being widely dismissed as frivolous, "bad faith," or irrelevant to that decision.
• 
... these scholars insist that "The First Amendment does not apply in impeachment proceedings, so it cannot provide a defense for President Trump."
• 
That may be technically true in the sense of an actual defense to enjoin or bar impeachment in court.
• 
It is not true in the sense of a free speech concern over the implications of a conviction of political speech in America.
• 
Declaring that the First Amendment has no relevance or applicability to an impeachment proceeding is chilling.
• 
The question for senators is whether they should be concerned that the president's speech would not be considered actual incitement as a criminal matter in federal court.  The answer is that, of course, they should. 
• 
That is particularly a concern when critics of the president, including members of this Senate "jury," have engaged in similar over-heated and reckless political rhetoric.
• 
The Framers saw impeachment as reserved for cases of constitutional clarity.  That clarity is achieved by comparison to the conduct of others – both as criminal and protected matters.
• 
As a secondary argument, the scholars insist that "The First Amendment ... does not grant the president the freedom to engage in a willful dereliction of duty." The statement is again conclusory.
• 
Trump is accused of seeking to incite an actual insurrection or rebellion, not just the "willful dereliction of duty." The status and intent of his words are the crux of the matter.
• 
Moreover, the argument is circular.  It is arguing that this is not protected speech because it is incitement.  However, if it is not incitement, it is protected speech.
• 
While Trump does call for citizens to "fight" for their country and used aggressive rhetoric, he also told them to protest "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." He also said that the reason for the march is that "we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women."
• 
In the end, however, the primary argument is not just a First Amendment claim but a free speech claim (though these terms are often used interchangeably).
• 
In judging the culpability of a president's speech, the Senate must consider how this impeachment impacts free speech for presidents in declaring such speech to be a constitutional violation of his duties.
• 
That means that free speech is relevant, as is prior political speech deemed protected under the First Amendment as essential to our democratic system.
• 
The Senate should consider how this riot was an attack on democracy.  But it should also consider the impact of sanctioning political speech on that same democratic system.
• 
... just two days before the trial, Rep.  Cori Bush, D-Mo., was criticized when some felt she was justifying the violent takeover of a prison in St.  Louis by tweeting the words of Martin Luther King that "a riot is the language of the unheard."
• 
I believe such statements are not only protected under the First Amendment but exercises of free speech.  I would take that position if there was an effort to sanction or expel Bush in Congress.
      Jonathan Turley: Impeaching Trump – House threatens to trash this core principle to ensure conviction  (Fox 02/07/2021)
• 
Over the last four years, we have seen an alarming trend of law professors and legal experts discarding constitutional and due process commitments to support theories for the prosecution or impeachment of Donald Trump or his family.
• 
Legal experts who long defended criminal defense rights have suddenly become advocates of the most sweeping interpretations of criminal or constitutional provisions while discarding basic due process and fairness concerns.
• 
Even theories that have been clearly rejected by the Supreme Court have been claimed to be valid in columns.  No principle seems inviolate when it stands in the way of a Trump prosecution.
• 
Yet, the statement of House manager Rep.  Jamie Raskin, D-Md., last week was breathtaking.  A former law professor, Raskin declared that the decision of Trump not to testify in the Senate could be cited or used by House managers as an inference of his guilt – a statement that contradicts not just our constitutional principles but centuries of legal writing.
• 
... it appears a signature of this team of House managers.  Rep.  Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., insisted in the last impeachment that the failure of then-President Trump to turn over documents by citing privilege or other defenses should be cited as evidence of guilt on any underlying claims.
• 
Presidents have historically not testified at impeachment trials.  One reason is that, until now, only sitting presidents have been impeached and presidents balked at the prospect of being examined as head of the executive branch by the legislative branch.
• 
Moreover, it was likely viewed as undignified and frankly too risky.  Indeed, most defense attorneys routinely discourage their clients from testifying in actual criminal cases because the risks outweigh any benefits.
• 
Finally, Trump is arguing that this trial is unconstitutional and thus he would be even less likely to depart from tradition and appear as a witness.
• 
Despite the historical precedent for presidents not testifying, Raskin made an extraordinary and chilling declaration on behalf of the House of Representatives.  He wrote in a letter to Trump that "If you decline this invitation, we reserve any and all rights, including the right to establish at trial that your refusal to testify supports a strong adverse inference regarding your actions (and inaction) on Jan.  6, 2021."
• 
Raskin justified his position by noting that Trump "denied many factual allegations set forth in the article of impeachment." Thus, he insisted Trump needed to testify or his silence is evidence of guilt.
• 
Under this theory, any response other than conceding the allegations would trigger this response and allow the House to use the silence of the accused as an inference of guilt.
• 
The statement conflicts with one of the most precious and revered principles in American law that a refusal to testify should not be used against an accused party.
• 
The statement also highlighted the fact that the House has done nothing to lock in testimony of those who could shed light on Trump's intent.
• 
... the relative passivity of the House simply shows a lack of effort to actually win this case.  The Raskin statement is far more disturbing.
• 
The Fifth Amendment embodies this touchstone of American law in declaring that "[n]o person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
• 
Central to this right is the added protection that the silence of an accused cannot be used against him in the way suggested by Raskin.
• 
The Supreme Court has been adamant that the type of inference sought by Raskin is abhorrent and abusive in courts of law.
• 
This is not a political exercise.  It is a constitutional exercise.  These senators are undeniably politicians but they are also constitutional actors bound by oath to the standards and procedures laid out for impeachments.
• 
It would make this process a mockery if, in claiming to uphold constitutional values, members like Raskin destroy the very foundations of constitutional rights.
• 
It is true that this is not a criminal trial.  It is a constitutional trial.  As such, the Senate should try an accused according to our highest traditions and values.
• 
That includes respecting the right to remain silent and not to have "inferences" drawn from the fact that (like prior presidents) Trump will not be present at the trial or give testimony.
• 
This is not the first time that reason has been left a stranger in our age of rage.  There appears no price too great to pay to impeach or prosecute Trump.
• 
Now, the House is arguing against one of the very touchstones of our constitutional system and legal experts are silent.
• 
If everything is now politics, this trial is little more than a raw partisanship cloaked in constitutional pretense.
      Election Day riots – how did we get here?  There's plenty of blame to go around  (Fox 11/02/2020)
• 
Driving around Washington, D.C.  a couple days ago was a shocking experience.  Block after block of businesses are boarded up and anything throwable or movable has been removed from the streets.
• 
In the meantime, faculty, staff, and students at George Washington University (where I teach) have been told to stockpile medicine and food "as you normally would for a hurricane or a snowstorm."
• 
The reason?  We are about to have a democratic election.  The expectation is that is, unless it is a landslide for Biden, there will be rioting and arson in Washington and other cities.
• 
When exactly did election rioting become as forecastable as inclement weather?
• 
... Democratic leaders like House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C.  declared on Sunday that the only way Democrat Joe Biden could lose the election would be "for voter suppression to be successful."
• 
Thus, if Trump is close or winning on election night, it can only be due to unlawful conduct.  When President Trump made such statements about stealing the election, the media went into full alert over his laying the foundation for a coup.
• 
Yet, the media seems entirely comfortable with Clyburn's pre-election declaration that either Biden wins or the election is invalid.
• 
... rioting is not an act of God, but the criminal acts of those who only embrace democratic elections to the extent that they result in the "right" outcomes.
• 
People have little tolerance for analysis that does not reaffirm their bias.  They want clarity and reinforcement like Clyburn assuring them that any close election or Trump victory is by definition a stolen election.
• 
This expectation has been magnified by the unrelenting media coverage supporting Biden and his campaign.  If you watch CNN or MSNBC, there is no other possibility than voter fraud if Trump comes close on election night.
• 
... I do not recall any prior election where there were predictions of rioting, let alone such predictions in virtually every major city.
• 
We have never relied on this number of mail-in ballots.  Even in a normal year with a fraction of this number of mail-in balloting, we have had inevitable challenges on when and how to count such votes. 
• 
This could be a perfect storm of such election issues.  Both campaigns have assembled forces of lawyers that make D-Day look like a small intimate gathering.  They are going to use those lawyers.
• 
It falls into the old military adage that "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." In any contested election, all these campaigns will have are lawyers and every problem will look like fraud.
• 
Yet, the advantage of legal challenges is that lawyers do not throw their burning briefs through the broken windows of courthouses.
• 
We have a political system to bring democratic change and a legal system to make sure that such change comes from as the result of balloting not rioting.
• 
So here is my legal forecast.  This constitutional system will survive this election even if our windows do not.  Those rioting will be triggered by the exercise of democracy, not its denial.
• 
For the rest of us, this too will pass.
      Jonathan Turley: NBC analyst says Trump supporters have lizard brains  (Fox 10/24/2020)
• 
Vanderbilt University professor and historian Jon Meacham recently gave a quiz in his course on the 2020 election in which students were asked: "Was the Constitution designed to perpetuate white supremacy and protect the institution of slavery?"
• 
You had to answer "yes" or get points deducted.
• 
"I think Trump did himself good with his base tonight," Meacham said.
• 
"The question for America is how big that base is.  There is a lizard brain in this country.  Donald Trump is a product of the White man's, the anguished, nervous White guy's lizard brain."
• 
... was referring to a primitive part of the brain in psychological literature: "Many people call it the ‘Lizard Brain,' because the limbic system is about all a lizard has for brain function.  It is in charge of fight, flight, feeding, fear, freezing up, and fornication."
• 
What is striking is that Meacham is supposed to give what NBC, MSNBC and PBS present as neutral, scholarly analysis.
• 
But his comment about Trump supporters having lizard brains captures why conservative or independent voters view the networks as biased and gratuitously insulting.
• 
Indeed, these comments show that networks like NBC are now focusing entirely on Democratic and liberal viewers — writing off half of the American people as gag lines.
• 
There appears to be no point that is too insulting or raw for national commentary so long as it is an attack on Trump or those who support him.
• 
Miami Herald columnist and NBC analyst Leonard Pitts wrote a column headlined: "No, it's not the economy, stupid.  Trump supporters fear a black and brown America."
• 
The narrative has moved beyond Hillary Clinton's description of Trump supporters as a "basket of deplorables" to now portraying all Trump supporters as open racists.
• 
"Make America Great Again" hats are denounced by academics as the symbol of "modern day hitlerjugend" and hate speech.
• 
An article headlined "Why Your Lizard Brain is Keeping You Stuck and Specific Tools To Start Connecting" could be distributed as a self-help guide for network analysts.
• 
The article states: "When you're acting in one of these fear-based modes — whether you fight, flee or freeze — you can't remember any of the great communication tools you've learned or the tips or strategies you've been practicing because you can't access the part of the brain where that stuff is saved!  Brain imaging has shown that when the amygdala is activated by negative emotions, it actually interferes with the brain's ability to solve problems (or figure out how to get unstuck).  But here's the good news: positive emotions and thoughts do the opposite; they help you with creative problem-solving and strategic thinking."
• 
In other words, it is possible that tens of millions of voters are not lizard people, but people with opposing views.
• 
Yet, once Trump supporters are shown or discussed, it triggers these intense negative emotions in analysts who respond with fight and flight impulses.
• 
Once you accept that, you can access parts of "the brain where that stuff is saved" from your training and your scholarship.  You know.  Like history.
      Hunter Biden's laptop and the Facebook, Twitter censorship scandal – watch these 3 things  (Fox 10/16/2020)
• 
The convergence of law and politics is a common occurrence in Washington.  While law is used to ascertain truth, politics is often used to obscure it.
• 
That is why the truth is rarely evident in looking at a scandal straight on.  Rather it requires peripheral vision or analysis – often what is not evident is what is most enlightening.
• 
This most famous example of such reasoning was found in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's story "Silver Blaze," on Sherlock Holmes's investigation of the disappearance of a racehorse.
• 
The local inspector asked if there was "any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" Holmes responds, "To the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime."
• 
When the inspector objects, "The dog did nothing in the night-time," Holmes replies, "That was the curious incident."
• 
There is always something a tad curious of Washington legal scandals in what has not occurred.  That is why the latest Hunter Biden scandal is so curious.
• 
When the story broke in the New York Post, the Biden campaign was faced with thousands of emails that purportedly showed clear support for allegations that Hunter Biden was given millions as part of an influence-peddling scheme related to his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden.
• 
The problem was the absence of "barks" from the Biden camp.  The computer files revealed a host of embarrassing pictures of Hunter Biden using drugs or exposed in other embarrassing ways.  The emails contain dates and addresses that match up with confirmed records.
• 
If they are fabricated, there were three barks that we would have expected within hours of the release.
• 
Bark 1: This was not Hunter Biden's computer
• 
The most obvious response would be that this is not the computer of Hunter Biden.  After all, the computer store owner John Paul Mac Isaac who is legally blind said that he could not recognize the person who dropped off the laptop.
• 
Someone in the campaign must have called Hunter Biden and he had to have told them whether or not it was his laptop.
• 
Bark 2: These were not Hunter Biden's photos or emails
• 
Even if the campaign cannot deny that the computer was Hunter Biden's, it could deny that these incriminating pictures and emails were his.
• 
Note that if these are fabricated emails or pictures, this would be a serious federal crime and the basis for legal action.
• 
Yet, there is not a single allegation of fraud or fabrication after days of a brewing scandal.
• 
Bark 3: This is defamation
• 
Perhaps this bark is the most telling.  If these emails or pictures are fabricated, it is a clear case of defamation and other tort actions.
• 
It would seem that one of the hundreds of lawyers currently lined up by the Biden campaign would fire off an "intent to sue" letter.
• 
One big difference between the legal and political worlds is that in the latter there is no protection for the right to remain silent.  In politics, scandals can be managed but not silently.
• 
Instead of these obvious barks, the public heard something closer to a whimper: that the campaign could not find any notation on Vice President Biden's official schedule that he met with a Ukrainian figure connected to the payments to his son Hunter Biden.
• 
It would be a curious sight in itself for Biden's official schedule to include "meeting with Ukrainian connected to Hunter."
• 
Many meetings are not part of an official schedule that staffers know is subject to official records laws for preservation and review.
• 
That is what is so curious about the Hunter Biden story and, to move from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to Lewis Carroll, it is becoming "curiouser and curiouser."
 Turner  (04/23/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/14/2022) | Next sect (03/12/2020) | List bot 
      Daniel Turner: AOC disrespects working people – this Tweet tells us where we stand with the left  (Fox 04/23/2020)
• 
"You absolutely love to see it," Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said about the collapse of America's energy industry in a since-deleted tweet.
• 
It's unfathomable that any American, let alone a member of Congress, would celebrate the loss of millions of jobs.
• 
That's millions of salaries paying for dream homes and family dinners.
• 
Millions of moms and dads in rural parts of our country falling into unemployment, in need of government assistance, unsure of what their future will be.
• 
"You absolutely love to see it."
• 
The congresswoman is able to be so callous because, like any arrogant New Yorker, she is clueless as to life outside of the big city and appears to have a certain disdain for it.
• 
I absolutely don't "love to see it." I know people, friends, neighbors and family who work in this world and are sick with anxiety as they see their businesses slipping through their fingers and falling into financial ruin.  I wouldn't celebrate that.
• 
Good people don't have the ability to experience glee at the misery of others.
• 
Smart people know better than to put such vile sentiments on Twitter.
• 
But AOC apparently doesn't any know oil, gas, coal, fracking or pipeline workers.
• 
And because they don't exist in her experience, because she can't see them, they don't matter.
• 
We saw this same aloof disdain in a video also bewilderingly shared on social media, when AOC drove through an undisclosed rural area.
• 
"Many votes here as you can see," she explained, adding that the lack of people was part of the "scam" of the Electoral College.
• 
She was angry that this rural area had equal rights as her urban area.  "Very efficient way to choose leadership of the country," she snidely commented.
• 
Indeed.  Let us be glad the Founders were not self-absorbed millennials.
• 
Two years ago 15,897 people in Queens voted for her in a primary, anointing her the new representative to Congress from her overwhelmingly Democratic district.
• 
Because of that, we're supposed to pretend AOC is an expert on farming, the Electoral College and the energy industry.  She is not.
• 
Unlike AOC, who tweets gleefully about the energy industry collapse, people who know better are worried about tomorrow.
• 
The long-term ramifications are severe.  It returns us to foreign dependence.  It will make Iran and Russia more powerful, inviting hostilities in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf.  We will lose an advantage to Communist China.  It will raise the costs of all goods and services.  It will weaken our economy.
• 
Right now, in the short term, the collapse hurts people.  People suffering job loss.  People running out of money.  People running out of hope.
• 
No one should find glee in that.
      Daniel Turner: Trump's 'energy dominance' agenda will help America get through coronavirus  (Fox 03/10/2020)
• 
Coronavirus has given us good reason to be scared.
• 
Stores are being overrun as people stock up on supplies.
• 
Government officials have suggested "social distancing," including skipping events, concerts and airplanes.
• 
Panic is psychological, and facts don't always rein in the psyche.  One fact to prove it: In 2009, H1N1, or "swine flu," killed more than 12,000 Americans.
• 
Were you stocking up on dry goods back then?  No.  But you still don't feel any better, right?
• 
Here's another fact.  This winter, an estimated 31 million Americans had the "regular" flu, with roughly 300,000 hospitalized and 12,000 dying.
• 
Did you hoard toilet paper?  No.  But you are now, right?
• 
Facts don't always assuage panic.  You know there's no monster under the bed, but after watching a horror movie, sometimes you still look.
• 
"The fear of the coronavirus is likely to be as or more destructive than the virus itself," former presidential candidate Andrew Yang tweeted.
• 
But there is something else we should fear.
• 
That's how much American political leaders have surrendered our sovereignty in the name of economic globalism.
• 
In the age of coronavirus, globalism could be the real killer.
• 
More than 90 percent of our medical supplies, antibiotics and vaccines are manufactured in China.
• 
During last year's trade negotiations with China, a Chinese official suggested using their position of medical dominance as leverage.
• 
Afraid of coronavirus?  You should be more afraid of China cutting off our supply of penicillin because they could in an instant.
• 
We already know we outsourced our manufacturing to China.
• 
Apple proudly describes its products as "designed in California, manufactured in China."
• 
In a manufacturing shutdown inspired by coronavirus, a lack of new products will hurt the economy, sure.
• 
But it's going to really hurt when we can't get ibuprofen, or worse, anesthesia medicine.
• 
So worrying is America's dependence on the Chinese medical industry that Sen.  Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced legislation to return much of it to domestic production.
• 
"America first" isn't just a rallying cry.  It's now a national health emergency.
• 
No one intended to put America's health at risk by outsourcing to China.  They did it because it was cheaper.
• 
But globalism can only work when our international partners follow the same standards and practices as we do.
• 
However, it's exactly because other countries do not follow these practices that companies move there.
• 
Hygiene, lunch breaks, paid time off, hard hats, sensitivity training all cost money.  Fair wages and safety cost money.
• 
And in the age of climate change, protecting the Earth from pollution and contamination costs money.
• 
So companies moved jobs from America's heartland to mainland China, Rust Belt workers be damned.
• 
Tom Steyer, the billionaire, eco-warrior and former presidential candidate knew this.  Energy investments made up a portion of the hedge fund he founded.
• 
Did the green activist think coal companies in China were better stewards of the earth than coal companies in West Virginia?
• 
No, but they were more profitable, Earth be damned.
• 
Steyer's presidential candidacy was a marvel of un-American hypocrisy.  A man who invested in fossil fuels in foreign countries ran on a platform of banning them here in America.
• 
Luckily for Americans, we can't outsource our fossil fuels to China.  Our vast supply of coal, oil and gas is found right here in America.
• 
That is a blessing for us and a foil to the globalism enthusiasts.  Fossil fuels are global commodities, and international players can try to manipulate the prices.
• 
The days of the Arab oil embargo America suffered in the 1970s are long over.
• 
In this industry, there are no supply chain fears.  There are factory shut-down fears.
• 
For decades, America watched as globalism masquerading as the "free market" outsourced jobs and industries to our adversaries.
• 
It is frightening that China controls our medical supply chain.  But, like our energy, it does not have to be this way.  We can produce everything in America.
• 
President Trump's "energy dominance" agenda will help America get through the coronavirus fallout.
• 
Using domestic oil, gas and coal to produce our own energy and electricity, we can rebuild every sector of the economy by bringing products and jobs back from overseas.
• 
Then America will truly be great again.
 Tyrrell  (03/12/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (04/23/2020) | Next sect (12/04/2019) | List bot 
      Bernie's Solution to Full Employment  (JWR 03/12/2020)
• 
The forces of militant ignorance are in motion again.
• 
They are marching with Crazy Bernie Sanders and his spendthrift wife.
• 
They are marching with Congressgirl Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the former bartendress.
• 
They are rousing the drowsy forces of the Occupy Wall Street movement and the drowsy forces of the Occupy D.C.  movement, who have been recumbent for the past decade.
• 
They were the utopian socialists and parasites who provided so much hope to the left-wing Democrats back in 2011 and 2012.
• 
They slept in parks.  They hassled pedestrians.  They, occasionally, relieved themselves on parked automobiles.
• 
I called them then, and I call them now, the moron vote.
• 
They believed that health care should be free.
• 
They were for free education, especially if, while experiencing the thrill of free education, they did not have to read a book or get out of bed before noon.
• 
They were for a guaranteed annual income.
• 
Crazy Bernie also can supply the rest of the things that the moron vote believes should be free.
• 
After he recites his list, he often growls to his audience of morons something about "the movement" that he is creating.
• 
He calls it socialism and adds that "it has never been tried in America." But, he growls, it will be.
• 
I only have one question: How are you going to change the whole economic system from capitalism (which works, though it is disparaged) to socialism (which never works, though it is admired) in the midst of President Donald Trump's economic miracle?
• 
The promise of socialism is only thinly plausible when times are tough.
• 
In America today — when times are very good — the case for socialism is hopeless.
• 
Actually, when I hear Crazy Bernie sermonize about how what he is trying to do with socialism has never been tried before in America, I begin to believe that even he, the leader of the moron vote, is only semiliterate.
• 
Or maybe he, too, is a moron.  Is he not familiar with the likes of New Harmony, Indiana?
• 
It was an Indiana community on the banks of the Wabash River that the Welsh textile magnate Robert Owen tried to turn into a utopian socialist paradise in 1825.
• 
Like other dreamers of the day, he failed, and after two years, he returned to London a lot poorer but no wiser.
• 
Another wealthy man who promoted socialism was Julius Augustus Wayland, who, in 1902, wrote of socialism, "It's coming like a prairie fire and nothing can stop it." ... But we are still waiting for that prairie fire.
• 
Perhaps Bernie, another millionaire who made his millions while supping at the public trough, will be more successful than this millionaire socialist.
• 
Let us face the facts, Bernie.  The case for socialism is bleaker now than it was even back in Wayland's day or Owen's day.
• 
By now, it has been tried all over the world, and it is a bust.  A humanitarian bust and an economic bust — in every respect, it is the God that failed.
• 
Before the Soviet Union fell, the Soviets had turned every country they controlled into a prison and every economy they controlled into a poverty zone.
• 
Where today is the economic model for viable socialism?  Is Bernie summoning up Venezuela?  How about Cuba?
• 
Actually, he is pointing to Cuba.  The young people of Cuba have shiny white teeth and they can read, he claims.
• 
Well, let them read Armando Valladares' "Against All Hope," a book about the author's existence for decades in a Fidel Castro prison for having done nothing wrong.
• 
There are dozens of books like this written by brave Cuban freedom fighters.  Many are still wasting away in Cuban dungeons.
• 
When I turn to thinking about life in a Cuban hellhole today, I am reminded that Bernie Sanders' socialism is no joke.
• 
See related Sanders (Glenn McCoy, 03/09/2016) cartoon from Politics picture album
• 
See related Comrade Bernie (Mike Shelton, 02/27/2020) cartoon from Politics picture album
 Varney  (12/04/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (03/12/2020) | Next sect (11/28/2019) | List bot 
      Varney: Trump is 'negotiator in chief' at NATO, world leaders are 'feeling the heat'  (Fox 12/04/2019)
• 
"This is a hardline president.  He does not back off.  And our competitors, rivals and plain enemies are feeling the heat."
• 
"Watch out Europe, Trump's in town.  Be careful China, you're negotiating with Trump.  Watch out, Iran, Trump's in power on all fronts."
• 
"Iran's economy is collapsing.  The people are in revolt.  Hundreds of unarmed protesters have been shot dead in the street....  Now Trump pushed the Iranians to the brink.  For 40 years, the Islamic Republic has been killing Americans and now they're killing each other and they are bankrupt.  Trump is winning this one."
• 
"Europe, well, they don't know what to make of Mr.  Trump.  He arrived in London Monday night and this morning promptly laid down the law.  Emmanuel Macron has proposed a digital tax, which would be paid largely by our dominant technology companies.  If they go through with it, Mr.  Trump will slap a 100 percent tariff on French cheese, wine, handbags and champagne."
• 
"Germany.  President Trump complained loudly about their defense spending a measly 1 percent of GDP compared to 4 percent for America.  They, 'have to shape up or things are going to get very tough,'"
• 
"On China, the president said he had no deadline for a trade deal," Varney explained.  "In some ways, maybe it's best to wait till after the next election.  That's the negotiator in chief.  He can wait.  It's China that's in trouble yet again."
• 
While Trump plays hardball with world leaders overseas, Democrats in Congress forged ahead with their impeachment investigation, moving the inquiry to the House Judiciary Committee for its first public hearing Wednesday.
• 
Despite their best efforts, ... Trump's success at the NATO conferences leave the Democrats "out in the cold while Trump lays down the law to Europe, China, Iran, and others."
• 
"He's putting America first.  What a concept."
      The left, media, deep state would undermine our constitutional republic to oust Trump: Varney  (Fox 09/06/2019)
• 
Imagine: You run a business.  You have appointed managers.  You tell them what you want done.  Your business thrives.  But, some managers don't like the way you are running things and they secretly undermine your decisions.  They sabotage your business and claim they are your moral superiors.
• 
This is precisely what is happening right now to President Trump.
• 
A "senior official" within the administration writes anonymously in The New York Times that the president is "impetuous, petty and ineffective," and makes "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions." This official, along with others, work to stall and reverse the president's policies.  It's called sabotage from within.  And it's going on now.
• 
I can't remember anything like this: The deep state conspirators are now actively frustrating the policies of a duly elected president.
• 
They think they know better than us.  They must save us from ourselves.
• 
The official writes: "We are trying to do what's right even when Donald Trump won't." The arrogance is stunning.
• 
This is a stab at the heart of our democracy: The will of the people is being deliberately thwarted by a secret cabal.  And yet again, the media is complicit.
• 
The left, the media, and the deep state, hate our president.
• 
They will do anything to get him out, and that includes undermining our constitutional republic.
 Watts  (11/28/2019)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (12/04/2019) | Next sect (02/01/2021) | List bot 
      What George Washington was thankful for might shock you  (Fox 11/28/2019)
• 
In October 1789, long before Americans made it a national holiday, President George Washington issued a proclamation calling for a National Day of Thanksgiving.
• 
"Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor....  For the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed..."
• 
Just weeks after the Bill of Rights was sent to the states for ratification and during a time when their adoption was still very much in question, Washington recognized and called on Americans to thank God for rights that too many Americans today don't understand – and are even willing to sacrifice – like religious liberty.
• 
"And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions ... to render our national government a blessing to all the People, by constantly being a government of wise, just and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed ... and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord, to promote the knowledge and practice of the true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and Us, and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best."
• 
... the greatest value to the modern reader might just be the stark contrast it provides between our founding generation's vision for their infant nation and the wandering prodigal son into which we have grown.
• 
Indeed, Washington repeatedly referenced the Divine as the source of our rights, peace, and prosperity.
• 
Perhaps most shocking to many Americans today is Washington's specific admonition that that "good government" would promote "the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue."
• 
For Washington, religious liberty didn't mean government neutrality toward religion.
• 
To him and his fellow founders, religion, virtue, and liberty were inexorably linked.
• 
Consider some of the other fundamental realities in Washington's call to gratitude: there is a God; that God is not neutral in the affairs of men and nations; unity through gratitude to our Creator; Americans as individuals and collectively have duties to perform; that government should be a blessing to the people through wise, just, and constitutional laws.
• 
Despite our nation's shortcomings there is much for which to be thankful.
• 
We still enjoy more freedom, peace, and prosperity than any people in the world.  If we are to maintain these for ourselves and our posterity we could start by reclaiming our national identity through renewed respect for our founding principles, like religious liberty, and yes, even the imperfect men like George Washington who imparted them to us.
• 
"Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be – That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks – for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation."
 Weiss  (02/01/2021)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (11/28/2019) | Next sect (07/02/2020) | List bot 
      Bari Weiss: Woke culture is dominating our lives — here are 10 ways to fight back  (Fox 02/01/2021)
• 
... there is no gulag in America.  There are no laws permitting honor killings.  There is no formal social credit system of the kind that exists right now in China.
• 
By any measure, we have achieved incredible progress and enjoy extraordinary freedoms.  And yet people aren't acting that way.  They are acting, increasingly, like subjects in a totalitarian country.
• 
When everything is recorded for eternity, when making mistakes and taking risks are transformed into capital offenses, when things that were common sense until two seconds ago become unsayable, people make the understandable decision to simply shut up.
• 
Do not nod along when you hear the following: That Abraham Lincoln's name on a public school or his likeness on a statue is white supremacy.  (It is not; he is a hero.)
• 
That separating people into racial affinity groups is progressive.  (It is a form of segregation.)
• 
That looting has no victims (untrue) and that small-business owners can cope anyway because they have insurance (nonsense).
• 
That any disparity of outcome is evidence of systemic oppression (false).  That America is evil.  (It is the last hope on Earth.)
• 
This list could go on for a thousand pages.  These may have become conventional wisdom in certain circles, but they are lies.
• 
Yet too many good people are sacrificing the common good, and therefore their long-term security, for the sake of short-term comfort.
• 
1.  Remind yourself, right now, of the following truth: You are free.
• 
Your loss of self is the most significant thing that could be taken away from you.  Don't give it up for anything.
• 
2.  Be honest.
• 
Do not say anything about yourself or others that you know is false.  Absolutely refuse to let your mind be colonized.  The first crazy thing someone asks you to believe or to profess, refuse.  If you can, do so out loud.  There is a good chance it will inspire others to speak up, too.
• 
3.  Stick to your principles.
• 
If you are a decent person, you know mob justice is never just.  So never join a mob.  Ever.
• 
... if a friend or a colleague does something you disagree with, write them a private note.  Don't be a snitch.  Any mob that comes for them will come for you.
• 
4.  Set an example for your kids and your community.
• 
That means being courageous.  I understand that it's hard.  Really hard.  But in other times and places, including in our own nation, people have made far greater sacrifices.
• 
If enough people make the leap, we will achieve something like herd immunity.  Jump.
• 
5.  If you don't like it, leave it.
• 
A class in college, a job, anything.  Get out and do your own thing.
• 
I fully understand the impulse to want to change things from within.  And by all means: Try as hard as you can.
• 
6.  Become more self-reliant.
• 
To the extent that you can build your life to be self-reliant and not 100 percent reliant on the Web, it's a good thing.  It will make you feel competent and powerful.  Which you are.
• 
7.  Worship God more than Yale.
• 
In other words, do not lose sight of what is essential.  Professional prestige is not essential.  Being popular is not essential.  Getting your child into an elite preschool is not essential.
• 
Doing the right thing is essential.  Telling the truth is essential.  Protecting your kids is essential.
• 
8.  Make like-minded friends.
• 
Then stand up for them.  Two good tests: Are they willing to tell the truth even if it hurts their own side?  And do they think that humor should never be a casualty, no matter how bleak the circumstances?
• 
These people are increasingly rare.  When you find them, hold on tight.
• 
9.  Trust your own eyes and ears.
• 
Rely on firsthand information from people you trust rather than on media spin.  When you hear someone making generalizations about a group of people, imagine they are talking about you and react accordingly.
• 
10.  Use your capital to build original, interesting and generative things right now.  This minute.
• 
You have the ability to build new things.  If you don't have the financial capital, you have the social or political capital.  Or the ability to sweat.
 Wilcox  (07/02/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (02/01/2021) | Next sect (09/03/2020) | List bot 
      Dale Wilcox: Stop abusing visa system — Corporate America must hire homegrown talent  (Fox 07/02/2020)
• 
Education has long been one of the building blocks to achieving the American Dream.  Go to college, get a degree and you'll be on your way to a successful career and a prosperous life.
• 
Today that time-tested maxim is faltering, thanks in part to Corporate America's addiction to cheap foreign labor and its love for unfettered immigration.
• 
Greek poetry and Nietzsche may be the stuff of Starbuck's baristas, but the country will always need IT professionals and lab researchers, right?  Not exactly.
• 
At various times in America's rise as an enduring global economic superpower, our industries have needed specialists who were not available among our population.
• 
For that reason, the federal government created programs like the H-1B visa, which allows employers to temporarily employ foreign workers in specialty occupations.
• 
Sadly, profit has subsumed principle.  Foreign workers continue to be hired for American jobs under H-1B, not because of a dearth of skilled native workers, but because foreign workers can be hired at often a fraction of the cost of their U.S.  counterparts.
• 
This pattern has continued even through the mass unemployment of the coronavirus pandemic.
• 
... there are 583,420 H-1B skilled workers in the country at a time when tens of millions of Americans are out of work.  Are we to believe that no skilled workers are among that pool of job seekers?
• 
This is fundamentally wrong during better times.  Today it is a gross injustice.
• 
Corporations that want to enjoy low U.S.  corporate taxes and have access to the American market show utter contempt for American workers.
• 
This can be seen in numerous accounts of American workers who were asked to train foreign workers and then received pink slips when the trainees turned out to be their replacements.
• 
To be sure, this obsession with foreign labor is not about a lack of homegrown talent.  As of 2014 there were more than five million native-born Americans with STEM undergraduate degrees, but they were working in non-STEM occupations.
• 
Why is that?  Maybe because many of them have been squeezed out of the career they trained for as employers prefer foreign labor that can be paid substandard wages.
• 
That is not capitalism; it's exploitation and using yet another government program as a form of corporate welfare.
• 
These maneuvers may be smart for a company's balance sheet, but they are decidedly bad for America and its citizens.
• 
At a time when many corporations are extremely image-conscious and virtue signal their political correctness, many have no shame about proclaiming their unquenchable thirst for cheap labor at the expense of Americans.
• 
Even at the height of the pandemic-related economic fears, 324 of America's largest employers sent a letter to President Trump, warning that any attempt by him to limit their access to cheap foreign labor would likely result in more financial hardship.
• 
Who advocates for our sons and daughters who played by the rules, worked hard and earned a degree in a growing field?
• 
They are mere collateral damage to the corporate giants and the politicians who carry their water in exchange for campaign funding.
• 
Some corporations that buy Super Bowl commercials and wrap themselves in American values are also harming American workers by leveraging foreign labor programs to increase profitability.
• 
Americans need to know who these companies are and make consumer decisions accordingly.
• 
President Trump and a few brave souls in Congress have been tireless defenders of American workers on immigration issues.
• 
We, the American people, need to continue to remind them that programs like H-1B have strayed far from their original intent and are harming the future of our children and our nation.
 Williams  (09/03/2020)  Go to:  List top | Prev sect (07/02/2020) | Next sect (01/19/2019) | List bot 
      Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Nonsense  (JWR 09/03/2020)
• 
My question to you is: Would a basketball team be improved if coaches were required to include ethnically diverse players for the sake of equity?
• 
I have no idea of what your answer might be but mine would be: "The hell with diversity, equity and inclusion.  I am going to recruit the best players and do not care if most of them turn out to be black players."
• 
Another question: Do you think that any diversity-crazed college president would chastise his basketball coach for lack of diversity and inclusiveness?
• 
What explains the fact that over 80% of professional basketball players are black, as are about 70% of professional football players?
• 
Only an idiot would chalk it up to diversity and inclusion.
• 
Instead, it is excellence that explains the disproportionate numbers.
• 
Jewish Americans, who are just 3% of our population, win over 35% of the Nobel prizes in science that are awarded to Americans.
• 
Again, it is excellence that explains the disproportionality, not diversity and inclusion.
• 
As my stepfather often told me, "To do well in this world, you have to come early and stay late."
      Are Today's Leftists Truly Marxists?  (JWR 08/12/2020)
• 
Most people who call themselves Marxists know very little of Karl Marx's life and have never read his three-volume "Das Kapital."
• 
Most people who call themselves Marxist have only read his 1848 pamphlet "The Communist Manifesto," which was written with Engels.
• 
Marx is a hero to many labor union leaders and civil rights organizations, including leftist groups like Black Lives Matter, antifa and some Democratic Party leaders.
• 
It is easy to be a Marxist if you know little of his life.
• 
Marx's predictions about capitalism and the "withering away of the state" turned out to be grossly wrong.
• 
What most people do not know is that Marx was a racist and an anti-Semite.
• 
Many of Marx's racist ideas were reported in "Karl Marx, Racist" a book written by Nathaniel Weyl, a former member of the U.S.  Communist Party.
• 
Marx's anti-Semitic views were no secret.  In 1844, he published an essay titled "On the Jewish Question."
• 
He wrote that the worldly religion of Jews was "huckstering" and that the Jew's god was "money."
• 
Marx's view of Jews was that they could only become an emancipated ethnicity or culture when they no longer exist.
• 
Just one step short of calling for genocide, Marx said, "The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way."
• 
Marx's philosophical successors shared ugly thoughts on blacks and other minorities.  Che Guevara, a hero of the left, was a horrific racist.
• 
White liberals are useful idiots.  BLM, antifa and other progressive groups use the plight of poor blacks to organize left-leaning, middle-class, college-educated, guilt-ridden suburbanite whites.
• 
These people who topple statues and destroy public and private property care about minorities as much as their racist predecessors.
• 
Their goal is the acquisition and concentration of power and Americans have fallen hook, line and sinker for their phony virtue signaling.
      Historical Ignorance and Confederate Generals  (JWR 07/22/2020)
• 
"The Confederacy, the American Civil War, was fought, and it was an act of rebellion.  It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the U.S.  Constitution."
• 
Let's start at the beginning, namely the American War of Independence (1775-1783), a war between Great Britain and its 13 colonies, which declared independence in July 1776.
• 
The peace agreement that ended the war is known as the Treaty of Paris signed by Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, John Jay and Henry Laurens and by British Commissioner Richard Oswald, on Sept.  3, 1783.
• 
Article I of the Treaty held that "New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, to be free sovereign and Independent States."
• 
James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, rejected it.  Minutes from the debate paraphrased his opinion: "A union of the states containing such an ingredient (would) provide for its own destruction.  The use of force against a state would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound."
• 
During the ratification debates, Virginia's delegates said, "The powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the people of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression."
• 
If there were a provision to suppress a seceding state, the Constitution would never have been ratified.
• 
... on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a state's right.  ... "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861."
• 
"An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in extent."
• 
Confederate generals fought for independence from the Union just as George Washington fought for independence from Great Britain.
• 
Those who label Robert E.  Lee and other Confederate generals as traitors might also label George Washington a traitor.
• 
Great Britain's King George III and the British parliament would have agreed.
• 
See related P.C. (Glenn McCoy, 08/15/2017) cartoon from USA picture album
      Aesop revealed how socialism works — a finer explanation there has yet to be  (JWR 03/18/2020)
• 
Senator Bernie Sanders' call for socialism has resonated among many Americans, particularly young Americans.
• 
They've fallen prey to the idea of a paradise here on Earth where things are free and there's little want.
• 
But socialists never reveal what turns out to be their true agenda.
• 
Let's look at the kind of statements they used to gain power.
• 
You'll note that all of their slogans before gaining power bore little relation to the facts after they had power.
• 
Vladimir Lenin promised, "Under socialism all will govern in turn and will soon become accustomed to no one governing."
• 
That's Friedrich Engel's prediction about "the withering away of the state."
• 
Lenin also promised, "Communism is Soviet power plus electrification," and "No amount of political freedom will satisfy the hungry masses."
• 
Lenin's successor, Joseph Stalin, said, "Advance towards socialism cannot but cause the exploiting elements to resist the advance, and the resistance of the exploiters cannot but lead to the inevitable sharpening of the class struggle."
• 
He also said, "Gaiety is the most outstanding feature of the Soviet Union," and that "Gratitude is a sickness suffered by dogs."
• 
Then there's China's Chairman Mao Zedong, who said: "Socialism must be developed in China, and the route toward such an end is a democratic revolution, which will enable socialist and communist consolidation over a length of time.  It is also important to unite with the middle peasants, and educate them on the failings of capitalism."
• 
Mao advised: "A communist must be selfless, with the interests of the masses at heart.  He must also possess a largeness of mind, as well as a practical, far-sighted mindset."
• 
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro said: "Capitalism has neither the capacity, nor the morality, nor the ethics to solve the problems of poverty.  We must establish a new world order based on justice, on equity, and on peace."
• 
He added, "I find capitalism repugnant.  It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating...  because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition."
• 
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez promised: "I am going to do my best to try to create a country in which children are not living in poverty, in which kids can go to college, in which old people have health care.  Will I succeed?  I can't guarantee you that, but I can tell you that from a human point of view it is better to show up than to give up."
• 
Adding, "I am convinced that the path to a new, better and possible world is not capitalism, the path is socialism."
• 
Bernie Sanders' statements are not that different from those of Lenin, Stalin, Castro, Chavez and other tyrants.
• 
Sanders says, "Let us wage a moral and political war against the billionaires and corporate leaders, on Wall Street and elsewhere, whose policies and greed are destroying the middle class of America," and "We need to change the power structure in America, we need to end the political oligarchy."
• 
Stalin's campaign didn't mention that he would enact policies that would lead to the slaughter of 62 million people in the Soviet Union between 1917 to 1987.
• 
Mao Zedong didn't mention that his People's Republic of China would engage in brutal acts that would lead to the loss of 76 million lives at the hands of the government from 1949 to 1987.
• 
The late Professor Rudolph J.  Rummel of the University of Hawaii documented this tragedy in his book "Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900."
• 
Because socialism is a fight against basic human nature, it requires brute force in the attempt to reach its goals.
• 
The best warning about socialism comes from Aesop, who said, "Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant ... must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves."
• 
We shouldn't ignore Martin Luther King Jr.'s warning, "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
      I've been a professor for decades.  Today's'institutions of higher learning' pose threats on several...  (JWR 02/22/2020)
• 
A recent Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on our nation.
• 
The leftward political bias, held by faculty members affiliated with the Democratic Party, at most institutions of higher education explains a lot of that disappointment.
• 
Democratic professors outnumber their Republican counterparts most in the humanities and social sciences, compared with the natural sciences and engineering.
• 
The ratio is 42:1 in anthropology, 27:1 in sociology and 27:1 in English.
• 
In the social sciences, Democratic registered faculty outnumber their Republican counterparts the least in economics 3:1.
• 
The partisan political slant is most extreme at the most highly rated institutions.
• 
The leftist bias at our colleges and universities has many harmful effects.
• 
At American University, a history professor recently wrote a book in which he advocates repealing the Second Amendment.
• 
A Rutgers University professor said, "Watching the Iowa Caucus is a sickening display of the over-representation of whiteness."
• 
A Williams College professor said he would advocate for social justice to be included in math textbooks.
• 
Students at Wayne State University no longer have to take a single math course to graduate; however, they may soon be required to take a diversity course.
• 
Then there's a question about loyalty to our nation.
• 
... former chairman of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard, was arrested earlier this year on accusations that he made a materially false, fictitious and fraudulent statement about work he did for a program run by the Chinese government that seeks to lure American talent to China.
• 
He was paid $50,000 a month and up to $158,000 in living expenses for his work, which involved cultivating young teachers and students...
• 
... court records reveal that Emory University neuroscientist Li Xiao-Jiang was fired in late 2019 after being charged with lying about his own ties to China.
• 
A jury found a University of California, Los Angeles, professor guilty of exporting stolen U.S.  military technology to China.
• 
... federal prosecutors say that University of Texas professor Bo Mao attempted to steal U.S.  technology by using his position as a professor to obtain access to protected circuitry and then handing it over to the Chinese telecommunications giant, Huawei.
• 
The true tragedy is that so many Americans are blind to the fact that today's colleges and universities pose a threat on several fronts to the well-being of our nation.
• 
See related Political Correctness (Glenn McCoy, 11/11/2015) cartoon from USA picture album
      Morality of Free Markets  (JWR 12/11/2019)
• 
"The hallmark of a truly free market is that all associations and relationships are based on voluntary agreement and mutual consent.  Another way of saying this is that in the free market society, people are morally and legally viewed as sovereign individuals possessing rights to their life, liberty, and honestly acquired property, who may not be coerced into any transaction that they do not consider being to their personal betterment and advantage."
• 
"You don't kill, you don't steal, and you don't cheat through fraud or misrepresentation.  You can only improve your own position by improving the circumstances of others.  Your talents, abilities, and efforts must all be focused on one thing: what will others take in trade from you for the revenues you want to earn as the source of your own income and profits?"
• 
In a free market society, income is neither taken nor distributed.  Income is earned by serving one's fellow man.
• 
Free markets are morally superior to other economic systems.  To have a claim on what my fellow man produces, I'm forced to serve him.
• 
In a word or so, our protest should not be against capitalism.
• 
People should protest crony capitalism, where people use the political arena to buy government favors.
• 
If millennials and others want to wage war against government favors and crony capitalism, I'm with them 100%.
• 
But I'm all too afraid that anti-capitalists just want their share of the government loot.
• 
See related Bad to the Bone (Antonio Branco, 03/12/2019) cartoon from General picture album
      US in Moral Decline  (JWR 10/23/2019)
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"Secularists and their allies have marshaled all the forces of mass communication, popular culture, the entertainment industry, and academia in an unremitting assault on religion and traditional values."
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The attorney general is absolutely correct.  Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.  The left's attack on religion is just the tiny tip of the iceberg in our nation's moral decline
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Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another?
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And, if that person does not peaceably submit to such use, do you believe that there should be the initiation of force against him?
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Neither question is complex and can be answered by either a yes or no.
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For me the answer is no to both questions.
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I bet that nearly every college professor, politician or even minister could not give a simple yes or no response.
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A no answer, translated to public policy, would slash the federal budget by no less than two-thirds to three-quarters.
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After all most federal spending consist of taking the earnings of one American to give to another American in the form of farm subsidies, business bailouts, aid to higher education, welfare and food stamps.
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Keep in mind that Congress has no resources of its own.
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Plus there's no Santa Claus or tooth fairy that gives Congress resources.
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Thus, the only way that Congress can give one American a dollar is to first, through intimidation and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American.
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Such actions by the U.S.  Congress should offend any sense of moral decency.
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If you're a Christian or a Jew, you should be against the notion of one American living at the expense of some other American.
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When God gave Moses the Eighth Commandment — "Thou shalt not steal" — I am sure that He did not mean thou shalt not steal unless there is a majority vote in the U.S.  Congress.
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By the way, I do not take this position because I don't believe in helping our fellow man.
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I believe that helping those in need by reaching into one's own pocket to do is praiseworthy and laudable.
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But helping one's fellow man in need by reaching into somebody else's pockets to do so is worthy of condemnation.
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We must own up to the fact that laws and regulations alone cannot produce a civilized society.
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Morality is society's first line of defense against uncivilized behavior.
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Religious teachings, one way of inculcating morality, have been under siege in our country for well over a half a century.
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In the name of not being judgmental and the vision that one lifestyle or set of values is just as good as another, traditional moral absolutes have been abandoned as guiding principles.
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We no longer hold people accountable for their behavior and we accept excuses.
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In 1798, John Adams, a leading Founding Father and our second president said: "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
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I am all too afraid that a historian, writing a few hundred years from now, will note that the liberty American enjoyed was simply a historical curiosity.
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Then it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.
 Willink  (01/19/2019)  Go to:  List top | Previous section (09/03/2020) | List bottom 
      Ex-Navy SEAL Jocko Willink: 'Toxic masculinity' and the powerful dichotomy of being a man  (Fox 01/19/2019)
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Stoically controlling your emotions is necessary.
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Competitive spirit drives success.
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Dominance – and the mental and physical strength required to dominate – is far superior to a lack of strength, which results in being dominated by someone else.
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And aggression is a means to an end.  Without aggressive action, you will likely be on the receiving end, bowing to someone else's aggression.
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Instead of competition, in that imagined world everyone would win.
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Rather than looking to dominate, in this imaginary realm everyone would collaborate and live as equals.
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And finally, in this fictional domain, aggression would not stand and people would simply hug each other and get along.
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But that world doesn't exist.  Would it be nice if it did?  Sure.  But it doesn't.
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The world is a hard place.  Life is tough.
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Human beings are not always benevolent and kind.  You cannot count on charity, tolerance and compassion.
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If you show your emotions, you might get taken advantage of.
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If you make emotional decisions, they will likely lead you in the wrong direction.
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If you lack competitive spirit, you will probably lose on many fronts...
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Finally, if you are not aggressive, you will not be able to capitalize on opportunities.
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Good things in life don't just appear on your doorstep – you have to be aggressive and make them happen.
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Failure to do so will result in missed opportunities.  Instead of you being in control of your life, life will be in control of you.
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So: Be stoic, be competitive, be dominant and be aggressive.
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But it isn't that simple, and this is where things become difficult.
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It's important to not go too far with any of those traits.
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... a leader must strive for balance and a man must do the same.
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If you turn your emotions off completely and become overly stoic, you will not be able to connect with anyone.
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If you are too competitive, you can be driven to the point where you cannot enjoy anything.
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You will obsess over winning and drive yourself crazy.  A loss will crush you.
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The will to dominate must also be tempered.  If you focus on dominating in all situations, it will not work out well for you.
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If your goal is to dominate you won't listen to other people and will thereby miss out on other ideas and thoughts that might be superior to your own.
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Lastly, if you are hyper-aggressive you will burn yourself out.  You will take too many risks, burn too many bridges and use up all your ammunition.
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This list of dichotomies continues on endlessly: as a leader and as a man, you have to have balance.
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You must be courageous but not foolhardy, decisive but not dictatorial, open-minded but principled, disciplined but not rigid.
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So don't listen to the media telling you to suppress your "masculine traits." Don't listen to commercials conveying that acting as a "traditional man" is bad.
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But at the same time, don't let those traits, or any other, drift to the extremes.  ... Instead, balance the dichotomies that pull you toward one extreme or another.
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And pass that balance on to your sons – and your daughters as well.
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These so-called "masculine traits" aren't just for men.
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