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On Monday, just as our newsletter staff was preparing to take the occasional pause that refreshes, we had one of the best news days we could’ve hoped for since Election 2024.  Talk about ending this short work week on a high note!  There’s a lot to be thankful for this Thanksgiving.

First and perhaps most important, as reported by the POST MILLENNIAL, President-elect Trump is “set to nominate Kash Patel to a top role in the FBI or the Department of Justice.”  AXIOS, citing “top transition sources,” broke the news more tentatively, saying that “the President-elect is considering him to be deputy FBI director or a high-up investigative role in the DOJ.”

In case you’re not familiar with Patel’s extensive background, the PM report summarizes it well.  Another top contender for the job of FBI director has reportedly been Missouri AG Andrew Bailey, another fabulous choice.  As we recently reported in another piece of delightful news, Mike Rogers, whose name had been floated (by whom, we have to wonder?) as a prospective FBI director, is not and has never been up for consideration by Trump.  One would imagine that once Trump heard Rogers had been given the thumbs-up by none other than disgraced former deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now a contributor at MSNBC, that would have cemented his decision.

Regarding any appointment of Rogers to the FBI, Trump was quoted by senior Trump campaign adviser Dan Scavino as saying he had “never even given it a thought.”

So, why might Trump be thinking about Patel for deputy director and not the top spot?  Perhaps it’s to keep him out of reach of senators who fear him and plan to refuse his confirmation.  Patel is someone of whom it’s often said that he “knows where all the bodies are buried.” 

But Mike Davis, who might have similar knowledge of the location of those (figurative?) bodies, says Patel would have no problem with Senate confirmation.  After reading what some leftist hack wrote about him in his Wikipedia entry, we’re wondering if Andrew Bailey might actually have more trouble, with Dems and RINOs:

“During his tenure as attorney general,” it says, “Bailey has refused to release prisoners after overturned convictions, attempted unsuccessfully to restrict gender-affirming care, battled initiatives to restore access to abortion in Missouri, and staunchly defended former President Donald Trump over his legal problems.”

That was just the second paragraph, and the author was only getting started.  Most of these seem like good reasons FOR Bailey’s appointment.  We don’t know the details of those cases in which he allegedly resisted releasing prisoners but unfortunately cannot rely on the Wikipedia entry, which really is just a hit piece.  (And, sorry, Wikipedia, after showing us this slanted piece of garbage presented as an “encyclopedia” entry, you do NOT get the small donation your fundraising pop-up screen solicited.)

As for Patel, either as director, deputy director or special investigator, he is a spectacular choice.  Until Trump is sworn in and does what he will with current FBI Director Chris Wray (which should involve a man-size Hefty bag in anticipation of trash day), Wray is still there and behaving true to form.  As we reported yesterday, agents just last week raided the home of another nonviolent J6 attendee, a cancer patient, and arrested him.  January 20 can’t come too soon.

https://thepostmillennial.com/just-in-trump-to-nominate-kash-patel-for-fbi-or-doj-position-report

Speaking of confirmation, it might surprise you to know that there’s nothing in the Constitution that requires FBI background checks for any White House appointees or even the President himself.  J. D. Rucker makes the case that this FBI should NOT be doing background checks on Trump’s team.

https://rumble.com/v5swnkw-no-president-trump-should-not-let-the-fbi-do-background-checks-on-his-team.html

The actual RULE is this:  After someone is hired for the position, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Administration, which is not involved with the FBI at all, does a security check before that person receives top-secret clearance.  These professionals are looking for “threats,” Rucker says, while the FBI is looking for “dirt.”  The goal of the FBI, as they have shown many times, is to subvert the Trump administration.

This would explain why so often a nominee is derailed --- or almost derailed --- when the opposition resorts to “trotting out the women,” as we like to call it.  These alleged personal failings have nothing to do with national security.  (Exception:  when, as in the case of Democrat Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, the woman is a Chinese spy.)

Rucker notes that Tulsi Gabbard is really being “slammed hard” by political enemies with made-up stuff about her being a Russian agent.  RFK Jr. and Pete Hegseth are in the crosshairs as well.  Trump should stand firm, he says: “The moment he allows the Deep State to start weaving their tentacles into his appointees, that’s the moment when we’re going to start seeing the situations such as what we saw with Gen. Michael Flynn, who should have been in the last Trump administration.”  It was VP Pence and the FBI who stopped that.  Recall that thanks to the machinations of then-FBI Director James Comey, Flynn got to serve as Trump’s national security advisor for 11 whole days.

The Senate really can’t use FBI warnings about “national security” as pretext for rejecting nominees.  Again, that’s because after confirmation, there’s another agency that verifies they’re good-to-go.

“If they tell you otherwise,” Rucker says, “they’re lying.”  In support of that statement, we would add that one of the most vocal proponents of using the FBI for vetting has been confirmed liar California Rep. (now Senator-elect – thanks, California) Adam Schiff.

As Mollie Hemingway told FOX NEWS’ Laura Ingraham on Monday night, “The idea that these [at the FBI] are people who could in any way vet whether a candidate is good or not, that they would be trusted to do that, is just laughable.”

Likewise Mary Katharine Ham: “The idea that by getting elected by the popular vote and the Electoral College and then naming people to his Cabinet, he’s ‘dismantling’ the government [as another confirmed liar, New York Rep. Dan Goldman, has said] seems insane to me…The idea that the FBI should be trusted by a Trump transition team --- I cannot express how wild that is without using cuss words...”

The other big, happy piece of news we received Monday is that “Special Counsel” Jack Smith finally dropped the four remaining charges against Trump related to January 6.  He had already dropped the charges against him in the Mar-A-Lago “classified documents” case.

Sadly for Trump’s two J6 co-defendants, Smith did not dismiss charges against them, as they don’t enjoy Trump’s presidential immunity as established by the Supreme Court this summer.  And in Smith’s characteristic weasel fashion, he dismissed the case against Trump “without prejudice,” meaning he could actually pick it up again at some point, presumably when Trump is out of office in 2029.  “This outcome is not based on the merits or strength of the case against the defendant,” he lied.

On the contrary, re-filing this ridiculous case should be met with extreme prejudice.

Julie Kelly has an enjoyable piece on what a graceless loser and pathetic failure Jack Smith is, outlining his history and noting that just this year, this “dirty Democratic operative” was rebuked by the Supreme Court “on three separate occasions.”  She also gets her digs in at presiding Judge Tanya Chutkan, a partisan monster in a black robe.

Kelly strongly recommends an investigation into these cases, with criminal charges “where appropriate.”  She sees plenty of evidence to support charges of conspiracy, especially in the J6 case, which “revealed collaboration between the National Archives, the DOJ and the Biden White House to concoct a documents case against Trump as early as spring of 2021.”

Continuing:  “Court proceedings in Florida also disclosed examples of evidence tampering, destruction of evidence, and witness intimidation not to mention the selective nature of bringing a documents case against a former president for the first time in history while at the same time other public officials including Joe Biden and Mike Pence were found to have unlawfully kept classified files after leaving office.”   

And then there’s the shameful Mar-A-Lago raid, which should be investigated as a likely set-up.

“If the DOJ had a Hall Of Shame,” Kelly writes, “it would be named after Jack Smith.”

https://www.declassified.live/p/biggest-loser-in-doj-history-takes 

FOX NEWS legal analyst Gregg Jarrett had some good comments Monday night with Sean Hannity, especially about the role played by the media in furthering all this.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365192003112

Here’s more from Jonathan Turley about what a loser Jack Smith is, one that history will not treat kindly.  Not that Smith deserves kindness.

https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2024/11/25/jonathan-turley-jack-smith-drop-trump-election-case/

Here’s Turley’s full column on the January 6 case.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/11/25/congresss-jan-6-investigation-looks-less-and-less-credible/

Aforementioned liar Adam Schiff “had a hissy,” as we say in the South, about Smith dropping the J6 charges against Trump.  He blew up on X, and, yes, he actually used the line that “no one is above the law.”  (So far, Schiff seems to be.  For example, last we heard, claiming homes in two different states as one’s primary residence is called “fraud.”)  Bonchie’s excellent piece on Schiff’s reaction doesn’t spare the January 6 “Select” Committee, either.  How about “selecting” co-chairs Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, among others, for a nice, big investigation?  Not for vengeance, but to know the truth.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/11/25/adam-schiff-copes-and-seethes-after-trump-charges-are-dropped-but-hes-got-no-one-to-blame-but-himself

Finally, Victoria Taft at PJ MEDIA offers suggestions for how Trump can get “payback” against Jack Smith and “the lawfare mob.”  Again, this isn’t about revenge, but rather punishment to the full extent of the law so there’s no repeat of the lawfare against Trump and anyone representing or supporting him.  In her words, “this cancer has to be rooted out to stop its corruptive spread.”  She’s right; it needs major surgery and chemo.

Taft lays out in bullet points the myriad abuses by “Lawfare Incorporated.”  Of particular note is the 65 Project, which targets attorneys who dare to represent Trump.  Alan Dershowitz, who himself has been targeted by this group, wants a thorough investigation of that, as well as a probe of the case in New York brought by Letitia James and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.

https://pjmedia.com/victoria-taft/2024/11/25/heres-how-trump-needs-to-execute-the-big-payback-against-jack-smith-and-lawfare-mob-n4934619

But for now, it’s time for us to go and give thanks for all the great news.  There is so much to be thankful for, this is bound to take us pretty much the rest of the week.

 

A breakneck pace

November 26, 2024

President-elect Trump is nominating officials to fill his Administration at a breakneck pace, with a flurry of new posts filled just since Friday. We don’t want to turn the newsletter into a long list of names and resumes, so we’ll first point you to this page from Fox News that provides an ongoing tally and background info, then focus on a few appointments of special interest.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/from-cdc-labor-secretary-see-trumps-top-picks-cabinet-roles

Trump supporters were likely pleased that Trump chose Scott Bessant as Treasury Secretary. A longtime Trump economic adviser and founder of Key Square Group, Bessant is a major investment expert and supporter of low taxes, deregulation, government spending restraint and using tariffs as a trade negotiation tool.

Trump also named Russ Vought to head the Office of Management and Budget, a role he previously filled in Trump’s first term.

Scott Turner, an NFL veteran and former head of Trump’s White House Opportunity and Revitalization Councilwas named to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which could certainly use some revitalization. Democrats on the federal, state and local levels have spent billions if not trillions on housing, yet affordable housing seems to get scarcer and scarcer in blue states.

(Latest example: California Gov. Gavin Newsom promised to build 1200 tiny homes in Sacramento to house the homeless. A year later, not a single tiny home has opened. Maybe they're waiting for Kamala to have that government Internet access up and running.)

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/05/24/report-none-of-gavin-newsoms-1200-tiny-homes-has-opened-a-year-later/

Some of Trump’s most headline-grabbing appointments include Dr. Marty Makary, an outspoken critic of the government’s COVID response, as commissioner of the FDA…Former White House adviser and Fox News contributor Dr. Sebastian Gorka as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism…And Oregon Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Labor Secretary and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat as Surgeon General. As you can read at the links below, those last two nominations raised some strenuous objections, and not from Democrats for a change, but from Trump supporters.

https://pjmedia.com/benbartee/2024/11/24/trump-really-screwed-the-pooch-with-his-surgeon-general-nomination-n4934584

https://pjmedia.com/stephen-kruiser/2024/11/23/his-honeymoon-is-over-for-me-trumps-pick-for-labor-secretary-is-a-teachers-union-fave-n4934572

It’s been quite some time since we wrote in detail about the “long, proud history of the FBI” when it comes to spying and other wrongdoing.  For a refresher --- very timely as the prospect of reforming our intel agencies actually seems within grasp --- Mark Levin’s must-see Sunday monologue runs through the highlights of our government’s repeated Constitution-trampling.

To those political enemies who would criticize President-elect Trump and anticipate him abusing his power, Levin points out that he was one of the most well-behaved and that real presidential misconduct started very early in our nation’s history, with second President John Adams, a brilliant but flawed human being.  It was soon after our nation was formed, in 1798, that Adams signed the now-infamous Sedition Act, which effectively criminalized criticism of, well, John Adams.  This was tough stuff: “If any person shall write, print, utter or publish, or procure...or knowingly and willingly assist or aid in writing, printing, uttering or publishing any false, scandalous, and malicious writing or writings against the government of the United States...with intent to defame the said government...shall be punished by fine not exceeding $2,000 and by imprisonment not exceeding 2 years.”  Conspirators in such activity could be imprisoned by up to five years!

Americans could even be prosecuted under the Sedition Act for criticizing the Sedition Act.

Adams’ political enemy, Thomas Jefferson (who could legally be criticized all the live-long day) was OF COURSE opposed to this law, and once he was President allowed it to lapse.  But before that, 17 indictments and 10 convictions went through, “many upon charges so flimsy as to be comical,” according to Peter McNamara of the Free Speech Center.  So the beginning of our great nation was tainted by this affront to free political speech.  Just ten years after the Constitution was ratified, we were already violating it to the extreme.

Then there was Abraham Lincoln, who in 1861 suspended habeas corpus from Washington DC to Philadelphia, meaning he could jail people without charging them with a crime.  In 1862, in defiance of a federal appellate court ruling, he expanded this to cover the entire nation.  Under the authority of the military, thousands of Americans, including political opponents, were imprisoned.  Over 300 opposition newspapers were closed.  Yes, it was wartime, but this was still unconstitutional political warfare.

In 1917 and 1918, respectively, Democrat Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act and Sedition Act, which, according to Levin, “would come to be known as the most egregious assaults on free speech in our history.”  Thousands were prosecuted under these laws, most notably Wilson’s own political opponent Eugene Debs, whose sentence was later commuted by Wilson’s successor, Republican Warren G. Harding.

Wilson implemented the most extensive censorship regime of any President, according to Levin.  And the Espionage Act of 1917 lives on.  We would add that “Special Counsel” Jack Smith used it to charge President Trump with “willful retention of sensitive national defense information.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-pleads-not-guilty-to-37-federal-felony-charges-out-of-classified-records-probe

Then there’s the IRS.  Documents prove that Franklin Roosevelt and his administration used it to destroy the careers of their political enemies, such as former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, a Republican whom they knew was innocent.  FDR’s IRS also targeted newspaper publishers, among them William Randolph Hearst and Frank Gannett, who expressed opposition to the New Deal.  This is just scratching the surface.

JFK’s IRS provided him with the supposedly private tax information on individuals, businesses and groups.  Conservative groups were audited under “the Ideological Organizations Audit Program” (so, Lois Lerner wasn’t the first to do this).  JFK used the FBI to spy on Martin Luther King, Jr., tapping his phones, bugging his house and monitoring his every move.  Lyndon Johnson went further, using the FBI, IRS and CIA to spy on opponent Barry Goldwater, wiretapping his campaign headquarters.

According to Levin, they found out that one of Barry Goldwater’s staffers was gay, which Goldwater had known, and were threatening to use that. Goldwater called a senior member of LBJ’s campaign and said, “Please do not ruin this man’s life.”  Ultimately, they chose not to.

Being paranoid about Robert Kennedy, LBJ sent FBI spies to the 1964 Democratic Convention, where they also continued monitoring Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders.  In ‘68, when Hubert Humphrey was nominated, LBJ had the FBI tap his phones as well, to check his loyalty about the Vietnam War.  Again, this is just the tip of the iceberg, or spies-berg.

Levin skips over the Nixon administration, perhaps because their most famous spying is so well-known (but note how Democrats at the time pretended to be shocked by it.) He fast-forwards to President Obama and his AG Eric Holder, of whom even CNN’s Jake Tapper said, “The Obama administration has used the Espionage Act to go after whistleblowers who leaked to journalists...more than all previous administrations combined…”  That would be seven times.

Recall that in 2013, the “Justice” Department seized, with no notice or justification, phone records for 20 telephone lines to AP offices and journalists’ home lines, affecting more than 100 journalists.  Just a week later, the DOJ named FOX NEWS journalist James Rosen a criminal co-conspirator in a leak case, tracking his movements, seizing his email logs and even spying on his parents.  Obama’s spying gets much, much worse; check out this story from 2016…

https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/the-administration/311026-obamas-legacy-will-be-one-of-secrecy-and-hostility/

As for Obama-Biden and the Deep State’s actions against Trump, you know all about those horrendous abuses of power:  the unrelenting lawfare against Trump and his associates; the spying on his campaign and White House; massive leaking (including Trump’s tax returns); the Russia Hoax; two sham impeachments; the raid on his home; and the agencies’ role in January 6 and the spying, tracking, raiding, arrests and convictions that followed.  Not to mention the government’s online censorship activities.

So the good ol’ USA has a long history of abuse of power by its leaders.  But not by Trump --- he was the victim of it.  How ironic that the very one who’s actually trying to change this, to make this country the kind of open, honest place we’d like to think it is, is the one being hounded and feared and called a dictator. They accuse him of “destroying norms,” but if the norm he plans to destroy is government spying on American citizens and abusing its power for political reasons, then bring on the wrecking ball.

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6365141316112

Speaking of January 6 abuses, BLAZE MEDIA has an update on their journalist Steve Baker, who recently chose to plead guilty to four misdemeanor charges (such as “milling” and “parading”) rather than endure a trial.  As it happens, his pre-trial hearing was the day after the election, and he says the judge “really showed his intolerance.”

This judge, no doubt ticked off at the election outcome, wouldn’t even allow discovery.  “He showed that he was going to be completely inflexible in the trial.” Baker says.  “He dismissed all our motions...and the most important motion that we had is, we were requesting from the government discovery on the other 80 to 100 journalists that went through the building and weren’t charged with anything.”  According to Baker, his judge is “best friends with Merrick Garland.”

This, combined with the prospect of a Washington DC jury pool, is what led him to change his plea to guilty.

After that, Baker says, the judge “made a serious unforced error” in chastising him.  “He criticized none of the [alleged] behavior...but what he did criticize me [for]...[was] my remarks in my journalism about weaponized Department of Justice and the bias of the court.”

So, not his actions, but his words, critical of the government.  (Ah, we come full circle to John Adams’ Sedition Act.)  Steve Baker needs to be at the top of the list of those J6 political prisoners Trump pardons immediately after his inauguration.  Watch this five-minute clip of his interview with Pat Gray here, highly recommended, in which he says the government is still at this, as it just SWAT-teamed and arrested an Austin man (a cancer patient) who had nonviolently entered the Capitol that day.  This was done last week, AFTER the election.

https://www.theblaze.com/shows/pat-gray-unleashed/steve-baker-felon

When you have time, here’s investigative reporter Julie Kelly interviewing 22-year Marine Corps. Veteran, Purple Heart recipient and J6 political prisoner Christopher Kuehne.

https://blubrry.com/happyhourjulieliz/138738195/ep-173-julie-and-liz-talk-to-christopher-kuehne-decorated-combat-veteran-purple-heart-recipient-and-j6-political-prisoner/

Tristan Justice at THE FEDERALIST has an exclusive report on the evidence that shows the Pentagon deliberately delayed the deployment of the National Guard on January 6.  Recall our recent story about the Inspector General “knowingly concealing” the extent of the delay and Rep. Barry Loudermilk’s letter to IG Robert P. Storch about this, insisting he correct his report.

Kash Patel, who was then chief of staff for the Defense Department, is quoted here from a FEDERALIST story back in March, insisting that President Trump authorized those 10,000 National Guard.  It’s now crystal clear that Trump did just that and has told the truth about it all along.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/11/21/exclusive-dod-intentionally-delayed-national-guard-deployment-to-the-capitol-on-jan-6/

Speaking of Kash Patel, he appeared Sunday on FOX NEWS with Maria Bartiromo to explain how he as FBI Director would restore public trust in the Bureau.  Exposure of the corruption is a must, he said.  “Put out the documents.  Put out the evidence.  We only have gotten halfway down the Russiagate hole.”

In other words, it’s far worse than we know after almost four years.  Watch Patel’s interview at THE GATEWAY PUNDIT, which also features a rundown of the transgressions (that we know of) by current FBI Director Chris Wray.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/kash-patel-displays-why-he-is-best-pick/

Trump’s cabinet nominations are the clearest sign he could give that it’s no longer business as usual for the Deep State.  (And for those who still question the use of the term “Deep State” and whether or not it’s even real or just a conspiracy theory, we say YES, it’s real, and YES, that’s our preferred term.  Expect to see much more discussion of it here in the next months, as we watch it being dismantled.)

(Note: For those who scoff at the idea of Trump being able to dismantle these agencies, Vivek Ramaswamy of Trump’s new Government Efficiency agency explained that the “dirty little secret” of DC is that the government isn’t being run by the people we elect but by unelected executive branch bureaucrats. And most of their power and the damages they cause stem from regulations that the Supreme Court has recently ruled they had no unconstitutional power to impose. So yes, Trump will have the authority to gut them. Remember that some of the same people crying that a smaller government can’t do its job also said Twitter couldn’t function if Elon Musk cut 80% of the work force. It seems to be functioning just fine.)

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ramaswamy-outlines-doges-vision-bring-sweeping-change-bureaucracy-restoring-accountability

Matt Gaetz for Attorney General is the most obvious example of a jolt to the Deep State, as the left is freaking out over what they wrongly see as retribution or revenge against the DOJ.  Former federal prosecutor Andrew Cherlasky told the DAILY CALLER that “Gaetz is clearly an outsider and disruptor, and that’s the point.”  He’s “exactly what President Trump promised for the DOJ during his campaign, namely to end the department’s left-leaning focus on lawfare, censorship, and election interference.”

Sounds perfect.  On the other hand, legal analyst Andrew McCarthy isn’t too pleased, suggesting that Gaetz lacks qualification because he was “among the leading proponents of the effort to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election.”  Sigh.  We have to wonder what McCarthy’s assessment of that election might be one day, after everything comes out in the wash.

Here’s more on the Gaetz pick and others from the DAILY CALLER.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/17/trump-doj-bureaucrats-unexpected-leadership-picks/

Speaking of the 2020 election, another sign that things are changing is the discussion of revoking the security clearances for those 51 former intel officials who signed the infamous “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop being Russian disinformation.  That letter might have been the biggest single piece of election interference of all time.  The signers are lucky if they’re not prosecuted.

One might wonder what any FORMER intel officials need with security clearances, anyway.  Wouldn’t you think that once they leave the government, they shouldn’t retain them?  California Rep. Darrell Issa is asking that question.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/11/15/remember-those-51-hunter-biden-laptop-deniers-they-may-lose-their-security-clearances-n4934340

Gaetz was the subject of an ethics investigation in the House, and Speaker Mike Johnson is saying that since he has already resigned his House seat --- a curious move --- it would violate House rules for the House Ethics Committee to release it.

Whatever happens with this, and whether or not Gaetz wins Senate confirmation, we trust that whoever ends up with that job will be as tenacious as he is.  Details at THE EPOCH TIMES…

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/speaker-johnson-will-ask-house-ethics-committee-not-to-release-report-on-matt-gaetz-5760483

As we said last week, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is at the hub of the intelligence wheel.  Now Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for DNI, has reportedly sparked “a special kind of unease among Democratic lawmakers, the liberal media, and elements of the intelligence community.” And for ridiculous “reasons” that sound like a rehash of the Trump I Russia Hoax.

Tom Nichols at THE ATLANTIC is having a cow.  Likewise, Bill Kristol.  Wow, that sounds like the best recommendation FOR Tulsi Gabbard we could possibly have!  This piece at THE BLAZE is a must-read…

https://www.theblaze.com/news/tulsi-gabbard-has-national-security-experts-worried-the-dni-has-access-to-every-single-secret

Despite his surprisingly cordial transition meeting with Trump, President Biden and his staffers seem determined to do everything they can to undermine Trump before he takes office. We already told you how they’re shoveling billions of dollars from the “Inflation Reduction Act” to shady green “nonprofits” recently formed by their cronies, to keep Trump from canceling the spending. They reportedly just promoted three DEI-pushing woke military leaders that Trump wants to replace. They were also trying to send as much money as possible to Ukraine to continue the war Trump vowed to end. But Biden’s latest move might be not merely unscrupulous but dangerous.

During a press conference in the South American rainforest to promote a reforestation program, Biden announced that he’s given permission to Ukraine to use American-made long-range missiles that can reach into Russia. The reason is that Russia has reportedly amassed 50,000 troops in the Kursk region, including 10,000 North Korean troops, and this will allow Ukraine to go on the offensive and maybe dissuade Kim Jong-Un from further involvement.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-parting-gift-trump-major-escalation-ukraine-inching-us-closer-war-russia/

But critics across the political spectrum are alarmed that this escalation brings us a step closer to World War III. Vladimir Putin has said that he will consider it an act of war against Russia if any nuclear nation provides Ukraine with weapons to attack inside Russia’s territory, and he reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in response.

The leader of an opposition party in Russia said that allowing Ukraine to bomb Russia directly would mean “direct US participation in the military conflict in Ukraine. Which will inevitably entail the harshest response from Russia.” He warned, “The Biden administration cannot help but understand that it leaves the Trump team with the problem of resolving not only the Ukrainian conflict, but also an even more acute one – preventing a global confrontation.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/11/18/kremlin-warns-inevitable-escalation-over-long-range-missile-strikes/

I assume the Biden Administration does understand that, even if Biden himself doesn’t. He ended his press conference by bizarrely turning around and walking into the rainforest. It would be a blessing for America and the world if his entire Administration would go away now by doing the same thing.

The original idea of “The View” was to present a daily discussion of major topics by women with a variety of viewpoints. It’s morphed into a daily hivemind session where five leftists compete to see who can shout the craziest leftwing talking points to get the audience to clap like trained seals. But after last week’s election shocked them, ABC executives are finally starting to question whether it’s wise for their bottom line to air a show that spends an hour a day calling the majority of Americans stupid, sexist, racist, fascist Nazis.

So the New York Post reports that ABC is planning major changes to “The View,” such as adding some women with actual differing views, even – brace yourselves – a Trump-voting Republican!

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/11/14/the-view-looking-to-hire-pro-trump-woman-as-ratings-nosedive-n2647789

If it’s the usual network set-up of one Republican being shouted down by four crazy liberals, we’re not sure who would take the gig. One suggestion we’d love to see was Roseanne Barr. She’d send the other four fleeing to their dressing rooms in tears. But if she didn’t take the gig, who would? Some commentators have suggested they find one of the many hard-working women who take on jobs that nobody else wants to do, from caring for the elderly to changing diapers. That would prepare them for being on “The View.”

RELATED: Whoopi Goldberg accused a New York bakery of refusing to take a cake order from her because the owner didn’t approve of her political views. The bakery got bombarded with calls over it.

We know liberals love to play the victim, but the baker said she turned down the order, as she explained, because her building is from 1930 and has an unreliable boiler so she can’t accept orders weeks in advance since she doesn’t know if the equipment will be working. She did supply 50 treats to “The View” that day, and she said she didn’t know or care about the politics of whoever picked them up.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/whoopi-goldberg-claims-bakery-refused-service-leftist-views-they-did-not-like-my-politics

Thanks, Joe

November 16, 2024

Joe Biden is leaving us something to remember him by: Persistent inflation.

Remember that great Biden-Harris economy we were told we were stupid for not voting for more of? And how inflation was over? The Labor Department reported Wednesday that the October consumer price index rose by 0.2%, same as the previous month. It was actually 0.244%, but the government rounds prices down. Wish the grocery store would do that. This means the annual inflation rate that was 2.4% in September was up to 2.6% in October. I believe that’s moving the wrong way. Thank goodness voters didn’t.

https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/11/13/inflation-rose-in-october/

Biden is also helping fuel inflation by leaving us with a big new tax. His EPA finalized a rule imposing a tax of $900 on the oil and gas industry for every metric ton of methane emitted over a certain level in 2024. It rises to $1200 in 2025, $1500 in 2026, and I assume the sky’s the limit. Fortunately, Trump taking over the EPA in January should bring the end of this.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-imposes-new-methane-emissions-tax-way-out-white-house-critic-says-boost-big-oil

This will be sold by Democrats as a tax on the eeeevil oil and gas companies, but it’s actually a tax on all of us. It will just be passed on to consumers in the form of higher energy prices, which will raise prices on everything that uses energy to create or transport, which is everything. That’s called “inflation.” And guess where the EPA’s authority to do this came from? The trillion-dollar “climate change” spending bill laughably named “The Inflation Reduction Act.” We should tax the people who passed that for all the hot gas they spewed.

Welcome news

November 16, 2024

This is welcome news, even if hard to believe. Podcaster Joe Rogan claims that a number of artists, musicians and comedians have privately thanked him for endorsing Trump. Despite all the public histrionics over the election from leftist celebrities, Rogan says that a surprising number of them actually support Trump and think the country’s going in the wrong direction, but they’re afraid to say it for fear they’ll lose their careers.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/11/14/joe-rogan-artists-musicians-comedians-thanked-me-for-endorsing-trump-because-they-cant-do-it-because-theyd-be-attacked/

Rogan said, “The whole thing is nuts. And it’s a dangerous path that we were on…Trump has vowed to have free speech become a very important part of what he’s standing for. And that this censoring of information needs to stop. And that we need to stop all government influence in what people have to say.”

Of course, the Hollywood leftists have also denounced Rogan as a far-right extremist, but he’s incredibly successful in new media and doesn’t need them. He’s also not even a conservative: the last presidential candidate he endorsed was socialist Bernie Sanders, who just told his party they lost because they are out of touch with working Americans. Sounds like they’ve even out of touch with some of their fellow cowed celebrities.

Wonder if one of them is Sylvester Stallone? Nah, he’s definitely not afraid of being “canceled” by anti-Trumpers.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/11/15/watch-sylvester-stallone-calls-trump-the-second-george-washington-in-mar-a-lago-speech/

The real enemy for Democrats

November 15, 2024

The Democratic Party is facing an “existential threat,” but it’s not the bad orange man. To paraphrase the comic strip “Pogo,” they have met the enemy, and it is them.

In trying to figure out what caused last week’s shellacking at the polls, some Democrats are crying, pointing fingers, having tantrums and meltdowns, and claiming the problem is that the party wasn’t “progressive” enough (How many men can you fit INTO a girl’s bathroom?!)

https://notthebee.com/article/f-them-to-the-moon-and-back-editor-of-scientific-american-apologizes-after-calling-trump-voters-fing-fascists

But other Democrats are trying to take the party back from the far-left loons and drag it back toward the center. They’ve sensed that catering to the lunatic fringe and its boutique “problems” while calling working class voters stupid bigots and Nazis for complaining about $7-a-pound butter wasn’t a smart election strategy.

https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/11/11/centrist-democrats-roast-far-left-for-alienating-voters-with-nonsense-that-caused-election-loss/

Will they be successful in restoring common sense to the Democratic Party? It’s not looking good, if early reactions are any indication.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2024/11/11/massachusetts-democrat-seth-moultons-former-interns-staffers-demand-apology-over-lgbtq-remarks/

For instance, former staffers and interns of Rep. Seth Moulton are demanding an apology, and some LGBTQIA+++ activists even want his resignation over "offensive" remarks he made in an op-ed. Here’s what he said (Better cover the eyes of any children in the room):

He said the Democratic Party spends “way too much time trying not to offend anyone rather than being brutally honest about the challenges many Americans face. I have two little girls, I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete, but as a Democrat I’m supposed to be afraid to say that.”

I guess he should be afraid to say that if he wants to be a Democrat politician. He should join us over on the Republican side. We’ve been speaking obvious truths for years and not caring what lunatics say about us. It’s remarkably freeing.

When President Trump attempts to reform the EPA to get it away from radical environmental authoritarianism, he’ll now have a much clearer path. This week, in the case of Marin Audubon Society, et al v. FAA, et al, the US Court of Appeals in DC wiped out 46 years' of federal environmental regulations. 

The court ruled that a body called the Council on Environmental Quality inside the Executive Office of the President has for years been writing environmental regulations and guidelines and illegally publishing them in the Federal Record, as if they had the force of law, when the CEQ has no such legal authority.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/11/12/court-vaporizes-50-years-of-environmental-law-leaving-trumps-epa-to-build-on-the-ashes-n2181905

Streiff at Redstate.com has details at the link, along with the ironic news that the case was actually brought by environmentalists who wanted a regulation enforced, but it caused the judges to notice that the regulations never should have been imposed in the first place.

Look for other agencies to rush to reimpose decades’ worth of now-overturned regulations before Trump gets in, but with the SCOTUS having killed the Chevron deference that gave those agencies preferential treatment in court, the feds may be facing a tsunami of lawsuits against their ironfisted eco-dictates.

Iran reportedly “postponed” a third attack on Israel in hopes of reaching a deal with Trump…

https://www.breitbart.com/middle-east/2024/11/13/iran-israel-attack-deal-trump/

In an effusively complimentary letter, a member of the Saudi Royals asked Trump to “finish what you started” (i.e., the miraculous Abraham Accords peace deals that were going so well before peace in the Middle East was revoked by executive order of Joe Biden.)

https://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2024/11/12/saudi-royals-ask-trump-finish-what-you-started-middle-east/

The mayor of New York City is quietly telling hundreds of “migrants” that their free hotel stays will end as of December 15 (not a great time to be kicked out of your hotel in New York), and the deadline to get out has been moved forward from Dec. 31.

https://www.breitbart.com/immigration/2024/11/12/nyc-warns-migrants-funding-for-upstate-hotel-rooms-is-ending/

Also, the President of South Korea is taking golf lessons in hopes of playing with Trump; the UK hopes to cut a deal with Trump to avoid new tariffs by agreeing to separate more from the EU; EU officials are talking about buying more gas from the US in hopes of getting a discount on Trump’s tariffs; and Steven Colbert revealed that he’s so upset, he’s stress-eating.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/11/12/stephen-colbert-reveals-he-is-stress-eating-following-trump-win/

Don’t know if this another aspect of the salutary “Trump Effect,” or that Americans are finally unafraid to say how fed up they are with arrogant leftists who are always wrong telling them to shut up, or that media outlets are tired of circling down the financial toilet. But whatever the cause, we’ll take it: The Los Angeles Times has fired its entire leftwing editorial board and wants to replace them with actual journalists who will cover the incoming Trump Administration fairly and factually. Good luck finding any real journalists to hire these days.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/los-angeles-times-owner-fires-far-left-editorial/

It’s also not a good time to be a leftist at CNN or MSNBC. Seems that corporate owners will only put up with so much low-rated and money-losing ranting before they start handing the pinkoes pink slips.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/11/12/cnn-ratings-and-lots-of-firings-coming-n2181920

With Tulsi Gabbard’s strong commitment to freedom, individual rights and peace through strength, along with her military background (two tours in the Middle East with the National Guard), it was a foregone conclusion that President-elect Trump would find a choice spot for her in his second administration.  That has happened, with Trump announcing Wednesday that she is his nominee for Director of National Intelligence (DNI).  She’s an outstanding pick.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-trump-appoints-tulsi-gabbard-as-director-of-national-intelligence

Relatively few Americans even know what the role of the DNI is, but it’s pivotal, especially at this time of reorganization and reform of the intel agencies.  Yet most news stories about this, including the one linked to above, offer little clue as to what it’s for, so we’ll explain.  First, the federal government has 18 (count ‘em) different intelligence agencies!  We’re all familiar with the CIA, FBI and NSA, but there’s also the Defense Intelligence Agency for military intel and numerous others much more obscure.  The State Department, Treasury Department and DEA have their own intelligence bureaus.  The Army, Navy, Marine Corps., Air Force, Coast Guard and Space Force each have their own intelligence offices.  You can learn much more about this at the DNI website.

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/what-we-do/members-of-the-ic

Of course, part of the reform of the intelligence community will almost surely be to eliminate some of these and consolidate others, but in the meantime, the Office of the DNI is intended to be the go-between, the one who coordinates communication and intelligence sharing among all of them.

As DNI, Tulsi will be at the hub of all that.  In theory at least, when, say, the CIA wants to work with the FBI on a particular investigation, they’re supposed to work through the DNI.  (The CIA isn’t supposed to just go in and spy on Americans, you know --- only the FBI can do that, haha.)

On their website, they provide this capsule description of the DNI’s role: The DNI “serves as the head of the U.S. Intelligence Community, overseeing and directing the implementation of the National Intelligence Program and acting as the principal advisor to the President, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council for intelligence matters related to national security.  Specific duties are outlined here…

https://www.dni.gov/index.php/who-we-are

Obviously, for someone like Trump who himself has been targeted by multiple intelligence agencies and who wants to bring as much transparency as possible to their activities, the person in this job must be impeccably trustworthy. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s superb nominee for CIA Director, used to be the DNI himself.  In Trump’s announcement on Tuesday, he said this about Ratcliffe:

“From exposing fake Russian collusion to be a Clinton campaign operation, to catching the FBI’s abuse of Civil Liberties at the FISA Court, John Ratcliffe has always been a warrior for Truth and Honesty with the American public.  When 51 intelligence officials were lying about Hunter Biden’s laptop, there was one, John Ratcliffe, telling the truth to the American people.”

In 2020, Trump awarded Ratcliffe the National Security Medal, which is, Trump said, “the Nation’s highest honor for distinguished achievement in the field of intelligence and National Security.”  Previously a Texas congressman, Ratcliffe really has been at the leading edge.

https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-trump-taps-former-director-of-national-intelligence-john-ratcliffe-to-lead-cia

Investigative reporter Julie Kelly is liking what she sees at the DOJ, as she sees the “rats fleeing the ship” in anticipation of Trump’s allies coming in and the scales of justice having a chance to “recalibrate.”

For example, in an update on our “Special Counsel” Jack Smith story from Wednesday, he and his prosecution team confirmed they’ll be resigning before Trump takes office on January 20.  It’s not yet clear whether or not Smith will file a confidential report summarizing their work, required under the DOJ’s rules for special counsels.  Oh, well, Smith always seemed to make up his own rules. And he’s never really been a special counsel, anyway.

According to a story in THE NEW YORK TIMES, Smith now “finds himself on the defensive” (all together now: “Awwwww!!”).  This is because, as we reported yesterday, Republicans Jim Jordan, House Judiciary chairman, and Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, have told DOJ officials working on their two Trump cases to preserve all of their communications for investigators.  (Of course, the House’s sham January 6 committee was supposed to preserve all their records, too, and they chose to destroy them instead, with no repercussions so far.  I digress.)  The NYT writers say this is “a sure sign that a new balance of power in Washington will make Mr. Smith among those being hunted by congressional investigators and others.”

Ah, we get what you’re saying, NYT writers.  It’s the REPUBLICANS who are “hunting” now, simply for wanting accountability for the man who was hunting President Trump and exploiting the legal system in every twisted way possible to stop him from becoming President again.

As Kelly details, Smith “filed unprecedented federal indictments” against the President in Washington for the events of January 6 and in Florida “related to Trump’s alleged hoarding of national defense secrets,” but that his all-out pursuit of Trump is ending with “a whimper, not a bang.”  This must surprise all the cable news hosts and so-called legal experts who, she says, “hung on Smith’s every move in court, salivating over the vision of the war-crimes prosecutor [that was Smith’s background] hauling their long-time nemesis off to the gulag in handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit.”

No, instead they’re going to see their “nemesis” re-inaugurated.  And they won’t understand this, but if Smith turns out to be the one wearing an orange jumpsuit, it won’t be for “revenge” but for justice over his abuses of a defendant’s rights.

Rep. Jordan has also indicated that he may ask Smith to testify publicly, as Special Counsel Robert Mueller had to do after his investigation was over.  (Remember how oddly confused Mueller appeared to be?  It seemed that his second-in-command Andrew Weissmann might have been the actual leader.)  From what she knows of Smith’s personality, Kelly anticipates that he “will lay bare his sense of superiority and air of imperviousness for all the world to see.”

She suggests they also interview Jay Bratt, who is also planning to beat a hasty retreat from the DOJ.  Recall that Bratt is alleged to have threatened a defense attorney --- the one who was up for a judgeship? --- in the so-called “classified” documents case, to induce him to pressure his client to flip on Trump.  Bratt also visited the Biden White House at least twice and is alleged to have pushed aggressively behind the scenes for the armed FBI raid on Mar-A-Lago, which he sure got.

Kelly goes on to note that, according to a story in POLITICO, DOJ employees are “terrified” over Trump’s return, with one attorney saying that department prosecutors are “losing their minds.”  He said, “The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”

That’s exactly what needs to happen at the DOJ.  And Trump isn’t even in office yet.  This is what they’re calling “the Trump effect.” It’s like cockroaches scurrying to hide when the kitchen light comes on.

Prosecutors know they could be in big trouble over such abuses as withholding exculpatory evidence and violating the due process rights of J6 defendants, who often were detained for months and years without knowing the charges against them and without even being able to speak to their attorneys.  As Kelly reports, “In June, the Supreme Court concluded the DOJ unlawfully applied 18 USC 1512(c)(2), obstruction of an official proceeding, in J6 cases but not before hundreds were charged and over 100 sent to prison.”

Then we have selective prosecution.  Kelly writes that “no other group of political protesters in U.S. history has been subjected to the kind of federal charges levied against J6-ers.”  No wonder these prosecutors are panicked; they know what they did.  They might have thought they were safe, assuming they’d “get” Trump before he could come back and “get” them.  But, again, a re-tooled DOJ “getting” them on things they actually did sounds more like justice, not vengeance.

https://www.declassified.live/p/rats-flee-sinking-doj-ship?

 

 

RELATED STORY:  In a very different take on Trump’s new term, MSNBC intel expert Jeremy Bash (Dana Bash’s ex-husband and one of those 51 officials who signed the “classic earmarks” letter about Hunter’s laptop) said on Monday that he “expects” U.S. military and intelligence leaders to undermine President Trump and disobey orders if they decide they’re “unlawful” or “political.”

These are the “institutionalists,” he said, “who will apply “checks and balances.”

Oh, really?  Are these the same checks and balances they used when they disregarded Trump’s authorization for 10,000 National Guard troops at the Capitol on January 6, which would have prevented the riot that they apparently really, really wanted to have?

You have to read this.  This guy personifies the very attitude that has to be swept from the DOJ and the entire intelligence community.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/13/msnbc-intel-expert-jeremy-bash-says-institutionalists-within-the-government-will-thwart-trumps-agenda/

 

MORE READING:  For when you have time, Trump’s Agenda47 (not to be confused with “Project 2025,” which has nothing to do with Trump) lists point-by-point the actions Trump plans to take to dismantle the Deep State.  They involve establishing a “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to declassify and publish all documents on Deep State spying, censorship, and abuses of power.  Transparency at last!  Better prepare to be shocked.

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/agenda47/agenda47-president-trumps-plan-to-dismantle-the-deep-state-and-return-power-to-the-american-people

And here’s a snippet of Victoria Taft’s interview with investigative reporter Lee Smith about it…

https://x.com/VictoriaTaft/status/1856444459900350969?ref

At the time of this writing early Wednesday morning, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has been nominated by President-elect Trump to head the CIA --- fabulous choice, Mr. President --- but his nominee for FBI director is yet to be announced.  That’s going to be such a key position, right up there with U.S. Attorney General, because the FBI has to be taken apart and put back together in order to fix it.  The corruption there is breathtaking, as a story that hit late Tuesday reminds us.

An FBI analyst testified before the House Judiciary Committee and the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Barry Loudermilk’s subcommittee) that the FBI’s “Foreign Influence Task Force” has been using a new software tool specifically to track election-related speech on social media.  Never mind the word “foreign” in this task force’s name, because the task force doesn’t pay attention to that, either.  According to this analyst, they’ve been using their new “tool” on Americans.

In a (probably useless) letter to FBI Director Chris Wray, Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan wrote that this tool was being used to monitor social media posts “regardless of whether the users are American citizens or foreign actors, to search for ‘content indicative of criminal conduct.’”

According to the analyst, the FBI then shares user names and specific content with social media companies “to censor such conduct accordingly.”  That’s right --- they’re STILL DOING THIS.

When the witness was asked about the scope of said “criminal conduct,” FBI counsel repeatedly prevented him from fully answering.

“Therefore,” Jordan continued, “we write to obtain additional information in order to understand whether the FBI has or could use this software tool to censor or infringe upon lawful speech, particularly Americans’ political speech.”

This is more election interference by our own FBI, and Americans have had enough.  These power-mad bureaucrats just can’t seem to stop themselves from spying on Americans and controlling what we’re allowed to say, so someone else is going to have to stop them, even if it involves firing the whole lot of them.  Every one of them, that is, except the whistleblowers, who deserve a raise and a promotion.

https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2024/11/12/analyst-testimony-suggests-fbi-used-tool-to-track-and-spy-on-americans-engaged-in-election-related-talk-n2181913

A Post-Election Reflection

November 13, 2024

At dawn a week ago, I was driving on an overhead connector in San Antonio, several stories taller than most of the thrill-rides at our local theme parks. Only barely awake after watching the election returns, I listened as a radio announcer played the song the victorious Trump election team sang to celebrate the victory confirmed only moments earlier. To my utter amazement, they sang, “How Great Thou Art,” a traditional evangelical hymn I heard performed by my first-generation Swedish grandparents. At that same instant, a brilliant sunrise peaked over the edge of the horizon, the heavenly light demonstrating that grace might still be spreading to Texas as well as our sister-states.

Or at least some of them since the only ones in which Kamala had gained a clear plurality appeared to be those few which routinely fail to enforce voter standards –and so counting naturally takes longer. But those were the exceptions as the red wave swept inexorably toward the astounding total of over 300 electoral votes. Unlike four years ago, this election had been too big to lie about! Having suffered from a very Protestant skepticism that, all other things being equal, the electorate will usually choose Barabbas, it was hard to believe when TV cameras showed Amish villages enthusiastically hosting Trump caravans. And even died -in-the-blue New Jersey neighborhoods were now featuring Orthodox Jews proudly waving Trump banners. In the end a single pregnant fact underlined the Democratic debacle: Even in the familiar precincts of his home county, Governor Tim Walz had failed to achieve a win.

As regular readers may remember, I have long pondered the possibilities of civil war, those cleavages in our society reminding me both of our own history and my left-over nightmares from Bosnia. The Balkans hung together under the Ottoman Empire, Stalinism, the Cold War and, for a while, even the break-up of the USSR. But when separatism, historical revisionism and fratricidal agendas took over, 800 years of Bosnian unity shattered into three desperately warring factions. My treks over and through that shattered country continuously replayed themselves during what certainly seemed like the summer of our discontents. I have loathed Joe Biden’s reckless rhetoric about “MAGA Republicans” for a long time, his nefarious suggestions seemingly matched by the lawfare campaign organized under White House tutelage. The attempted assassinations mounted against Donald Trump were deeply shocking but not in the least surprising. History provides too many examples of what can happen after an assassination, the murder of Arch-Duke Ferdinand in Sarajevo becoming a proximate cause of World War I. Was something like that in our future as well?

Because so much was unknown and un-knowable, I avoided making firm plans until after the election – which suddenly came, went and we won! All through Veterans Day, I have been profoundly at peace, careful to pray as hard after those events as before, now combined with simple gratitude that maybe, just maybe, we might be spared the worst of all outcomes. As a former soldier, I know only too well what those outcomes could be: watching the steady erosion of our forces and their arms caches; and desperately contemplating those ten million illegals let in by Kamala as a Fifth Column of potential adversaries. Would you seriously expect the Russians, Chinese or Iranians to ignore their potential should push come to shove?

With the prospects for World War III seemingly growing daily, I certainly would not, which was why my day perceptibly brightened when the news arrived that our friend Governor Mike Huckabee will be our next ambassador to Israel, and that another governor, Kristi Noem, will shortly become the head of DHS. And then, later in the day, came the trifecta: Pete Hegseth appointed as SECDEF!

I turned immediately to CNN for a fresh demonstration of the legacy media’s institutional dereliction of duty. Sure enough, there was Erin Burnett, practically in tears as she related the dread tidings of these latest appointments by Donald Trump. Commiserating with a Democratic congressman (naturally enough), she even alluded to a secret plan by the incoming president to dismiss senior generals who were “too woke” to meet his standards. And wasn’t an unqualified Fox analyst like Pete Hegseth the perfect choice for such a scurrilous task? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/politics/2024/11/12/trump-woke-generals-warrior-board-executive-order/

Nonsense, Erin! For the record, Pete Hegseth is an exquisitely experienced junior Army officer and distinguished author. A generation apart, I only wish him Godspeed as he sets out to trim the Pentagon bureaucracy with the nearest axe that might be handy!

Colonel (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former West Point professor, Dean of the National War College and on-air military analyst for NBC News.

The moment it was clear last week that President Trump had won another term in the White House, we asked the question, what happens now with all the pending lawfare against him?  We’ve got some updates.

Every one of those cases was brought in the first place to try to prevent Trump from being President again --- and if prosecutors needed to put him in jail to accomplish that, so much the better.  (As the saying goes, that’s not a bug; it’s a feature.)  In that case, putting him in the slammer is what they would gleefully have done.  Even now, some on the left are still clinging to the idea that they can somehow paralyze the President-elect with one of these cases.  In at least one instance, that would seem to include the judge in the case, Judge Juan Merchan.  Otherwise, he’d just drop that hot mess.

In light of the SCOTUS decision that a President has immunity from federal prosecution for his official duties, the two cases brought by “Special Counsel” Jack Smith (never a constitutionally-appointed special counsel) are set to be dismissed by the “Justice” Department.  (Yes, we do relish the irony suggested by those quotation marks.)  The first of those is the so-called election interference case, the one related to the events of January 6, which the defense argues concerns his duties as President, for which he has immunity.

The other is the so-called “classified” documents case, which Florida Judge Aileen Cannon had already taken off the table.  Smith had filed an appeal, but the DOJ will be dropping it now.  We saw the most shockingly over-the-top abuses of power with that one, including collusion with the Biden White House to affect a massive land, sea and air armed raid of Trump’s estate Mar-A-Lago.  Looking back, it’s hard to believe that something this egregious was actually done in the United States of America, especially when you consider that as President, Trump had the absolute authority to declassify.

(NOTE: Melania Trump declined the traditional First Ladies’ tea with Jill Biden, reportedly because she doesn’t feel like sipping tea with people who called her husband Hitler and a threat to democracy, ginned up hatred toward him that sparked two assassination attempts, and sent armed goons to raid her family’s home at 6 a.m. and paw through her underwear drawer, looking for “documents.” Can you blame her?)

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/11/12/report-melania-trump-has-one-very-good-reason-why-shes-snubbing-jill-biden-n2181879

Then there were three state cases.  First, we have the RICO (!) case against Trump in Georgia filed by Fulton County DA Fani Willis, which also involved the Biden White House.  That case is awaiting an appeals court decision.

Next, we have the New York criminal trial over “fraudulent records” relating to those payments made to Stormy Daniels.  (Calling it the “hush money” case, as just about everyone does, is misleading, as this stitched-together case was based on an action that wasn’t even illegal; namely, making payments on an NDA, or non-disclosure agreement, with Stormy Daniels, whom he still insists he never had an affair with.)  The payments were listed as “legal expenses” in business records, which actually makes the most sense to us and many business and legal experts.

Since payment was made in 34 installments, the documentation of each check was turned by prosecutors into a separate count, a trick prosecutors use to inflate the charges.  Voila!  Trump is magically charged with 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.  In May, a Manhattan jury convicted Trump on all 34.  (If he’s found guilty of one, you know he’s going to be found guilty of 34, because they’re all the exact same thing, just spread out over 34 times.)

Sentencing had been set for November 26.  But yesterday, the judge in that case, Juan Merchan, announced he was postponing his decision on how to proceed in the sentencing phase in light of Trump’s re-election.  This was done at the request of the prosecution, which agreed with the Trump team that his re-election could have impact on the outcome of the case.  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg now has one week, until November 19, to propose what he thinks would be the appropriate next step, which might be to scrap the case.  (More on this development below.)

Finally, there’s the New York civil fraud case overseen by State Attorney General Letitia James, who had vowed during her campaign to prosecute Trump on...something, anything, everything.  That’s the one in which Trump had supposedly inflated the value of his real estate holdings in a way that’s routinely done in dealings with lenders, who always do their own assessments.  No one was damaged, no one had ever complained, the Trump Organization got its loans, the Trump Organization paid back its loans, and everybody involved was happy and wanted to do business together again.  Anyway, after a verdict of guilty in a New York court, the case is on appeal.

Prior to Judge Merchan’s decision Tuesday to delay further action in his case, Trump spokesman Steven Cheung had said the sentencing should not stand, so that “as Trump said in his historic victory speech, [we can] unify our country and work together for the betterment of our nation.”  After the decision, Cheung said, “It is now abundantly clear that Americans want an immediate end to the weaponization of our justice system, including this case, which should have never been filed.”

On Tuesday night, FOX NEWS host Trace Gallagher brought on criminal defense attorney Nick Bajaj, who said the case, after being delayed, is going to be dismissed.  His explanation of the reason for this is clear; here’s the problem:

“If we believe it took legal gymnastics to conjure up a crime that was not in the statute, imagine the legal gymnastics it would take for this judge to say, ‘In light of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding immunity, I’m gonna extract all the evidence that was presented to the fact-finder, the jury, that had to do with or came about while Trump was President.’  [That would include] testimony from his aides, the completion of the financial form, for instance.  This judge has to extract that, and then say, ‘Hey, whatever was left was enough for the jury to come back with a conviction.’”

It would just be impossible to sort this out.  “Now, why is this important?” he continued.  “Because the judge can say, ‘You know what?  That evidence [relating to Trump’s presidency] came in, it’s harmless error, it’s enough for the jury, enough for government work, let’s go for the conviction.’  But then it’s gonna go to the appellate courts, [where] this case is absolute toast, and it’s really a testament to the fact that it should never have been brought in the first place.”

Bajaj also commented on the Georgia lawfare brought by Fani Willis, citing corruption in the prosecution for that case and contrasting it with another case: “There has been a highly publicized RICO case involving gang activity, guns, drugs, murder, shootings, and that district attorney’s office fumbled the ball so much, they did such an incompetent job, that the lead defendant in that case was just given 12 years’ probation, if you can imagine that…”

He said that with the “clear conflict of interest” in Willis’ case against Trump, along with evidence of malicious prosecution, he doesn’t see the case going anywhere.

Before Merchan announced his decision to delay, Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, who defended Trump during his first impeachment, said he thought the sentencing might not happen.  “It should not happen,” he told the WASHINGTON EXAMINER.  “I don’t understand the case against Trump in New York.  If I had a class in criminal law, and they asked me to describe the conviction of Donald Trump, I couldn’t do it.  And so, if you can’t even describe it or understand it, this is just no crime here.  I think the only real impact of the New York cases, it probably contributed slightly to Trump’s election.”

We’d like to think so.

The penalty for Trump’s non-crime could be as much as four years.  Legal experts have suggested that although a full prison term is unlikely, Trump could still face fines or probation.  The WASHINGTON EXAMINER summary, written Monday, the day before Judge Merchan’s delay, is a good one.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/3225842/new-york-judge-trump-sentencing-hush-money-case/

The unbelievably huge conflict of interest faced by Judge Merchan in this case, the one involving his daughter’s highly profitable work raising money for Democrat interests, has only solidified with time, despite continued efforts in the media to downplay it.  Merchan should never have presided over this case, but efforts to persuade him to recuse himself were fruitless.  So one might imagine that efforts to persuade him to drop the case will be fruitless as well.  It’s probably going to be an appeals court that says, “Enough already.”

RELATED:  In other partisan litigation, J6 journalist Steve Baker has changed his not guilty plea to guilty, telling presiding Judge Chris Cooper that he would not be put through a “shaming exercise” of a trial that he’s realized has an almost certain outcome, given the judge’s hardline stance.  (Note:  according to his defense attorney, a plea of guilty is not the same as a confession.)  Here’s how that went…

https://www.theblaze.com/news/breaking-steve-baker-pleads-guilty-to-4-jan-6-charges-to-avoid-the-shaming-exercise-of-a-trial

 

With over two months to go till the Inauguration on January 20, it does feel like the calm before the storm.  The Trump 2.0 team seems to be moving as smoothly as a well-oiled machine, tapping some of the best people they could possibly have chosen for positions in his second administration.  Maybe even more importantly, he’s NOT tapping others, like former CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, who might have been too swampy themselves for the job of draining the swamp.  Trump knows he can’t reform the deep state bureaucracy if he chooses people to run it who came out of it.  And so far at least, his stated priorities and his personnel choices are looking good beyond our wildest imaginings.

He’s also not coming off as anything like the vindictive, retribution-seeking President-elect the left has been trying to make America fear.  That doesn’t matter, of course, to idiots who have been indoctrinated to hate him as an evil dictator who’s going to destroy democracy, and we’re seeing sporadic threats of violence.  At Montoursville Area High School in Pennsylvania, a disturbed 17-year-old boy posted on a bulletin board a “kill list” with the names and addresses of at least eight students and alumni whom he described as Nazis (Trump supporters).

His statement said, “A list of Nazi meeting grounds and conspirators in the Montoursville community that wish death to America and suffering to its people.  Destroy the buildings and kill the threats at all cost.”

Some Montoursville residents were horrified that a student had called for burning down houses --- helpfully providing the addresses --- and killing the occupants.

But perhaps even more shocking than the list itself is Superintendent Daniel Taormina’s cavalier attitude about it.  He called this a “non-event” and a time-waster and said the threats were “vague.”  Vague, really?  They seem quite specific to me.  One resident said, “The superintendent needs a refresher course in communications.  The choice of words doesn’t communicate the level of threat accordingly.  Calling for destruction of property with possible victims is simply criminal.”

Another resident agreed that criminal charges were appropriate: “They need to be permanently expelled and mental evaluation done.  The rest of the students shouldn’t be worried about having classes with this student and looking over their shoulders.”

We’ve seen so many cases of school shootings in which there had been red flags all over the place and nothing was done until students lay dead.  Here’s your huge red flag, Mr. Superintendent, waving right in front of your face.  You had better step up, recognize the danger and protect the students in your district.  And if this would-be killer came to his hateful attitude with help from any of your teachers or staff, you had better deal with that, too.

https://www.toddstarnes.com/campus/student-posts-kill-list-of-pro-trump-classmates/

But in a bit of welcome news, Jonathan Turley has a superb column on why the so-called “resistance” movement against Trump might fare very differently this time, making the case for “significant legal and political headwinds” it faces.

This piece was directed at such individuals as New York AG Letitia James, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Gov. Phil “Fight-to-the-Death” Murphy, all of whom are reflexively doubling down on their anti-Trump rhetoric.  Not that they should necessarily set aside their positions just because an election didn’t go their way, Turley says, but these politicians will not be giving themselves even one moment of self-reflection after Trump’s win.

There’s also the WASHINGTON POST, which published an editorial saying “The second resistance to Trump must start now.”  Their “resistance” will be more challenging this time.

“Pundits,” Turley said, “lashed out [with fury and delirium] at the majority of voters, insisting that the election established that half the nation is composed of racists, misogynists or domination addicts who long to submit to tyranny.”  (Note:  in truth, when it comes to tyranny, Trump supporters are just the opposite.  We see tyranny coming from the left and do NOT want to submit to it.)

Instead of looking inward and seeing that it’s their own attitudes and policies that led to their defeat, leftists are in large part blaming free speech for their loss.  MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski expressed the view that voters were “misinformed” by right-wing media.  This is why they’re pushing even harder now for censorship when polling has shown that free speech is one of voters’ top issues.

“That does not bode well for the Democratic Party,” Turley said.  “As someone raised in a liberal politically active family in Chicago, I had hoped for greater introspection after this election blowout.”  But, really, is anyone surprised at their tone-deaf reaction?  Turley must see that the wacko Democrat Party of 2024 is nothing like the “liberal” party he grew up in.  He’s made the point that they’re addicted to rage.  They like it, he said, noting that rage is “the ultimate high produced by the lowest form of political discourse.”

He said that “over the course of the last eight years, the U.S. has become a nation of rage addicts.”  Really, though, is it the U.S. as a whole, or does the hottest rage mostly emanate from the left?  If Trump had lost this election --- I mean REALLY lost it, fair and square, as devastating as that would be --- don’t you think we on the right would be doing the kind of introspection Turley is talking about, figuring out where we went wrong and strategizing what we need to do?  I don’t think we’d be shaving our heads and posting kill lists; at least I hope not.

There’s a difference between anger and rage.  That sham January 6 Committee tried to paint Trump supporters as the ones possessed by rage, but that appears to be the projection of their own hatred towards us.  I think we’re much more likely to behave like the adults in the room.

Turley singled out Letitia James as the one who “may have done more to re-elect Trump than anyone other than the President himself.”  Her Captain Ahab-style pursuit of Trump was and is not a good look and (along with “Special Counsel” Jack Smith, we would add) showed us the ugliest form of lawfare.

Turley described the Democrat Party as “an alliance of political media and academic interests wholly untethered to the views of most of the public.”  Too bad most of them are never going to figure this out.  (We’ve noticed there are a few exceptions who are starting to see, such as Bill Maher --- good interview on this with actor Michael Douglas --- and Van Jones.)  As the majority of Americans wake up to the fact that Democrats are light years away from them in their vision for the country, the left are just going to be left with nothing but their rage.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/11/11/the-second-resistance-movement-why-the-campaign-against-trump-this-time-is-different/

Here’s a story about some centrist Democrats are finally speaking out to try to wrestle their party back from the insane far-left, but they’ve got quite a battle in front of them.

https://www.breitbart.com/2024-election/2024/11/11/centrist-democrats-roast-far-left-for-alienating-voters-with-nonsense-that-caused-election-loss/

How kooky has your party become when old time socialist Bernie Sanders now sounds like its voice of reason?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bernie-sanders-excoriates-democratic-party-calls-campaign-disastrous-after-trump-victory

 

RELATED:  Although corrupt DA Fani Willis was re-elected in Fulton County, Georgia, many lefty prosecutors were sent packing.  They’re just not in line with what we want to see in our cities, even blue cities.

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2024/11/11/left-wing-prosecutors-took-electoral-drubbing-from-voters-fed-up-with-rampant-crime-1501888/

Another place the blame is going when leftists should be looking in the mirror: straight to Elon Musk, who is right up there with Trump now as a hate magnet.  The propaganda arm of the Atlantic Council, THE ATLANTIC, posted a nasty piece by Charlie Warzel that said Musk’s platform X (formerly Twitter) is full of white supremacists and that Musk is one himself.

“X is no longer a social-media site with a white supremacy problem but a white-supremacist site with a social media problem,” Warzel wrote.

Don’t bother reading this garbage; TWITCHY has a brief summary of the piece with some sharp and amusing commentary on it.  (Including this gem, which also summarizes Jonathan Turley’s point: “Who needs self-reflection when you can just go bat-poop crazy?”)  Leftist publications and social media posts are fueling the hate that will be building over the next couple of months.  Right now, that hate is mostly percolating quietly, interrupted now and then by incidents like “kill sheets” posted on bulletin boards.

https://twitchy.com/grateful-calvin/2024/11/11/the-atlantic-twitter-is-a-white-supremacist-platform-n2403641

 

Veterans Day

November 11, 2024

Today is Veterans Day, when we should all fly our flags and do whatever we can to express our gratitude to America’s veterans and active-duty military for putting their lives on the line to protect our freedom and security, and for all they do to protect other innocent people all over the world.

Despite all the other news demanding our attention, this day should never be overshadowed or overlooked. Today is about something far more important than passing political news. It’s about the men and women who make it possible for us to have elections and the Constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion, and to protest and seek redress when we think our government isn’t doing right by us (even though we have far too many people in DC who seem to have forgotten that we have those rights.)   

Memorial Day in May is to honor veterans who gave their lives in defense of America. Veterans Day is to honor all veterans, living or dead, past and present.

It began as Armistice Day, declared by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, to commemorate the end of World War I. In 1945, World War II veteran Raymond Weeks of Birmingham, Alabama, began a personal crusade to expand Armistice Day into a state holiday honoring all veterans. In 1953, an Emporia, Kansas, shoe store owner named Al King launched a campaign to make it a national holiday. Just one year later, in 1954, he succeeded. It helped that the President was a retired army general from Kansas named Dwight Eisenhower.

Not only is today Veterans Day, but yesterday was the 249th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. It commemorates the day in 1775 when the Second Continental Congress established the Continental Marines to serve in the war against Great Britain. After the Revolutionary War ended, the Marines were disestablished for a time until President John Adams reestablished the Marines as we know the Corps now, on July 11, 1789. But November 10th, 1775, is still considered the birth of the US Marines.

So if you see someone in uniform, this is a great day to say “Thank you.” Then again, any day is a great day to do that.

RELATED: Vice President-elect J.D. Vance wished a happy birthday to the Marines. It’s hard to believe, but in 249 years, he will be the first Marine veteran ever to become Vice President. Since the Democrats are always wanting us to vote for people because they’ll be the first this or that to hold the office, you’d think they’d be happy about this.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/11/10/jd-vance-first-marine-to-become-vice-president-wishes-fellow-marines-happy-birthday/

With all the problems our country faces, and all the chances for cover-up and sabotage by the outgoing party, don’t you wish Trump could just be inaugurated TODAY?  Heck, he’s picked his new chief of staff, Susan Wiles, and we’re already experiencing what’s being called the “Trump effect” in financial markets and global relations.  So, let’s roll.

It might surprise you to know that the months-long transition period in the United States between presidential election and inauguration is quite unusual among nations.  In most countries, a new president typically just sweeps in, and a new administration begins.

Even though this time the voters’ choice is as clear as can be, with Trump winning not just all the swing states but the popular vote by millions, we still have to wait from November 5 to January 20, a date constitutionally set in stone, to have Trump back in the White House.  (I guess in horse-and-buggy days, they needed that long.)  So that’s a lot of time for all sorts of things to happen.

It’s been mostly quiet in the week after the election, with the unhinged reactions confined largely to social media (we showed you a few of those over the weekend), but during the next couple of months, expect those reactions to build as the initial shock subsides.  We’ve talked about governors saying they’re going to “Trump-proof” their states against his “attack,” with Gavin Newsom in California even calling a special legislative session.  But right now, it seems a bit too quiet.  Perhaps this is the calm before the storm, though we’ve already seen horror stories about brainwashed people acting on their belief that we just elected a Nazi President.  One clearly mentally ill man in Minnesota killed his wife, his ex, the children he shared with both of them, and finally himself. 

From his social media posts, it’s obvious that he’d been made to feel fearful of the “religious zealots” who supported Trump.  “I have intrusive thoughts of being burned at the stake as a witch,” he wrote, “or crucified on a burning cross.”  (I get the distinct impression he didn’t know any Christians.)  He also believed that Trump would turn women into chattel, as in the fictional story THE HANDMAID’S TALE.  All of this was made up by the left, of course, just to try to defeat Trump.  To them, defeating Trump justifies saying ANYTHING.

In July, this man wrote, “We can do better than a binary choice between fascism and not fascism.”

Kamala herself had said in a TV interview, without the slightest hesitation, that she believes Donald Trump is a fascist.  This video clip was shared far and wide.  (Side note:  have you noticed that nobody on the left ever defines “fascist”?  If they understood what fascism was, they might start to notice how dangerously fascist-like their own attitudes are.)  What’s it going to take for the unhinged left to see --- let alone care about --- the danger posed by their own irresponsible rhetoric?  Don’t expect that to happen during this transition period; be prepared for more stories like this one...

https://nypost.com/2024/11/10/us-news/minn-dad-anthony-nephew-ranted-against-trump-killed-family-in-murder-suicide/

Some women have been using this “down time” to go on social media and make what seem like terroristic threats to poison men with a highly toxic substance from the 1600s called Aqua Tofana.  Why?  You can guess:  because men voted for Trump and therefore must die.  These women do not appear to be kidding, though we don’t know that anyone has died this way so far.   Let’s hope it’s just a deranged fantasy.  But men, if your wife or girlfriend voted for Kamala and has in the past week screamed for hours into a pillow or shaved her head on TikTok, please do not eat or drink anything she gives you!

This is the kind of behavior the FBI should be looking into, instead of targeting grandmothers who pray at abortion clinics.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/white-liberal-cat-ladies-reveal-battle-plan-poison-trump-men-aqua-tofana

There’s even enough time before Trump’s inauguration for Biden to actually resign his presidency so that Kamala Harris can be sworn in and technically be the first female black/Indian President of the United States until Trump is sworn in on January 20.  Kamala’s former communications director, Jamal Simmons, has suggested this be done, as a symbolic gesture.  I suppose that even if Biden did it the last day he was in office, it would count. Imagine Biden going along with that after being shivved to make way for her electoral disaster!

But as Amy Curtis wisely pointed out on TWITCHY, “the presidency is not a symbolic gesture.”  She likened the idea to that of giving Kamala a participation trophy, as this candidate never received even one delegate in 2020 and no votes in the 2024 primary.  So this would have essentially nothing to do with “our democracy.”  But, hey, because it checks the boxes, it would make history!

Yes, it would make history as a stupid stunt, as vapid as Kamala herself.  When Simmons brought it up on CNN, panel member Scott Jennings greeted it with the best response possible:  laughter.

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/11/10/kamala-comms-dir-wants-biden-to-step-down-in-symbolic-gesture-n2403590

Sure, that’s what Americans want to see: the LOSER of the 2024 election being installed as President in 2024.  As Rusty Weiss said in REDSATE in an excellent piece, “Are they all racing for gold in the Bad Idea Olympics?”

https://redstate.com/rusty-weiss/2024/11/10/former-dnc-official-proposes-plan-to-install-kamala-harris-as-president-even-cnn-was-skeptical-n2181808

The people wanting to do this are so petty, one of the things they like about it is that it messes with Trump’s merchandising of presidential items that say “45 and 47,” as he would now be “45 and 48.”  Note to leftist idiots:  this would probably make the “47” items even more collectible.  I’ll take some of those.

And while we wait for Trump to be inaugurated, the left is not waiting one second to push for even more censorship of “misinformation.”  (Note: whenever you hear the term “misinformation,” just know it likely is referring not to facts but to heretical opinions.)

Lexipol, a private consultancy firm geared towards law enforcement, is sending recommendations to its roughly 8,000 subscribers in that community to “establish a unit that would not only tackle supposed misinformation and disinformation, but also ‘collaborate with tech companies and civil society organizations to develop early-warning systems and identify harmful content in real time.’”  (Note:  whenever you hear the term “harmful content,” just know it likely is referring to so-called Russian disinformation --- you know, like Hunter Biden’s laptop.)

According to Didi Rankovic at RECLAIM THE NET, “Lexipol’s write-up plays on fears that it is ‘disinformation’ that might increase public hostility towards police officers and put them at greater risk.”  So now we have yet another rationalization for reining in free speech.  You know our incoming administration is chomping at the bit to strike back at such attempts to destroy the First Amendment.

https://thelibertydaily.com/inside-push-police-run-misinformation-units/

Before Trump takes office and the top DOJ officials are all out on their shiny behinds, they’ve reportedly been given a directive from the very top to hurry up and prosecute as many January 6th defendants as they possibly can.  They’ve been told to oppose any requests for delays.

As Jeff Charles at REDSTATE reports, “The primary reason for the Justice Department’s tighter focus is likely the possibility that Trump will pardon or vacate the sentences of those who were arrested and are facing prosecution over January 6.  His victory has sparked optimism among the defendants and those supporting them.”  And it should:  during his campaign, Trump said he would pardon all nonviolent offenders from that day.

But in the meantime, “Trump’s victory has undoubtedly stirred up a level of unease among prosecutors who pretend the riot was a direct threat against democracy and wish to throw the book at as many people as they can over the matter.”

The original story about this comes not from conservative media but from NBC NEWS.

To those who have a problem with violent offenders being pardoned, it should be noted that most of those who have been prosecuted did not engage in violence that day.  (We don’t think Trump should pardon violent offenders, either.)  As Charles reports, “The release of the security footage showed that the majority of these individuals simply entered the building after officers opened doors for them...It was obvious that the Justice Department sought to make an example of them for political purposes.”

For these persecuted people, who suffered a terrible miscarriage of justice, President Trump cannot get back into office too soon.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/11/09/doj-rushing-to-prosecute-j6ers-before-trump-issues-pardons-and-ends-the-investigation-n2181780

As Joseph Hanneman writes for THE BLAZE, “Perhaps at no time like the modern era has a presidential vote been watched so keenly as January 6-ers watched the evening of November 5...From the dingy cells of the District of Columbia jail, the unwavering tones of the National Anthem rang out more assuredly than on other nights over the past nearly four years.”

That’s one more reason why we wish Trump could just take office.  All these people must linger in jail for 2-1/2 more months.

Trump’s also ready to do that super-deep housecleaning all the federal agencies.  One way he’ll start is by moving many parts of the federal bureaucracy out of Washington, an idea I’ve advocated for years.  He had started this during his first term, by moving the Bureau of Land Management out to Colorado, but the plan is much more extensive.  The Trump campaign has said he might move up to 100,000 government positions out of Washington. It’s reported that many of them are already making plans to resign before he takes office, another wonderful example of the “Trump effect.”

Trump also plans to target compromised individuals in the bureaucracy, exposes hoaxes and abuses of power, and reform the FISA Courts.

https://www.westernjournal.com/going-trump-targeting-100000-deep-staters-absolute-exile-dc/

According to an article in POLITICO, “a collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump’s rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign.”  (Editorial aside:  AND FOR GOOD REASON.)

One DOJ attorney said, “Everyone I’ve talked to, mostly lawyers, are losing their minds.  The fear is that career leadership and career employees everywhere are either going to leave or they’re going to be driven out.”  (Editorial aside:  GOOD.) As one wag joked, “I’ve been busier than the shredder at the DOJ.”

They’re afraid Trump is going to replace them with “partisan loyalists.”  What, to replace the current partisan loyalists?  And some of the attorneys fear being blackballed.  What, like the attorneys who have dared to defend Trump?  If you already have a good idea of what’s been going on at the DOJ for the past decade or so, you’ll find lots of unintentional humor here…

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/10/trump-return-justice-department-00188623

RELATED READING:  Speaking of Russian disinformation and Hunter’s laptop, last week Catherine Herridge, formerly of FOX NEWS and CBS, posted her take on the new whistleblower revelations that case agents were blocked from taking actions that would’ve revealed the investigation’s existence BEFORE the 2020 election.  She also details CBS’s handling of the laptop story in October 2020, which was essentially to drop it, after Herridge knew it was true.  An absolute must-read.  With this kind of fakery out in the open now, we anticipate Trump’s second term is going to be very different from his first.

https://catherineherridgereports.com/p/chr-post-title-will-go-here-0f522498c9206360

Smaller government, more transparency, returning power to the people…Worst fascist EVER!

I hope and pray that Trump accomplishes all the things he says he will, which will be great for all Americans, who voted for him across all demographic lines despite the Democrats’ best efforts to divide and conquer us. As usual, Rush Limbaugh was right: The best thing for Republicans’ electoral fortunes is for Democrats to get into power for just a little while and remind people of how much damage they can do in a surprisingly short time.

I was disappointed that Kamala Harris remained on brand to the end, refusing to face the cameras or make a difficult speech. When it was obvious she had lost, a minion was sent out to tell her disappointed followers to go home and get some sleep. There was no unifying congratulatory call to Trump or gracious concession speech. Wags accused her of plagiarizing Hillary Clinton. There was some rumbling from the Dems’ lawfare brigade about the race not being over for days, but when you’re down by five million votes, that’s what meant by “beyond the margin of fraud.”

There were some suspicious incidents at polling places around the nation, but the RNC’s lawyers responded fast, and shut them down PDQ. Kudos to Lara Trump and Michael Whatley at the RNC for fighting back on that front.

I also hope that the Democrats will learn from this that Americans reject the savage and divisive politics of racial grievance and slandering opponents as Nazis and garbage, and will work with Trump to make things better for all Americans. Sadly, their initial reactions to losing don’t fill me with optimism.

Some “progressives” blasted the Dems for not running far enough to the left. Yep, that would’ve done it. One arrogant liberal who flaunts her Ph.D. on Twitter/X decreed that this election shows we’re ruled by stupid, uneducated people. She reminds me of the great comedian Brother Dave Gardner’s observation that “some people are ‘educated’ beyond their intelligence.” I suspect she’s confused “educated” with “indoctrinated.” She may think she’s sipping Chardonnay, but she’s really drinking the Kool-Aid.

CNN seemed to sniff disaster early on, so they refrained from too much gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, knowing that conservatives would post it on YouTube and laugh at them for years to come. But there was no such restraint among the lefty loons at MSNBC, where Joy Reid had the predictable meltdown, ranting that Florida is an extreme, right-wing fascist state, apparently because it’s capable of counting votes quickly and efficiently.

Reid and her ilk also claimed that there was voter suppression, despite the heavy turnout. One state they cited was Texas, so I’ll let my writer Pat Reeder, who lives in suburban Dallas, respond to that:

“Laura and I voted early, and we live in a racially-diverse, lower middle-class neighborhood (Note to the Gov: We need a raise.) Not a Kamala Harris ‘middle-class neighborhood,’ but a real one. The line stretched out the door but moved quickly, and it only took about 20 minutes. Both voters and poll workers were of various races. We all smiled at each other, talked politely, voted and left. I didn’t notice me or anyone else being suppressed, except we did all have to show our IDs. Everybody had one, though. Shocking.”  

Leaders around the world sent congratulations to Trump, saying they were looking forward to a close and friendly working relationship. I imagine Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is especially relieved to know that Israel will once again have a firm ally in the White House.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/world-leaders-react-trump-victory-on-historys-greatest-comeback

That’s odd: I’d been assured by all the smartest people that other world leaders mocked and disrespected Trump.

 

 

Trump Wins

November 6, 2024

Before I say anything else, please join me in giving thanks to God for blessing America, and giving us one more chance to return to our founding principles of respecting religious liberty, free speech, respect for life and the protection of innocent children.

Don’t expect any long, well-organized essays today, as my writers and I have been up all night following the election returns and need to get some rest. Today’s edition will be mostly bullet points and celebrations. And in the spirit of unity and good sportsmanship, let me say that I sincerely hope someone hid the Drain-o from Bette Midler.

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2024/11/05/disneys-hocus-pocus-2-star-bette-midler-suggests-drinking-drano-if-trump-wins/

Tuesday, Donald Trump made the greatest political comeback in American history, overcoming years of lawfare and vilification to become only the second person ever elected to non-consecutive Presidential terms (I’m waiting for Rachel Maddow to accuse him of plagiarizing Grover Cleveland.)

At this writing, the news networks have him at 277 Electoral College votes, but despite their stubborn refusal to call the rest of the states, he’s on track to carry all but Maine. Even the New York Times predicts that he’ll eventually win by a 312-226 landslide. He’s even on track to win the popular vote by about five million votes, which is astounding for a Republican. I wonder if all those blue states that hate the Electoral College and want to give their EC votes to the popular vote winner will give them to Trump? Or will that issue suddenly go away?  

It proves what I’ve been telling you for the past few months: If our side just ignores the polls and votes, we determine who runs the government, not a bunch of condescending leftist elites. We all just have to show up at the polls and we win.

The media also show the GOP retaking the Senate with at least 51 seats, which seems sure to rise to 55 or more. There was some concern that the Democrats might have won the House, setting us up for at least two years of obstruction and groundless impeachment hearings, but as of now, it appears that the GOP will narrowly hold on to control both Houses of Congress and the White House.

Trump mowed down any number of precedents, earning far greater shares of votes from typically Democratic voting blocs than any Republican in decades, including voters under 30, blacks, young males and especially Hispanic males. For instance, Trump was the first Republican in 30 years to win heavily-Hispanic Miami-Dade County in Florida, and by 55%.

It was truly the “red wave” we failed to see in 2022. Maybe young voters just hadn’t yet figured out how badly they were getting hosed under Biden-Harris, but now, they get it. One of my favorite moments of the coverage came when an analyst on one of the liberal networks cut to a map of all the counties in the US where Harris did better than Biden – and there were none!

My favorite reality-denying headline came from CNN.com: “Trump’s edge over Harris rises to 270.” Uh, guys? 270 isn’t an “edge,” it’s the presidency.

Trump gave an excellent, unifying victory speech, surrounded by his family who were among the strongest members of his campaign team. Here’s video of it and a transcript:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/donald-trumps-victory-speech-in-full-transcript/ar-AA1tBTp3

He called MAGA “the greatest political movement of all time,” and said he believes what many have told him: that God spared his life for a reason. He went on:

“I want to thank the American people for the extraordinary honor of being elected your 47th president and your 45th president. And every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future, every single day I will be fighting for you with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America, that's what we have to have.”

Strangely, he said nothing about setting up concentration camps for MSNBC anchors or any of the other things we were told he’d do as soon as he declared himself dictator for life. You know, all the stuff he forgot to do in his first term.

New York Times “Pulitzer Prize-winning economist” Paul Krugman will also be shocked to see how Wall Street is reacting to Trump’s election:

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-economy-starts-already-dow-futures-absolutely-explode-overnight-trump-secures-presidency/

Let’s also give J.D. Vance credit for killing the Dems' momentum by destroying Tim Walz in the VP debate and being one of the best VP picks we’ve seen in decades. As for Walz, at least he’ll now have plenty of spare time to learn how to load a shotgun.

The people who’ve spent the past four years telling us that January 6th was the worst insurrection in history suddenly decided that election denial and rioting are now patriotic again. A bunch of Hamas-supporting morons in NYC demonstrated outside of Fox News in a futile attempt to disrupt the election coverage, and some Antifa idiots tried to riot in Seattle. But not only is there a new sheriff coming to DC, but there are police in Seattle again, and several thugs were quickly arrested. It’s not 2020 anymore: if they think they’re going to shut down America by throwing violent temper tantrums over losing an election, they might want to rethink that.

The proof that their radical moment has passed into history (hopefully along with wokeness, DEI and all the other idiocy of the past four years) was displayed well by an online video of a Harris supporter, yelling angry slogans into a megaphone and trying to gin up a protest all by himself as annoyed passerby ignored him completely.

Sadly, not all the elections went as I’d hoped, like Hung Cao’s Senate loss to the vapid Tim Kaine in Virginia. I hope Trump finds a spot for Cao in his Administration.  And Californians cursed America by promoting Adam Schiff, the biggest liar in the House (imagine holding that title!) to the Senate, cementing California as one of the places that, as Nancy Pelosi put it, would vote for a glass of water with a (D) by its name. Of course, they also voted for Kamala, proving that they’ll even vote for an empty glass with a (D) by its name.

But maybe some Californians are finally starting to wake up a bit. They overwhelmingly passed Proposition 36, the Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, to undo parts of the Soros-backed soft-on-crime Proposition 46 that’s caused many residents and businesses to flee the state.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/proposition-36-overwhelmingly-passes-in-california-reversing-some-soros-backed-soft-on-crime-policies/ar-AA1tAYoS

And voters in L.A. threw out their criminal-coddling DA George Gascon by nearly a 2-1 margin.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/george-gasc%C3%B3n-loses-la-county-district-attorney-reelection-bid-menendez-brothers-potential-release-thrown-into-doubt/ar-AA1tBzwL

Let’s hope that someday, the little light in their mental fridges finally comes on and they grasp the connection between voting for Democrats and their lives becoming intolerable.

Finally, I was gratified to see that despite the Democrats spending an estimated $570 million to push abortion-up-to-birth measures in Nebraska and Florida (outspending Republicans 15-1), both lost decisively. But pro-abortion measures did pass in other states, although most were blue states like New York and Colorado, where there were already few if any limits. I pray for the day to come when all Americans realize how horrific abortion is and stop trying to cover up the ugly truth with fuzzy euphemisms like “reproductive freedom” and dishonest slogans like “It’s my body.”

Well, that’s it for now. We’ll have more tomorrow as the news rolls in. Right now, we’re all going to go get some rest, and thank God for Elon Musk, McDonald’s, Joe Rogan, garbage trucks, Peanut the Squirrel and all of you who said, “Enough is enough” and voted accordingly.

Let’s start here.

https://x.com/fredemonium/status/1854023081548746778

“If you want to red-pill America, raid their homes and murder their pets.”  --- Greg Gutfeld           

“Never shoulda killed Peanut.” --- Sweet Meteor O’Death, on X.

We’ll never know what effect on the 2024 election this terrible event caused.  But the invasion of Mark and Daniela Longo’s home and subsequent killing of their friendly little squirrel and his harmless raccoon companion quickly became a stunning example of government overreach under Democrat leaders in 2024.  It’s fitting that Trump took that moment in his victory speech last night to say, “This will forever be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.”

For years now, the people who most crave power have pointed at President Trump and projected their own evil desires onto him.  They raided Trump’s home to take possession of classified documents that he’d had the authority as President to declassify.  And if they’re in power, they’ll raid YOUR home to take possession of your pet, your gun, maybe even your child if you insist on calling him or her by the correct pronoun and balk at butchering his or her body irreversibly. 

Kurt Schlichter put it well in his Election Eve column: “[Kamala] represents the party of the people who think it’s OK to go to someone’s house and take their beloved pets and murder them simply because they can.  If you think Peanut the Squirrel and Fred the Raccoon are one-offs, you are in denial.  They killed Ashley Babbitt because they could.  They imprisoned their political opponents because they could.  They censored Hunter’s laptop because they could.  They locked old people in COVID-ridden nursing homes because they could.  If they got their wish and disarmed you, what do you think they would do to you?”

“...The horror of the cruelty of killing a beloved and innocent little animal aside, this illustrates what the real stakes are.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/11/04/election-day-lets-do-this-thing-n2647172

According to Natalie Hoage at YAHOO!NEWS (“Pet Helpful”), it was “anonymous complaints” that led to this travesty, but the source of those complaints might well turn out to be a bigger story, especially if it was someone who has clout with state government.  So far, no media outlet has confirmed the involvement of that photographer in Texas, who has nevertheless been branded online as “the Karen who killed Peanut.”

The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in New York State said in a statement that they’d “received multiple reports from the public about the potentially unsafe housing of wildlife that could carry rabies and the illegal keeping of wildlife as pets.”

Peanut was a social media phenomenon with over 685,000 Instagram followers.  Last Friday, two days after the animals were taken, Longo broke the news on Instagram that the family had learned that both Peanut and Fred had been euthanized.  This was ostensibly to test for rabies after Peanut allegedly bit an agent during the confiscation, a claim that seems dubious, given agents’ heavy protective gloves.

Heartbroken fans quickly left over 20,000 comments.

It’s true that an animal has to be euthanized to test for rabies; they need a full cross-section of brain tissue.  But Peanut had lived indoors for seven years and had shown no sign of illness.

 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/pet-squirrel-seized-home-people-140000663.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall 

“The squirrel isn’t just a squirrel,” reads one post on X that had 1.9 million impressions as of Monday afternoon.  “Peanut is for everyone who has ever feared that someone more powerful than you could walk into your home and take something that you absolutely cherish away from you, for absolutely no good reason, with no recourse.”

It was Peanut’s huge social media audience that helped fund the Longos’ animal sanctuary, which they moved to last April.  Peanut was more than a pet --- he was a business model.

“Despite our passionate outcry for compassion, the agency chose to ignore our pleas, leaving us in deep shock and grief,” Longo said on Instagram.  “To add to our anguish, they informed the media of their decision before even notifying P’nuts Freedom Farm, his loving home.  This demonstrates a troubling lack of respect and empathy.  Their lives were precious, and we refuse to accept this loss in silence.”

https://reason.com/2024/11/04/government-goons-murder-internet-famous-squirrel/

Tyrus quipped on GUTFELD Monday night, “I don’t have any animals, Greg,” though, of course, viewers know he has many, particularly tropical fish and sea creatures.  “You think I want those mother-(bleepers) comin’ to my house?”

“This bothered me on a personal level,” he said.  “...Their excuse was that Peanut bit them.  What did Fred [the raccoon] do, giggle?  This is what these officials do.” Tyrus then proceeded to tell the story to a suddenly hushed audience about his own dog being euthanized after simply being “a good dog” and doing his job, as trained, to protect their property.  The animal control officials had lied to him, telling him he would get his dog back.

“Unfortunately, this is not uncommon,” Tyrus said. “The people coming in are power-hungry.”  As for the “rabies” cover story, he said, “A squirrel with rabies is not hard to figure out.”  They’re “aggressive, and no owner would be holding them.”  They have “a little frothy mouth” (kind of like Hunter Biden on crack, he joked, trying to add a little levity).

“It’s a terrible thing,” he said, “and, you know, it DID wake a lot of people up...So, if you’re on the ropes, if you’re not sure, if you want to get on the right team, if you don’t want to vote because Tyrus told you to, which you shouldn’t anyway, or a celebrity, DO IT FOR PEANUT AND FRED.”

Everyone knew the joke had a serious undertone.  Tyrus had already confidently predicted the election outcome:  that Trump would win in a blowout, and that we would know it on Election Night.

Guy Benson called the killing of Peanut “the most cartoonish, disgusting abuse of government that shows all the wrong priorities, and it’s so easy for people to understand…I think this is a horrible story but will focus people’s minds.”

The Brit on the panel, Piers Morgan, said there was something about this story that is “utterly disgusting.”  The idea that they can send in ten armed agents for five hours when New York is “riddled with crime, and homelessness, and mayhem” is crazy. 

And about the rabies: “Only one set of people,” he said, “seems to me, were behaving like foaming-at-the-mouth rabid animals, and it wasn’t the raccoon and the squirrel.  It was the people that had been sent by the government...to eradicate the scourge of this famous little squirrel and his raccoon mate.”

“If you were making this up, it would be funny.  But it’s true.  And this couple have lost their beloved pet, so remember why they took on this squirrel,” Piers said, relating the story of how they’d rescued the baby squirrel whose mother had died.

“Then he has to have him wrenched away by his own government, and murdered.  It is disgusting.”

Kat Timpf, a libertarian, admitted she had a hard time talking about this without getting upset (and I have to say, I would, too).  “This happens in government every single day,” she said.  “This is what government does.”  Follow the policy, no matter how ridiculous or inhumane.

Gutfeld’s monologue on what the government did here starts at 2:36...

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6364210033112

The BABYLON BEE treated the story with its trademark satire to mock on the left:

https://babylonbee.com/news/new-york-authorities-announce-peanut-the-squirrel-died-of-covid

On Sunday, J. D. Vance (now VP-elect) mentioned the story, saying President Trump is “fired up” about the “murder” of the smart little squirrel.  “The same government that doesn’t care about hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant criminals coming into our country, doesn’t want us to have pets,” J. D. said.  “It’s the craziest thing.”

https://nypost.com/2024/11/04/us-news/jd-vance-trump-is-fired-up-over-death-of-pnut-the-elon-musk-of-squirrels/

It has seemed from the start that there must be something even more sinister behind this story.  We still don’t know what it is, but when Longo appeared on Friday with Chris Cuomo on NEWSNATION, he said this was “somebody out to get me.”  Why would a household be targeted this way?  Mark and Daniela had moved from Connecticut to a small town in New York State to start their non-profit animal rescue, which has since saved over 300 animals.

“Peanut is the center of our organization,” he said.  “I used his social media to gather the funding to continue to help animals...So I need an explanation of how the state can find the funding to bring this many people to my house to destroy my life but we can’t fix major issues that we’re having in this state.”

It’s true that the Longos have made quite a lot of money with their online ventures, and Mark theorizes that jealousy might have played a role here.

Longo confirmed that he and his wife had heard about the euthanizing on the news.  “Since they left my house,” Longo said, “not a single DEC employee or state official called me to tell me what happened.”

“They got local sheriffs to approve this,” he told Cuomo.  “The DA approved this.  They had a criminal judge sign a search warrant to come and take these animals.

Longo just doesn’t believe the story about Peanut biting someone, because “these are professionals who deal with animals on a daily basis.”  He saw their protective gloves.  So much about this story is wrong.    

https://www.newsnationnow.com/cuomo-show/pnut-the-squirrel-euthanized-owner-says-someone-was-out-to-get-me-cuomo/

Note the irony of the word “Freedom” in the name of this animal rescue, P’Nuts Freedom Farm.  When Peanut and Fred were first seized, a GoFundMe account was set up to help with legal fees needed for recovering them.  After they were killed, the account was turned into a fundraiser for the rescue, which had relied on Peanut’s social media presence to raise money.  My husband and I gave, and I hope you will as well.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-peanuts-return-to-pnuts-freedom-farm?attribution

Whatever the last straw was for you in terms of government overreach, if it got you to the polls, thank you so much.

https://www.glennbeck.com/blog/the-left-s-insane-response-to-p-nut-s-death-may-push-trump-over-the-finish-line-on-election-day

And in closing, please look at this editorial cartoon, but I warn you: have some Kleenex handy

https://x.com/still_boneless/status/1853588986402324719?t=3prDrH0y5z_MKX1UXmd1Tg&s=19

 

Must-Read

November 4, 2024

This is why we desperately need Trump in office to appoint Elon Musk to a government waste task force. The Biden-Harris Administration constantly points to the laughably-named “Inflation Reduction Act,” which actually increased inflation by adding another trillion dollars or so to the national debt. They’re terrified that if Trump gets in, he’ll rescind what’s left of that profligate spending before the money can be squandered.

So, as James Varney at RealClearInvestigations reports, the White House is quietly and quickly handing out billions of dollars in grants to cronies with shady “nonprofits,” many of them “green”-related. The EPA is passing out the green via these massive grants, which it’s never done before.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/10/22/overnight_success_bidens_climate_splurge_gives_billions_to_nonprofit_newbies_1066437.html

Some of these alleged “green nonprofits” got their tax-exempt status as recently as last spring. One showed revenues of only $100 in 2023, yet it was just given a grant of $2 billion of our money. Trump’s former EPA chief said, “These groups are political front groups that are simply created to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Democrat campaigns under the guise of doing something good.” The director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment said, “It’s worse than a slush fund – it’s a slush fund to create non-profit slush funds.” 

Read the whole thing, but I warn you: It may cause global warming due to it making so many readers’ blood boil.

RELATED: Here’s what some experts hope to see out of Trump’s government efficiency agency (Let’s hope it doesn’t do nothing and keep demanding budget increases, like all the other agencies in DC):

https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2024/11/01/heres-what-experts-expect-and-hope-to-see-from-trumps-government-efficiency-agency/

A general feeling of disconnectedness exists between Americans and their Federal Government. This is particularly true in what the bi-coastal crowd calls ‘flyover country.’ The Federal Government appears cold, distant, and impotent to address or solve the issues impacting people's lives. This played out most recently with many Citizens living in Appalachia in North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Georgia in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. However, that is not the only instance. It echoes the feelings and comments of citizens in East Palestine, Ohio and Lahaina, Hawaii.

Those connected to the power structures in D.C. and in the east and west coast urban centers may pan these concerns as more perception than reality, but it is a general feeling that seems to be growing. The feeling is continually reinforced by the rhetoric and actions of the civil servants in the Departments and Agencies in Washington, D.C. While a much-circulated video of the Federal Emergency Management Agency discussing “disaster equity” did not show an actual disaster preparedness meeting, it still showed a horrific lack of empathy for American Citizens. The fact that a bureaucrat unabashedly talked about shifting any Federal program, let alone emergency management, away “from utilitarian principles” and providing the “greatest good for the greatest amount of people” to “disaster equity” is appalling. What’s even further shocking is that no one in the group had the moral courage to say, ‘What are you talking about?’  Were the Americans in Marshall, North Carolina or East Palestine, Ohio not deserving enough for prompt emergency response and assistance? 

It is not just in emergency response. The same duplicity exists in the Federal justice system. The application of Federal law is proportional to your connection and utility to the power structures in Washington, D.C. That is apparent in the case of Kevin Clinesmith. As an attorney, an officer of the court, working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, he lied about evidence used to secure a surveillance warrant on an American Citizen from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. His punishment? He was sentenced to 12 months of probation and 400 hours of community service. Contrast that to the almost Jacobin-like fervor the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice employed against people who trespassed in the Nation’s Capitol on January 6th. The DOJ charged Rebecca Lavrenz, the so-called “J6 Praying Grandma,” on four federal misdemeanor charges and a potential year in prison and $200,000 in fines. Her offense? She entered the Capitol for ten minutes and prayed. Does that warrant a harsher and more vigorous prosecution than a government lawyer that lied on a subpoena?

Granted, anyone who rioted, destroyed property, or assaulted police officers at the Nation’s Capitol deserves rigorous prosecution. Yet the DOJ and FBI lacked the same vigor to pursue and prosecute the organizers and perpetrators of massive riots by BLM and ANTIFA that objectively caused more death and damage to public and private property than January 6.

Showing the inherent duplicity, FBI Agents while on duty kneeled in solidarity with BLM and ANTIFA rioters, possibly in violation of the Hatch Act. FBI leadership coyly lauded the move. Would the same standard apply had they kneeled on January 6? Definitely not.

Disconnectedness is also evident in the Federal Government’s interaction with private commerce. The National Marine Fisheries Service felt a necessity to monitor the herring fishing industry. Instead of securing Congressional funding for the program, the bureaucracy felt empowered to pass the costs of the program onto private commercial entities. They imposed a tax of approximately $710 per day on each fishing vessel to pay for the privilege of Federal oversight. The edict smacked of the Colonial Stamp Act against the then British Colonies. How do private enterprises thrive with this sort of ‘oversight?’ 

Many civil servants faithfully live up to the oath of office they swore to. They work diligently on behalf of their fellow Citizens in their assigned function.  Arguably the disconnect between the Federal Government is born out of the general hubris and sense of arrogance in the culture of the DMV (District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia). A type of group think develops that solutions for everyday problems start and end inside the Beltway. Peter Strzok, the disgraced Federal Bureau of Investigation Agent, is undoubtedly the quintessential icon of the smug Beltway hubris. He famously remarked to his paramour while visiting a Wal Mart in southern Virginia that he could “SMELL the Trump support.” His aristocratic sense of self-superiority precluded him from mingling with the subjects.

So, what is the fix to restore the faith and credibility of the Federal Government? If elected, former President Trump plans to initiate a commission led by Elon Musk to look at efficiency in the Federal Government. Musk recently stated he believes such a commission could eliminate $2 Trillion in Federal spending. The first level of analysis of this task-force should look at functions. What Departments and Agencies duplicate each other’s services? Does the Federal Government still need 18 different agencies for intelligence? Perhaps it is necessary, or more likely, throughout the Cold War we built redundant and duplicative capabilities and no one has questioned their necessity anymore. Next, what functions, currently controlled at the Federal level, could gain efficiency by delegating them to states. This is the ideal nature of our Constitutional Republic and was the intent of the Founding Fathers. It affords more local control and places accountability in State Capitols with elected officials from our citizen’s own neighborhoods. The growth of the mega-centralized Federal government that started with FDR requires a review and potentially rebalancing.

A second necessary step is to evaluate what Departments, Agencies, and Bureaus should remain in D.C. It makes sense that any Department, Agency, or Bureau focused on National Security should remain in proximity to the Chief Executive. Other entities could disperse through the rest of the country. The COVID lockdown demonstrated the power of modern technology for distributed meetings and productivity. Every government employee is familiar and comfortable with Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other teleconferencing platforms. The idea of a Nation’s Capital focused on every function of governing and co-located in one geographic area is outdated.

Perhaps the Department of Agriculture should move to Omaha, Nebraska or Des Moines, Iowa near the center of U.S. agribusiness. Or the National Marine Fisheries Service could move to Bangor, Maine or Astoria, Oregon. Maybe the Department of the Interior should be somewhere in the interior, such as Salt Lake City, Utah or Denver, Colorado. If the civil servants drafting these policies and regulations had to live among the population impacted by their decisions, it would force more ‘common sense’ into their thinking. Currently a civil servant crafts policies in a corner office in D.C. and commutes home to live somewhere in the DMV among other civil servants. Imagine if the person crafting the policy lives in the same neighborhoods, has kids in the same youth sports leagues, or worships with the Americans impacted by the policy it would force more ‘common sense’ into our governance. Thomas Paine would concur!

 

Praying for Our Country

November 1, 2024

Last Sunday, our pastor called the church to prayer, and not for victory on either side in next week’s election. No, this solemn assembly sought to raise the level of our congregation to something approaching the stakes confronting us on November fifth, a stark reality that some have called the most consequential choice in our long and sometimes uncertain past. If that seems over-stated, recall that our only Civil War began after Abraham Lincoln won the election of 1860. In recounting the tensions leading to Fort Sumter, historian Erik Larson ascribed that long-running tragedy to “The Demon of Unrest.” https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Unrest-Hubris-Heartbreak-Heroism/dp/0385348746/https://www.amazon.com/Demon-Unrest-Hubris-Heartbreak-Heroism/dp/0385348746/ref=sr/

To drive out today’s demons, our pastor first prayed that God’s purposes would be fulfilled in this election, that it would be decided not on the basis of race, party, gender or corruption but for the welfare of our brothers and sisters. He even prayed for our stewardship in choosing who to vote for, that no corruption, plot or misadventure would play any role in that decision. Praying for life and safety, he even invoked Isaiah’s ancient words “That no weapon formed against you shall prosper…(Isaiah 54:17, NKJV).

When early voting started in Texas this week, I was still pondering that invocation in an odd mixture of hope and skepticism. For many years, the “old soldier” in me has worried about the steady decline in the number of Americans willing to serve in our armed forces – now hovering at less than one percent. Does such a country even deserve to remain free? Would we respond as bravely as the Ukrainians and Israelis when they came under attack? No sooner had those mental gyrations calmed than my business-warrior psyche began pondering the tightly integrated cyber-military-economic-espionage/AI-whole-of-society onslaught now arriving each day courtesy of the People’s Republic of China. I had barely finished Calder Walton’s magisterial history of Russian and Soviet intelligence, Spies, only to discover that his final chapter is a thoroughly alarming thirty-page coda detailing “The New Cold War” with China in which we are currently engaged! Who knew?

https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/spies-epic-intelligence-war-between-east-and-west

In contrast to my mental calisthenics, our trip to the polls this week was uneventful, even encouraging – although I admit to watching too many Hallmark movies. It only took a half-hour on a bright, sunny day but the crowd seemed happy - except for the malcontent who bemoaned the poor performance of the Dallas Cowboys. My standard uniform for the polls is strictly non-political (Go Army! Beat Navy!) but a surprising number of people came over to thank me for my service. A one-time draftee, I thanked them all for exercising the rights that every soldier, sailor, airman and marine was privileged to defend.

That warm glow of self-congratulations lasted only until mid-week when, like a fool, I turned off Hallmark and started watching the news. Having spent nearly a decade as an on-air military analyst with the networks of NBC News, I should have known better than to watch MSNBC  - now little more than an electronic message board for Democrats. Having known her father and her younger brother, I always looked forward to appearing with Mika Brzezinski. But 30 years ago, we adopted my daughter, who is now the mother of my three beloved grandsons: Any idea how little patience I have when listening to a well-paid “analyst” like Mika talking about the “reproductive freedom” women should enjoy? Clearly, those freedoms do not include the unborn baby brutally torn from its mother’s womb. How exactly are we morally superior to the perpetrators of the Holocaust or, for that matter, those benighted heathen sacrificing their infants to the Canaanite fire-god Moloch?

My colleague Charles Lipson, as he so often does, made exactly the right points about the disgusting “lack of decency” in our public discourse, from Donald Trump’s alleged “comedian” at Madison Square Garden to President Biden’s unbelievably crass labeling of his opponents as “garbage.” As Professor Lipton correctly points out, such tactics “weaken two central pillars of a stable constitutional democracy: The legitimacy of opposing candidates, (and) if they are elected…peaceful contests to choose them, followed by peaceful transfers of power.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2024/10/30/america-is-sinking-into-the-muck/

In short: Remember that this brief commentary began by recalling our linkages to the Civil War, still our most destructive conflict after all these decades of bloodletting. Are you political and media idiots blind as well as stupid? Or don’t you even remember those lessons we learned so recently back in Bosnia: That civil wars are frighteningly easy to start but the Devil’s own nightmare to stop.

 

Colonel (Ret.) Ken Allard is a former member of the West Point faculty, Dean of the National War College and on-air military analyst with NBC News.

 
 

(Sarcasm alert:  Yes, it will be creeping in.)

With all the stories already appearing about vote irregularities --- ballot boxes set on fire, ballots falling off the back of a truck, a local RNC committeewoman arrested at a polling place, lawsuits to keep noncitizens on voter rolls, and much more --- wouldn’t it be helpful to get some reassurance from an expert that the election is secure?  And not just any old expert, but the head of a government agency that specifically deals with election infrastructure (voting machines and the like)?

Bret Baier, on Wednesday’s edition of FOX NEWS “Special Report,” brought on a guest to offer this valuable reassurance.  And this expert must know all about election security, because she’s the Biden-appointed director of CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Administration.  I feel so much better now after being reassured by her that the election is secure!

(Note:  We’ve discussed CISA here a number of times.  This is the agency for which the term “infrastructure” was expanded to include internet content, with an eye towards regulating online speech.  Mike Benz, founder of Foundation for Freedom Online, has been all over it.  If you’re not up to speed, the following is a must-read.)

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/05/14/mike_benz_dhs_got_involved_in_online_censorship_by_labeling_disinformation_a_cyber_attack.html 

Anyway, at the start of his segment, Bret acknowledged there are many people who are worried about election security, “and whether someone or some group or some country could interfere with the voting this year.”  Then, he introduced CISA Director Jen Easterly.

When asked how she would respond to real concerns from voters about whether or not their votes counted, her answer should raise some big red flags for anyone caring about government and media censorship:  “...Americans have been subjected to a firehose of disinformation.  A lot of that is coming from our foreign adversaries:  Iran, Russia, China.  The fact is, our election infrastructure has never been more secure and resilient.”

Really?  Never more secure?  And there’s that word, “disinformation.”  You know, like that Hunter Biden laptop story that was suppressed four years ago.  They called that disinformation.

Easterly continued:  “But why do I say that?  Well, to prevent digital interference, voting machines are not connected to the internet.  To prevent digital manipulation, over 97 percent paper ballots.  And to guarantee no human manipulation, there are multiple layers of safeguards:  physical access controls, cybersecurity controls in place to protect election infrastructure from compromise.”

Again, really?  Voting machines aren’t connected to the internet and control both physical and cyber access to the infrastructure?  That sounds great!  The 2024 election seems to be amazingly secure.

She went on, smiling:  “So no matter who you vote for, you should have confidence that your votes will be counted as cast.”

Easterly has been a ray of sunshine on this topic before.  On October 2, she told the AP that “malicious actors, even if they tried, could not have an impact at scale such that there would be a material effect on the outcome of the election.”  There was no chance at all.  I’m so glad to know we can all stop worrying about this.

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-security-misinformation-russia-iran-b93d6bbbf08c5046b4cee70ba7676a52

According to the AP, she said, “State and local officials have made so much progress in securing voting, ballot-counting and other infrastructure that the system is more robust than it has ever been.”

(Note:  if you do go to the above AP “news” story, you will see that they manage to work in the editorial comment that Trump’s claims of election rigging are “false.”  They have not been proven false.)

“Things will go wrong,” she told them.  “There could be another storm.  There could be a ransomware attack, a distributed denial of service attack.  These disruptions will create effects, but they will not impact the ability and the votes being cast or those votes being counted.”

Wow, apparently they have some kind of magic wand that counts all the votes no matter what!  I guess we didn’t have to “bank” our votes ahead of time after all!  Kidding; don’t believe this.  VOTE NOW.

Here’s another big red flag from the AP story:  In late September, Democrat Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a letter to Easterly urging CISA to take further steps against “misinformation and disinformation,” including coordination with social media platforms to deal with “false claims.”  Yes, they are still pushing this.

Easterly told the AP that her agency “does not monitor social media sites or attempt to moderate their content.”  She said that “CISA does not censor.  CISA has never censored.  And allegations against CISA are riddled with factual inaccuracies.”  Actually, CISA was sued by Republican-led states who alleged the agency had applied “unrelenting pressure” to force changes in content online.  The case did not go forward, but that was only because SCOTUS ruled the states didn’t have “standing.”

She had more rock-solid reassurances for Baier, addressing the lack of uniformity of rules in the 50 states by saying, “The diverse and decentralized nature of our election infrastructure actually means that it is impossible for a bad actor to tamper with or to manipulate the voting infrastructure in a way that would have a material impact on the outcome of the Presidential election, certainly not without being detected.”

Don’t you feel better now?

Speaking of the security of voting machines --- and no doubt Bret couldn’t challenge his guest on that, given the settlement between FOX NEWS and Dominion Voting Systems --- Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson alleges there indeed is a glitch in some types of Dominion machines.  Specifically, she cites the Dominion ICX Voter Assist Terminal, which she says has a problem if users try to split their ticket (vote for candidates of both parties).  This is the machine designed to help people with disabilities.

Wish Bret could’ve asked Jen Easterly about that.  More details here…

https://www.westernjournal.com/michigan-secretary-state-reveals-nationwide-issue-affecting-certain-dominion-voting-machines/

Also in Michigan, a Chinese student at the University of Michigan voted illegally but, according to state law, will have his vote counted anyway.  Once it’s in the system, there’s apparently nothing that can be done.

The student is in trouble, facing charges of perjury and unlawful voting for allegedly signing an affidavit saying he was a U.S. citizen and voting in Ann Arbor.  Still, the ballot counts, so some lawful voter in Michigan has been disenfranchised with a canceled-out vote.  Here’s more about the case…

https://mxmnews.com/article/6a10171b-2c53-47e9-b07b-c3987d0ba3b7?chinese-college-student-casts-illegal-ballot-in-michigan-as-state-suggests-ballot-will-still-count-report

Yesterday, we discussed Democrat election attorney Marc Elias and his willingness to “go to the mattresses” if the returns on Election Night are not to his liking.  Peter Schweizer has a new piece on this “Master of Political Dark Arts.”

“This guy is presented as the champion, the biggest protector of democracy, to the extent that Donald Trump is seen by so many as the biggest threat to democracy,” Schweizer says.  But we find it incredibly ironic that in order to get wins for his clients and “save democracy,” he has to stand democracy on its head.  There’s virtually nothing about Kamala’s ascent to the top of the Democrat ticket that is democratic.  It’s not about democracy; Elias has said himself on his own website that his goal was to elect as many progressive Democrats as possible.

As reported in BREITBART NEWS, “Marc Elias is behind efforts to kick third-party candidate Cornel West off the ballots in several states, and simultaneously keep the libertarian candidate on the ballots. His law firm files state-level suits to allow unsecured ballot drop boxes, to extend deadlines for absentee ballot counting, and other efforts to increase the likelihood of Democratic victories.”

This Soros-funded attorney had Hillary Clinton as a client and was involved in the creation of the Steele “dossier.”  Schweizer says that “Elias’s job is to manipulate the laws and the rules to skew them in a direction that benefits his clients.”  He also is a master of picking at results, counting and re-counting until he gets his win.  Even if Trump and other Republicans appear to have won in a landslide next Tuesday, Elias will be doing that, treating the initial results like a “red mirage” that he can make vanish in two weeks.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/30/schweizer-election-lawyer-marc-elias-is-the-master-of-political-dark-arts/

Lots of reports of vote irregularities are coming in, and it’s too soon to be able to verify them.  We’d rather apply the “72-hour rule” and be right than to rush out with a story that isn’t accurate.  (Of course, even if it’s perfectly accurate, the media will still slam it as “disinformation.”)  But last week, Elon Musk established what he calls the Election Integrity Project on X as a way to report suspected irregularities.  When we search for this online, what comes up is headline after headline from the likes of THE ATLANTIC, NPR, NBC, the usual propagandists, ripping into Musk for “spreading election security doubts,” promoting “misleading election claims,” and “aggressively sharing conspiracy theories and misinformation.”

You can bet CISA would love to see Elon shut down.

As of Monday, we are one week and one day away from what may be the most important election of our lifetimes, and for once, that’s not hyperbole. It will determine whether the United States continues sliding over a cliff or changes course and returns to its foundations.

I’ve run and been involved in a lot of campaigns, and I can tell you that in successful ones, by this late stage, you’ve nailed down your base and should be making the case to persuade the persuadable undecideds to break your way. It’s when you’re barnstorming the country to make your final argument for why you deserve their vote and to fire up enthusiasm among your supporters to get to the polls and do it. That’s become even more important now that Election Day has been stretched into Election Weeks or Month, so that voters are already casting millions of ballots.

So how did Donald Trump and Kamala Harris each spend this all-important weekend?

In between a flurry of campaign appearances, Trump sat down for three hours with podcaster Joe Rogan, who is immensely popular with young listeners, especially males. It was posted late on Friday and as of this writing early Monday morning, it had already racked up 33 million views on YouTube alone, plus over 436,000 comments. Most were positive, with some calling it the best political interview they’d ever seen. Some said they were former Democrats who are now voting for Trump, and many remarked on how intelligent, measured, knowledgeable and funny he is, nothing at all like the dumb, crazy fascist the Democrats depict him as being.

Some said they didn’t intend to sit through the whole thing, but stayed up half the night listening. How often do you hear that about any political interview these days? Maybe Rogan and Trump together will bring back the requirement that political candidates have to be able to speak for hours without a teleprompter. That can only be a good thing.

One thing I found heartwarming is how many commenters stated they were in nations all over the world, from Denmark to Malawi, but they love America and are praying for voters to elect Trump. If you haven’t seen it yet, here are some highlights…

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2024/10/26/heres-the-highlights-of-joe-rohans-three-hour-interview-with-trump-n2646816

But honestly, it’s worth setting aside three hours for. Here’s the entire thing…

Trump followed that on Saturday with a rally in Novi, Michigan, where he introduced a group of respected local Muslim leaders who endorsed him. Imam Belal Alzuhairi said, "We, as Muslims, stand with President Trump because he promises peace, not war! We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine. The bloodshed has to stop all over the world, and I think this man can make that happen. I personally believe that God saved his life twice for a reason." This came amid news of a stunning YouGov poll showing Trump now leads Harris among Arab-American voters by 49-47%.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-earns-endorsement-highly-respected-muslim-leaders-battleground-state

Then came the big kahuna on Sunday: Trump’s historic rally at Madison Square Garden. (Full video here): 

https://www.youtube.com/live/HysDMs2a-iM?si=p2VZGGZlna6A0i0r

Despite Democrat politicians telling Trump he wasn’t welcome in New York (and trying to jail and bankrupt him to prove it), the people of New York packed the 20,000-seat venue with an estimated 75,000 more standing outside. Hillary Clinton compared the event to a 1930s Nazi rally there (nonsensical on all fronts, especially considering she and Bill have both held rallies there.) Tim Walz said much the same thing as Hillary in suggesting that Americans who support Trump are Nazis…

https://pjmedia.com/graysonbakich/2024/10/27/tim-walz-calls-trump-madison-square-garden-attendees-nazis-n4933698

Despite threats that any Trump appearance would be disrupted by the communist toddlers of the Dems’ professional protester class, police reported that it was not only peaceful, but everyone was friendly, polite and respectful. They even cleaned up their trash, which was also a hallmark of the old Tea Party rallies. Man, these people just don’t know how to be Nazis.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/10/27/worst-nazi-rally-ever-n4933703

Also, for a “Nazi rally,” there were a surprising number of Jewish people in attendance.

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2024/10/27/jewish-people-attend-trump-nazi-rally-at-madison-square-garden-didnt-they-get-the-memo-n2181154

Lawrence Jones said on “Fox & Friends” that he was surprised to see so many people in his NYC apartment building wearing red MAGA caps because they’d never displayed their political beliefs before. Trump isn’t just making America great again, he’s making Americans feel emboldened to speak out freely again and stop self-censoring.

Election Day...eight days and counting.  After President Trump’s triumphant rally at Madison Square Garden (or as the New York Post renamed it on their front page, “MAGA Square Garden”) on Sunday, we’re about to find out from the Democrats how much insanity can be packed into one crazy week.

On TV, it’s bringing out the worst in them, and I’m sure we still haven’t seen how bad that is.  How low can they go?  On THE VIEW, Joy Behar took the “Trump is Hitler” narrative even farther than ever, calling him a fascist pig.

“I don’t even know what to say any more,” she said.  “If people still follow this fascist pig, then I don’t know what else to say.  I really don’t.  (Helpful hint:  when you don’t know what to say, it’s best to say nothing.)

“It’s like, how many times we have to hear him say that referring to all immigrants as animals and Hitler cleansing Germany of all those parasites, referring to immigrants, and he calls Jews lice and this guy Trump calls people vermin,” she said in a sentence that makes no sense.  (Yes, that is Joy verbatim.)  “It’s the same language that Hitler used.”

Trump uses language that blunt to describe illegal immigrant violent criminals who rape and kill, such as members of Venezuelan gangs.  (He called them “animals” in his speech at Madison Square Garden last night, and I hope actual animals don’t feel too insulted by that.)  To say this language likens him in any way to Hitler is trivializing what Hitler said about Jews --- and what he did to them.

Behar and her colleagues might want to listen to this post on X from 94-year-old Auschwitz survivor Jerry Wartski, whose family was murdered by Hitler’s troops when they invaded Poland.  “I know more about Hitler than Kamala will ever know in a thousand lifetimes.  For her to accuse President Trump of being like Hitler is the worst thing I’ve ever heard in my 75 years of living in the United States.”

He said Kamala “owes my parents and everyone else who was murdered by Hitler an apology for repeating this lie.”

https://x.com/trumpwarroom/status/1849844030177161659?s=51&t=J4D-_h2kFjBAjWxykloF4w

It’s a devastating reminder that when you call your opponent “Hitler” for cheap political gain, you not only slander your opponent, you trivialize the real horror and suffering of the worst crime of the 20th century and insult and demean its victims.

Behar wasn’t the only one on THE VIEW to spew this ignorance.  Co-host Sunny Hostin praised her, saying, “I think you’ve really hit the note.”  Both should apologize to Jerry Wartski and his ancestors who were murdered by Adolf Hitler.

Dave Rubin of THE RUBIN REPORT had a good comment: “You’re all idiots and liars.  And you know it.  That’s you, literally.  Ladies of THE VIEW, you have the job you have because a corporation pays you to sit there and lie so that the Democrats can retain power.  It’s as simple as that.”

https://www.theblaze.com/shows/the-rubin-report/trump-joy-behar?utm_source=theblaze-breaking

At Trump’s rally Sunday, none other than Hulk Hogan --- who better for Madison Square Garden? ---came out in his wrestling attire and, in six minutes, took apart the “Trump as dictator” garbage: “I don’t see no stinkin’ Nazis in here!  I don’t see no domestic terrorists in here!  The only thing I see in here are a bunch of hard-working men and women that are real Americans, brother.”

You have to see this…

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/10/27/hulk-hogan-body-slams-the-dem-narrative-while-jd-vance-finishes-kamala-with-just-one-sentence-n2181162

Recall that we noted last week that the Democrats have likened the Republican nominee to “Hitler” in every election since 1944 (well, except for Eisenhower, but only because he actually defeated Hitler. Tough break for them.) Talk about crying wolf!  Today, Stephen Soukup at AMERICAN GREATNESS has a terrific essay on why the Democrats’ tired “Nazi” narrative is losing steam.  In Soukup’s words, “No one pays the slightest bit of attention to Democrats when they prattle on about Republicans being fascists because they have done so for almost as long as anyone can remember.”

This really kicked into high gear when Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater ran for President in 1964.  Soukup has a list of quotes about Goldwater at the time; they’re just as exaggerated as the claims being made about Trump today.  (Goldwater lost in a landslide.  That, however, was back in the days of liberal media gatekeepers and long before such claims got REALLY OLD and conservatives got sick of being beaten over the head with them.  We’ve since learned the power of mockery and are fighting back against the lies.)

In one brilliant passage, Soukup sizes up why the control of language translates into the control of humanity, because the very concept of morality underlying the words we say has been lost:

“...we have—very largely, if not entirely—lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality.

“As a result, moral pronouncements become mere expressions of feelings and sensations, which are elevated above objective reality and traditional conceptions of right and wrong, good and evil, etc. In short, words like ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’ come to mean nothing more than ‘I don’t like this.’ The Democrats don’t like Trump, but they lack the moral language to explain why. In turn, they resort simply to calling him the names they associate with other things they believe they don’t like. Trump, therefore, is a Nazi, Hitler-esque—just as Mitt Romney was, just as George W. Bush, just as Reagan and Goldwater were, just as all Republicans are. The left doesn’t consider the implications or the meaning of the comparisons they use, largely because they don’t understand them. They know only that they are comparing two things that they don’t like.”

It’s Joy Behar, EXPLAINED!  I hope you’ll read the whole thing…

https://amgreatness.com/2024/10/26/why-the-nazi-slur-has-no-power

Gen. John Kelly, former chief of staff to President Trump has been quoted by THE NEWS YORK TIMES as saying Trump privately praised Hitler on several occasions and met his definition of a fascist.  Kamala Harris has made much of this in the scripted comments she makes everywhere she goes.  But Nick Ayers, then-Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, said this on X:

“I’ve avoided commenting on intra-staff leaks or rumors or even lies as it relates to my time at the White House, but General Kelly’s comments regarding President Trump are too egregious to ignore. I was with each of them more than most, and his commentary is *patently false.*”

This refutation includes other stories told by Gen. Kelly as well, such as the one that Trump didn’t want to be seen with veterans who had lost limbs and had called soldiers who had been injured or killed in battle “suckers and losers.”  These are stories that Democrats are still telling constantly on the campaign trail.

When THE ATLANTIC magazine (the propaganda arm of the Atlantic Council) published the “suckers and losers” comment, even huge anti-Trumper John Bolton responded that Trump had not said that.   

As reported in THE NATIONAL PULSE, when THE ATLANTIC published a similar piece this week claiming that Trump had denigrated murdered American soldier Vanessa Guillen, her family roundly rejected the magazine’s claims, with her sister no doubt rankling them by saying she had already voted for Trump.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2024/10/24/even-mike-pences-chief-of-staff-says-general-kelly-is-lying-about-trump/

But as the hysterical “Trump is Hitler” narrative wears thin, the Democrats are trying even harder to thwart election integrity measures, suing states and towns across the country.  To cite just one example, after the Commonwealth of Virginia removed about 1,600 registered voters who had IDENTIFIED THEMSELVES as non-citizens from its voter rolls, U.S. Judge Patricia Giles, just this Friday, ruled that those names must be PUT BACK.  I am not kidding.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/us-judge-orders-virginia-restore-voters-removed-from-rolls-restoring-access-thousands

But logically, it seems likely this will backfire as well.  According to a new Gallup poll, a whopping 80 percent of Americans support BOTH a border wall AND voter ID, and 83 percent say that proof of citizenship should be required for voting for the first time.  But the messaging from the Democrat Party is that these policies are racist.  How does this go over when a vast majority of Americans are finding themselves agreeing with Trump?  Here’s Jonathan Turley’s column...

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/10/25/gallop-80-percent-of-americans-support-voter-id-and-proof-of-citizenship-laws/#more-224697

As Nick Arama at REDSTATE writes of Trump, “Not only is he doing well in the polls, but he’s been doing events that have blown up the only desperate argument they seem to have left --- the “Hitler gambit.”

Working at McDonald’s and chatting with everyday Americans.  Shooting the breeze for three solid unedited hours with Joe Rogan.  He’s funny, personable, intelligent, widely knowledgeable, and, yes, stable and even-tempered.  The dictator stuff falls away as just another political lie.

It was reportedly son Barron who encouraged Trump to get out and do these kinds of events and podcasts, to let people see who he really is, especially young people who are most prone to leftist brainwashing.  How often do you get that in politics?

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/10/27/hilarious-trump-may-just-win-all-fifty-states-with-his-new-election-promise-n2181125

None of this will matter, though, if we don’t get out and vote.  Have the satisfaction of “banking” your vote, in person.  It’s up to all of us to make this election too big to rig.

RELATED COMMENT from Huckabee writer/researcher Laura Ainsworth:

While in Charlotte, North Carolina this weekend for a music event, my co-writer/spouse Pat Reeder and I took a drive through a beautiful historic district called Elizabeth.  Impressive, immaculately restored homes from the early 20th century line the streets; many of these go for well over $1 million.

We could see that in this prestigious neighborhood, the ONLY political signs were for Harris-Walz and the down-ballot Democrats.  NOT ONE Trump sign in the entire neighborhood.  What are the odds?  If you were to ask these well-educated, prosperous people what they thought of Trump, I’d be willing to bet they’d say he was a racist and a threat to democracy.  They might even use the word “Hitler.”

On the other hand, while there were quite a few Harris signs, most of the homes did not have yard signs at all.  I had to wonder, had these people been intimidated by what’s being said about Trump to not publicly support him?  I had a feeling that if more of them felt as their neighbors did, they’d have signs for Harris, too, but they didn’t.  Perhaps they find it safer to say nothing.  It will be very interesting to see the vote tallies from areas like this.

RELATED VIDEO: At the Trump rally at MSG, Tucker Carlson said one of the greatest gifts Trump has given Americans is to inspire people to stand up against meritless elitists who want to bully us into silence and force us to repeat lies.

The Left's War on Christmas

October 28, 2024

Every year around this time, we start hearing about the left’s War On Christmas, with the banning of terms like “Merry Christmas,” or even the word Christmas itself. Then, regular as clockwork, we get the smirking denials from the left that a “War on Christmas” exists. Like their denials of Biden’s cognitive issues and the endless failures of their economic policies, their certainty is impervious to all evidence. Latest case in point…

The Neiman-Marcus Christmas catalog, with its opulent gifts for the well-to-do, has become a Christmas tradition that always sparks fun conversations. But after 98 years, it is suddenly no longer called the “Christmas Book.” It’s now titled “A Neiman’s Fantasy,” and the generic cover shows a fashion model with no images suggestive of Christmas time. They’re referring to it as the “Holiday Book,” but it features no references to any holiday. Astoundingly, the company declared the change to be, “in the spirit of inclusivity as it welcomes customers of all backgrounds, religions and traditions to celebrate the season.”

What season? Yes, nothing screams “inclusivity” like erasing one of the most important holidays of Christians.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13999209/Neiman-Marcus-bans-Christmas-fury-Saks-woke.html

Many longtime Neiman-Marcus employees are furious over the change. This is what they feared would happen when the Dallas retailer was taken over by a new corporate owner. The CEO, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, announced last year that five percent of the workforce would be cut. One anonymous worker told the Daily Mail that if the CEO and his team “put as much time into running the business as they did on expressing viewpoints about DEI, we would be buying Saks or launching an IPO. Instead, my job is at risk because of our business failure.” Another said, “The book didn't need a name change. Personal opinions about inclusion - from Geoffroy and his leadership team - changed this.”  

Neiman-Marcus may be the next company to learn the hard way the lesson of “Get woke, go broke.” But of course, they'll deny it's because they joined the War On Christmas. That doesn’t exist.

The sophisticated power play used by the “Justice” Department in Trump’s first term to safeguard their positions and their ginned-up “Russia” ploy was simply to open an investigation into him.

Really, it was that easy. That’s all they had to do. As with the current investigation of the Secret Service, it’s the little magic wand they wave when they don’t want to talk about something. Once they had their Trump “Russia” case on file --- for which the pretense, ridiculously, was Christopher Steele’s “dossier” funded by Hillary’s 2016 campaign, plus the fake “Alfa Bank” scandal, also exploited by her campaign --- they could clam up in front of congressional committees, limiting Congress’s oversight power with their non-answers. They could go into public hearings confident that their stonewalling would go unchallenged, with nothing revealed except their lack of transparency.

It’s the President’s job to hire and fire these top bureaucrats, who constitutionally “serve at the pleasure of the President,” but Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey was painted as an outrageously Nixonian attempt to obstruct justice because, why? Comey was officially investigating him. Check-MATE. These people had Trump boxed in, and that’s why he needs another term to handle them, now that he understands the game.

Trump is already working on “Special Counsel” Jack Smith (the quotation marks here mean he’s not a real one, having been appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland without ever being confirmed by the Senate), to get the January 6 case against him dismissed.

As reported by JUST THE NEWS, Trump’s attorneys asked on Thursday for a dismissal of the case against him. Their argument? Just what we said above and have always said, that Smith was unconstitutionally appointed. Florida U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon, who’s been presiding over Smith’s OTHER case, the so-called “classified documents” case, dismissed it (Smith is appealing), ruling that “no legal statute gave Garland the authority to give Smith the amount of power he has as Special Counsel, and that the appointment violated the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution.”

Given Jack Smith’s stained history as a prosecutor, he was just the right person to do whatever was necessary to get Trump. He would charge ahead and never second-guess himself. But as Trump’s lawyers claim, Smith was a “private citizen” when he was appointed by Garland, and so, “Everything that Smith did since Attorney General Garland’s appointment, as President Trump continued his leading campaign against President Biden and then-Vice President Harris, was unlawful and unconstitutional.” Acknowledging that is the only sufficient remedy for Trump.

If the court agrees, it will end Smith’s J6 case against President Trump. Smith has just a few days, until October 31, to file his response.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/trump-requests-dismissal-january-6-case-over-jack-smiths-appointment

Normally we don’t like to see a case thrown out on technicalities, but Trump’s accusers have gone around the Constitution so many times, we’ll take it. Otherwise, they’ll determine who will and who won’t occupy the chair in the Oval Office, and they also want to curtail Congress’s official oversight duties.

Trump himself, even after what he went through following Comey’s firing, has no qualms now about firing Smith, saying he’ll do it “within two seconds” of taking the Oval Office. He said this on a wide- ranging interview on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show last Thursday.

When asked which he would do, pardon himself or fire Smith, Trump said, “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy. He’s a crooked person. I would fire him within two seconds.” (We’re thinking the best way to handle this would be to fire Merrick Garland, appoint a new AG and let THAT person fire Smith.)

As you know, Smith recently submitted a revised court filing to try to keep his J6 case against Trump going even after the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity. As NEWSMAX reports, “Smith’s latest tactic is to argue Trump ‘resorted to crimes’ and ‘used private actors and his campaign infrastructure to attempt to overturn the election results and operated in a private capacity as a candidate for office.”

He means Trump wasn’t acting in his official capacity while doing the things he’s accused of doing. Ending the case because he WAS carrying out presidential duties seems, again, like getting off on a technicality, but this might be the only way to get Smith to stop his sick, Captain Ahab-style pursuit (once he’s exhausted the appeals process, of course).

https://www.newsmax.com/us/special-counsel-jack-smith-prosecutor/2024/10/24

One other part of their interview, especially interesting in light of what Kamala says about Trump abusing power Hitler-style: When he was asked about pardoning Hunter Biden, he commented that political prosecutions “are bad for the country.” He also noted that when his rally fans in 2016 chanted “Lock her up, lock her up” about Hillary --- who really should’ve been tried for destroying evidence, obstruction of justice and mishandling classified material --- he told them to “take it easy, just relax. I could have put her in jail. But I didn’t want to do that. I thought it would look terrible [for the country].”

Here’s more of what Trump said about pardoning his rivals and trying to do what is best for the country. It seems to me that if he wants to be Hitler, he’s going about it all wrong.

https://thelibertydaily.com/trump-floats-possibility-pardoning-hunter-biden-if-elected/

What’s been obvious for some time is that the little dictator wannabes locking up their political opponents are actually the Democrats. Friends of Kamala. Or, if not true friends, at least political cronies trying to get her elected.

Trump is the one they paint as the relentless authoritarian. The Hitler, even. Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST has a great piece that looks at the accusations Kamala is making against Trump in the final days of the campaign, and she makes this stellar point: “There is no way to sugarcoat the fact that Harris, in her desperation as her campaign heads down the toilet, has just invited more assassination attempts on her political rival.

“She has green-lighted future efforts to murder him, with her carefully scripted, deliberately delivered official message from the official vice presidential residence in Washington DC. Using an American flag as a backdrop, just to add an obscene flourish.”

https://nypost.com/2024/10/23/opinion/the-left-puts-a-target-on-donald-trumps-back-with-nazi-adolf-hitler-smears/

[Note: We saw her press conference, which was set up with the American flag to Kamala’s right and another flag to her left. This appeared to bear the insignia of the U.S. Vice President, and she gave her shockingly political speech from the Vice President’s residence. Some have accused her of violating the Hatch Act, which prevents federal officials from “using their official authority or influence to interfere with the outcome of an election.” To show how even-handed we are, we’re going to link to a NEWSWEEK fact-check on this; they say it’s a gray area at the level of VP but rule it “false” since the President and Vice President hold certain exemptions. Even if that’s true (we’re still checking legal experts ourselves), it was horrifically inappropriate for her to use the trappings of her office this way.]

https://www.newsweek.com/fact-check-did-kamala-harris-violate-hatch-act-1973960

On the other hand, it seems glaringly obvious that “Transportation Secretary” Pete Buttigieg is blatantly violating the Hatch Act and posting the evidence of it on his personal X account:

https://redstate.com/streiff/2024/10/19/did-pete-buttigieg-just-document-himself-committing-a-federal-crime-n2180798

Is anything being done about this? Don’t count on it. This would seem to fall into the “D-Next-To-Your-Name” exemption from federal laws. As Derek Hunter writes at Townhall.com, “It’s not that the left has double standards – one for them, another for everyone else. They have standards for everyone else and absolutely none for them.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2024/10/24/the-media-are-the-scum-of-the-earth-n2646673

PROGRAMMING ALERT: Dust off your easy chair or set your DVR because Miranda Divine will be my guest this weekend on “Huckabee” on TBN, the only show on TV that will give her a forum to discuss her new book about Biden family corruption and also judge a chili cook-off.

Yesterday, we talked about the left’s historical obsession with linking their enemies to Hitler. Here’s a piece with lots of examples of how George W. Bush was portrayed as LITERALLY HITLER. It does seem much worse now, with Trump, but it’s been bad for a long time, and it actually started when Hitler was still alive.

https://twitchy.com/amy-curtis/2024/10/24/cnn-medical-analyst-george-w-bushs-silence-about-election-indefensible-n2402672

John Daniel Davidson at THE FEDERALIST has a warning about the left: “The purpose of constantly invoking the specter of a dictatorship under Trump is to condition Democrats to react violently if Harris loses.”

We know the Dems tend to do to us what they claim we’re doing to them. Case in point: Kamala’s always been “consistent and forceful,” Davidson says, “about one thing throughout her campaign: that Trump will destroy America if he’s re-elected. He’ll even use the military to round up people and put them into camps.

“What they’re doing is pushing a narrative that Trump is going to be a fascist dictator if he wins office and use the power of the presidency to go after ordinary Americans. That’s an extreme and frankly unhinged position with no basis in reality. You don’t say things like that unless you’re hoping to provoke a strong reaction, and the reaction Democrats are hoping to provoke is violent resistance to a Trump second term.”

If you thought some incarnation of Hitler had been elected to high office, and that he was going to round up your family and take them off to work camps, wouldn’t you want him taken out? Of course you would. You’d want him dead. And if he got elected and immediately fired the man who’d been prosecuting him, wouldn’t you think that was just evil? And might there be huge civil unrest because of it? The more it looks like a Trump win, the more enamored the Democrats will become of a scenario like that. It will be all they have left.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/10/17/kamala-harris-is-priming-democrats-for-violent-resistance-if-trump-wins/

RELATED: Political analyst Mark Halperin is just one of a number of experts warning that because of all this red hot, ginned-up Trump Derangement Syndrome, if Trump wins, “I think it will be the cause of the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.” He predicts it will result in alcoholism, broken marriages and fights at kids’ birthday parties (I’d say that’s the best-case scenario.) But he thinks we’ll be fine by Inauguration Day.

Let’s all hope and pray that the leftists reach the “acceptance” stage of grief sooner than that, although we know that for some of them, any excuse for a riot is a good excuse.

https://townhall.com/columnists/scotthogenson/2024/10/20/tds-and-the-medias-agitation-of-mental-disorders-n2646468

As I reported earlier this week, the carefully-constructed delusion about the medical necessity to mutilate confused children in the name of transgender rights is finally, blessedly crashing down. I already reported on the lawsuit that revealed how HHS official “Rachel” Levine and the trans cheerleading medical group WPATH conspired to hide evidence that there were no benefits to kids from their quackery.

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/rachel-levine-must-resign-2d7?publication_id=61371&post_id=150390017&isFreemail=true&r=9bg2k&triedRedirect=true

Now, the latest outrage: Back in 2015, the NIH awarded a taxpayer-funded grant to study the effectiveness of puberty blockers on improving the mental health of children. Nine years later, the results have yet to be published, but study head Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy claimed the kids were in “really good shape when they come in, and they’re in really good shape after two years.”

In reality, a quarter of them were depressed or suicidal before treatment, and there was no change afterwards. Now, Olson-Kennedy has admitted that she withheld publishing the study for political reasons. She didn’t want it “weaponized” by opponents of the treatments because, as the New York Times reports, “the findings might fuel the kind of political attacks that have led to bans of the youth gender treatments in more than 20 states.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/24/doctor-admits-to-blocking-publication-of-10-million-taxpayer-funded-study-showing-no-mental-health-benefits-of-puberty-blockers-on-transgender-children/

I don’t need to comment on that because “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling already summed it up perfectly in a single X/Twitter post:

“We must not publish a study that says we’re harming children because people who say we’re harming children will use the study as evidence that we’re harming children, which might make it difficult for us to continue harming children.”

You have to hand it to Kamala Harris – because she can’t figure out how to take it for herself.

I didn’t think it was possible for her campaign to get any worse, but at this late stage, she’s still setting new records for awfulness. The closeness of the polls is a frightening testament to how effective the politicized mass media has been at brainwashing the public. How else to explain the support for someone being President who can’t answer a simple question and who makes the dumbest campaign decisions I have ever seen, and I’ve been involved in a LOT of political campaigns.

For instance, Kamala is traveling today to Texas, a state she has no chance to win, but it’s about pushing unfettered abortion, so of course, she’s taking time out of her schedule with Election Day less than two weeks away. Texas is the state that’s been most impacted by the disastrous open border policies of Biden and Harris, so with illegal immigration being one of the top voter concerns, why not go down there and remind voters of her border debacle? Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called it “one of the dumbest political decisions I’ve ever seen.”

No wonder top Texas Republican office holders are demanding that if she’s finally going to visit Texas, it should be to apologize.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-politicos-launch-full-court-press-against-harris-ahead-her-border-state-campaign-rally-apologize

Earlier this week, Harris did a townhall on CNN with Anderson Cooper hosting. It was nearly as friendly a venue as “The View” and that was an embarrassing tongue bath. But it went so badly that Matt Margolis at PJ Media called it “a masterclass in self-destruction” and the biggest political disaster since Biden debated Trump. Even Anderson Cooper diplomatically admitted that he didn’t think she “sealed the deal,” although I’m sure that won’t keep him from voting for her, if he hasn’t already.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2024/10/24/kamalas-cnn-town-hall-was-a-masterclass-in-political-self-destruction-n4933594

Like watching “Plan Nine from Outer Space,” it’s hard to pick a favorite bad moment, but one that’s getting a lot of attention was when she was asked what her weaknesses were and she replied with a word salad that never answered the question but somehow worked around to praising herself.

Her campaign is now resorting to relying on celebrities from Lizzo to Beyonce to Michael Keaton to try to drag Kamala over the finish line – because nobody can relate to the problems of struggling working Americans in the Biden-Harris economy like fabulously rich celebrities. This seems to be backfiring bigly. Michael Keaton’s post looked like a hostage video as he told regular people that Trump and Elon Musk didn’t really care about them or want to hang out with them. It was greeted with hundreds of derisive responses from people asking when they could come over to Michael’s house for a beer.

Last night, Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen tried to gin up some enthusiasm for Kamala at a rally in Georgia, but reports are that the crowd started leaving as soon as Springsteen finished and she started talking. Don Surber has an amusing piece that covers that, along with topics like why Kamala is so bad at retail politics and how she managed to hold a “one-person debate” on CNN and lose.

Don Surber
The sham-didate
As Democrats struggle to push Kamala Harris into a second term for FJB and a fourth term for Obama, the I&I/TIPP Poll asked three questions that expose the real problem with her…
Read more

Not that the crowd were that impressed with Springsteen, either. Bob Hoge at Redstate.com reports that Bruce’s galloping TDS seems to have left him clinically depressed. After a dark and divisive rant about Trump being a “tyrant,” he mumbled through a dreary solo rendition of “Dancing in the Dark,” which includes these lyrics that sound like a description of Kamala’s campaign:

https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2024/10/25/bruce-springsteen-brings-dark-message-to-kamala-rally-then-delivers-dreary-bomb-of-a-performance-n2181045

Cheer up, Bruce. If Trump gets elected, maybe you won’t have to declare your multi-million-dollar estate in New Jersey as a farm anymore just to get a tax break. (For those who don’t know that story, here’s a 2015 Billboard article about it.)

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/bruce-springsteen-organic-farm-tax-new-jersey-bon-jovi-6509638/

Now this is a scandal

October 28, 2024

One of the biggest political scandals in history that the media is burying (although some reporters are trying futilely to get straight answers out of Kamala Harris about what she knew and when she knew it) is the cognitive decline of Joe Biden. There was a concerted effort to cover that up and get him reelected for another four years, as the people around him prioritized their own hold on power over the security of the United States and its people.

Reluctant as I am to believe anything in one of Bob Woodward’s books, his new one “War” includes both anonymous and on-the-record quotes from people who expressed concerns about Biden’s mental state more than a year before the election.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/sources-tell-woodward-biden-struggled-speak-focus-more-than-year-before-leaving-race

While Kamala and his other defenders claimed he was vigorous and sharp as a tack behind closed doors, these witnesses describe alarming episodes of him rambling incoherently at fundraisers, forgetting common words like “veteran,” and repeating the same story three times in the same words. One said, "It was ‘like your 87-year-old senile grandfather,’ wandering around the room, saying to women guests, ‘your eyes are so beautiful.’"

When you hear Kamala say anything about Trump, remember this. If she’d lie to you this badly about Joe Biden’s fitness to be President, what lie wouldn’t she tell about Donald Trump’s fitness to be President?

Winning the election is just the start. If we get there in a couple of weeks --- it’s looking good, but take NOTHING for granted --- we then have to make it all the way to Inauguration Day. And the left will not go gentle into that good night. Who knows how far they’ll go to shake things up before then --- and after? It’s going to get mean.

We do know much of it will necessarily involve an army of aggressive lawyers and partisan judges. But another piece of it involves taking a cue from what the European Union is already doing with great diligence and enthusiasm. That is, they’ll work even harder to shut down all communication from those they consider “right-wing extremists.” And since they define President Trump as a right-wing extremist, it follows that all his supporters are, too, and, like him, require their own “gag order.”

They will try this even though by now it should garner little more than a yawn when they describe Trump as worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Attila the Hun, Chairman Mao, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler, Idi Amin and The Grinch, COMBINED. It’s really getting old: the Democrats have called every Republican presidential nominee “Hitler” since Thomas Dewey in 1944. (And that was when we were actually at war with Hitler.) This time, with Kamala as their candidate and her weaknesses on full display, that “dictator” stuff is all they’ve got.

The list of people they’ve likened to Hitler is long. For when you have time...

https://instapundit.com/229455/

But, wait, you might say of our joke. Idi Amin was so evil, he was a cannibal! Would the left really go so far as to compare Trump to a cannibal? Sure they would! To the TDS-infected mind, he’s Jeffrey Dahmer. Besides, the cannibalism is true in a figurative sense, because he’s eating Kamala for lunch.

In truth, THE ATLANTIC didn’t go that far (yet); they held back and just said Trump was like Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini combined. This sparked Margot Cleveland at THE FEDERALIST to quip, “When Hitler isn’t bad enough!”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/journalists-political-commentators-respond-atlantic-article-comparing-trump-hitler-stalin

Our riff on what THE ATLANTIC said is something called comic exaggeration, done to make a point.

But this kind of pointed ridicule is precisely what the left is most afraid of and obsessed with silencing. Gabe Kaminsky at THE FEDERALIST reports that the EU has released an 18-page report that warning that your use of humor and satire, even the sharing of funny memes, could be a sign you’re one of...THOSE. You know, right-wing conspiracy theorists. Nazi white supremacists. Domestic terrorists. Deploooooooorables.

We are not amused, they say. And, yes, that is the royal “we.” We know this because they behave like the ruling elite, assuming power through Divine Right.

Cracking down on humor and satire? Them’s fightin’ words in our book. This is being done by control freaks who think the ending of George Orwell’s novel “1984” is a happily-ever-after.

An EU-funded group called the Radicalization Awareness Network has partnered with them to combat “violent extremism” with “surveillance and security.” Yes, surveillance. Their report is titled “It’s not funny anymore. Far-right extremists’ use of humour.”

“This paper,” they say, “scrutinizes how humour functions as a potential factor in terms of influencing far-right extremist violence.”

“The most potent weapons known to mankind,” their report reads, “are satire and ridicule.” Yes, and that’s exactly why we all need them in our arsenal. Taking them away is like disarming the populace. Somebody needs to print up the bumper sticker: To take my sense of humor, they’ll have to pry it from my cold dead mind.

But then, the self-anointed ruling elite will prowl parking lots and scrape those bumper stickers off pickup trucks.

They themselves are generally humorless; they’ve designated most humor as unsafe. As Greg Gutfeld said Wednesday, the left has “cancer of the funny bone.” They know our humor loses its power when it can’t be shared, so that’s the kind of world they envision, with themselves in charge of what can be communicated. Accordingly, this group recommends de-platforming those who produce and/or share memes of which they disapprove. They’ll psychoanalyze each creator and pick apart each image to imbue them with motives and beliefs that likely aren’t even intended. One can see from examples in the EU report that this is what they have done.

Note: these people get the strangest ideas. For some reason, they have the bizarre notion that the “OK” hand sign, with the thumb and index finger touching, is code for white supremacy. But somebody just made that up. (It means “okay.”) Or the idea that Trump supporters are QAnon conspiracy theorists. As immersed in the news as my team and I are, when we first started seeing references to QAnon, we had to look it up, as we had no idea what it was. Yet they’d wipe me from the internet in a heartbeat.

At the same time, as Kaminsky writes, “There is no direct reference to left-wing extremism and whether individuals who promote radical ideas on all sides of the political aisle ought to face consequences.” Well, of course there isn’t. Antifa, knock yourselves out with the memes --- although, again, I don’t think we have to worry too much about YOUR sense of humor, because you don’t have one.

The report cites a number of “resources,” such as the Urban Dictionary, Tech Against Terrorism, Meme War Weekly, Know Your Meme, and the CARR Guide to Online Radical-Right Symbols, Slogans and Slurs. Does the right have a secret handshake, too? Good grief.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/27/new-eu-alert-having-a-sense-of-humor-is-proof-you-might-be-a-far-right-terrorist/

But here’s some good news on the censorship front: Though California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been trying hard to act as the humor police, state AG Rob Bonta has stipulated that California cannot legally enforce a law (AB2839) against “materially deceptive” political content, including memes and parodies of elected officials, from plaintiffs BABYLON BEE and law blogger Kelly Rickert.

Thanks to the Alliance Defending Freedom for successfully fighting this attempt by the State of California to flout the First Amendment. To quote BABYLON BEE CEO Seth Dillon: “Our job is hard enough when the jokes keep coming true, as if they were prophesies. Unfortunately for them, the First Amendment secures our right to tell jokes they don’t like.

https://justthenews.com/nation/free-speech/california-agrees-it-cant-punish-satirical-website-babylon-bee-election-memes

RELATED: It’s too bad the Brits are cracking down on humor, because they’ve been such a great source of it over the years. John Cleese of the original Monty Python comedy team has had plenty to say about this, particularly with the rise of “content moderation” in the age of Trump and wokeness. Cleese famously said he doesn’t perform on college campuses any longer and has done many interviews and presentations on the subject of wokeness killing creativity; here’s one. In it, he makes the case that “all humor is critical” --- even if it’s a joke based on a weakness of all human beings --- and he passes along an insight from groundbreaking psychiatrist Robin Skinner about super-sensitive people: “If people can’t control their own emotions, then they have to start trying to control other people’s behavior.” That is a brilliantly simple explanation for the left’s focus on “safe spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and the like.

If humor goes away, then the sense of proportion does, too. “If humor is gone,” Cleese says, “then as far as I’m concerned, you’re living in ‘1984.’”

https://bigthink.com/videos/john-cleese-on-political-correctness/

Trump and Harris both have celebrity billionaires campaigning for them, but I think I’d rather have Trump supporter Elon Musk on my side than Harris-pushing Mark Cuban, whose candidate has such bad economic ideas that he’s forced to deny she really means it even as he attempts to promote her.

https://www.westernjournal.com/mark-cuban-rails-one-kamala-harris-policy-proposals-campaigning/

During a Harris campaign event in Arizona, Cuban was asked if Harris supports a big tax on unrealized capital gains. That means taxing the increase in value of assets, even if you haven’t sold them and taken the profit. Trump calls it “communism,” and even Cuban knows it’s an incredibly stupid idea and an economy killer. So he assured the questioner that Harris does not support that.

Problem is, she said in August that she did support it, and it’s one of the few idiotic leftist ideas she hasn’t taken back.

Elon Musk seems to be having a lot more fun stumping for Trump. Musk made a stunning revelation about one reason why he’s backing Trump and wants to head up a government efficiency office to eliminate needless regulations. It was a jaw-dropping story about all the idiotic demands California regulators put on SpaceX before they would clear letting their rockets land in the ocean. These ranged from studies of the likelihood of the rocket hitting a shark and then a whale, and forcing SpaceX to put headphones on a seal and play sonic boom sounds to study its reaction.

This is a must-read that’s already inspiring countless pro-Trump memes of headphone-wearing seals. It would be hilarious if you didn’t realize these loony bureaucrats were actually serious.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/10/21/elon-musk-shark-story-n2180845

Of course, Musk is also being accused by leftists of violating election laws by giving away a million dollars a day to a random registered voter who signs his PAC’s petition. But he’s not paying for votes or paying anyone to register. Not like Mark Zuckerberg, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars in 2020 registering voters mostly in heavily-Democrat districts. Apparently, it’s okay for billionaires to buy votes only when they’re buying them from Democrat office holders. And it’s okay to promise free money for votes only if you’re offering them other people’s tax money.

Monday, October 21, was the first day of early voting in Dallas County.  The sun was shining and the birds were singing as I got ready to go to the polls with husband (and HUCKABEE co-writer) Pat Reeder.  I was happy, happy, happy to finally be casting my vote for former (and, I hope, future) President Trump and everyone else on the ballot who did NOT have a “D” next to his or her name, as I absolutely cannot support any candidate still professing loyalty to the Democrat Party, given its dishonest leadership and horrible agenda.

Then I turned on the radio, earlier than usual, about 10:15, to WBAP-AM and heard a host I don’t usually hear, Casey Bartholomew.  It sure took me out of my lovely mood.  In fact, I’m still spitting nails over what he was telling his audience.

This was the second hour of his two-hour show, so admittedly, I didn’t hear everything that preceded the discussion in progress.  But Bartholomew was ardently defending Election Day as THE ONLY day to vote.  He apparently doesn’t care that Republicans are being asked --- begged --- to “bank” their votes in case something happens between now and Election Day.  He’s always voted on the actual Election Day and, by gum, he’s going to do the same thing this year.  In fact, he aggressively criticized those who vote early as people who care more about their own convenience than the seriousness of casting their vote.  He was telling his listeners that they should all wait and vote on Election Day as he does.

Now, I grew up thinking of Election Day as sacred and casting my vote as a kind of sacrament.  This year marks the first time, in fact, that I’ve voted early.  But this situation is different.  This time, it’s SO IMPORTANT for my vote to count that I just had to make sure it got in.  (Never mind the story about some voting machines in Dallas County mis-tabulating ballots in their recent trial run but being certified for use anyway.  That’s pretty horrifying, but there’s nothing I can do about it.  At least if someone else’s “R” vote isn’t counted correctly, my “R” vote can help bridge the gap.)

So many things could happen on Election Day:  What if the electrical grid is tampered with or otherwise fails?  What if some locations run out of ballots?  What if some of the machines go down or are found to have problems?  What if there’s some “black swan” event we haven’t even thought of, designed to interfere with the process? What if there’s a tornado (We are in Texas, after all)?

And then there’s me:  What if I get really sick and have to stay home?  What if there’s a family emergency I have to take care of?  What if I fall off the roof cleaning leaves out of the gutters and have to go to the hospital?  What if my house burns down and everything is lost, including my ID?  What if I’m in a wreck on the way to the polls?  (Not that I wouldn’t crawl the rest of the way if I could.)     

What if I DIE?

Since I’m not a Democrat, I know I can’t vote if I’m dead, so the best strategy is to vote as soon as possible, while I definitely have a pulse.  Now that I’ve voted, that vote will be my legacy if I happen to get hit by a bus on, say, November 4. Pat and I will be the first people ever to vote Republican after we’re dead.

I never used to have this sense of urgency about voting.  If the election system is ever reformed the way I want it --- with in-person voting on Election Day and maybe just a few days before so crowds are manageable, no electronic machines (which ARE proven hackable), and absentee ballots by request for specific reasons only --- I might go back to voting as I always did.  But that’s the “perfect world” that doesn’t presently exist.

I tried to give Casey Bartholomew the benefit of the doubt.  Was he perhaps using reverse psychology to get his audience fired up about voting early?  Nothing in his delivery suggested this at all.  Was he trying to be deliberately provocative?  If so, this subject is too important to be playing games with the audience.  No, I think he was quite serious.  Could be wrong, but I’m pretty good with nuance, and if his nuance was lost on me, it was probably lost on most people.

This host did his listeners a huge disservice.  I hope they stayed on to listen to Dan Bongino, who gave them the antidote and maybe even helped nudge them to the polls on that first day of voting.  He’s made it clear, as we have, that it’s important to get our votes “banked,” just in case anything interferes on Election Day.  I was happy to see a long line at my polling place, and the vibe there was really good.

Have you voted yet?

(P.S. from Pat: I couldn’t tell who most of the people there were voting for, but I’m pretty sure that the guy in line behind me in the T-shirt with an AR-15 rifle and the slogan, “As long as we’re redefining things, this is a cordless hole-puncher” was voting for Trump.)

Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, has found something else that strongly suggests that “witness” Cassidy Hutchinson was lying under oath to the House J6 Committee.

Recall that last week, it was revealed that then-Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who co-chaired the so-called “Select” Committee on January 6 with Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, had had unethical communications with Hutchinson as her testimony grew and evolved over time.  (I suppose we should say “alleged communications,” but these conversations are right there to read.)

Now, a handwriting expert has determined that a note Hutchinson said had been written by her actually wasn’t.  She testified at a public hearing on June 28, 2022, that Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Eric Hirschmann, one of Trump’s attorneys, had dictated it to her.  The note read: “ANYONE WHO ENTERED THE CAPITOL ILLEGALLY WITHOUT PROPER AUTHORITY SHOULD LEAVE IMMEDIATELY,” with the word “ILLEGALLY” marked out.

Hirschmann has always maintained that he wrote the note himself, and this is consistent with what the handwriting expert found.  From Loudermilk’s press release: “As the Select Committee consistently did with all of Hutchinson’s testimony, they accepted and promoted her claim without any corroboration or seeking other evidence to substantiate her testimony.”

Okay, we already knew Hutchinson was lying --- her story about Trump grabbing his driver and trying to make him go to the Capitol is an obvious tall tale --- but this is just another example of the “Select” Committee bringing discredit upon itself.

https://cha.house.gov/press-releases?ID=995DD584-4385-4765-820E-4E274D09B5FC

Stories like this have been percolating for a long time, but Selwyn Duke at NewAmerican.com asks if we’ve reached the tipping point where people are realizing that plastic recycling is an expensive, inconvenient myth that’s finally unraveling.

https://thenewamerican.com/us/environment/is-the-myth-of-plastic-recycling-finally-being-exposed/

As he notes, John Stossel has been raising the alarm for a while now that only 5% of the plastic returned for recycling in the US is actually recycled. The rest is incinerated, dumped into landfills or sent to other nations – where it’s probably incinerated or dumped into landfills, which is still better than dumping it into the ocean, which also happens.

One problem is that plastic is “extremely inexpensive to produce while recycling is costly.” There are about 40,000 different manmade polymers that all have to be treated differently. And here’s another mindblower for the green crowd: Plastic is not only a better packaging material for foods than other alternatives like paper, but in 93% of cases, it does the least environmental damage.

But as people are finally waking up to the pointlessness of most plastic recycling, the result is predictable: The government, which has been promoting plastic recycling relentlessly for years and pressuring businesses to go along with it, is now accusing the companies they pressured of misleading the public. For instance, California is suing ExxonMobil, “alleging it falsely promoted the recyclability of plastic.”

Maybe the best thing for the Earth would be simply to use only as much plastic as we need, send it to the dump when we’re through with it, and send a whole lot of meddling but scientifically ignorant politicians to the dump along with it.

With the presidential campaign in the home stretch, the differences between the candidates are becoming even more glaring, with the main one being authenticity. Trump is able to relate to everyone naturally, whether he’s talking to steelworkers, football fans or McDonald’s employees. Kamala Harris has to have everything scripted in advance, and even then, it can become a disaster (but not as big a disaster as when she ad-libs, like responding to a call of “Jesus is Lord” by saying, “You’re at the wrong rally.”)

The two also seem to have switched campaign themes. It’s Trump who’s exuding “joy” as he revels in fun photo-ops with regular Americans, while Harris has turned to angrily attacking Trump in every speech. She’s getting so strident, some pundits have started comparing her to the late-stage campaigning of Hillary “Basket of Deplorables” Clinton. Rep. Dean Phillips, the one Democrat who dared to challenge Biden in the primaries and earned far more votes than Kamala (zero), also dinged her for focusing on slamming Trump instead of being “clear about what she believes.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2024/10/21/dem-rep-dean-phillips-slams-kamala-harris-focusing-trump-instead-what-she-believes/

At this point, I’m not sure she even knows what she believes. Like, remember how she was against fracking before she was for fracking? Well, now she’s against it again. At least, she’s against more of it. She's attempting the rate flip-flop-flip. You try figuring her latest position out…

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/kamala-harris-faces-backlash-oil-and-gas-association-over-perceived-flip

Meanwhile, Trump spent time Monday talking and joking with regular working guys at a Bronx barber shop. The most shocking news to come out of it was when the shop owner said that under Biden-Harris, his monthly energy bills have gone up from $1200 to $15,000! Trump told him that he will cut energy prices in half during his first year in office.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2024/10/21/trump-visits-barbershop-in-bronx-n2180868

Harris had a townhall Monday with everyone’s favorite Republican, Liz Cheney. Instead of being an opportunity for voters to ask spontaneous questions, moderator Maria Shriver announced at the outset that all the questions had been “pre-determined.” Harris’ answers had also apparently been pre-written and rehearsed, which didn’t mean they were delivered convincingly.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2024/10/22/watch-kamala-harris-is-so-bad-at-staged-town-hall-even-liz-cheney-was-left-cringing-n2180896

Vulnerable Democrats in swing states are seeing how bad Harris’ campaign is and rushing to distance themselves from her. Even Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina said on MSNBC that her campaign team looks “absolutely exhausted” because they have so many tough decisions to make and so little time “while everyone is telling them they’re a band of idiots, and they should do it their way.”

https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/10/21/everyones-telling-them-theyre-a-band-of-idiots-2012-obama-campaign-manager-on-harris-campaign-n2180884

If it’s any consolation, I don’t think her campaign workers are idiots. That’s not where the problem lies. Or the idiocy. But make no mistake: This race isn't over. Ignore the polls and the pundits and keep turning out as if America's very existence depends on it, because it does.