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SD firefighters fly in fire experts to tackle lithium battery fire still blazing from last week
By Olivia Murray
Climate Stupidity
By James T. Moodey
Tyranny by Any Other Name Still Stinks
By J.B. Shurk
Climate Change ‘Solutions’ Are Harming the Environment
By H. Sterling Burnett
U.S. Intelligence Deserves the Distrust It Is Generating
By John A. Gentry
On May 16, Foreign Policy magazine published an article by three experienced intelligence officers, including one who has chronically politicized U.S. intelligence, who argued that the U.S. intelligence community (IC) is getting a bad rap at a critical point in history for unfortunate, unjustified reasons. Only the first part of the assertion is correct. Far more accurate would have been a judgment that the declining respect for the IC reflected in polls is a direct result of the recent partisan political activism and dishonesty of ostensibly respectable senior former intelligence officers and many inaccurate “leaks” by current intelligence officers, mainly against candidate and then President Donald Trump.
This activism is new. For many decades the organizational culture at the CIA, most importantly given its role of supporting presidents, was that intelligence officers inform all presidents as best they can in apolitical ways, whatever the receptivity of presidents to intelligence or the accuracy of their complaints about intelligence. People believed politicization of any sort -- from the political Right or Left -- damages the usefulness of intelligence and agency interests. Insightful intelligence officers such as the CIA’s Martin Petersen knew that intelligence had to perform well constantly to maintain presidential confidence and that errors in judgment and lapses in integrity had severely negative, long-term consequences. There was no need for an intelligence norm equivalent to the military’s normative prohibition on political activism by former generals and admirals because intelligence officers rarely were politically active. There had never been a General Douglas MacArthur-like challenge to presidential authority.
But President Obama sought to change the demographics and the political complexion of the federal work force, and intelligence leaders such as CIA director John Brennan (2013-2017) made clear that they intended to change the organizational cultures of agencies in politically significant ways. They succeeded brilliantly, with overt activism in defense of Obama/Brennan changes beginning in 2016, when Trump emerged as a potential threat to the “progress” that Obama’s policies allegedly had achieved.
This radical change became glaringly obvious when former CIA deputy director Michael Morell invoked his CIA credentials in a New York Times op-ed to rationalize endorsing Hillary Clinton for president while harshly criticizing Trump. Morell then became one of the “talking heads,” along with Brennan, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director Michael Hayden, and several dozen less-senior people whom the mainstream liberal press promoted as legitimate observers of everything relevant to their anti-Trump campaign. In 2018, senior CIA officer Peter Usowski noted that partisan activism by former CIA officers, whose last titles always precede their names in public discourse, was likely to be seen widely as activism by the agency proper. Usowski’s insightful observation was ignored.
It got worse. Among the worst ways, Morell admitted to the House Judiciary Committee that he and former CIA operations officer Marc Polymeropoulos connived in October 2020 with the Joe Biden campaign in the person of Antony Blinken to debunk an accurate New York Post story that Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, abandoned at a repair shop, contained information suggesting that he and Joe Biden may have corruptly sold influence abroad. Morell and Polymeropoulos wrote a prospective open letter suggesting that the laptop’s contents, which the FBI had already determined were genuine, had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Fifty-one former intelligence officers signed the letter. The insinuation worked. Politico, which had published earlier politically-oriented open letters, obligingly converted the linguistic obfuscation of the letter into a definitive statement of Russian culpability in its headline. With intelligence help, Joe Biden won his election, averting an “October surprise.” One recipient of a Morell-Polymeropoulos pitch told me the explicit goal of the solicitation was to help Biden, not recruit expertise about Russian disinformation techniques.
Brennan was nearly as bad. In op-eds and tweets, he repeatedly bashed Trump, charging that Trump was a dupe of Russian President Vladmir Putin, calling him treasonous, and comparing him to swindler Bernie Madoff. Brennan also, while still CIA director, urged CIA employees to be politically active, arguably coming at least close to violating the 1939 Hatch Act that prohibits political activities by serving government employees.
Hayden, who published a fine book in 2016, published an emotional anti-Trump diatribe in 2018 that is riddled with errors. Titled The Assault on Intelligence, it documents no such thing. Trump largely ignored intelligence and the federal workforce generally. In October 2023, Hayden tweeted that Senator Tommy Tuberville should be removed “from the human race,” which led Tuberville to report Hayden to the U.S. Capitol police and others as an assassination threat.
The list of outrageous claims is long. Some, like many of Brennan’s, were simply outlandish. Many others were untrue. Many activist partisans, who accurately noted Trump’s casual respect for facts, wantonly misrepresented Trump and their own motives and actions. Several prominent critics, including Brennan, Clapper, and the FBI’s James Comey and Andrew McCabe, were accused pointedly of lying. Use of favorable versions of “truth” became a frequent tool of the politicization of intelligence. Chronic, blatantly obvious dishonesty is not conducive to public confidence in people who claim to speak “truth to power.”
Serving intelligence officers politicized in different ways. Unable to appear on MSNBC or write op-eds, they leaked often incorrect information -- falsehoods designed to damage Trump. Leaks surged early in the Trump administration and evidently remained at lofty levels. These included incorrect reports that Trump received briefings in early 2020 about the dangers of COVID and did nothing to address the problem. The Defense Department refuted the assertions. More significantly, the IC’s analytic ombudsman reported that China analysts in the IC withheld information from the White House that they believed might help Trump administration officials -- a potential national security threat.
Given this history, intelligence partisans of recent years unsurprisingly are again misrepresenting the legacy of activism of recent years. But it is hard to know how much is purposeful dishonesty and how much is self-delusion. National Intelligence University faculty incongruously argued in 2021 that Hollywood fables were to blame in part for growing public distrust of intelligence and that intelligence should better tout its value.
Hence, public confidence in intelligence, rationally, is declining. A Rasmussen poll released in October 2023 found that only 36% of American voters believed that intelligence agencies behaved in an impartial manner, while 51% said the agencies have their own political agendas. And 65% believed it likely that the agencies are influencing corporate media’s coverage of political issues. Another Rasmussen poll released in March 2024 showed that most Americans think the IC is trying to influence the 2024 presidential election. Per Peter Usowski, this is an understandable fear given the actions of Morell, Brennan, Comey, and many others since 2016, whether senior intelligence executives now orchestrate politicization directly or not. While many intelligence professionals lament the activism quietly, some have spoken against the politicization. For example, former CIA counterintelligence chief Mark Kelton observed that widespread worry in 2015, when Brennan was director, about “fraying professional discipline” of the workforce turned into a “tsunami” of leaks in the Trump years.
It is axiomatic in many walks of life that trust is earned slowly but can be destroyed easily. Hard, honest work done consistently over a long time is the only way to rebuild trust in intelligence. Restoration of the longstanding norms of apolitical public service and establishment of new norms of civil-military-like conduct are essential to restoring trust. But current and former intelligence officers first need to recognize that they caused the problem and accept that the task of rebuilding confidence in intelligence is theirs alone. There is, however, no evidence that many of them yet see the problem. Instead, the ideology and interests that led intelligence officers to oppose Trump in 2016 seem likely to reappear, especially given that Trump seems to recognize that he ignored management of the federal workforce in 2017-2021 and appears determined to remedy his error if he wins in November. Many of the activist former officers have irreparably damaged their credibility, but others seem likely to emerge.
In another election year, citizens should remember that intelligence activism of any sort by current or former intelligence officers reflects gross violations of longstanding, effective norms that intelligence people well understand. Citizens should remember, too, that the politicizers try to deflect responsibility for their actions and are practiced in doing so.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/u_s_intelligence_deserves_the_distrust_it_is_generating.html
The Trump Jury and the ‘Had It Coming to Him’ Factor
Will the verdict in a politically motivated trial also be decided by politics?
by Tim Donner | May 24, 2024
As the nation holds its collective breath for a few more days waiting for a verdict in the trial of Donald Trump in Manhattan, the right appears more confident of a Trump acquittal than the left does about a conviction of their archenemy. But all of the collective opinion to date is based on millions of individual views of a trial based largely on reporting and pre-conceived notions rather than a live feed on TV. Those following the story have drawn their own varied conclusions, but of course, the only opinions that matter are those of the 12 jurors who likely feel the weight of the world on their shoulders as they prepare to decide a case that could have a profound effect on the presidential election – no matter their verdict.
So, what criteria will prevail in the minds of the jurors? The judge will provide specific instructions to guide their deliberations when the final stage of the trial commences on Tuesday, May 29. But will that prevent the seven men and five women deciding Trump’s fate from going rogue when they know an acquittal would make Trump’s return to the White House more likely? In fact, the jury has not been sequestered, and thus are free to watch and read coverage of the trial. And they are well aware that finding Trump not guilty on all counts might effectively render the left’s entire lawfare strategy a dead letter, given that the three other trials Trump faces now appear likely to be delayed past the election.
While even some pundits on the left have stipulated that government prosecutors have not proven their flimsy case, the greatest danger for Trump is what we will call the HITCH factor – a “had it coming to him” verdict. After all, with the 45th president now wildly unpopular in his hometown, and with over 90% of Manhattan residents registered as Democrats, will the jury require substantial hard evidence to convict a man many or most of them probably dislike or even hate? Some legal analysts argue that when a juror or witness takes an oath, they become more objective and less opinionated than they were when first entering the courtroom. But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, and just how are these jurors going to explain to their friends and neighbors that they let the evil orange man off the hook?
Throw Enough Charges Against the Wall …
That brings us to the volume of felony charges – 34 in total. This piling on is understood to be a common practice among prosecutors seeking any kind of conviction who prefer not to put all their eggs in one or two baskets. Put simply, taking 34 bites of the apple is better than one or two, as it gives the jury great latitude to pick and choose between the charges. And with the presumption that some version of HITCH will enter their judgment, wouldn’t the easiest solution be to find him guilty on one count or more? At the same time, the indictment is for 34 separate instances of the same crime, falsifying business records, not for separate or different crimes, so it would make delivering a guilty verdict on just some of the charges more complicated. Liberty Nation Legal Affairs Editor Scott Cosenza elaborates:
“I do not believe the number of crimes alleged will affect the jury’s decision here. No one can say a guilty verdict is probable. Mr. Trump’s motivation for reimbursing Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels was hardly proven beyond a reasonable doubt. It is possible, however. Any time a person is in criminal legal jeopardy, a conviction is possible, which is why the grand jury was instituted. Sadly, that check on prosecutorial power is functionally deceased. Also, we should expect some jurors successfully hid their hatred for Trump and relish the thought of sending him up the river.”
Then there is the potential for jury nullification, a practice many claimed jurors employed in the infamous trial of the late O.J. Simpson, which fittingly ended with one of the jurors doing a black power salute as he left the courtroom. Was the mountain of evidence against Simpson predominant in the minds of the jury? Apparently not, for they reached a not-guilty verdict in short order. The Trump trial is the most high-profile case in the three decades since the O.J. fiasco, and it seems just as likely to render a biased or subjective judgment.
There are also two lawyers on the jury. Being professionally versed in the law, will they stick to a faithful interpretation of the relevant statute(s) or find reasons to warp their judgment, considering the identity of the defendant? It is impossible to know, but on balance, Trump likely prefers to have attorneys on the jury who can explain the intricacies of the law to their fellow jurors. Will one of the lawyers, or another member of the jury, be willing to stand alone and ultimately convince the rest to go along with their judgment, as in the iconic movie 12 Angry Men? Not likely. That was fiction, and something that rarely happens in real life.
Would a Successful Trump Appeal Change the Narrative?
There have been so many instances in the proceedings so far that would seem ripe for appeal in the event of a guilty verdict, not the least of which is the transparent animosity of Judge Juan Merchan towards Trump reflected in instantly sustaining prosecutors’ ubiquitous objections and severely limiting the scope of testimony by key defense witnesses – including one from the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) who was reportedly prepared to testify that Trump’s actions did not violate election law. Incredibly, there is still open debate about what exactly was the underlying crime related to an expired misdemeanor, as it has yet to be specified by the government, even with closing arguments set for the coming week.
But would even a successful appeal erase the label of convicted felon in the court of public opinion? When the conviction of Hollywood Producer Harvey Weinstein was recently overturned on appeal, it hardly changed the public’s opinion of a man vilified by almost everyone. Once again, we will not know whether a potential conviction has already been “baked in” to people’s perception of Trump and this trial – or whether a guilty verdict would turn current public opinion on its head.
For reasons more political than legal, the best-educated guess here – and it’s just a guess – is a hung jury. It is hard to envision every single juror agreeing either that the government proved its case or, on the other hand, that Trump is not guilty on all counts. The question that hangs over the trial is whether an indictment brought for nakedly political purposes will be decided on the same basis by the dozen jurors who hold Donald Trump’s fate in their hands. Will there be a HITCH in the works?
https://www.libertynation.com/the-trump-jury-and-the-had-it-coming-to-him-factor/
Fani Willis Whistleblower Claims Misuse of Grant Money Was Part of ‘Madame’s Vision’
By Tom Ozimek
May 23, 2024
A former staffer at Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’s office told a Georgia Senate hearing Thursday that she was wrongfully fired after blowing the whistle on plans by Ms. Willis’s office to misuse a federal grant worth nearly half a million dollars that was meant to help at-risk youth but was instead earmarked for ineligible expenses like travel, computers, and “swag.”
Amanda Timpson, former grant project manager at Ms. Willis’s office, told the Georgia Senate Special Committee on Investigations on May 23 that in the course of her work supervising the administration of federal grants, she became aware of “irregularities” and “problems” in the way the grant money was going to be spent.
The $488,594 grant was earmarked for intervention strategies that could dissuade youth from joining gangs in Fulton County, specifically for the establishment of the Fulton County Center of Youth Empowerment and Gang Prevention. The grant remains open and the center has not been built.
Ms. Timpson testified that when Ms. Willis took office in 2021, her then-supervisor Michael Cuffee, a former campaign aide to Ms. Willis, told her he planned to use the grant money in a way that was explicitly prohibited by the rules governing grant administration.
“He articulated that he wanted to spend the grant on computers, travel, and swag,” Ms. Timpson said, adding that Mr. Cuffee said he wanted some of the money to be spent on promotional items like pins, coffee mugs, and T-shirts as part of the Fulton County DA’s office “rebranding” after the election of Ms. Willis.
Ms. Timpson said she quickly interjected and clarified to Mr. Cuffee that the grant funds could only be used on expenses that were specific to programming requirements, namely to help at-risk youth.
Investigative committee chairman Sen. Bill Cowsert asked about Mr. Cuffee’s reaction when Ms. Timpson told him the way he wanted to spend the grant funds “was illegal.”
“Initially, he let me know that it was, um—the employees in the DA’s office called Ms. Willis ‘Madame’—so he let me know that it was ‘Madame’s Vision’ and I basically said ‘I understand that but it’s not what the grant says,'” Ms. Timpson testified.
A request for comment on Ms. Timpson’s allegations sent to the Fulton County DA’s office was not returned.
‘Madame’s Vision’
The hearing was part of the special committee’s investigation into Ms. Willis and allegations of impropriety after it was revealed she engaged in a romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade, whom she hired to help prosecute an election interference case against former President Donald Trump.
Previous hearings before the GOP-controlled committee revealed that there was, as Mr. Cowsert said, “very little control” and oversight of Ms. Willis’ $36 million budget.
President Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, has alleged that the charges are politically motivated and has called for Ms. Willis to be removed from the case.
During her testimony on Thursday, Ms. Timpson said that she persisted in her opposition to what she described as planned misuse of the grant funds at weekly meetings. In retaliation for flagging the intended misuse of the grant funds, she said she was shut out of the weekly meetings, intimidated, and subsequently fired for what she suggested was retaliation.
As resistance built to her objections about the planned misuse of grant funds, Ms. Timpson testified that she notified Ms. Willis of the situation by email—but that the email was ignored.
Ms. Timpson then said she had a meeting with Ms. Willis on July 26, 2021, during which she notified Ms. Willis that her objections to the grant appropriation were meant in good faith to protect the integrity of the grant allocation and that of Ms. Willis’s office itself.
The whistleblower added that, when she articulated her objections to the way Mr. Cuffee planned to spend the grant money, she was cut off by Ms. Willis and demoted—effective immediately—as punishment for persisting with her view that the grant funds should not be used in line with Ms. Willis’s vision.
‘Funny Style Business’
During Thursday’s testimony, Ms. Timpson said that she had another in-person meeting with Ms. Willis on Nov. 19, 2021, to discuss the grant fund appropriation.
She said she decided to record the meeting on her phone, fearful of what type of retaliation bringing up the intended grant fund misuse would trigger, because the last time she did so she was demoted.
Ms. Timpson said that she wanted to make Ms. Willis aware that there was more “funny style business” going on with grant appropriation that she became aware of. Ms. Willis told her that she “didn’t disagree” with her and that she “wasn’t necessarily wrong,” adding that sometimes things take a long time to get to her, per Ms. Timpson’s testimony.
A copy of this recording was obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
“He wanted to do things with grants that were impossible, and I kept telling him, like, ‘We can’t do that,'” Ms. Timpson is heard telling Ms. Willis at the Nov. 19, 2021, meeting, per the recording. “He told everybody … ‘We’re going to get MacBooks, we’re going to get swag, we’re going to use it for travel.’ I said, ‘You cannot do that, it’s a very, very specific grant.'”
“I respect that is your assessment,” Ms. Willis responded. “And I’m not saying that your assessment is wrong.”
Ms. Willis apologized to Ms. Timpson later in the conversation, saying that Mr. Cuffee had “failed” her administration.
During Thursday’s testimony, Ms. Timpson said she had a meeting on Jan. 14, 2021, with her new supervisor, Ramona Toole, during which she said she told Ms. Toole “everything” about the matter, including her allegation that she was intimidated and demoted for whistleblowing.
Ms. Timpson then said that she believes the conversation she had with Ms. Toole, whom she described as a close ally of Ms. Willis, went directly to Ms. Willis, while suggesting that Ms. Willis then ordered for her to be fired.
Ms. Timpson said she was abruptly terminated, ostensibly because she was an at-will employee and her services were no longer needed, and escorted out of the building by seven armed investigators.
An official separation didn’t come until two months later, she said, adding that it just stated “employee discharged.”
She also alleged that Ms. Willis made “completely slanderous and libelous statements” about her that affected her ability to find a new job because prospective employers could find those remarks relatively easily and viewed her as “a gamble.”
Ms. Timpson, who has filed a wrongful termination lawsuit that is pending, said that she applied for over a thousand jobs until landing in her current position.
While Ms. Willis’s office did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Timpson’s allegations, her office provided a statement to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in August 2022 in response to the lawsuit, calling Ms. Timpson a “holdover from the prior administration” and that “all of her supervisors found her performance to be inadequate.”
Ms. Timpson testified on Thursday that her performance on the job never drew any objections from any supervisors—with the exception of her whistleblowing.
https://www.ntd.com/fani-willis-whistleblower-claims-misuse-of-grant-money-was-part-of-madames-vision_994923.html?src_src=ntddailynoe&src_cmp=ntd-2024-05-24
Washington Post Lost $77 Million, 50% of Subscribers
By Mark Swanson | Thursday, 23 May 2024 10:49 PM EDT
The Washington Post lost $77 million over the past year, stemming from a 50% decline in audience since 2020, with the outlet's publisher telling staff that "we are in a hole."
Further, staffers were told in a strategy announcement Wednesday that moving forward, artificial intelligence will be "everywhere in our newsroom," Semafor reported.
Post Publisher Will Lewis presented the dire financial report to employees Wednesday morning, countering that with the announcement of new tiers of subscription offerings called Post Pro and Post Plus.
"To speak candidly: We are in a hole, and we have been for some time," Lewis told employees.
The Post's announcement of Lewis' presentation didn't mention the use of AI as part of the newspaper's revenue-boosting efforts moving forward, saying only that the Post "will begin experimenting with the new offerings over the next few months."
Regardless, Lewis outlined the three pillars of the Post's new strategy: great journalism; happy customers; and making money.
"If we're doing things that don't meet all three … we should stop doing that," Lewis told employees, according to Semafor.
"I hope in the future you see this day as a significant day in the history of our company," said Lewis, who joined the Post in January.
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/washington-post-publisher-revenue-losses/2024/05/23/id/1165956/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM627413_05242024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010104vbaefb
Many Border Patrol Agents Leaving Under Biden: 'So Bad for Morale'
By Charlie McCarthy | Thursday, 23 May 2024 11:16 AM EDT
Some U.S. Border Patrol agents blame President Joe Biden for the agency losing nearly a quarter of its workforce since the 2020 presidential election, the Washington Examiner reported.
The Border Patrol, which is comprised of more than 19,000 agents, lost 4,281 federal law enforcement agents who left the agency between October 2020 and April 2024. Biden won the White House in November 2020.
That number includes agents who quit, were forced to retire due to their age or number of years on the job, or who chose to retire as soon as they became eligible, the Examiner reported. Early retirements have soared under Biden.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows many more agents are choosing to leave than normal. For example, twice as many agents have chosen to retire early compared to retirement rates during the Obama and Trump administrations.
In the seven years leading up to fall 2020, the agency lost an average of 996 agents annually.
"The [Biden] administration is so bad for morale," one senior Border Patrol official told the Examiner. "I'm not trying to be political. I'm just speaking facts. It's become so political. Catch and release is demoralizing for agents."
Matthew Hudak, recently retired second-in-command of Border Patrol, said agents had taken an oath to protect the country have become humiliated by arresting migrants and then releasing them into the U.S.
"Under Biden, things are the worst they have ever been by far," one agent based in Arizona told the Examiner. "Agents are calling in all the time. You always hear, 'It doesn't matter,' or, 'What's the point?' in reference to doing our job. Agents are afraid of ending up on the news for doing their job or getting in trouble for doing their job. There is no morale."
"Our agency is half Hispanic, so we're not a bunch of raging racists," the senior Border Patrol official told the Examiner. "We just want to enforce the law. What really motivates them is being able to stop bad people and narcotics from coming in."
Dissension in the ranks of CBP was shown in full view in a leaked January 2022 video from a meeting with Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Laredo, Texas.
"You're getting bogged down in the policies and the politics," Ortiz shouted at agents in front of Mayorkas, as they objected to the Biden administration's open border policies, with one saying, "you keep releasing criminal aliens into this country."
https://www.newsmax.com/us/border-patrol-border-agents/2024/05/23/id/1165871/?ns_mail_uid=110c4f27-b39e-4490-8c9e-becd156886f8&ns_mail_job=DM627326_05232024&s=acs&dkt_nbr=010502a6hib6
Revelation of secret Obama-era program casts doubt on stated reason for Trump Mar-a-Lago raid
'The law protects only those who follow the norms of one party,' America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein says
By Emma Colton
Published May 23, 2024 3:12pm EDT
FIRST ON FOX: A purportedly never-before-seen Department of Defense memo from the Obama era appears to indicate the federal government already may have had original copies of the documents seized at former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida in 2022, raising serious questions about the pretext for the raid, Fox News Digital has exclusively learned.
America First Legal (AFL), a conservative legal group, released Thursday what it says is a newly unearthed memo from the Obama administration Department of Defense "confirming the government may have already had originals of the alleged classified documents involved in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s sham prosecution against President Trump."
The document, titled Memorandum of Understanding Entered into by Presidential Information Technology Community Entities, is from 2015, and followed an October 2014 Russian breach of the Executive Office of the President’s network. Then-President Barack Obama took executive action to create the Presidential Information Technology Community (PITC) to better protect the executive branch from such attacks, according to AFL.
The PITC, which includes representatives from federal agencies such as the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, effectively established that the president controls information he receives through the PITC network.
The executive action was made public at the time. However, AFL said it obtained a never-before-seen memo confirming the Department of Defense has been "operating and maintaining the information resources and information systems provided to the President, Vice President, and Executive Office of the President."
The memo could mean that the federal government has stored and retained Executive Office of the President documents, including "a substantial amount, if not all, of President Trump’s classified documents," AFL said in its press release.
"What America First Legal has uncovered after months of investigative work paints an unfortunate picture of the rule of law in Washington. A former President of the United States — the most democratically accountable officer under our Constitution — was subject to a politicized referral concocted by the Biden White House that led to an armed FBI raid of his home — where his wife and youngest child live — and is now subject to prosecution," America First Legal Vice President Dan Epstein said.
"And to now realize that the Biden Administration could have avoided an illegal referral process to recover records the government already possessed, that it could have used normal means to ensure that records the former president believed should be housed in his presidential library (not yet built because of the hordes of investigations aimed at silencing him) were subject to a temporary hold for purposes of Archives’ review — yet didn’t — speaks loudly to America: the law protects only those who follow the norms of one party," Epstein added.
AFL obtained the documents through litigation against the Department of Defense, the press release said.
The DOD told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the department has "nothing to offer" when asked about the memo. The White House and DOJ did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's requests for comment.
The FBI agents seized 33 boxes of documents in August 2022 from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, spurring another legal battle that Trump has called a "scam." The investigation is overseen by special prosecutor Jack Smith, whom Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed to the job, and has charged Trump with 40 felony counts, including allegedly violating the Espionage Act, making false statements to investigators and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
The FBI at the time told a judge there was "probable cause to believe" that classified documents at Mar-a-Lago were being improperly stored and that investigators would find "evidence of obstruction."
Trump has pleaded not guilty to the charges, and slammed the case as an "Election Inference Scam" promoted by the Biden administration and "Deranged Jack Smith."
The case was slated to head to trial on May 20, but has since been put on ice until presiding Judge Aileen Cannon sets a new date. Cannon did hold hearings this week to address the defense team’s motion for dismissal.
Trump's classified documents case also opened the doors to investigations regarding classified documents in the possession of President Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence. Special Counsel Robert Hur announced in February that he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, citing that Biden is "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."
"Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone from whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness," Hur wrote in his report.
The findings sparked widespread outrage that Biden was effectively deemed too cognitively impaired to be charged with a crime but could serve as president. Trump has meanwhile slammed the disparity in charges as a reflection of a "sick and corrupt, two-tiered system of justice in our country."
Earlier this month, the White House asserted executive privilege over audio and video recordings related to Hur's interviews with Biden, sparking condemnation from Republicans. Biden met with Hur for about five hours last year, when he was grilled about his handling of the classified documents.
Republican House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., responded to the executive privilege by arguing there's "a five-alarm fire at the White House."
"Clearly President Biden and his advisers fear releasing the audio recordings of his interview because it will again reaffirm to the American people that President Biden’s mental state is in decline. The House Oversight Committee requires these recordings as part of our investigation of President Biden’s mishandling of classified documents," Comer told Fox News Digital last week.
"The White House is asserting executive privilege over the recordings, but it has already waived privilege by releasing the transcript of the interview. Today’s Hail Mary from the White House changes nothing for our committee. The House Oversight Committee will move forward with its markup of a resolution and report recommending to the House of Representatives that Attorney General Garland be held in contempt of Congress for defying a lawful subpoena."
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/revelation-secret-obama-era-program-casts-doubt-stated-reason-trump-mar-a-lago-raid
DC Board of Elections trains illegals and ‘non-citizens’ how to vote in US elections
By Olivia Murray
For anyone who thought 2024 was going to be free and fair, please disabuse yourself of that idea immediately.
The progressive Democrats constantly tell us that illegal aliens are not voting in our elections, because of course it’s illegal. Well, so is crossing the border illegally, but we’ve seen how that has gone—how many tens of millions of illegals are actually living here? (I suspect Ann Coulter is right when she puts that number around 50 million.)
Yet, those very same progressive Democrats have been teaching “non-citizens” how to participate in what should be, American elections. The District of Columbia Board of Elections (DCBOE) recently held two events in which government officials taught illegals how to vote; the first was the “Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training” event in early April, and according to Wendi Staunch Mahoney at UncoverDC, the second was a “town hall” type training on April 30th. From Mahoney:
During the April training sessions, non-citizen voters learned about the February 2023 D.C. Law 24-242 (Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022) that enables them to vote in local DC elections. In February 2023, the Council of the District of Columbia amended the D.C. Election Code of 1955 to qualify illegal aliens and non-citizen residents as ‘qualified electors for the purpose of local elections.’
The Act allows noncitizens to vote for Mayor, Council members, Attorney General, Member of the State Board of Education, Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner, or any initiative, referendum, or charter amendment on a District ballot. Notably, the amended law also extends voting to undocumented immigrants. The bill was opposed by congressional Republicans, but they failed to overturn it. Appeals, however, are ongoing.
Here’s a link to the DCBOE website that details how non-citizens can participate in “American” elections.
Oh, and see what Congress is attempting to do below too:
The Left: *Undocumented immigrants* (aka, illegal aliens) don’t vote!
Also the Left: We have to waive inadmissibility for illegal voting in all our amnesty bills because *undocumented immigrants* vote! 🤔@chiproytx @SenMikeLee @SpeakerJohnson
Just one example: pic.twitter.com/eUvLxZqPY0
— Immigration Accountability Project (@I_A_Project) May 9, 2024
While D.C. encourages illegals to vote in local elections, other jurisdictions encourage illegals to vote in federal elections (Congress and the presidency).
I actually sounded the alarm on illegals voting in “American” elections years ago when I ran into what I could only describe as attempted voter suppression—on August 4, 2020, I was still living in Tucson, and when I went in to my local precinct voting center (El Camino Baptist Church), I was handed a ballot that did not include local and statewide races, but only had the federal options. At that point in time, I was unaware that Arizona had what was called a “federal only” ballot, which is legalized illegal voting; the Secretary of State website says this:
A person is not required to submit proof of citizenship with the voter registration form, but failure to do so means the person will only be eligible to vote in federal elections (known as being a ‘federal only’ voter).
When I told the poll workers that something was amiss because there were a whole host of local statewide races in which I should be voting, they insisted I was wrong, and the ballot they handed me was the only one they had. I then spoke to the man in charge, and he gave me the same answer. I then directed their attention to a graphic on the wall, listing out the candidates for legislative and statewide races, telling them that those offices are the ones about which I was speaking—this did nothing to convince them, at least that’s what they idiotically feigned. At this point, I left the polling station, went home, and grabbed the mail-in ballot that I’d not wanted to use, and drove back to the voting center to show them. Upon my return with my mail-in ballot, the workers magically discovered that they did in fact have piles of ballots that included the Republican local and statewide races. I wonder how many times the poll workers successfully passed off “federal only” ballots to Republicans who should have had the opportunity to vote in state and local elections?
In fact, telling this story on video was what I assume got me banned off of Twitter the first time. After the story was widely shared, I found I was “temporarily” suspended, and the followup email informing me that my suspension would be permanent did not give me a reason.
Now, Arizona has mostly partisan primaries, unlike completely open primaries, and as a registered Republican, when I walked in and acknowledged that I was in fact a Republican, I was directed to the Republican “side” where workers seemingly “verify” that I am on the voter rolls. (I say “mostly” because there’s a provision that allows voters who aren’t registered as Republican or Democrat to pick the primary in which they’d like to vote.) At the time, I wondered if Democrats had run into similar issues.
And, imagine my surprise when I found out it was an issue that only affected Republicans! Turns out I wasn’t the only one who experienced this, and a day or so later, the local propaganda media ran a story on what had happened; it was all just an unfortunate error, of course:
Nothing to see here folks!
Just mainstream media running clean-up for Pima County elections after poll workers “accidentally” suppressed Republican voters in 2020. pic.twitter.com/i6PnOLmuZM
— Olivia Murray (@americaliv1) May 22, 2024
“Nothing purposely done, just an accident.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/dc_board_of_elections_trains_illegals_and_non_citizens_how_to_vote_in_us_elections.html
Biden’s ‘bloodbath’ moment?
By Warren Beatty
Joe Biden increased tariffs on E.V.s made in China from 25% to 100%, ostensibly to reduce the number of E.V.s sold in order to protect E.V.s produced in the U.S. Was this Biden’s “bloodbath” moment?
Former president Donald Trump, during a March 16 speech in Vandalia, Ohio, while talking about the auto industry, said, “Big, monster car manufacturing plants that you’re [China] building in Mexico right now, and you think you’re going to get that, you’re going to not hire Americans, and you’re going to sell the cars to us? No. We’re going to put a 100% tariff on every single car that comes across the line, and you’re not going to be able to sell those cars. If I get elected. Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath for the whole [industry]. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”
The MSM went wild. Major news outlets, including the New York Times, ABC, and the Associated Press, wrote that Trump warned of a “bloodbath” in headlines that didn’t include the auto industry context.
However, the media expressed no concerns when Joe Biden did exactly the same thing. Here is a typical response from CNN: “The Biden administration is set to unveil a sweeping restructuring of former President Donald Trump’s trademark tariffs on Chinese imports.” Another response: “The tariffs are designed to protect the US auto industry from an invasion of low-priced, good-quality EVs made in China, where the costs of labor, raw materials and components are vastly lower than in the United States.”
The Biden campaign also went wild, wasting no time creating a response. The campaign created an ad on the following Monday that excoriated Trump’s “bloodbath” remarks with a montage of what it called Trump’s past incendiary rhetoric. The ad began with the “bloodbath” clip (with no context, of course), then cut to a scene from Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017 (again, no context). The ad ended with Trump saying, “It’s going to be a bloodbath,” with “STOP TRUMP” superimposed over him speaking.
About the remark, Biden campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika attempted to add her own context: “The Trump campaign can try to spin all they want, but the context is clear: their candidate has spent every moment since his first campaign encouraging and excusing political violence. Repeatedly. It’s not a bug; it’s a feature of Donald Trump’s extremism. We take Trump at his word — and voters will, too.”
Bottom line: We’re witnessing a double-standard that focuses upon what a disfavored candidate says rather than what he does.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/biden_s_bloodbath_moment.html
This 'demo' has flown
By Silvio Canto, Jr.
They call it "the demo" or "the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25-54."
I am no longer in that demographic, but that's for another post.
The story today is that the demo has left CNN. It's a fancy way of saying that the people who matter ain't watching.
Here is the story:
CNN’s primetime lineup of "Anderson Cooper 360," "The Source with Kaitlan Collins," and "CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip" managed only 83,000 nightly viewers in the advertiser-coveted demographic of adults age 25-54 from May 13-19. The dismal total tied the network’s 2023 Thanksgiving week for its smallest audience in the critical category since 1991.
By comparison, Fox News programs "Jesse Watters Primetime," "Hannity," and "Gutfeld!" averaged 186,000 demo viewers to crush CNN’s audience by over 100,000 people between the ages 25-54.
CNN’s primetime lineup had a smaller audience among the demo than 23 different basic cable options, including FXX, MTV, Hallmark Channel, Discovery, A&E, Adult Swim, Comedy Central, TLC, HGTV, Food Network. ESPN2, and Bravo, in addition to Fox News and MSNBC.
CNN’s primetime lineup wasn’t particularly successful among total viewers, either, averaging only 484,000 total viewers compared to two million for Fox News.
CNN’s historic viewership low came in the midst of former President Trump’s criminal trial as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his team attempt to prove he falsified business records related to a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s buzzed-about testimony couldn’t even help CNN’s hapless primetime lineup, which has seen significant changes in recent years.
Chris Cuomo was fired late in 2021, and Don Lemon was shifted to mornings before being shown the door himself in 2023. The network tinkered with various lineups before landing on the current trio of low-rated programs.
The tiny audience heard Cooper admit on Thursday he would "absolutely" have doubts about Cohen’s testimony if he were on the jury after Trump’s lawyer caught him in a lie.
There you have it. The demo has flown to paraphrase "Norwegian Wood."
Yes, you can talk about Trump 24/7, turn the case into a modern version of the Nuremberg Trials and cheer for a conviction. Yes, you can do, but nobody is watching because the brand is so sick that the demo has flown to watch something else.
Honestly, I thought that CNN had learned its lesson after losing its audience following 2020. I guess that management still has a few more faces or producers to replace.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/this_demo_has_flown.html
Why are conservatives so committed to a dead system?
By Nick Lopez
America, I’ve got some bad news for you. You might want to sit down.
Your public education system is dead.
It’s not dying; it kicked the bucket...some time ago (judging by the stench).
You are sending your children into a maggot-infested corpse every day, and it’s making them sick.
The right-wing media correctly reports that public school teachers have become blue-haired, gender-confused communists who are trying to indoctrinate children into Marxism...
…and then Republican legislators want to arm these same teachers, who are self-proclaimed gender confused communists.
Seriously?!
If you have a communist problem, arms for the communists is not the solution. Not in El Salvador, not in El Mirage, not in El Paso!
I don’t have kids. I’m not sure why this is so evident to me — and not to the people whose children have teachers who are fighting for the right to hide from parents that their child is using a litter box at school.
The fact that the above sentence is absolutely accurate and not absurd should be evidence that there is a big, big problem...that can’t be fixed.
Getting rid of the schools gets rid of all the problems. Unions, tenure, indoctrination, state pension shortfalls, school shootings, bullying — all of it.
And what do we do for education? We start over, in one-room schools set up in people’s living rooms and churches, without funding from the Rockefeller Foundation or Alex Soros.
It’s so out of control that we don’t even have time to actually go through the process of an organized shutdown. The only option for getting rid of the beast? Starve it!
Pulling out of the public school system and letting the system collapse is the only practical solution.
Don’t let your kids go back to school in the fall. It’s not going to help them get into college. If they are black, they have already been accepted to Yale. And if they aren’t? Yale doesn’t want them (and neither does Cal Tech, Cal State, UVM, etc., etc.).
You want your kid to be successful? Teach him plumbing! Only one concept to master (poo runs downhill), and they will be set for life!
Frankly, your child has a computer in his pocket. Teach him how to extract an education from it, instead of just using it for getting likes for doing stupid things.
Honestly, if communism takes over this country, conservatives will have only themselves to blame. There are only three communist countries left on the planet. If you lose the Cold War at this point, it’s pathetic.
Take your children back! Do it now! Stop pretending the system can be reformed. It can’t.
It’s dead.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/05/why_are_conservatives_so_committed_to_a_dead_system.html
America is on fire
By Richard Berkowitz
The democrats pretend….
By Patricia McCarthy
The Myth of the J6 Coup
By Blaine L. Pardoe
We all hear the talking points of the left regarding President Trump. He’s going to end democracy… there will never be a free election again, he will arrest the media, there will be retribution against his enemies; the list of his alleged evil deeds is almost endless.
Do these actually hold water?
Seizing control of the US government is no simple task. In writing Blue Dawn, I had to go over a number of coup scenarios for the book. The biggest challenge is that to seize control, you must have complacency or support of the military and the means to still have a functioning government; all the while avoiding the consequences of the law.
Those that claim that January 6th was an insurrection fail to explain how, in any scenario, Donald Trump would have been able to seize and hold power. Even if this fantasy is played out, and the trespassers rounded up Congress had had him certified as the winner of the election, they would have simply reversed that vote the moment they were free. Impeachment would have been a slam dunk if that had been the plan. In reality, it was protest that got out of hand resulting in the tragic death of a single person, a protester.
Let’s play the fiction of January 6th with a scenario where the full Congress and Senate were rendered unable to fulfill their duties after the intrusion in the Capitol, i.e, they were killed. If that had happened, processes exist to replace those roles in every state. Eventually the vote would have been reversed. On the short term, it would provide a false sense of legitimacy to an overthrowing of the government.
The Supreme Court would have been engaged on the matter on an emergency basis. If the Supreme Court were not negated, they would be compelled to take legal action. Trump would have moved on the court. Reminder: this didn’t happen at all on January 6th.
Nixon contemplated having the 101st Airborne and local Marine troops surround the White House should he be impeached. If Trump considered this action, chances are he would have been met by Pentagon leadership that would have refused his orders as illegal and unjust. Some commands might follow Trump’s orders but in fairness, most would not.
For someone to overthrow the government, they must have and maintain the support of the masses. Remember, a significant percentage of his own party hated Trump and worked against him. If he broke countless laws to seize power, there would be rally cries from both sides of the aisle to remove him.
Would the vast machine of the federal government continue to operate if there had been a coup? No. Trump’s calls to “drain the swamp” would have led much of the federal government to shut down. The reality is most Americans wouldn’t care or notice if the federal government were to walk off their jobs. There are exceptions though. Once checks stopped coming out of Washington D.C. for things like Social Security, there would be a massive wave of pressure to remove any tyrant in office.
Playing this out further, assuming that through craftiness, he managed to stop a popular uprising in the nation to oust him, how long could he hold on to power? Chances are it would be days at best. Unless a coup d’état were horrifically bloody and wiped out the other two pillars of American government, it would be next to impossible to maintain control singlehandedly as Chief Executive. World outrage would be sparked even among allies. Calls to form a government in exile would have followed. Control would wane each hour.
The pinnacle of Trump’s power in life was when he actually was the President. If he wanted to “end democracy,” the time to do so when he was at the peak of his power. In fact, peacefully turning over power, Trump made any of these fanciful speculations, obsolete and the stuff of fiction. Why return to the status of a private citizen and have to run for reelection when you were already the Chief Executive? Why risk losing an election a second time around?
The myth of Trump’s dictatorship does not hold water and never has. It was never about him actually doing it. The reason it exists is fear. It generates anxiety in voters; a sense of dread designed to alter their votes. It is a propaganda tool designed to influence the election, nothing more.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/the_myth_of_the_j6_coup.html
Absolute Immunity Is Nothing New
By Twilight Patriot
Catastrophe Ahead
By Jeffrey Folks
My father was born into a tenant-farming family in western Oklahoma just a few years before even that meager existence was swept away by the arrival of the Great Dust Bowl of the 1920s. By hard work and intelligence, he worked his way through college and law school. But then, just as he began to establish himself in a career, he was drafted into the Army, in which he would serve from 1942 to the fall of 1946. When he returned, he found that his former position had been taken by a younger man.
Eventually, my father got his job back and worked his way to the top of his profession, but at such cost that he died at an early age. Even when he became affluent, half of his earnings were seized in taxes. His life was an unending catastrophe.
Very few young people, including those foolish students joining the anti-Israel demonstrations, have faced so much as an inconvenience in their lives so far. They are supported by prosperous families; are given everything they desire (including credit cards and smartphones from an early age); and, apparently, indulged themselves without ever having been corrected. It is a far cry from feeling lucky when you had a bite of squirrel to eat for supper or a pair of hand-me-down shoes with the toes cut out to accommodate growing feet.
And yet the world outside our prosperous bubble has not changed, even if it may appear to have. The self-indulgence of the very young in America will end at some point, and end badly.
Millennials experienced a taste of this with the appearance of COVID in 2020, but COVID was a brief and manageable epidemic, and we seem to have come through it, for the most part and for most of us, relatively unscathed.
Greater challenges lie ahead, and I wonder how well Millennials and their successors will face it. Recent inflation of 20 to 30% under Biden gives us a taste of what might come. Runaway inflation of 100% per year, or per month or per day, is common in countries outside the U.S. and Europe, and there is no reason it can’t happen here, especially with the burden of servicing a federal debt of over $34 trillion combined with state and local debt.
We are on our own, and, as a nation, we have not been doing very well lately. We are resting on our laurels — and on the credit we inherited as the world’s reserve currency, with all the advantages that it brings — but that good fortune will not last. The Chinese are establishing the yuan as a reserve currency in Brazil and other countries. We may soon become just another second-world nation and a defeated one at that. We will be lucky to avoid an occupation by Chinese troops.
In any case, we will be much poorer in real terms than we are now. That process has already begun with the Biden inflation, under which goods and services cost on average 20 to 30% more than they did just four years ago. As government continues to spend our way into oblivion, we will decline in real living standards another 20%, 50%, or 90%.
According to the Social Security Administration, the fund may run out of money by 2033. In addition, Social Security Disability is threatened by 2035 and Medicare by 2036. Since the Social Security fund by law cannot borrow, there must be some combination of tax increases and/or benefit cuts. Cutting benefits for seniors would trigger mass political discontent with unpredictable consequences.
The only large pool of money to tap would be middle-class earning and middle-class retirement savings — taxing “billionaires” (Biden’s perennial “solution”) does not work because, in the first place, there are not that many billionaires, and second, many would flee if they were heavily taxed, and in any event, taxing the rich simply drains investment from business, leading to higher prices and slower growth.
But Social Security and Medicare are only two programs that face potential cuts. As larger portions of federal and state revenues go toward servicing the debt, all programs, from aid to dependent children to education to military and police, will face potential defunding. We face a future of unanswered 911 calls, unavailable medical care, overrun schools, and shuttered libraries. Worst of all, if war breaks out, we may not have the revenues to fund a successful defense. It will be a catastrophe.
Human beings can live through catastrophe — sometimes — but only at great physical and psychological cost and with lasting scars. For the young in Ivy League schools, the good old days of marching around calling Jews “Nazis” will be over. Those who have not made an extraordinary effort in school and at work will be cast to the bottom, and they will be poor and enslaved in a nation with no ability to provide for them. That is the meaning of catastrophe, and although few young people believe it is coming — and none has experienced it in growing up — that is what they will face: the end of affluence, and the beginning of a long life of hardship.
My father was a strong man whom everyone respected. With no help from anyone, even his penniless parents, he worked his way through school and survived the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, and WWII. I see no evidence that any of today’s young are capable of the same sacrifices and strength. When the time comes, they may rise to the challenge, or they may simply roll over and play dead — and some may actually be dead. They will discover, as my father did, that there is really no help for them in this world of ours.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/catastrophe_ahead.html
Dementia Joe Circles Back to Racism
By Sloan Oliver
Anyone who’s ever dealt with an Alzheimer’s (or dementia) parent or grandparent knows the routine -- they only talk about five or six topics before they return to the first. By the time they’ve reached topic #5, they’ve completely forgotten that, only 30 minutes prior, they spent 10 minutes telling you about story #1. Those in such condition, those losing their mental faculties, spend the most time on events that most impacted their life; then it’s on to story #2 for several minutes; followed by topic/story #3, 4 and 5 before they revert to topic #1.
In the last years of my WWII, Korean War veteran father’s life, he told us (topic #1) that he singlehandedly defeated the Japanese (He was a Marine Corps fighter pilot in the Pacific.) and singlehandedly kept the Chinese hordes from overrunning the Marines at the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. Topic #2, he talked about scoring the winning touchdown (in 1938) against the cross-town rivals. Topic #3, he reminded me that I came from his penis. I tell this only to let you know that people with dementia are completely unfiltered. They either don’t know what’s inappropriate or don’t care. But they tell you exactly what they think, such as I came from my father’s penis. All his stories took place decades ago and had a grain of truth (He fought in WWII and Korea, and scored a TD) but they were all embellished and largely concocted in his mentally reduced mind. It’s the same with all who suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s.
It’s obvious; Joe Biden has reached dementia stage where he only talks about five or six topics before reverting back to topic #1. For Joe, topics #3 through #5 are some kind of tale beginning with “No joke” or “I’m not kidding” and goes on to tell some wild story from decades ago: such as his Uncle Bosie was eaten by cannibals during WWII; or that he was arrested in South Africa trying to visit Nelson Mandela (1970s); or that he drove 18-wheelers (1960s); or his confrontation (early 1960s) with notorious gang-leader Corp Pop (a “bad dude”) before he circles back to Topic #1. Just like my father, Biden’s stories have a grain of truth -- Uncle Bosie died during WWII; Joe went to South Africa, etc. The majority of Joe’s story is made up, mostly pandering to those gullible enough to listen to him.
Dementia Joe’s Topic #2 is white supremacy. For years, Biden has claimed white supremacy (WS) is the greatest terrorist threat facing America, and the group Patriot Front is the most hateful of the WS movement. I didn’t know that. Patriot Front must be some “bad dudes” with hundreds of murders and thousands of violent acts to their credit. So, I looked them up, or I should say, I looked at what the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) had to say about them. (Note: the SPLC is radical leftist and despises Whites and Christians. They report on every white-on-black racial incident to prove their false claim that white supremacy exists. Problem for them is there are very few violent white-on-black racial incidents.) If anyone could find violent crimes committed by the Patriot Front and other WS groups, it would be the SPLC. Turns out, the Patriot Front is such a terrible WS organization that they’ve committed ZERO murders and ZERO acts of violence against blacks or against other minorities. The SPLC does claim that the Patriot Front uses racial slurs against minorities (so do most hip-hop videos), shares violent images (many people routinely share violent videos), denigrates illegals and gays (a legal act), have demonstrated against gay pride events (completely legal and protected by the 1st Amendment), and have defaced LGBTQ posters (boo-hoo, at least they don’t burn down cities and federal courthouses like Antifa and BLM do). In other words, in Joe’s addled mind, whites who protest are white supremacists and must be designated the #1 terrorist threat.
If white supremacy is Joe’s Topic #2, what could possibly be #1? Drum roll, please… the topic that Biden always “circles back” to is racism. Biden starts with racism, goes to topic #2 (white supremacy) and #3, then back to racism. The man is obsessed with racism and returns to it over and over again. He’s been doing this for years. In 2011, Biden told a black audience that Republicans are “gonna put y’all back in chains.” In 2020, he told blacks, if you don’t know who to vote for “you ‘ain’t black.” As a candidate, Biden made skin color (not competence) the primary qualification for his vice president. As president, skin color (not competence) is Joe’s primary consideration for Supreme Court appointments. His focus on skin color must be belittling and condescending to all blacks, especially those who are qualified and competent.
Somebody please tell Joe that we’re not in the 1950s or 1960s anymore. For him, he’s remembering fonder times, days when Dems felt free to overtly display their hatred of blacks, but enough is enough. (Recall it was Dems who violently attacked protesting blacks in the ‘50s and ‘60s -- such as blasting them with water hoses (Bull Connor), beating them at the Edmund Pettis Bridge (Sheriff Jim Clark), denying them entrance to schools (Gov. Orval Faubus) and universities (Gov. George Wallace), and even electing a Grand Wizard of the KKK to the U.S. Senate (Senator Robert Byrd)).
Last Saturday, Biden reverted to Topic #1. He delivered the commencement address at Morehouse College. He started and ended his speech with lies and “racism” as he told the graduates (and us) that blacks are still being treated today like they were in the 1950s and 60s. Joe talked about black men being killed in the streets, implying that such killings are happening today due to white-on-black racial violence or police-on-black killings. Joe’s implications are false. Yes, blacks are being killed in the streets. Simply look at Macon (in central Georgia), or at any city with a large black population, and we know that’s true. However, blacks are being killed by other blacks. Overall, there is very little interracial violence. When interracial violence occurs, black-on-white violence is much more prevalent then white-on-black. In 2019, 246 blacks were killed by whites (across the nation) but 566 whites were killed by blacks. One has to willfully ignore all relevant crime figures to conclude that white supremacy and white racism are the main cause of violence against blacks.
Moving on, the remainder of Biden’s speech was a 30-minute version of America hates blacks because of skin color and U.S. democracy is a “trail of broken promises.” What broken promises is Biden talking about? For decades, Dems have run every large American city and all of them are much less desirable places to live and raise a family; yet Biden wants to blame you and me for some nebulous promise. Adam B. Coleman best summarized Biden’s speech. “Imagine working hard for years to graduate from college and Joe Biden shows up to remind you that you’re a victim and America doesn’t love you because you’re black.”
Final Thought: No wonder Biden is so unpopular. His message to Morehouse grads was depressing, demoralizing, unpatriotic and that white America hates blacks. Then again, Joe does have dementia and circles back to racism.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2024/05/dementia_joe_circles_back_to_racism.html
An Effective Trump Presidency Requires Republican Control of Congress
By Steve McCann
Biden Rushes to Lock in Regulations in Case Trump Wins
The president only has so long to make new rules.
by Kelli Ballard | May 23, 2024
As Election Day 2024 draws near, the Biden administration is scrambling to make sure its legacy is cemented no matter the victor. Part of this includes pushing through a huge number of favored regulations before time runs out. Under the Congressional Review Act (CRA), federal rules can be rolled back within 60 legislative days after they are issued, putting pressure on the president to act quickly to safeguard a long list of regulations should Donald Trump win in November.
Biden Rushes to Lock in Regulations
“In April 2024, federal agencies broke records by publishing 66 significant final rules,” the George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center recently reported. This is higher than any previous month during the Biden administration “and is nearly five times the average of the preceding months.”
According to the report, more than half (34) of the rules are economically significant, which means that “each of those rules is likely to have an annual impact of $200 million or more on the economy.” Of those 34, 27 were published during the last two weeks of April. That number is higher than any other month going back to Ronald Reagan’s administration, including the “midnight” months, when there is a flood of activity just before a president leaves office.
The report demonstrated the rush, showing that the Biden administration published 262 final rules each month from February 2021 to March 2024. Five percent of those were significant, and 2% were economically significant. Fast forward to last month, and 22% of the rules were significant, while 11% were economically significant. “That comparison suggests that agencies have likely been prioritizing publication of the most controversial, high impact rules to minimize the risk of CRA disapproval in case of a presidential transition.”
In 1996, Congress enacted the CRA as a tool to measure resolutions that were introduced and did not result in disapproval. The late Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said about the bill: “The President promulgates a regulation and Congress has a chance to look it over to see if it is too burdensome, too costly, too unfair. We have done that a few times. That was legislation that I did, and it was great when we had Republican Presidents, not so great when we had Democratic Presidents, but it was fair.”
The act had been used only once before Trump became president. In March 2002, President George W. Bush signed a resolution to overturn an OSHA ergonomics rule from the Clinton administration. When Trump became commander-in-chief, he signed 16 CRA resolutions against rules from Barack Obama’s administration. “This is Newt Gingrich’s knife against the throat of the administrative state that Trump weaponized,” Craig Segall, vice president of the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action, told The American Prospect. And this is what Biden is trying to prevent from happening again.
Some of the regulations Biden is pushing through include:
A Federal Trade Commission non-compete clause rule
Environmental Protection Agency’s standards for coal-fired power stations
A Labor Department overtime rule
A boost to electric vehicles by limiting automobile tailpipe emissions
A ban on non-compete agreements
The first federal mandate to cut carbon dioxide from power plants
National limits on forever chemicals in drinking water
Healthcare for DACA undocumented immigrants
Government use of HIPAA to safeguard access to abortion
Biden needs to publish regulations before the end of May to protect them from the CRA, although some lawmakers argue that such significant changes could be safeguarded as far out as September. Whatever the ultimate deadline, passing rules and regulations that an incoming administration would have to expend effort to repeal hints at the wisdom of Ronald Reagan’s famed 1964 adage that “governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear.”
https://www.libertynation.com/biden-rushes-to-lock-in-regulations-in-case-trump-wins/
The White House Can’t Even Get Its Inflation Lie Right
From not a problem to transitory, inflation blindsided the administration.
by Andrew Moran | May 23, 2024
Is Biden Bucking the Buckeye State?
Risky presidential strategies afoot in Ohio.
by Mark Angelides | May 23, 2024
The Ohio Democratic Party has been put on notice that President Joe Biden risks not being on the November ballot. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose this week issued the latest in a string of warnings that unless the party gets its act together, the commander-in-chief might just miss out on the deadline to file as a candidate.
Ohio law requires that candidates are certified by their parties at least 90 days before voters go to the polls; however, the Democratic Party Convention will not take place until August 19, when attendees will converge on Chicago – just 65 days before Election Day. The question has become: Who will jump first?
Is Biden the Nominee or Not?
Officially, Joe Biden will not become the nominee for his party until the national convention, which means he will miss the certification cut-off date. LaRose warned in a statement that:
“I’ve said from here to Colorado that it’s in the best interest of voters to have a choice in the race for president. I’m also duty-bound to follow the law as Ohio’s chief elections officer.
“As it stands today, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee will not be on the Ohio ballot. That is not my choice. It’s due to a conflict in the law created by the party, and the party has so far offered no legally acceptable remedy.”
One might argue that the state could change its rules to accommodate the sitting president, but there appears no such appetite in the Ohio legislature for this action. The process for doing so, however, was already nixed by local leadership.
Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Republican, said: “There’s just not the will to do that from the legislature.” His position was echoed by his Democrat counterpart, Minority Leader Allison Russo, who held out little hope that a solution would come through bipartisan legislation. “We’ve seen the dysfunction here in this place,” she stated. “And I think we’ve seen that folks have not been able to put aside partisanship and hyper-partisanship and infighting… I think at this point, you’re probably going to see either, you know, some sort of inner party effects or perhaps court action.”
The Governor Disagrees
Republican Governor Mike DeWine believes that the state apparatus can resolve the situation, however. He argued:
“I have every confidence that it’s going to get done. No one should worry, they’re going to be able to vote for the president or the former president, whoever they want to vote for. You know, this is not going to be a situation where the president’s name is not on the ballot. So, it’s either going to be done by the court, or it’s going to be done by the legislature.”
While the legislature has been working towards a solution, efforts in that arena are currently stalled.
New banner Perpective 1A Biden spokesman assured voters in response to LaRose’s plea that all would be well come Election Day. “Joe Biden will be on the ballot in all 50 states,” he said. “Election after election, states across the country have acted in line with the bipartisan consensus and taken the necessary steps to ensure the presidential nominees from both parties will be on the ballot.”
Indeed, Alabama faced a similar situation earlier this month and came to an agreement to move the certification deadline from 82 days before the election to 74.
But what can the American public glean about the players in this quasi-farcical comedy of errors?
Ohio Matters
As Kyle Kondik – managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball – writes in his book The Bellwether: Why Ohio Picks the President, the Buckeye State has only deviated by roughly two points from the national voting average in the last 30 presidential election cycles. In fact, Ohio has the best track record of electing presidents of any other state since 1896 – missing out on only Thomas Dewy in 1944, Richard Nixon in 1960, and Donald Trump in 2020.
Why would Joe Biden take any risk whatsoever with missing out on what some describe as the Ultimate Bellwether?
The lack of action to the repeated requests by Secretary of State LaRose hints at a hubris within the administration and the state Democratic Party, almost a sense of entitlement that states should fall in line behind the federal government’s lead. Yet, this presents a fundamental misunderstanding of how the nation works.
It is not one grand election for the president of the United States but rather 50 state elections. It is not the states’ responsibility to ensure that a candidate has access to the electorate, but the candidate’s duty to ensure he or she complies with the individual rules.
https://www.libertynation.com/is-biden-bucking-the-buckeye-state/
Thursday's Energy Absurdity: In California, the tax-per-mile 'conspiracy theory' becomes reality
David Blackmon
May 23, 2024
For several years now, boosters of the failing energy transition have publicly dismissed critics who have speculated that their ultimate goal where transportation is concerned is not merely to shift private car owners to adopt EVs, but to make the cost of owning a car so expensive that all but the most elite in society give up their cars altogether. Anyone reaching that imminently logical conclusion based on the evidence at hand has been dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ or something worse.
One easy way to make owning a car increasingly costly would be to tax drivers on a cents-per-mile basis. With EVs replacing some percentage of gas-powered cars, states are finding their slush funds of taxes collected at the gas pump dwindling and are looking for ways to get the revenue flowing again. Some states, like Texas, are doing that with a hefty annual fee on EVs, but taking that route is hard to hide and tends to get hubris-filled EV buyers into a tizzy about having to actually help pay for the roads their extremely heavy vehicles do so much to damage. Go figure.
So, politicians being politicians, many are looking for a way to do this that’s somewhat easier to hide and seems “fair,” at least on the surface. For this reason, we now see the politicians and regulators in California (because of course it’s in California - where else?) now running tests on assessing a new tax based on miles driven each year.
Here’s an excerpt from a story at Motor Trend:
To combat the reduced gas tax revenue without singling out EV owners or trying to approximate an electric car's equivalent gas use or some other scheme that, it's assumed, nearly everyone (owners of gas cars and EVs alike) might find unfair, the California Department of Transportation (known as Caltrans) is considering ditching the gas tax all together in exchange for imposing a use tax on all vehicles, which would charged per mile driven, regardless of what powers your car. To test it out, Caltrans has launched a pilot program called “California Road Charge.”
How will the state keep track of how many miles you drive? Well, those who are volunteering to participate in the Road Charge pilot program can elect to have a tracking device installed in their car. Alternatively, participants can also just take a picture of their odometer and submit that instead.
[End]
Mind you, California has already adopted a $100 annual road damage fee on EVs, which is half the Texas fee. Now, in addition to that, the state is moving to invoke a per-mile fee by forcing drivers to accept a tracking device being installed in their car. Thus does yet another ‘conspiracy theory’ become reality.
While state officials now claim the per-mile fee would replace the traditional at-the-pump gas tax, you can be certain that will not happen. This is a state dealing with the most massive state budget deficit in US history, after all.
But I suppose that’s just another ‘conspiracy theory,’ right? My advice: Bookmark this piece and get back to me when the conspiracy becomes the next reality.
Thanks to podcasting partner Tammy Nemeth for tipping me off to the Motor Trend story.
That is all.
https://blackmon.substack.com/p/thursdays-energy-absurdity-in-california?publication_id=712558&post_id=144905113&isFreemail=true&r=rd9j8&triedRedirect=true