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How bloodthirsty Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua used NYC migrant shelters to build a criminal empire: ‘Hiding in plain sight’
By Joe Marino and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon Published Sep. 23, 2024, 6:00 a.m. ET
In little more than a year, a once-obscure South American street gang has taken hold in the Big Apple, exploiting the migrant crisis to build a violent criminal enterprise from within the walls of city shelters.
Tren de Aragua, a Venezuela-bred crew of thugs, now terrorize Gotham with gun-toting, moped-riding hoods, sell illegal guns under the very noses of private shelter security guards, and run sleazy prostitution rings in neighborhoods suddenly besieged by the marauding migrants.
The gang, which also peddles a lethal fentanyl mix called Tussi or “pink cocaine,” has grown so fast that it has so far overwhelmed both average New Yorkers and the city’s elite police force.
“Not every migrant is here to commit crimes, not every migrant is a gang member,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny. “But these TDA guys hide very well in plain sight in the migrant community.
“We aren’t looking to grab the food delivery guy, but these guys go so far as to wear Uber Eats clothing, [use] the delivery bags while they’re out there committing their crimes,” the chief told The Post. “When we do arrest them, they are very eager to talk about the crime they have committed.
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“They are unwilling to talk about TDA itself.”
The gang, whose name means “train from Aragua” (a state in north-central Venezuela) in Spanish, now runs citywide theft and robbery crews that have terrorized neighborhoods.
In Jackson Heights, a stretch of Roosevelt Avenue dubbed the “Market of Sweethearts” has become a testament to TDA’s muscle and influence, with vendors peddling stolen items and an open-air red light district that has migrant hookers walking the streets day and night.
A 24-hour brothel raided by the NYPD last week may have ties to the gang, sources said.
Long list of victims
One current crime spree has seen nearly two dozen heists pulled off by migrants wielding guns or knives, with the crooks typically as young as 15 and no older than 19 years old, law enforcement sources said.
The crews move in groups of a half-dozen or more, and raid not only retailers but average New Yorkers: One victim was approached by a TDA gang and threatened with a knife, slugged and robbed in June.
In July, another victim was lounging near the Central Park playground when two thugs forcibly stole $80 and grabbed his phone, making him give up his password before running off.
And last month, a woman walking near Rockefeller Center was pickpocketed by another migrant.
The NYPD also recently shut down a major gang-linked robbery crew, with nearly two dozen migrant teens either busted or identified as suspects in 21 separate and often violent robberies.
Once in the US, Tren de Aragua members branched out all over the country, setting up shop in various states and cities, including New York and Chicago.
NY Post Composite
“They were like, ‘We need your phone, we need your stuff,’ because I had my bag with me, my phone, AirPods, Apple Watch,” one victim told The Post. “They wanted everything, but I couldn’t give anything because I had some money, I had some things in my bag.
“They started and punched me to the face,” he said. “I was stepping back, you know, trying to fight back, but I couldn’t do anything. And then five more guys came in, total, like, minimum, 10 of them.”
With little regard for law enforcement, TDA gangbangers are also not shy about targeting cops.
Gang member Bernardo Castro Mata, 19, was arrested in Queens in June and charged with shooting NYPD officers Richard Yarusso and Christian Abreu after they nabbed the gun-toting robbery suspect.
In February, suspected gang member Jesus Alejandro Rivas-Figueroa, just 15, was busted for allegedly firing at a tourist and a police officer in Times Square.
A month earlier, a cowardly gang of migrants with alleged links to the gang jumped two NYPD cops in the same area, and one of them, identified as Jhoan Boada, 22, was so brazen as to flash reporters the double bird as he walked out of court without bail.
‘Very bad people’
For the majority of asylum seekers, the gang is a stain on their community, and an example of the rampant violence and lawlessness that forced them to leave their homelands in the first place.
“I wouldn’t want the violence I grew up with to start here,” one Venezuelan migrant at Manhattan’s Roosevelt Hotel said Sunday. “I wouldn’t be here if I saw what I saw in Venezuela. I brought my kids here so they wouldn’t have the experiences with criminals like how it is over there.”
Another migrant simply called the gang “very bad people.”
Ground zero for TDA’s New York City operation is Randall’s Island, where a massive tent city was erected to help accommodate the wave of migrants from the US border.
Kenny called it “the main hub site.”
“You have the shelter itself and also have kind of like a tent city where people who are not registered to be in the shelter have taken up residence on their own,” the chief said.
He said one migrant dealer busted by the cops “didn’t want to go onto Randall’s because it’s too dangerous. There’s a lot of people there that don’t belong — it’s a congregation of people.”
But they’ve infiltrated other shelters: Sources said one TDA bigwig was booted from the massive Hall Street shelter in Brooklyn for breaking the rules, but returns every other day to collect the proceeds from drug sales at the facility and to smooth over any beefs between gang members.
International feud
The 4,000-bed shelter is also home to a rival Venezuelan gang called “El Carro De Lost Caragijos 666,” which has a beef with TDA that predates its arrival in the US.
Tren began to expand out of its home base in 2018, and popped up on the radar of the Venezuelan military when it resorted to assassination and bribes to win lucrative railroad contracts in the city of Maracay — and soon established chapters elsewhere in South America.
Members sneaked into the US among the millions of migrants who crossed the border, and set up shop across the nation, from cities like El Paso and Chicago to Florida beaches and Middle America.
Members are told to get distinctive tattoos that mark them as members, with the body art typically including anchors, clocks, crowns and phrases that included the word “guerrero” — which means warrior in Spanish but also pays homage to Hector “Nino” Guerrero, the leader of Tren de Aragua in Venezuela.
The gang tats also tend to feature the number “23” or NBA stars Michael Jordan and LeBron James, both of whom wear the number on their jerseys, while others include images of bulls, seemingly a shout-out to the Chicago Bulls basketball team, a city where TDA has flourished, sources said.
Just last week, an immigration enforcement source told The Post that the gang has also expanded into New Jersey, in part with new recruits plucked from the Big Apple.
Shelters are the focus
In New York, TDA recruiters worked city shelters to enlist new members, many of them strong-armed into joining their ranks under the threat of having their families targeted by the gang.
Any asylum seekers who refuse to join are labeled “Culebra” — an enemy of TDA.
With many job-seeking migrants taking food delivery jobs, TDA exploited the industry by putting armed robbers and even hit men on mopeds and scooters, often posing as deliverymen.
Guns and drugs were smuggled into shelters like Randall’s Island inside food deliver bags — which are rarely searched or put through metal detectors by security, sources told The Post.
Migrant hit teams also use the scooters to eliminate rivals or breakaway gangbangers, with a driver and gunman on the two-wheelers and gang members keeping tabs from nearby cars, the sources said.
The sources said TDA members are not shy about opening fire on cops, a standard practice back home in Venezuela, where shooting at police typically means you can get away.
When nabbed in New York, TDA gang members have spilled their guts about their crimes — but most refuse to fess up to their affiliation with the vicious and vindictive gang for fear of retribution.
Additional reporting by Valentina Jaramillo and Jennie Taer
https://nypost.com/2024/09/23/us-news/how-tren-de-aragua-used-nyc-migrant-shelters-to-build-a-criminal-empire-hiding-in-plain-sight/
BREAKING: The Democrat Mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, Ameer Ghalib, just officially ENDORSED President Trump
🚨BREAKING: The Democrat Mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, Ameer Ghalib, just officially ENDORSED President Trump pic.twitter.com/jggPfPuq5k
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 22, 2024
The UN General Assembly votes that the Jews must leave historical Jerusalem
By Andrea Widburg
BREAKING 🚨
— Open Source Intel (@Osint613) September 18, 2024
The UN General Assembly voted in favor of a resolution requiring Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria territories and impose sanctions on Israeli officials, along with a weapons embargo.
In favor: 124
Against: 14
Abstention: 43 pic.twitter.com/ecCta0m0ag
Trump: "My promise to Jewish Americans is this: With your vote, I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House."pic.twitter.com/LribF5cyo4
— Awesome Jew (@JewsAreTheGOAT) September 20, 2024
Kamala Harris comes courting the Mormons for votes -- and runs into Utah's Sen. Mike Lee
By Monica Showalter
Kamala Harris should probably stay away from religion, from her own perspective at least, given her legislative and prosecutorial acts persecuting peoples of faith.
But here she is, out courting the Mormons for votes in Arizona, a state with a huge Mormon, or Church of the Latter Day Saints (LDS) presence.
According to the Associated Press:
PHOENIX (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is stepping up her efforts to win over voters who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, enlisting prominent members of the faith to make the case in pivotal Arizona that Donald Trump does not align with the church’s values.
Her state campaign announced on Thursday an advisory committee to formalize the outreach to current and former members of the church, widely known as the Mormon church.
With nearly 450,000 church members in Arizona, about 6% of the state’s population, Latter-day Saints and former church members could prove critical in what will likely be an extremely close race.
She probably didn't count on running into Sen. Mike Lee, a conservative Republican, and LDS member from nearby Utah, who exposed her religious record on 'X.'
🧵 1. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote against any religious institution, including schools, universities, hospitals, and charities. The media doesn’t want you to know about the Do No Harm Act. They won’t ask her about it because they know the answer. https://t.co/6fQ0LtItRq
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) September 22, 2024
Ben Rhodes and 740 of his closest friends praise Kamala Harris as 'an effective leader able to advance America's security interests'
By Monica Showalter
The problem in Springfield is a lack of common sense
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
When anger should trump ‘joy’
By Eric Utter
“Why does Trump often seem angry?”
A question I have had posed to myself—or heard mention of on mainstream media ad nauseam. Take the last “debate” for instance. Conventional wisdom stated that Trump was angry and Kamala was full of “joy.” A bad “look” for the former president, a good look for Kamala, it was said.
Yes, why in the world does Trump sometimes seem perturbed, a bit miffed, or even irate? That is a puzzler, I guess, except for the fact that he has been ridiculed, lied about, libeled, and slandered by virtually every mainstream media outlet for years. And has had the same done to his family. Has been smeared with the vilest language and called “Hitler” too many times to count by the very same people who denounce him for being “mean-spirited” and who claim that his rhetoric incites violence. Then there is the fact that the Biden administration, Democrats, their media remoras—and assorted other asshats and evildoers—have tried to imprison him and get him taken off states’ ballots. And they raided his home and rifled through his wife’s lingerie.
Oh, and they’ve tried to kill him. Twice. Or at least aided and abetted the effort to do so. And covered up the evidence.
Moreover, they have weaponized virtually the entire U.S. government against him—and his supporters. In the interest of democracy! In fact, they have (tolerantly and inclusively!) called his supporters “deplorables,” “domestic terrorists,” “fascists,” and worse. And (tolerantly and inclusively!) locked many of them up, some in solitary confinement, some without charge.
Oh, and they are well on their way to destroying the nation he loves, ruining its economy, flooding it with illegal aliens, and besmirching its history—and its founding principles. All while insisting he is the threat to democracy.
No decent and sane person should trust anyone who isn’t more than a little pissed off by all of this, especially those who claim to be full of “joy.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/09/when_anger_should_trump_joy.html
Catty Democrats
By Noel S. Williams
Lots of ‘Coincidences’ in Trump Assassination Attempts
By Grant Baker
The U.S. Secret Service (USSS), established as a personal bodyguard for U.S. presidents, is playing an increasingly dangerous role in U.S. politics. Assassination attempts on the life of former president Donald Trump, by Ryan Routh on September 18 and Thomas Crooks at Butler, Pennsylvania, raise the disturbing possibility of designed convergences of security lapses that give assassins the opportunity to kill.
Trump’s protective detail was purposefully stretched thin
Details are still missing regarding Routh’s attempt, but he apparently camped out for approximately 12 hours waiting for Trump to appear at hole 6 of the Trump International Golf Club. Trump was headed that way, teeing off at hole 5 when a Secret Service agent saw a rifle sticking through some shrubbery and flushed Routh out with a few shots. There was no prior sweep done of the golf course.
Newly consolidated details on Trump’s Butler rally reveal a more sophisticated plot. Jill Biden spontaneously decided to speak in Pittsburgh on July 13 at a small event, announced only a week prior. Kamala Harris similarly joined a small event in Philadelphia the same day, confirmed as a speaker on July 10. These last-minute additions to “The Schedule” diverted most of Trump’s regular protective detail and breached longstanding White House and USSS security protocols.
Trump’s tall, male USSS regulars were replaced by substantially shorter agents, many of whom were women, borrowed from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and whose training consisted of only a two-hour webinar. One of these women cowered behind Trump as he was shot at by Crooks, positioned merely 130 yards away on the roof of building 6 (AGR 6) of the nearby AGR multi-building complex.
Butler security was a wreck. The usual canine teams were missing, improper people were accessing backstage areas, and DHS officials failed to properly patrol the podium area or the “secure perimeter” near the AGR complex, a mistake repeated at Trump’s golf course. Trump had been routinely denied security resources such as sniper teams and additional agents for the previous two years personally by USSS deputy director Ronald Rowe. Rowe became USSS acting director after Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation, becoming responsible for investigating the failed USSS security plan and response to the assassination attempt.
Rowe had personally made cuts to the Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), responsible for venue threat assessment. The CSD had not conducted an evaluation for the Butler rally or even been present the day of. Rowe personally retaliated against agents voicing security concerns leading up to Butler. One whistleblower stated: “If personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder.”
Local resources were similarly stretched. Police were consumed with traffic duty and told USSS they were unable even to station a patrol car in front of the AGR complex. Only three local snipers from the Butler and Beaver County Emergency Services Units (ESU) were assigned to the entire AGR complex, guarding from the second-story window in AGR 7, and one had to leave before the rally.
USSS was offered surveillance drones by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) but turned the offer down.
Prior to the Butler rally, USSS leadership made preparations to defensively brace for Butler rally criticism
Whistleblowers told Congress that USSS leadership informally told agents not to request extra security specifically for the Butler rally. This allowed USSS deputy director Rowe to testify to Congress that all security requests for Butler were approved, a dishonest statement that required preparations prior to the rally.
After years of denying USSS snipers to Trump, USSS decided to send two teams to cover barn rooftops behind Trump, assigning them at the last minute and giving them almost no preparation time. Missing was the customary third team, which would have prevented a fan of exposure. Additional problems with their deployment suggest they were security props, approved to ward off suspicion post-assassination.
USSS assets were deployed such that they could not stop shooters
Foiling the September 15 assassination attempt was Ryan Routh’s mistake of poking his rifle barrel out onto the fairway. USSS agents were deployed on the putting green instead of covering all points, allowing the plethora of trees and bushes to be used as cover. Had Routh waited patiently to fire behind cover, agents would have been unable to pinpoint his location, leaving Trump caught in a hail of bullets.
At Butler, the two USSS sniper teams, Hercules 1 and 2, were similarly deployed not to respond to Crooks. USSS posted them behind the protectee instead of overwatching concealed positions such as AGR. Positioned on barns directly behind Trump, the northern team (Hercules 2) was not able to see a specific section of AGR 6 obscured by a tree, where Crooks assembled his weapon and shot Trump.
Hercules 1 was farther away and, though not blocked by a tree, had limited vision of Crooks due to the gentle slope of the AGR 6 rooftop and six-inch ridge cap. Without radio communication, Hercules could not assess in a timely way the real-time location of Crooks despite the latter being flagged, photographed, identified, trailed, chased, and flushed out of cover by local officials.
In fact, real-time communications between local officials and USSS were designed to be impossible from the start. USSS snipers relied on cell phone texts for threat updates, despite experiencing poor cellular reception earlier.
These communications were passed through a pipeline with many single points of failure. Communication from local officers to USSS required a radio transmission to a trailer, a phone call from the trailer to local near USSS command, the local relaying verbally to USSS, which would text Hercules. It is unclear if the local representative was even in the USSS command post shortly before the shooting. PSP commissioner Paris testified that Butler was the first time he had seen such a pipeline.
Were USSS snipers told not to fire at Crooks prior to the shooting? Rowe testified that Hercules killed Crooks as soon as they first saw him, but his testimony was undercut by video released the next day showing Crooks standing upright and running west to east on AGR 7 and transferring to AGR 6 in full view of the crowd, Trump, and USSS snipers.
The most damning decision of all was USSS’s chosen “secure perimeter,” a chain link fence roughly 100 yards north of Trump, stopping just short of the AGR complex. Even nearby rally attendees remarked before the shooting how insecure the site was, yet this choice of perimeter, apparently made by committee, sailed through the multiple stages of checks and reviews by the DHS and USSS. This choice of perimeter allowed USSS to pass responsibility of securing the AGR complex to local Pennsylvania law enforcement. USSS had assigned local SWAT to redundant positions in barns behind Trump, leaving only two local units available to cover the entire AGR complex. These local snipers were not given real-time means to contact USSS, which had refused radios from locals enabling real-time communications.
Contrary to Rowe’s testimony, USSS never told local officials to guard the AGR rooftop.
Mistakes regarding perimeter security, overwatch, aerial surveillance, sweeps, and threat assessment were repeated at Trump’s golf course.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/09/lots_of_coincidences_in_trump_assassination_attempts.html
Dick Cheney Loves KamaLOL!!!
By J.B. Shurk
Harris and Biden Putting Illegal Aliens First and Americans Last
By Brian C. Joondeph
How Pure Democracy Fails
By Paul C. Binotto
Fiddling with the Constitution to limit existing state rights in favor of pure majority rule should be rejected.
Yet, there’s a movement afoot to do just that. It really isn’t all that new. An earlier example of this movement culminated in 1913 with the ratification of the 17th Amendment. The primary changes the 17th Amendment made to the Constitution was to provide for the direct popular election of U.S. senators, a function originally reserved only for the state’s legislatures. As a result, the ability of less-populated states to exercise their co-equal rights was eroded.
Presently, a push is gaining momentum to circumvent the Electoral College, in favor of a national popular vote. Changing how Senate seats are assigned to states is also being advocated. A “census-based” system like the one used for determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives, thereby, giving more populated states more seats and votes in the Senate.
Whatever form and approach, the common goal is to replace the democratic republic form of federal government with pure democracy.
The Supreme Court’s recent reversal of Roe has increased calls for eliminating the Senate filibuster. It’s true the filibuster is only a Senate rule, not law, so its elimination wouldn’t directly challenge, or violate the Constitution. However, it does indirectly affect the co-equality of states guaranteed by the Constitution.
Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at the Catholic-affiliated Duquesne University, gives what he considers four good reasons in his recent opinion piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
According to Ledewitz, supporters of ending the Senate filibuster believe that the potential benefits from the filibuster’s demise, both for the Senate and for American democracy, outweigh any potential negative consequences.
Proponents view one probable consequence of ending the filibuster to also be a welcomed benefit. Ledewitz enthusiastically anticipates and endorses that it will permit voters to “[give] control of the government to one party, that party could enact anything that the Constitution permits.”
He glibly dismisses this outcome as, “So what? We have a name for that situation. It’s called democracy… Sounds like a good system. We should try it.” Presumably because voters can always vote out the one party out. This naively ignores the reality of how difficult it is to remove one-party rule once in power.
Most Americans would agree that one-party rule does not “sound(s) like” Democracy. Because it is, in fact, tyranny, only going by the name of democracy. And it’s not at all what the Constitution’s framers envisioned for a democratic republic form of government.
A good argument can be made that one reason for the filibuster rule in the Senate is to give a tool to senators in the minority for asserting or forcing senators in the majority to recognize their state’s co-equal rights. The left-leaning non-profit Brennan Center for Justice acknowledges, “that a group of senators representing a small minority of the country can use the filibuster to prevent the passage of bills with broad public support.” Predictably, they view this practice unfavorably. But, in fact, the practice is vital for ensuring equal footing among all states in the union on the Senate floor.
Without the filibuster, states whose senators are not in the majority risk losing their co-equal footing with the states in the majority. They will become more prone to having their Senate voices and rights diminished, ignored, or abused.
Supporters of pure democracy would do well to first reflect on the Framer’s own reasoning for rejecting it. The Framers chose their words carefully and precisely. They did so because they knew well that their words would one day be used against them, or rather, more detrimentally, against the Constitution which they were setting down as the new law of the land.
It's important to note that the Framers deliberately chose to open the Constitution with “We the People.” This introduction was not phrased this way only to show whose authority and behalf they were given the power to represent and speak. But also, whose rights and interests they were beholden to defend.
If they intended only to speak for the majority of people, as in a pure democracy, they would have rightly and precisely written, “We the Majority of the People...” They did not, because they intended to represent equally all the people, the people both of the majority, and of the minority. They intended to create what Abraham Lincoln would later immortalize at Gettysburg, a national “government of the people, by the people, for the people” -- all the people.
The Framers didn’t reject pure democracy because they instead preferred minority rule, but because they had a keen understanding and distrust of human nature. More so, of the tyrannical tendencies of human nature concentrated anonymously as “The Majority.” One party ruling over a minority is the same as an absolute monarch, as King George. They absolutely did not want or intend this.
That same precision was used in the careful choice the words when naming the new country. The name was to describe its true character, The United States of America. “States,” by design, hold a prominent and central position in the name.
Subsequent nations would choose names familiar to all as much for what they are, as for what they are not, such as, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), aka North Korea. These nations, of course, are neither (purely or remotely) democratic nor protective of individual rights. The American democratic republic, the United States of America (USA), is both!
Had the Framers intended a pure democracy, pure majority rule, they would have enshrined it in the nation’s name. They would have named it some variation to those chosen by China and North Korea. And if they had, time would have proved pure democracy to be no less tyrannical in practice than the actual systems of these two other countries with free-sounding names.
“States” hold a prominent and central position in the naming of the United States of America by design because the Framers wanted to clearly communicate that the new nation was to be a union of individual states, peopled by individuals with common but also distinct interests.
By experience, from when the states were joined together only by a loose confederacy, they knew a republican form of government was preferable to a confederacy. They could also perceive how one day, what’s good for a “California” and a “New York” may not be good for a “Montana” and an “Ohio.” Thus, they also knew that a democratic republic form of government was preferable to either a pure republic or a pure democracy.
pure democracy may sound good on paper and may seem a no-brainer to modern American mind. But for good reason, it does not appear anywhere on the paper of the U.S. Constitution. The Framers understood well that pure democracy would ultimately only lead to poor democracy. Pure democracy is poor democracy because it does not adequately protect the rights and unique interests of all the people from the dangers of a tyrannical majority. If pure democracy did not sound good to the Framers, most assuredly, “one party rule” did not sound to them anything at all like democracy. We definitely should not try it.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/09/how_pure_democracy_fails.html
Vermont Town Requires Building Permit for Yard Signs
Clever dairy farmers figure out how to fight city hall.
by John Klar | Sep 23, 2024
A Vermont dairy family has been issued a notice by their town demanding that they obtain a building permit because they have more than two political yard signs (that support GOP candidates) displayed on their property. Rather than pay the $25 fee (plus 3% for credit cards) to comply, young newlyweds Sara and Ryan Bullis pulled the small signs from the ground and attached them to the side of a truck trailer stacked with hay bales.
Yard Signs of the Times
The Bullis family has milked cows in scenic Grand Isle, VT, for four generations. Their business name captures the idyllic beauty of their home: Savage View Farm. A complaint posted on an online community bulletin board (allegedly by a seasonal summer resident) about yard signs appears to have sparked the administrative response from the town of North Hero. The neighbors of Bullis farm display numerous Democratic candidate signs: It is unclear whether they obtained the requisite “building permit” to stick the small political campaign signs in the ground.
Vermont famously banned billboards in 1968. State law restricts political campaign signs like those on the Bullis farm and their neighbours’ from being too close to the road (to ensure safety and view) and restricts them to election season. Vermont’s state laws are narrowly tailored and do not extend into what Vermonters can display on their barns, their living room walls, or land not within the regulated setback. North Hero’s building permit requirement stretches a more intrusive hand than the state, and farmers like the Bullis family will not be bullied.
The community post condemning yard signs also mirrored what appears to be widespread societal ignorance of fundamental free speech guarantees. The post targeted yard signs for a list of grievances: They are ineffective, environmentally harmful, could incur legal fines (at least in North Hero), create “visual clutter,” and – woe to Vermont voters – pose a “potential for divisiveness”:
“Displaying political yard signs can sometimes lead to tension or conflict between neighbors with differing political views. This can contribute to a polarizing atmosphere within communities.”
Free Speech Prevails
Such sentiments display a desire – or an actual call – for government (in this case, a small town whose zoning administrator was hired in April) to stifle citizens’ most basic liberty so that they won’t be exposed to differences of political preference during an election year when the opinions of candidates and voters are supposed to be paramount. Perhaps when citizens broach their political concerns to legislators (such as about a property tax increase of 25% or more in many Vermont towns in 2024), it creates a “polarizing atmosphere.”
There is even greater irony in the idea of using aesthetics to negate free speech: to exploit Green Mountain scenic views as justification for silencing locals’ political views. How dare these “deplorable” farmers botch the tourist view for which their skyrocketing taxes have paid? Vermont’s 1968 billboard legislation exempts signs smaller than 150 square feet, and state officials take no position on its potential application to mobile signage such as those employed by Savage View Farm to continue expressing the family’s political views directly to their neighbors.
Vermont’s aesthetic ironies don’t stop here, though. The state is all in for solar panel arrays, which have poisoned the view and usurped much fertile farmland without any political messaging other than the visible hypocrisy. Solar panels pollute horribly, not just as eyesores but in their manufacturing and disposal – an exponentially greater threat than yard signs in coal and energy consumption and ecotoxin generation. Those chemical pollutants may be invisible to tourists driving EVs (which generate 30-50% more toxic rubber dust than gas-powered cars, accounting for 78% of ocean microplastic pollution), but the solar panels are plain to see.
Foreign corporations collect state and federal subsidies to plant ugly rows of toxic solar panels in the Green Mountains, while summer residents use local ordinances to silence the political views of those who might object. The US Constitution was created to prevent exactly this type of bullying, and it will remain a bulwark against delusional ideologues who object to constructive criticism, scientific facts, or their neighbors’ audacity to publicly express their opinions.
An Unheroic Vermont Town
The town of North Hero will perhaps have a difficult legal row to hoe if it proceeds against rebellious newlywed farmers Sara and Ryan Bullis. Constitutionally, it is hard to see how any town can justify push-in yard sign regulation under a building code – what’s next, the dogcatcher rounding up horses and cows for flatulence? Property assessors inspecting basements for verboten political signage? Road crews scraping political stickers off car bumpers? This ordinance is obvious government overreach, running afoul of established constitutional law.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas summed up the legal view of the importance of political speech practiced by these dairy farmers in Reed v Town of Gilbert, Arizona:
“Innocent motives do not eliminate the danger of censorship presented by a facially content-based statute, as future government officials may one day wield such statutes to suppress disfavored speech. That is why the First Amendment expressly targets the operation of the laws — i.e., the “abridg[ement] of speech”—rather than merely the motives of those who enacted them.”
Some residents are not convinced this Vermont town’s motives were innocent. The town clerk’s husband is running for State Senate as a Democrat against some of the Republicans whose signs graced the Bullis farm. North Hero’s zoning administrator has stated that only one “friendly letter” has been issued, and that the town clerk was not involved in the decision, which was “not an official notice of violation,” merely a request “to come into compliance with the town’s regulations by obtaining a permit.”
As the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled, it is not the burden of citizens to prove bad intent: The dangers of censorship must be prevented for those who one day might. Vermonters must be allowed to communicate freely with their community.
https://www.libertynation.com/vermont-town-requires-building-permit-for-yard-signs/
It’s Time for the Annual Continuing Resolution Congressional Theater
The funding drama comes each year – often more than once!
by Dave Patterson | Sep 23, 2024
It’s that time again – when all the US legislators get together and fail to do their jobs. The fiscal year will close on September 30, and Congress still hasn’t passed a government funding bill. But that’s nothing new; this complete failure to legislate is an annual occurrence. In its job description, funding the government is perhaps the most important recurring constitutional responsibility Congress has. Instead, we routinely meet the end of the fiscal year with a continuing resolution, which keeps the government up and running – sort of – until either full-year funding bills are passed or another continuing resolution resets the timer yet again.
Passing appropriations bills that authorize federal agencies to draw money from the US Treasury to pay bills before the end of the fiscal year is crucial to the smooth running of the federal government. However, that has happened only four times in the last 48 years.
Of Course There Will Be a Continuing Resolution
If there is one failure of Congress that is the most harmful to national security, it is the failure to pass a defense budget on time. Legislators pat themselves on the back despite not doing the job they are elected to do. When they can’t make the required date ending the fiscal year to pass appropriations bills, they pass a continuing resolution (CR) or “stop-gap” spending measure. That’s the spending legislation that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) couldn’t get passed in the House on Sept. 18.
“On Wednesday, the House failed to pass the continuing resolution spending bill, with the SAVE [Safeguard American Voter Eligibility] Act attached, that would have funded the federal government beyond the end of the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 and through March,” The Daily Signal reported. This language ensures that only citizens vote in federal elections. It seems like a law everyone could get behind. Not so, since overwhelmingly Democrats are against it. Every year some speed bump is raised in the road toward funding the government. What is unusual this year is that most Republicans wanted the SAVE Act included, but a handful – 14 to be exact – voted either against it or “present.”
However, as the time grows short to the end of the fiscal year and the shutting down of at least part of the government, the frenzy to get a CR passed increases in magnitude. No one on Capitol Hill wants to be blamed for shutting down the government, furloughing the hordes of government employees, and jeopardizing the ability of those working in critical national security positions to protect American citizens. Consequently, a continuing resolution will be passed; it won’t have the SAVE Act attached, however. It will not be what everyone wants, but it will prevent a government shutdown. Closing down the federal government has been rare, happening only five times since 1995.
A shutdown isn’t the only consequence of Congress failing to do its job. The CRs carry extremely restrictive conditions for federal agencies. When the government is operating under a CR, there can be no new program starts. This hurts the Department of Defense since structured and disciplined programs require predictable funding. CRs insert uncertainty that drives up costs and decimates schedules.
Additionally, operating under a continuing resolution, a federal agency cannot spend more in the new fiscal year than it did in the previous one. Any new budget initiatives dependent on funding increases must be put on hold until an annual appropriations bill is passed. A full-year CR means no new programs and stagnant spending at last year’s funding topline.
Believe it or not, there was a time when funding bills passed without much fanfare. Congress passed the first spending bill, the Appropriations Act (HR-21), on September 29, 1789. Note the date. The nascent legislative body passed a spending bill on time before they knew what “on time” meant or even realized there was a fiscal year, but it believed that passing funding legislation in a timely fashion was a good thing. Unfortunately, such adherence to sound financial stewardship has been in short supply since then and is absent most of the time.
Keeping with the low public profile of the congressional budget process historically, “Continuing resolutions – when first passed in 1876 and up to 1981 – were noncontroversial interim spending measures designed to keep the government afloat until the enactment of the regular appropriations,” according to a William and Mary Law School Scholarship Repository Faculty Publication. After 1981 CRs have often become political cudgels to drive spending or other legislation that would otherwise have met resistance. CRs provide the vehicle for attaching substantive legislation since the stop-gap spending measures are not subject to House rules, which do not allow attachments of significant legislation to appropriations bills.
Knowing the House rules, a cynic might get the idea that our congressional leaders are incentivized not to do their jobs on time so as to have the chance to throw all manner of non-appropriations bills into a CR or billions of non-essential spending into the follow-on omnibus spending bills – the latter being the more popular. It is more difficult to get legislators’ pet constituency projects into individual authorization and appropriations bills during the regular budget process before the fiscal year’s end. An omnibus appropriations bill is generally the legislation ending a CR, which gathers together all the agency appropriations bills into one.
Omnibus Spending Bill Allows for Lots of Pork
Sticking in all manner of legislation that did not make it into the base legislation is more appealing. “The omnibus spending bill is loaded with thousands of earmarks, which are line-item funding for specific pet projects directed by members of Congress. Many of these earmarks would advance the Left’s extreme agenda and fund its institutions using the taxpayer’s money,” The Heritage Foundation explained in a commentary titled, “12 Woke Earmarks in Omnibus Spending Bill.”
Though there is much hoopla about the importance of fiscal responsibility and getting the government funded, it really boils down to theater. Congressional representatives don’t simply fail to do their jobs; many don’t want to do the jobs for which the taxpayer sent them to Washington, DC. The CR is the cover so that representative can return to their constituencies and crow about how they passed a continuing resolution saving the government from shutting down. Had they done what they were paid to do on time, members of Congress could go back home to their states and districts and brag about how they did their jobs – enabling the government to carry on efficiently. Wouldn’t that be better?
https://www.libertynation.com/its-time-for-the-annual-continuing-resolution-congressional-theater/
As Voter Fears Rise, Trump Landslide Predictions Start to Emerge
The parallels to a memorable election decades ago are unmistakable.
by Tim Donner | Sep 23, 2024 |
The defining narrative of the 2024 presidential election right now is that the race is a toss-up, and that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have an almost equal chance of winning. It’s not just the polls that make Harris appear to be on solid footing. Perhaps in response to the voluminous number of surveys showing a neck-and-neck race, and believing Trump is too volatile to be elected again, the betting markets – the best single indicator of who people believe will win – now favor Harris by seven points. So Kamala is in a strong position to become the 47th president, right?
Not so fast. Over the last few days, at least three respected political analysts have gone out on a limb by hinting at or outright predicting not just a win for Trump, but a landslide. Are they delusional – and, if not, what exactly leads them to this startling conclusion? Liberty Nation News was bold enough to consider such an outcome many months ago, albeit in a matchup between Trump and Biden, not Harris, but even though the VP appears to be more popular with voters than Biden, the fundamentals of the race have not changed as much as many think.
In his piece for The Hill, entitled: “The ‘scared majority’ could deliver a landslide victory for Trump,” Douglas Mackinnon, a Reagan/Bush-era political consultant and no fan of Trump, cites the mounting fears of voters about what they have experienced since 2020. Alluding to the downward spiral of life in America, he observes that the alarming number of Americans living from paycheck to paycheck are increasingly driven by abject fear. Animated by Harris’s celebrity-drenched appearance with Oprah Winfrey, in which she returned to her pre-debate, cringeworthy words salads, Mackinnon pulls no punches:
“While the entrenched elites from politics, academia … Hollywood and the media who live in bubbles of luxury and protection won’t notice, those Americans have never been more scared in their lives. Not only about their future, but about their present … Those I speak with on a regular basis tell me they have never been so frightened about circumstances out of their control … I predict that there is a reckoning coming in November from those tens of millions of scared voters. And I suspect that reckoning is going to produce a landslide victory for Trump.”
Joining the Trump Landslide Bandwagon
Trump skeptic Douglas Mackinnon is not the only commentator daring enough to predict a Trump landslide. Longtime conservative columnist Roger Kimball, in a piece for Trump-friendly American Greatness entitled “Levitation 101,” cuts to the chase: “Victory for the Democrats will depend on the perpetuation of the illusion that Kamala Harris is in any way a plausible candidate for the presidency of the United States.”
Citing Harris’ “seeping, leaking emission of empty saccharine vocables,” he goes on to argue that “[t]he more she vocalizes (I almost said ‘talks’), the more damage she does to her candidacy. Her embarrassing performance on a ninety-minute livestream exchange with Oprah Winfrey in Detroit a few days ago underscored the problem … Even Winfrey, a prominent anti-Trump Harris supporter, seemed taken aback by her guest’s incoherent flights of flaccid, cringe-making glossolalia.”
Then comes Kimball’s conclusion: “Harris’s campaign will fall to earth before November 5 and – though this is not what the polls currently tell us – Trump will win in something approaching a landslide.”
Fulfilling the ol’ rule of three, there is also a piece just released by popular Substack author Sasha Stone, entitled: “Kamala Harris’ Pitch to Undecided Voters: ‘Just Be,’” and subtitled: “The Queen of Gobbledegook just dropped a doozy.” Stone brings dark humor and sarcasm to the ridiculous Kamala-Oprah event and its utter tone-deafness: “I’m sure an event with Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts was a great way to win over undecided Voters. They’re probably out there thinking, I can’t put food on the table, and I can’t send my kid to school without worrying about them coming home and asking for puberty blockers, and what is going on in Springfield? Are we on the brink of World War III? Ah, but the celebrities will help. They will guide me! Yes! I’ll vote for Harris!”
While hinting at, though not directly predicting, a big Trump victory, Stone adds: “Harris sounded like that person who drank too much wine or maybe smoked a joint and is spouting a platitude.” She is not alone in that observation.
An Historical Connection?
Americans over the age of 50 will remember the 1980 election. A president widely viewed as a failure, Jimmy Carter, was running neck-and-neck with challenger Ronald Reagan as October turned to November. And, of course, this was well before the days of conservative talk radio, Fox News, the internet, and social media. The platforms that favored Reagan were few and far between, while big media, far more dominant then than now, were all behind Carter, while depicting Reagan as a dangerous warmonger and right-wing reactionary. It seemed that, despite his many shortcomings – economic stagnation, inflation, astronomical interest rates, consistent foreign policy failures – Carter might well hold on and win a second term.
But something dramatic happened in the last week of the campaign, driven by that famous question posed by Reagan in his single debate with Carter: Are you better off than you were four years ago? It seemed to be a question voters would ask themselves anyway, but it served to frame the election in the simplest terms for voters of all stripes. Of course, by that time, Ronald Reagan had long since introduced himself to the nation, serving two successful terms as governor of California, and nearly unseating President Gerald Ford in a tightly contested GOP primary race four years earlier.
What does the 1980 election have to do with 2024, you might rightly ask? Well, in that final week of the campaign, voters evidently asked themselves the mirror-image of Reagan’s famous question: Do we really want four more years of this? The answer was a resounding no. The dam burst on Carter in the final days of the race, and Reagan accomplished the unthinkable, a landslide of epic proportions, the worst defeat for an incumbent since the Great Depression. Reagan won 44 states, Jimmy Carter a mere six. Voters were not sure what they might get with Reagan, but they sure knew they didn’t want another four years of the misery they experienced under Carter.
So, when push comes to shove, when people enter the privacy of the voting booth or complete their mail-in ballots, alone with their conscience and contemplating the fear-inducing reality of their lives today, will a majority actually pull the lever for Harris? If so, she will defy the full sweep of American political history.
https://www.libertynation.com/as-voter-fears-rise-trump-landslide-predictions-start-to-emerge/
Wheezing Past the Graveyard
"The Democrats are self-immolating on the altar of their own tenuous relationship with common decency." — Tom Luongo
James Howard Kunstler
Sep 23, 2024
Today’s blog, Monday Sept 23
What could go wrong? Probably more than you might imagine. We have just turned the corner into autumn. Now, things get serious, even gravely dark. America has never been so into dancing skeletons and morbidity. The small-town yards are filling up with inflatable signifiers of hell and death. Don’t you wonder what all this signifies besides good old family fun? The zeitgeist maybe having a little sport with us, you think?
We are chiefly preoccupied with our badly dysfunctional self-governance, of course, and the method for periodically revising it, which we call an election. Nobody has confidence in the process, which has acquired so many layers of absurd, needless complexity for the sole purpose of perverting the outcome that every lawyer in the land will have a hefty guaranteed annual income in the probably futile effort to sort it out come November 6. There is your hell-scape, with overtones of death on a pale horse. . . and all. Chaos. . . riots. . . anarchy. . . civil war.
The threat of World War Three may have abated for the moment, but in a peculiar and disconcerting way, viz. a coup in the executive branch. The gadfly Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, long ago chief-of-staff to Sec’y of State Colin Powell, reports that the Pentagon has cancelled “Joe Biden,” that is, taken him out of the decision-loop for anything. Well, you ask yourself, how is it possible he had even remained remotely close to any decision-loop this long, in any case, given the problem of his obviously broken brain? But now, it is unofficially official: just eat your mint-chocolate ice-cream and shut up, and let Dr. Jill run those “cabinet meeting” photo ops.
According to Col. Wilkerson, Sec’y of Defense Lloyd Austin told the “president” to his face that there will be no flinging of US-supplied long-range missiles from Ukraine “deep into Russia,” as the neocon-infested White House been chattering about endlessly. Wiser heads deep in the DOD HQ have decided the matter. Lump it, if you must, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan. The Russians’ “red-line” on such a caper is so wide you can see it from the International Space Station — that is, if you’re an astronaut marooned up there due to combined NASA/Boeing incompetence. . . but that’s another story.
Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer was all revved up for the missile operation and flew to Washington for a one-to-one meet-up with “JB” to get the go-ahead. The Brits are avid for another World War. The last two went so well for them that they kissed their vast empire goodbye. Now they want to kiss goodbye their sceptered isle itself, which has almost no economy left and is overrun by cultural hostiles who are not into Shakespeare. The Brits’ floundering government is a posse of monomaniacs fixated on defeating Russia which, at this point in history, is like a dormouse (Glis glis) facing down a brown bear (Ursus arctos).
“Joe Biden,” reportedly “furious” at losing his executive power, was constrained to tell Mr. Starmer that the missile strike op was off, which left the UK PM miffed that he had crossed the ocean for no reason. Who knows, the Brits are so nuts these days that perhaps they’ll try to pull it off on their own. Mr. Zelensky, the no-longer-elected leader of Ukraine was begging them to try it because Ukraine has nothing left. NATO as a whole really has nothing left, either. Not much of a combined military, scant munitions left in the cupboard, and no will to wage war among the depressed citizens of its member nations.
There is nothing left except to come to terms on a settlement that will leave Ukraine not a member of NATO. The entire affair has been a humiliation for NATO and America, especially for the “Joe Biden” management team (whatever it actually consists of these days). The longer they refuse to engage in talks, the less of Ukraine will be left as a sovereign entity — having proven to the world that its sovereignty rests solely on its capacity to be used as a catspaw by the American neocon / intel blob. You’re reminded that for seventy years prior to 2014, Ukraine was not a problem for anyone until we made it a problem on-purpose — our purpose being idiotic and malicious — and Ukraine could, in theory, revert to not being a problem for anyone again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?
The neocon / intel blob’s other catspaw (domestic version), candidate Kamala Harris, is promising all kinds of good things “when [she] is in-office.” For some reason, nobody on The New York Times’s enormous staff of Ivy League germinated journalist-geniuses has informed Ms. Harris that she is actually in-office now, and has been since 1/20/2021. Why no good things for us plebes all these many months? No rainbows, unicorns, tax cuts, or ten-pound blocks of government cheese? Nothing but a disintegrating dollar, floods of savage mutts crossing the border and landing everywhere from Springfield, Ohio, to Nantucket, and endless raging bullshit about fighting “misinformation” — i.e., any idea that contradicts the Democratic Party’s agenda for assisted national suicide.
Ms. Harris’s gaslight-powered campaign has lost its loft in recent days, its most newsworthy event being last week’s cuddle hour with America’s official Care-Bear, Oprah. . . because, you see, there is nothing left except to pander to the emotional void induced by Woke-ism in the desperately needy minds of X-million voters of the birthing-person persuasion — especially among those unhappy souls who never got around to the birthing. Ms. Harris’s loathsome accessory, Tim Walz, has performed so discordantly that the campaign had to hang him in a closet somewhere, along with all his assorted skeletons, and lock the door. As ever, October surprises await: monsters, demons, ghouls, shrieking ghosts, the walking dead, and all the paid-up minions of the teachers’ union.
https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/wheezing-past-the-graveyard?publication_id=2076970&post_id=149292395&isFreemail=true&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true
GM DD-
Welcome back.
Some Republicans have figured it out and bailed
As have numerous former democrats that don't want communists to take over the country.
...................al
Thanks to Joe and his administration!
Chicago Gangs Clash with Venezuelan Tren de Aragua Members
https://truthpress.com/news/chicago-gangs-clash-with-venezuelan-tren-de-aragua-members/?utm_source=truthpress.beehiiv.com&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=secret-service-agent-shoots-himself&_bhlid=e861a95c42161f96028b36c68a4cf3d3b3a38756
Venezuelan migrants moving into Chicago’s South Side have caught the attention of the city’s gangs, with some fearing an impending turf war between local gangs and their Venezuelan counterparts.
“When the black gangs here get fed up with the illegalities and criminal activities of these migrants or non-citizens, the city of Chicago is going to go up in flames and there will be nothing the National Guard or the government can do about it when the bloodshed hits the streets. It’ll be blacks against migrants,” Tyrone Muhammad, a former Chicago gangster who did 20 years in prison and now runs a violence prevention program, said in a report for the New York Post.
The comments come as Chicago has seen an influx of Venezuelan migrants, according to the report, including members of the notorious Tren de Aragua gang.
With the arrival has come a rise in crime, locals told the New York Post, while some Venezuelan gangsters have started to encroach on the territory of the city’s local gangs.
“There’s been a lot going on with (the migrant gangs) that nobody’s even hearing about,” Zacc Massie, a local Chicago gang member, told the New York Post.
“They be moving in our own territory and robbing people but they don’t get arrested like we do. I actually talked to one on the translator app. He told me all the things he got going on; how they helped him get a car, an apartment, (EBT) card, all this stuff. They giving them thousands, we get maybe $400 a month. And they don’t even have Social Security numbers!”
Sources from local Chicago gangs told the New York Post that members of the Venezuelan gang are often heavily armed and have begun spilling into areas traditionally controlled by local gangs.
Local gang member Corey Rogers told the New York Post that Venezuelan gangsters will often be seen “showing the flag,” a slang term for brandishing their firearms. He also showed the outlet text threads that featured local gang members threatening turf wars with the newcomer gangsters.
“What bothers me is that the Venezuelans are united,” Rogers said. “The black gangs are too divided and they take each other down.”
Others shared concerns about the possibility of increased violence, telling the New York Post that things had actually improved in the city before the influx of migrants.
“It’s still violent down here but it’s calmed down a lot,” one gang member told the outlet. “Back in the day we’d get shot if we went over there. It’s calmed down a lot. The last thing we need are the Venezuelans.”
Who exactly is running the country? Certainly appears to be Jill Biden — and not Joe
By Miranda Devine Published Sep. 22, 2024, 10:15 p.m. ET
It’s easy to forget because he’s usually invisible but we still have Joe Biden as president for four months.
That’s a scary prospect considering his obvious cognitive decline. He’s spent almost half his presidency goofing off and being shielded from scrutiny but the situation is rapidly getting worse.
The fate of the free world should not be left in the hands of a man who can’t remember where he is or what he’s meant to be doing at any given moment.
On Saturday, for instance, he made the prime ministers of India, Japan and Australia shlep to Wilmington, Del., for the annual meeting of the Quad, a partnership designed to keep an increasingly aggressive China in check.
In public remarks livestreamed by the White House the president forgot that he was supposed to introduce Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“Who am I introducing next?” Biden asked the crowd.
After an awkward silence, he started shouting “Who’s next?” before Modi raced on stage all smiles and saved the day.
Dr. Jill in charge
The whole thing was an embarrassment. Starting with the fact that the Quad leaders were not being hosted with dignity at the White House and instead were housed at the rundown Hotel DuPont in Biden’s podunk hometown and had to hold their summit at Archmere Academy, the posh Catholic prep school Biden attended while his younger brothers had to content themselves with the local public school.
At least the Quad leaders got individual tours of Joe’s palatial estate, which has been off limits to the media due to fascinating speculation about how the self-described “poorest man in Congress” could afford such luxury, a Georgian pile Joe had built by master craftsmen from Bryn Mawr on a lake in the ritziest neighborhood in Delaware, an upgrade from his former Du Pont mansion.
In photographs dribbled out by the Australian delegation, we got a glimpse of the grandeur of the custom-built wood paneled library where Joe secreted classified documents dating back to his Senate days, for which he never was held accountable because special counsel Robert Hur thought he was too old and forgetful for a jury to convict.
But why was this important meeting being held in Wilmington at all? The White House patched up a story about Biden wanting to show off his hometown but he’s never had the urge before and, quite honestly, there’s not much to show off.
More likely it was that the White House was already booked out for the self-aggrandizement of the relentlessly ambitious first lady.
On Friday, Jill Biden was hosting a glitzy party for the cast of the West Wing.
Saturday night was a pet project for the “life-long educator” on the South Lawn: hosting the “first-ever Back-to-School Night at the White House to celebrate the start of the new school year with educators, school professionals, students, and families,” as the press office put it.
No room at the White House for the leaders of 2 billion people to discuss how to combat Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. So off they trooped to Wilmington.
What a joke.
But not as much of a joke as what happened Friday, at Joe’s first Cabinet meeting in 11 months. He brought in Jill to sit at the head of the table as if she were running the show. She delivered a little speech on one of her pet topics while Joe stared vacantly into space and Cabinet members had to politely clap.
Harris to blame
Whether it’s Jill or someone else running the country, the bottom line is that we don’t have a functional president.
This is a constitutional crisis.
Kamala Harris is most to blame because she has the constitutional duty as vice president to ensure the president’s brain is not AWOL.
She also knows more about Biden’s cognitive health than anyone, apart from Jill and Hunter Biden.
She has lunch with him regularly and often has boasted of being the “last person in the room” when decisions are made.
But she has been lying through her teeth to the American people about Biden’s health — for instance, calling him “bold and vibrant” in February when concerns were raised.
“Our president is in good shape, in good health, and is ready to lead in our second term,” she said.
A few weeks later she said: “Not only is he absolutely authoritative in rooms around the globe, but in the Oval Office.”
Even after Biden’s disastrous July debate, she was still at it, like Baghdad Bob, insisting Biden might have had a “slow start,” but he triumphed with “a strong finish.” Sure.
She lied to make sure Joe got through the Democratic primaries with all other challengers hobbled, so that only she was left.
All she had to do was run out the clock so she could ascend to the throne without having to win actual votes or make an effort.
She would slide through with fake smiles and vacuous phrases and be anointed president as has happened in every role she has ever held.
Biden being forced out of re-election was not her preferred option but the complicit media and the old Obama hands managing her are ensuring she escapes the traditional scrutiny we expect for presidential candidates.
Harris’ decision to skip the Archdiocese of New York’s Al Smith charity dinner is telling. It will be the first time in 40 years a presidential candidate has not attended the roast and shows how incapable she is of the impromptu and humorous appearances that Donald Trump excels at.
Duty-bound
She can hide from the Al Smith dinner, but she can’t hide from her constitutional duty.
It is her duty to ensure that Biden is fit for office.
If he is not, then she and a majority of the Cabinet are bound to invoke the 25th Amendment, at which point Harris becomes “acting president.”
Law professor Jonathan Turley says that because Biden is still functioning in a fashion, and not comatose, it is not a straightforward decision.
But scheming Nancy Pelosi has made it easier to address this conundrum because in October 2020 she introduced a bill to revise the 25th and allow Congress to appoint an independent body to assess the president’s physical and mental fitness.
That’s the least the American people deserve. An honest report of Biden’s condition instead of this increasingly farcical presidential kabuki theater.
Even the White House press corps was complaining last week that all they get are “photo ops.”
It is up to Harris to ensure we have a president capable of doing the world’s most important job. Anything that goes wrong in the next four months is her fault.
https://nypost.com/2024/09/22/opinion/who-exactly-is-running-the-country-certainly-appears-to-be-jill-biden-and-not-joe/
*LIVE* ~ President Donald J. Trump >
45th President of the United States of America,
will hold a rally in >
Indiana, Pennsylvania
on Monday, September 23, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. EDT.
Watch LIVE on RSBN starting at 12 p.m. ET.
The start time is approximate and subject to change.
https://www.rsbnetwork.com/video/live-president-trump-holds-a-rally-in-indiana-pennsylvania-9-23-24/
Republican After Republican Sounds Off On 'Border Czar' Kamala Harris
Forbes Breaking News
3.58M subscribers
President Trump announces plan to END all Sanctuary Cities in North Carolina, across the United States pic.twitter.com/Zo9qrgRnW3
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) September 21, 2024
War to break out in Chicago thanks to Joe Biden?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13880573/Venezuelan-super-gang-Tren-Aragua-finally-finds-challenger-America-ex-warns-one-city-flames.html
"JUDGE JOE BROWN DROPS BOMBSHELLS ON KAMALA’S CAREER" | KAMALA HARRIS VS TRUMP | LATEST NEWS
https://rumble.com/v5fwub6-judge-joe-brown-drops-bombshells-on-kamalas-career-kamala-harris-vs-trump-l.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Douglas Macgregor: Ukraine Faces Defeat in Kursk – How Long Can They Hold On?
WarZone Echo
President Trump announces plan to END all Sanctuary Cities in North Carolina, across the United States pic.twitter.com/Zo9qrgRnW3
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) September 21, 2024
President Trump announces plan to END all Sanctuary Cities in North Carolina, across the United States
President Trump announces plan to END all Sanctuary Cities in North Carolina, across the United States pic.twitter.com/Zo9qrgRnW3
— RSBN 🇺🇸 (@RSBNetwork) September 21, 2024
GOP = Grifting Obstructionist Pedophiles
Trump Devotional Syndrome is a disease similar to Stockholm Syndrome. It is treatable by mental health professionals. No amount of evidence will ever change you from voting against your own interests and against the good of the country. Some Republicans have figured it out and bailed, but you will just have to suffer a defeat again so that you have something to whine about.
Hey Ayock-
I'm glad you keep reading what I post. Maybe someday it will get through to you. Liberalism is a disease and I am trying to help you with a cure. Best wishes
....................al
Another barfing up of garbage...you are SO PAINFULLY PREDICTABLE...sigh. /e
FOx was fined $750,000,000 for consistantly lying...why waste time w/them.../e
Uh, oh. "My Pillow" man Mike Lindell is in hot water:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13879213/mypillow-ceo-mike-lindell-online-backlash-sinister-meaning-advertisement.html
Just who can we trust in this election?
By Donald N. Finley
Of yard signs and tolerance
By Eric Utter
Exactly what kind of sociopath is Kamala Harris?
By Andrea Widburg
She didn't say it once, twice or even three times. Kamala practically campaigned on gun confiscation.
— National Association for Gun Rights (@NatlGunRights) August 2, 2024
Here is a clip of her clearly stating that the "buyback" will be compulsory. https://t.co/VShzBugAmj pic.twitter.com/gmu84g37dd
Whoa - Kamala promises to take executive action to confiscate firearms the first 100 days of her term
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 30, 2024
She’s going to seize the guns
Communism is here and it just organized a bloodless coup to push Biden out of the way
pic.twitter.com/ALAX7xvHeb
Kamala vows to barge into your home and take your legally owned guns.
— American Woman 🇺🇸 (@1True_American_) September 18, 2024
This isn’t a rumor. This is from her mouth. pic.twitter.com/MsC5O08bu5
In the span of 4 years, Kamala has gone from campaigning on gun confiscation to telling Oprah “if someone breaks into my house, they gettin’ SHOT”
— johnny maga (@_johnnymaga) September 20, 2024
This just shows how strongly the American people reject Kamala’s radicalism
She’s in total pandering mode pic.twitter.com/czR1st11PH
Kamala debuts a Latina accent while speaking at a Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Conference
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) September 18, 2024
No matter how bad you expect it to be, I promise you it’s worse pic.twitter.com/lBoQ6xO7QC
Omg listen to how Kamala Harris says “64 days” in Detroit vs. how she says it in Pittsburgh just a couple hours apart..
— Alex Bruesewitz 🇺🇸 (@alexbruesewitz) September 2, 2024
The accent change is insane pic.twitter.com/Gwo1lRnS76
The one thing I will say about Mr president @realDonaldTrump is he’s family first! he greeted my family like he knew them for years! my daughter you would have thought was his granddaughter l! they talked about her horses he told her a story just a wonderful moment he gave to my… pic.twitter.com/1Ix1Smm3cq
— Tyrus (@PlanetTyrus) September 19, 2024
Kamala Harris gets that coveted IRS endorsement for president
By Monica Showalter
ABC's Trump fact check blows up
By Mike McDaniel
The best thing that could happen to Democrats is that Trump wins
By Mark C. Ross
Be afraid: The left is arming up
By D. Parker
Arizona State University prof claims current abortion policies could lead to forced breeding camps and cannibalism
By Eric Utter
The Democrats Defraud the Voters With A Little Help From Their Friends
By David Kahn
A Week to Remember
By Clarice Feldman
Some weeks there’s not much of great importance. Others, like this week, there is almost too much to absorb, but in my view the key items are the destruction of the terrorist Hezb’allah organization, the vacuity of Kamala Harris and the media’s great efforts to glide her into office while hiding her agenda, the pernicious ruling class and why they have forfeited our trust, and lastly, the pending scandal which ties celebrities and key Democrats to sex trafficking and racketeering.
Destruction of Hezb’allah
Almost four decades since Hezb’allah killed hundreds of Americans in the bombing of our barracks in Lebanon, the perpetrators finally received justice, though not at our hands. (The U.S. just offered bounties and did nothing to capture the perpetrators. France under Macron was worse. Though it, too, lost significant troops in the Beirut bombing, Macron was critical of Israel, which is understandably believed to be the force behind the destruction of Hezb’allah.) The figures of the eliminated and disabled fighters keep changing but the best intelligence is that since Monday Hezb’allah has lost at least 60 officers and fighters and one of its senior leaders. Five hundred Hezb’allah terrorists have been eliminated, with 12% of those sustained this week alone. Many more have been seriously injured and are certainly out of commission. Most injuries and fatalities were occasioned by exploding hand-held devices, a few more by precision bombings by the IDF.
We may never know exactly how, when, or where the devices were manipulated to explode, but it is the most ingenious, audacious event in military history.
When Hezb’allah learned their cellphones were compromised, they bought 5,000 pagers and instructed their people to use them; when the pagers simultaneously exploded, they instructed their people to use walkie-talkies; and when those exploded, they had to meet in person where they were eliminated in a precision bombing.
The short take by the inestimable Iowahawk (David Burge) says it best:
Hezbollah: USE PAGERS INSTEAD OF CELL PHONES *beep beep BOOM*
Hezb: I MEAN WALKIE TALKIES *beep beep BOOM*
Hezb: ok emergency meeting at the WeWork until we figure this out *BOOM BOOM BOOM*
There’s some mewling by the usuals about danger to civilians, Hussain abdul-Hussain, a Lebanese analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, pooh poohs that:
Non-combatant civilians in #Lebanon do not use pagers. Non-combatant civilians in Lebanon do not use walkie-talkies. Non-combatant civilians in Lebanon are like all normal people on the planet: They use commercial smartphones (mostly Samsung because it's cheaper than iPhone). Only Hezbollah's military-aged males use pagers and walkie-talkies, all that are connected to an exclusive (and they thought secure) Hezbollah network. Two Hezbollah members of Lebanese Parliament had neither pagers nor walkie talkies issued to them. Their sons, two fighters with Hezbollah, had pagers on them and died. The fathers are still alive (even though they are Hezbollah, but they are non-combatants who are not connected to the militia's military comms). Not all pagers in Lebanon blew up. Medical staff at all hospitals (including Hezbollah's hospitals) use pagers that did not blow up. There was one medical staff at Hezbollah hospital who died because his pager blew up. That was the exception (he probably joined the combatants at the frontline). Enough with the academic garbage on Law of War and International Humanitarian Law. #Israel's blowing up of Hezbollah's pagers and walkie talks was one of the most surgical attack on enemy combatants in the history of wars.
The Vacuity of Kamala Harris
The Democrats switched her for the failing president late in the game and hope with the aid of a partisan press and her dodging any real interviews to hide from the public her extreme leftist views. The debate with ABC struck most of us as a softball one-sided one -- more like an interview than a debate -- with both “interviewers” (one of whom was her sorority sister) “fact checking” Trump “lies” while allowing her to gibber on with pre-packaged blather. A whistleblower has provided a credible sworn affidavit (which he wrote a day before the interview) in which he says she was given sample questions similar to those which were actually asked, was promised certain questions would be out of bounds by the interviewers and further, that Trump -- but not her -- would be “fact checked” by them. ABC provided a tardy response, which is hardly sufficient.
Bill Ackman explains:
@ABC and @RobertIger should directly address the specific accusations of the whistleblower, and Iger/Disney should launch a full investigation. Not surprisingly, there has been no denial from the two ABC moderators. Just silence. In the past, when we did activist short selling, the subject company would issue a carefully written press release or management would make a statement to misdirect shareholders in response to the issues we had identified. ABC’s response here is reminiscent of Herbalife’s statements which attempted to rebut our accusations. And take a look that stock.
@Disney is subject to @SECGov oversight. The reputation of ABC is material to the value of Disney. As such, the company must address the specific allegations made by the whistleblower, and cannot mislead the market by issuing a statement which purports to address the issues identified, but does not.
Yes, this reminds us that ABC contributor Donna Brazile fed Clinton the questions “in anticipation of a supposedly unscripted townhall meeting” and ABC helped deflect questions about Biden’s failing mental state. (His mental state is so bad that this week he called the first cabinet meeting in 11 months and turned it over to his wife to preside at.)
In an effort to rescue her from the growing perception that she’s incompetent, Oprah had another “interview” which was so awful she had to intervene after about three minutes of Harris’s babbling to bring the interview back down from the vapor. A couple of audience members were allowed to ask her questions and got the usual word salad and cackles. Videos of the entire episode are widely available online. Some select bits, however, are more than enough to establish that with Harris the lights may be on but no one’s home.
“We really would love to know what your plan is to help lower the cost of living,” the wife said to Kamala.
“Yeah, first of all, thank you both for being here. And yours is a story I hear around the country as I travel and, ummm, in terms of both rightly having the right to have aspirations and dreams and ambitions for your family and working hard and finding that the American Dream is -- for this generation and so many recently -- far more elusive than it's been, and we need to deal with that. And there are a number of ways. One is bringing down the cost of everyday necessities, including groceries.”
The great satire site Babylon Bee could not resist:
DETROIT, MI -- Famed talk show host and meme subject Oprah Winfrey was showered with accolades today after last night's release of a moving 1-hour special on the dangers of alcohol abuse.
According to viewers, Winfrey sat down with one of America's most well-known drunkards for an interview, presumably in a thinly veiled attempt to warn Americans just what might happen if they also succumb to the siren call of the bottle.
"It was a really powerful show," recalled Oprah fan Jack Morley. "I watched it as Oprah went through and hammed it up with whoever that other completely sozzled lady was on the show. It was a stark illustration of what can happen to a person when they fall into the abyss of alcoholism. I didn't know a human could drink that much and stay conscious."
Our Pernicious Ruling Class
The Brownstone Institute argues that “Covid is the story of billionaires, monopolies, psyops, Moore’s law, vaccine injury and CRISPR. These came together to create a new pernicious ruling class with unprecedented powers.” If you weren’t enraged as I was when NY placed Covid sufferers in with fragile nursing home residents; issued broad vaccine mandates; allowed BLM marches but banned religious services and barred apartment dwelling kids from fresh air romps in local parks, this week gave further evidence for the merit of the Brownstone argument.
“Former NYC Covid Czar Held Secret Drug-Fueled Sex Parties During Global Pandemic; Says New Yorkers Would Have Been “Pissed” If They Found Out Because He Was Running Entire Covid Response For City Dr. Jay Varma, Former Senior Advisor for Public Health, NYC Mayor’s Office: “I had to be kind of sneaky about it...I was running the entire Covid response for the city… we rented a hotel... we all took like, you know, molly[E*stasy/MDMA] … 8 to 10 of us were in a room... like just being naked with friends…” “We went to some like, underground dance party… underneath a bank on Wall Street… We were all rolling…” “This was not Covid-friendly.” “I did all this deviant, sexual stuff while I was you know, like on TV and stuff…” “The only way I could do this job for the city was if I had some way to blow off steam every now and then.”
Several lawmakers fumed over the newly released footage, with Council member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) telling The Post it showed the “perverse corruption” of the de Blasio administration.
“This guy was running around living like a drug-fueled Caligula, mandating that ordinary New Yorkers suffer in lockdown and lose their livelihoods while he throws himself parties that could make a rock star blush,” Ariola said.
“Dr. Varma’s pathetic attempt to impress a date further revealed what we all knew -- that the ‘leaders’ who shut down businesses, told us not to celebrate Thanksgiving, and fired workers for not taking the vaccine, have always been absolutely full of s–t,” added Councilmember Joe Borelli (R-Staten Island).
He admitted that the only reason kids were kept from school was because the teachers union demanded it and the then-mayor DeBlasio needed their votes.
Since leaving his position with the city he has held the position of executive vice-president and chief medical officer of Siga Tech, where he is paid a reported $1.5 million a year.
The Upcoming Scandal
The rapper P. Diddy was just charged with sex trafficking and racketeering. Bail has been denied and he’s under suicide watch in the same place that prevented Epstein from committing suicide.
Like me, you may not care a fig about rappers or celebrities, but Diddy’s drug and sex-fueled parties which he videoed and stored may affect a lot of them and their Democratic pals:
First, this seems to be a story with nice, long legs that even Tina Turner would envy. There’s sex, celebrities, wild parties, debauchery, baby oil(!), and more -- the bad boy of Bad Boy Records acted very badly, indeed. Plus, Combs seems to have (stupidly) videotaped much of it. This is gonna be in the news cycle for a while. Might as well buckle up and enjoy the ride.
Second, Sean Combs was considered a “celebrity in good standing” because he was closely aligned with the Democratic Party. Kamala Harris has warmly Tweeted to him, thanking Combs for hosting her town hall event. (No word if Kamala later attended his “freak off” after-party celebrations.) FOX News has also detailed Combs’ intimate ties to Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, New York City Mayor Eric Adams, and other prominent Democrats. For decades, Combs has supported liberal causes, including the MTV-affiliated “Rock the Vote” and launched 2004’s “Vote or Die” campaign. He’s had particularly close ties to black Democrats, especially the Obamas. Combs endorsed Joe Biden in 2020 and said “white men like Trump need to be banished” during a radio interview.
So, this won’t just be a sex scandal. Before it’s over, it’ll be a political scandal, too.
Good, because sex scandals seem to be the only thing that catches the attention right now of people driven half-mad by the pernicious ruling class and their absurd policies.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/09/a_week_to_remember.html
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Assistants al44 |
It is Your Economy .. yours, mine, our family, friends and neighbors -- EVERYONE to some degree is touched by the markets and their behavior. So we should be aware of the various mechanisms that make the markets and our economy tick. We live in a new era where politics, rumor, weather and just about anything you can think of effects the markets and our economy in some way, shape or form. Like it or not we are globally tied at the hip and in this new era where the advent of technology and the internet pushes information to the edge of the envelope, we can only hope to keep up with the many challenges ahead and the speed at which they develop. Technology is a double-edged sword and unfortunately can be used for good as well as evil, it just depends on who is holding the sword. This board was created to follow news, markets, stocks, cycles, trends, indicators and most of all to communicate and share ideas. Humor and Cartoons are welcome here, it breaks up the monotony from time to time and I am alays game for a good joke. I enjoy data mining, especially for info that the MSM (Main Stream Media) fail to or are not allowed to report. We must see things from all angles and aspects in order to verify what is true and what is false, basically becoming more atune to separating the wheat from the chaff. Hopefully in the long run this will help us all to make better and more sound decisions. This board is/was basically an information board, but all are welcome to post, (actually I encourage it because looking through another's eyes gives more perspective on issues). We can never learn too much about these ever changing times and the economy at hand.
* I have only a couple of rules and that is if you should post; NO PURE POLITICS or RELIGION and as always expected, please PLAY NICE !!!
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NOTE: What is meant by "pure politics" as stated in this boards' iBox decriptiion is just that.., it has no real ties to the economy and is mainly a composition of political innuendo. As I assume most of you know, it is difficult at times to separate politics from the economy due to the fact that politics plays a very large part in our everyday lives; be it on an economical, personal or other level altogether. Therefore this has created problems in the discernment of which posts should stay or go due to their leaning too far toward the political side and are slight on economic issues. As hard as my assistants and I try, we cannot please everyone. But we do what we do and want to be fair, we do want what should stay as part of this forums curricular. Everyone has an opinion and/or wants to be heard and I will do whatever I can to help ensure that is what takes place and hopefully most will not feel as though they are being targeted or alienated.
In the end all I can ask is that you be patient if a post of yours has been deleted, yet it has economic undertones that state otherwise and you feel should remain. If you feel you have been wronged - relax, sit back and PM me and I will make a final judgement. I am rather liberal, therefore more times than not I most likely will restore your post if it has merit and/or fallen between the cracks. Things happen or are interpreted differently and sometimes incorrectly, we are human. So do NOT throw a hissy fit nor become a foul mouth fool. Also PM harassment is frowned upon and should carry a level of disciplinary action, but I will leave that up to iHub Admin. Besides all that life is too precious to spend in a tirade. These types of behavior will get you no where except a closer view of the exit.. Treat people as you would like to be treated and we can work through most issues. It all starts with civil dialogue, respect for another's opinion even if not agreed upon. An agreement to disagree is the way I like to see things conclude when minds cannot meld. Just because an agreement cannot be reached does not mean we automatically have to trash another for their views and/or opinions. Let's face it, we all want better, we all want to be part of something bigger than ourselves and we all want to gain an edge in the game of life. This cannot be accomplished without an open mind and a certain level of tolerance for all that speak out.
As a matter of fact I encourage as many of you as possible to post, even if it is just once a month. You don't have to take the world by storm, it could be about something as simple as a neighborhood observation such as more homes up for sale than in months past or how empty the parking lots are at a traditionally known hot spot. Post an article or commentary that hits close to home, test the waters and see if others have seen similar events around the country. We have at our fingertips virtually 100s of libraries of information and cyber chat connections we can use to find out how different aspects of the economy are doing all around the nation. I truly believe we all have a lot to contribute and share and while we all will never see eye to eye on every subject or then again maybe none at all, but different points of view may enhance our own outlook or the way we see and do things. Right or wrong, the world is constantly evolving and technology will begin to pick up speed by leaps and bounds So we could serve each other better if we take what is posted for face value instead of an opportunity to lambaste someone that sees things in a different light than our own preconditioned mindset. When opposing views are met with hostile impositions it is of no service to anyone. I certainly would not want a cult following or a bunch of "yes" men setting the tone for this forum, I want diversity !!! Variety is the spice of life !!! You cannot expand your horizons if you automatically shut down and feel as though you have it all figured out. I got news for you, you don't and you won't until you are lying on your death bed. I do not care who you are or how worldly and educated you may be, we never stop learning unless we hold ourselves back with preconceived notions. Knowledge IS Power...
AND if you should feel the need to post on an otherwise different, yet similar stage:
Your Economy OT - Conspiracy, Politics, Religion, Terrorism, War (whatever else you can think of) (YE2OT)
It's open and ready for business. Over there you can post whatever you like to your hearts content, especially political/economic articles and commentary that does not quite fit in at YE1. So now you have 2 boards - One for economics, markets, trends, data, news, commentary, etc. - a more serious site for those who want the straight dope. And now the YE2OT board for everything else. I will play Moderator, but I am taking applications for an assistant who would control 90%+ of the interaction over there.
If people choose, they can travel between boards if they need a fix of some controlled chaos at YE2OT and then want some cold hard facts as (YE1) was intended.
I want everyone to have a voice, now you have a choice .. enjoy
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