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Here’s yet another reason to love Dolly Parton: she requested that her name be removed from this year’s nominees for the “Rock and Roll” Hall of Fame. Dolly was at #4 out of five open slots on the fan vote board and feared she might beat out someone who actually belongs there. She’s one of the greatest country singer/songwriters of all time, but she’s not a rock musician and she and everyone else (except the Rock Hall of Fame board, apparently) knows it.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/dolly-parton-removes-herself-rock-roll-hall-of-fame-nomination

Her request was humble and generous toward other artists, as is typical of Dolly, but it could also be read as subtly chiding the Hall of Fame for its notorious habit of nominating people who don’t belong there while snubbing those who obviously do (I’ve previously noted the long list of those who’ve been inexplicably snubbed, including Jethro Tull, the Guess Who, the Monkees, Blue Oyster Cult, the Jam and Meat Loaf, while the Sugar Hill Gang, Tupac Shakur, Laura Nyro, Janet Jackson, Madonna and Jay-Z are all in.) Dolly nicely wrote that her husband has always wanted her to cut a rock album, and she hopes they’ll consider her again if she ever does that.

Not-nice subtext: “I’ve NEVER made a rock album, Einsteins!”

Now, let’s hope Lionel Richie, Dionne Warwick and Eminem follow suit. Nothing against any of these artists, but like Dolly, they don’t make rock music and they know it.

I’m also sad to have to report that Willie Nelson’s sister, Bobbie Nelson, has died at 91.

https://www.keranews.org/arts-culture/2022-03-11/bobbie-nelson-willie-nelsons-sister-and-bandmate-dead-at-91

She was his first band member and the pianist for his iconic band for decades. She could play whatever style Willie’s songs required, from old time gospel to rollicking honky-tonk to Great American Songbook. Willie recently wrote of how she always looked after her little brother, and that she was a “genuine piano prodigy,” far more of a musical prodigy than he was. Check out that story from the Dallas public TV station KERA to learn more about this remarkable lady who contributed so much to Willie’s musical legacy from just outside the spotlight, and to see a rare sample of her performing all on her own.

There’s an old saying that a conservative is a liberal who got mugged. With virtually everyone in San Francisco now having become a crime victim thanks to “progressive” district attorney Chesa Boudin’s policy of ignoring crime and releasing criminals back into the streets, is it possible that even San Francisco liberals are capable of having some sense literally knocked into their heads?

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2022/03/17/woke-california-district-attorney-finds-himself-in-hot-water-n537284

A new poll by EMC Research found that 68% of likely primary voters plan to vote to throw Boudin out of office. That includes 64% of registered Democrats. Nearly three-quarters of respondents have an unfavorable opinion of Boudin, and 61% believe he’s responsible for the rising crime rate. Really? What was their first clue?

Between this and the recent surprise ousting of three ultra-left school board members, there are hopeful signs that even in San Francisco, the “woke” can wake up when things get bad enough. It remains to be seen, however, whether they will replace these blights on the public good with anyone better, or, as New Yorkers have done, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”

This is, after all, the city so tolerant and devoted to diversity that its elected officials now refuse to do business or travel to more than half of America. A recent memo from the City Administrator pointed out that due to their disapproval of other places’ insufficiently woke policies on such leftist shibboleths as abortion, LGBTQ+++ issues and election integrity laws (i.e., “voter suppression”), San Francisco is now boycotting 28 of the 50 states.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2022/03/15/san-francisco-boycotts-most-of-the-u-s-for-insufficient-wokeness-n1566587

This is making it difficult and expensive for the city to conduct basic public business, since they have to source every necessity from building contractors to bus parts from the dwindling handful of options that are still pure enough in their wokeness. And I’d be willing to bet there aren’t too many good contractors or bus part factories still in those places, since they’ve probably already moved to red states.

You’d think that when a city is overrun with crime, homelessness, drug needles and human feces, the people would be so furious that they’d throw out every last public official who thinks none of that is as important as virtue signaling about other places not showing enough deference to trans people. But in San Francisco, the jury is still out. I’m hopeful for the next elections, but I’ll believe they’re recovered their sanity when I see it.

Mass Migration Event

March 18, 2022

Axios reports that US intelligence officials fear a “mass migration event” in which 170,000 illegal immigrants will stream across the Mexican border if the Biden White House ends a Trump-era immigration policy of expedited expulsion due to the pandemic.

https://www.westernjournal.com/report-biden-officials-fear-mass-migration-event-coming-southern-border-soon/

The White House responded with this statement: “Of course the administration is doing our due diligence to prepare for potential changes at the border. That is good government in action. As always is the case, this Administration is working every day to provide relief to immigrants, restore order, fairness and humanity to our immigration system and bring it into the 21st century.”

I would respond that of all the ways you could describe Biden’s handling of the border and (illegal) immigration, “good government in action” is hardly the phrase that springs to mind. Consider that this 170,000-strong “mass migration” that some are so worried about is a mere drop in the bucket compared to the over 1.8 million illegal entrants, the highest on record, that were estimated to have come into the US during Biden’s first year alone.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/forecast-1-8m-illegal-migrants-under-biden-worst-ever-year

The Administration reportedly plans to deal with this potential surge through the newly-formed Southwest Border Coordination Center, which functions like a “war room,” “coordinating responses to issues relating to the southwest border among different agencies.”

Or for once, they could just not end a Trump policy that’s working. Or try securing the border instead of leaving it wide open. For the record, those things would be examples of “good government in action.” I point that out for them because I suspect they would never recognize that on their own.

Warning to all “fact”-checkers and online content moderators (censors): This commentary discusses the theme of election interference, specifically in the 2020 presidential election. And it's all demonstrably true. While some on the left like to rail about supposed “voter suppression,” there’s something else that really can and does affect the outcome of elections, and that’s why it’s used. I’m talking about voter INFORMATION suppression. Voters need information, and to deny them this is to deceive them. We’re tired of the lies.

A poll from the Media Research Center a few weeks after the election in seven key swing states showed that, among the Biden voters who were unaware of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal and some others such as the Tara Reid allegations, a full 16 percent said that if they’d known, they would not have voted for Biden. They included 4 percent who would have switched and voted for Trump, another 4 percent voting for a third candidate, and another 4 percent not voting for President. Another 5 percent would not have gone to the polls at all. Then there were 5 percent who just wouldn’t answer the question.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/national/alexander-watson/poll-shows-media-censorship-cheated-voters-vital-info-robbed

Recall that the great Miranda Devine of the New York Post broke the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop, abandoned by him at a Delaware computer repair shop, and later wrote a bestselling book –- highly recommended –- called LAPTOP FROM HELL. Of course, readers of this newsletter know all about what was on Hunter Biden’s laptop and don’t need a refresher. Along with incredible debauchery surrounding Hunter’s personal life, it contained startling information about the Biden family’s foreign business dealings.

Major news outlets such The New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and NPR suppressed the story before the 2020 election, with the NYT calling it “unsubstantiated” even in September of 2021. Later the Times re-edited that story for their archives but did not issue a formal correction.

But on Wednesday, deep into an inside-page story about Hunter Biden’s taxes being under federal investigation, they quietly acknowledged the legitimacy of the laptop story, saying that files from Hunter’s laptop had been “authenticated.”

To the surprise of no one, major TV networks other than FOX News didn’t even seem to notice, though we may safely assume they did. But on Thursday, the NY Post editorial board had this response, a must-read:

https://nypost.com/2022/03/17/the-times-finally-admits-hunter-bidens-laptop-is-real/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=Slack

Recall that Hunter’s former partner on some China business deals, Tony Bobulinksi, came forward in the fall of 2020, right after Devine had broken the story, and confirmed that the Hunter emails bearing his name were real. (He was also interviewed by the FBI.) “How did the Times [finally] authenticate the laptop?” asks the NYP board. “It doesn’t say...No facts have changed since fall 2020. They knew the laptop was real from the start. They just didn’t want to say so."

The Post editorial board also mentioned the meeting between Joe Biden and an official from Burisma, the corrupt Ukrainian energy company that had hired Hunter and his partner Devon Archer to be on its board. The Times had cast doubt on this meeting as well, they said, simply by quoting a Biden campaign spokesperson who said it the meeting wasn’t on his official schedule. Well, if a Biden campaign spokesperson says so...!  But Devine can document that it must have taken place.

(Note: We’re not linking to NYT stories on this because it is a subscription service that only pretends to be reporting the news. You’d actually have to give them money even to read one article.)

Sixteen months after Joe Biden was elected –- barely squeaking by in key battleground states –- the Times felt it was safe to quietly mention that the laptop was “authenticated.” Can you even imagine what their reporting on this would have been like in October 2020 if such a laptop had belonged to someone in Donald Trump’s family? It would have been more frenzied than a drug-fueled orgy at Chateau Marmont, one of Hunter’s favorite places to party in Los Angeles.

Speaking of must-read commentaries, Matt Vespa at Townhall has a great one, pointing out that the Hunter Biden laptop story was THE “October Surprise” of the 2020 election, buried by the liberal news media and smeared by the same people who peddled the Steele “dossier” and the whole nonsensical Russian hoax in 2016.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/17/reckoning-all-the-crow-the-liberal-media-will-eat-over-hunter-biden-story-should-choke-them-out-n2604702?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky2

How many times does it have to happen? In story after story, we’ve got it right and they’re shown to be wrong, and they just keep trying to keep the lies going. Vespa points out that when White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked about this on Thursday, she could only weakly deflect. “I would point you to the Department of Justice,” she said, “and also to Hunter Biden’s representatives. He doesn’t work in government.” That’s irrelevant, Jen, and you know it.

Of course, in this era when so many are (unwisely) getting their news from social media, it wasn’t enough that newspapers such as the Times were suppressing information before the election. Twitter had to help, too, and they did, by actively censoring the Post for days, punishment for daring to report their true story. “Twitter banned us for supposedly publishing ‘hacked materials’ that weren’t hacked,” the editorial board said. “The company’s CEO apologized, but by that point, they had accomplished what they wanted. Like the Times, they cast enough doubt to avoid making their preferred candidate look bad.”

In October of 2020, readers of the Post (and this newsletter, of course) knew “that Hunter Biden pursued business deals in Europe and Asia” to the tune of billions of dollars, and that he “may have leveraged his father’s position as Vice President to do it.” There was much more, as you’re aware, such as the reference to setting aside 10 percent of the spoils for “the big guy.” But Twitter and other social media did what they could to contain all of this.

And the term “Russian disinformation” (used interchangeably with “misinformation” because many so-called journalists don’t even seem to know the distinction) was everywhere. Biden himself blamed Russia, in a presidential debate. Thursday night, Tucker Carlson had a great interview with Miranda Devine and also aired a fun montage of “journalists” and public officials repeating variations of the same "Russian disinformation" talking point over and over.

We couldn’t find a clip of just that segment posted yet; here’s the whole episode with the segment starting at 24:30.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr6HL74NjHo

I said recently that Lesley Stahl needed to apologize to President Trump for contradicting him during an interview, after he correctly said he’d been spied on. Update: She now needs to apologize twice, this time for repeatedly insisting that the laptop “can’t be verified” as Hunter’s. When Trump presses her to tell him how she knows, she vapidly keeps insisting it can’t be verified.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=50581443-31DE-4A4C-9858-8274544E8A62

President Trump was asked on Thursday–- not by Lesley Stahl –- about the NYT’s admission about the laptop, and we’d like to leave you with his comments, brief and to the point.

https://100percentfedup.com/trumps-response-to-hunter-laptop-story-being-confirmed-by-nyts-is-pure-gold-video/

I hope you’re able to escape from what the great Irish-American humorist P.J. O’Rourke called “All the trouble in the world” and enjoy St. Patrick’s Day today.

We took a brief pause from breaking news so that my staffers could spend some spring break time with their families, so I thought we should catch up on all the trouble in the world that we missed. But it turned out that there was very little “new” in the news for the first part of this week.

Vladimir Putin continued his horrific attack on Ukraine, ratcheting up the unconscionable attacks on civilians, including bombing a theater in Mariupol that was being used as a shelter for hundreds of civilians and plainly labeled on the outside with the Ukrainian word for “children.” At this writing, the death toll is still unknown, but there are hopeful signs, with reports of survivors emerging safely.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-forces-bombed-mariupol-theater-despite-signs-warning-children-were-sheltering-inside-ukraine

We’d also like to extend our sympathies and prayers to the families of Fox News cameraman Pierre Zakrzewski and his colleague, Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra “Sasha” Kuvshynova, who were both killed when they were struck by incoming fire outside Kyiv. Fox News correspondent Benjamin Hall was also injured in the attack, but he’s been safely evacuated and will recover. Our prayers for him as well.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/fox-news-cameraman-pierre-zakrzewski-killed-ukraine

The Biden Administration seems conflicted about whether this invasion makes Putin a “war criminal” (a rather toothless term, if the alleged criminal recognizes no authority to enforce the law against him.) Russia fired back, citing the many people killed by American bombs around the world. They conveniently overlook the difference that America bombed states and terrorist organizations that attacked us first, and while there have tragically been instances of innocent people who were killed, we’ve never invaded any nation that hadn’t attacked us first or harbored people who did.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/president-biden-calls-putin-war-criminal-invading-ukraine

Despite what you might have heard from Kamala Harris, Ukrainian President Zelensky said Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and he conceded that it is unlikely Ukraine will join NATO, which was one of the pretexts that Putin used for his invasion. That could signal a potential break in a ceasefire agreement, but only if you believe Putin is honest about his motives.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/zelensky-ukraine-conflict-nato-russia-b2037181.html

However, Ukraine has joined the EU’s Energy Union, uniting its power grid with Europe’s. Zelensky also warned that World War III may have already started in his country.

I miss the good old days, when the media were telling us that if Trump got elected, he’d start World War III, and I could rest easy knowing that was just partisan nonsense.

During one of her press briefings a few days ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki brought up that old accusation about Russia “hacking” the 2016 election. There is no evidence that Russia changed any vote tallies or did anything else to change the outcome, and Psaki never really made clear what she meant by “hacking the election,” so we find it ironic that she said this in the same briefing in which she spoke about “misinformation.”

It’s also pretty hilarious that anyone questioning the electronic security of the 2020 vote is roundly scorned, even censored and canceled, while questioning the electronic security of the 2016 vote is just fine, even patriotic at a time when Russia has shown itself to be such an enemy.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/psaki-says-russia-hacked-2016-election-during-briefing-on-combating-disinformation

We’d like to focus on one part of Jerry Dunleavy’s report, the paragraph that has to do with the supposed Russian “hacking” of the DNC’s emails. He wrote that “U.S. intelligence officials did conclude Russian operatives were behind the hacking of Democratic emails in 2016. Russian military intelligence interfered in the 2016 presidential election, in part by spearphishing Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s email systems, then providing them to WikiLeaks, for dissemination, Robert Mueller’s special counsel report concluded. Russia has denied involvement, and WikiLeaks has denied receiving emails from Russia.”

Of course, we can’t believe anything that comes from the Kremlin –- or, sadly, from U.S. intelligence officials –- but I do have considerably more confidence in what comes from WikiLeaks. The story about Russia “hacking” the DNC still belongs in the category of misinformation. It’s a talking point. I say this even though Robert Mueller concluded in his special counsel report that this had happened. We know now that this conclusion was reached without any actual evidence, because the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike never allowed the FBI to do a forensic examination of the DNC server. The FBI never demanded that they turn it over and, incredibly, took CrowdStrike at its word. We scratch our heads at how the U.S. intel community could legitimately have had “high confidence” –- their words –- that the Russians did this. For what it’s worth, here’s what Mueller said at the time, as reported by Dunleavy in 2019...

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/mueller-says-russias-gru-stole-clinton-dnc-emails-and-gave-them-to-wikileaks

But fast-forward to 2022, and Margot Cleveland is reporting that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating the 2016 DNC server hack. If anyone is serious about getting down to the truth about this, you know he is. Until now, there was no known link between the Alfa Bank hoax being investigated by Durham and the DNC “hack,” but now there is. As it happens, the Defense Department tasked the same Georgia Tech researcher involved in the Alfa Bank hoax –- “Researcher – 1” in Durham’s court filings pertaining to the Michael Sussmann case but known to be Mano Antonakakis –- with investigating the “origins” of the DNC hacker.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/10/exclusive-special-counsels-office-is-investigating-the-2016-dnc-server-hack/

And here is Cleveland's update on that story:

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/14/exclusive-researcher-tells-durham-he-saw-holes-in-the-alfa-bank-hoax-before-democrats-shopped-it-to-the-fbi/

According to an email obtained by The Federalist on March 9 in response to a “Right-to-Know” request, the special counsel’s office is indeed investigating the so-called “hack,” and “prosecutors harbor concerns” about the Defense Department’s choice of this particular researcher to investigate it.

Cleveland’s report provides a good refresher on Durham’s investigation, but it boils down to this: According to Durham’s indictment of Sussmann (Perkins Coie attorney for the Hillary campaign and DNC), a cyber executive named Rodney Joffe (“Tech Executive- 1”) asked Antonakakis and another Georgia Tech researcher, David Dagon (“Researcher – 2”) to find some way to use internet data to connect then-candidate Donald Trump and Russia. Antonakakis –- whom I would add has shown himself in emails to be strongly anti-Trump –- apparently couldn’t find anything useful, because he told Joffe that the results “do not make sense with the storyline you have.” Even so, Joffe came up with a draft “white paper” containing the fake story of a connection between Trump and Alfa Bank, which he gave to these two men and another researcher involved, April Lorenzen, to review. Then Sussmann passed this “white paper” to then-FBI general counsel James Baker, purportedly out of his sense of duty but secretly in service to Joffe and the Hillary campaign, which Durham found was being billed for Sussmann's services.

Until The Federalist got hold of this particular email from Antonakakis, nothing was known of any connection between the Alfa Bank story and the DNC “hack,” but he's the link. Antonakakis had written it to general counsel and other higher-ups at Georgia Tech about a week after his testimony before Durham’s DC grand jury, highlighting “areas of concern” that he wanted to discuss “after the dust settles.” In Cleveland’s words, he “launched a soliloquy that perfectly described the Russia-collusion and the plot by anti-Trump politicians and the deep state intelligence and law enforcement communities to take down the President of the United States.”

It was also a rant in which he painted himself as the victim of the special counsel. He said he’d been asked “point-blank” if “DARPA [the central R&D organization of the Defense Department] should be instructing you to investigate the origins of a hacker (Guccifer2.0) that hacked a political entity (DNC)?” How DARE the special counsel’s office ask that question, he steamed. It’s easily determined from the email that he had indeed been asked to investigate this.

The fact that he was being questioned because his team had allowed itself to be exploited by Sussmann and Joffe for political reasons seems to have been lost on him.

Antonakakis reveals himself to be a sanctimonious and hypocritical piece of work who actually believes he was involved in this fake-narrative project to “preserve our democracy.” Yes, that's the phrase he used, one we've heard all too often from Democrats.

So, why did the special counsel’s office “dare” to ask him about this? Something had to lead Durham to find out, or at least suspect, that Antonakakis had been tasked by DARPA with investigating the DNC "hack." And something had to lead Durham to be concerned about this. What did this arm of the Defense Department have to do with it, and who there was involved? Did they gain access to the DNC server? If so, was it Sussmann, as attorney for the DNC and Hillary’s campaign, who granted it?

This opens up a whole new area for Durham, but one that continues to tie together the same group of folks. Sussmann ties them to Hillary, where (as we’ve said many times) all roads lead. Too much remains a mystery about the DNC “hack” --- note that we always put "hack" in quotes, as there is no proof it even WAS a hack, let alone by Russia. Julian Assange has said flat-out that neither Russia nor any other state government was his source. Yet it seems to have been the event that spawned the whole long “Russia Russia Russia” hoax that, in some circles, still refuses to die. Other than Assange, who else knows the identity of whoever obtained the Podesta/DNC emails and gave them to him?

Another Biden Word Salad

March 17, 2022

President Biden continued making public statements that had people again calling for him to take a cognitive test. They weren’t just word salad, they were a whole word salad bar.

The weirdest might have been when he started talking about how people try to blackmail their exes with naked photos. There’s a Presidential quote for the ages! But Nick Arama at Redstate.com thinks he knows how that image found its way into Joe’s brain and thus fell out of his mouth: it’s exactly the kind of thing that might happen to his son, Hunter.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/16/biden-makes-bizarre-comment-about-naked-blackmail-that-has-everyone-talking-n536855

Other bizarre Bidenisms ranged from tongue fumbles like referring to Kamala Harris as the First Lady to transparent whoppers such as saying that his “green energy” push that’s helped gas skyrocket to upwards of $7 a gallon will save Americans $500 a year in energy costs. This stuff might be funny if it weren’t coming from the alleged leader of the free world during a time when we need someone who’s capable of dealing with countless domestic problems while also avoiding World War III.

https://www.westernjournal.com/word-salad-climate-dressing-6-disastrous-moments-joe-bidens-speech-dnc

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/03/16/bidens-remarks-at-equal-pay-event-were-a-dumpster-fire-n2604627

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/15/bidens-trainwreck-dnc-fundraiser-speech-shows-where-his-priorities-lie-n536386

My good friend Colonel Ken Allard has sent me this Ukraine update for my newsletter readers. I hope you will read it!

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee

Three weeks into the Russo-Ukraine War of 2022, it is reasonable to ask: Who is deterring whom - and from what?

So far, the only one being deterred seems to be Joe Biden, who clumsily refused to allow Polish Mig-29’s to be transferred to Ukraine despite the fervent pleas of embattled president Volodomyr Zelenskiy. Meanwhile, Old Uncle Joe was busy linking Vladimir Putin not only to the war in Ukraine but also to sky-rocketing American gas prices and rising inflation, twin outrages for which the Russian premiere bears only slight, if any, responsibility. Through such constant buffoonery, President Biden seems intent on channeling that canonical Mayor of Amity, hilariously reassuring townsfolk that a lucrative tourist season lay just ahead, despite Jaws occasionally snacking on their relatives.

Because we are a nation divorced from studying such politically incorrect subjects as military history, we can no longer distinguish the consequential from the trivial, the capillaries from the arteries.  From Afghanistan to Ukraine, our intelligence community has been hit hardest, seemingly unable to predict whether Tuesday will be followed by Wednesday. Not only were our intel weenies utterly mistaken in predicting how fast the Taliban would triumph but they also admitted last week to the House Intelligence Committee that they had seriously under-estimated the fighting spirit of Ukraine’s citizens. Naturally, they over-corrected, reciting a laundry list of Russian tactical shortcomings. Caught up in the latest zeitgeist, Francis Fukuyama - famous for predicting the end of history several decades too early - argued last week “Russia is heading for an outright defeat in Ukraine…The army in the field will reach a point whether they can no longer be supplied nor withdrawn, and morale will vaporize.” https://www.americanpurpose.com/articles/preparing-for-defeat/

While we can all hope that Professor Fukuyama will be proven right, America’s enemies seem to be a long way from desperation. While we plead for them to produce additional oil and prepare to sign yet another nuclear non-proliferation scam, the Iranians were not deterred at all - raining their rockets down on an American consulate in Irbil, Iraq. How much does Putin fear NATO - with or without a rearmed Germany - when he launches air-strikes that came within a dozen miles of Polish territory over the weekend? And for good measure also threatened to target logistical routes acting as lifelines to the Ukrainian resistance?

Please forgive me for casting doubt on such widely-cherished Beltway assumptions: But Vladimir Putin and his fellow conspirators in the new Axis nations are not desperate! Instead, they have concluded - correctly in my view - that America suffers from catastrophically weak leadership, that it has abandoned its core spiritual values, as well as the world-beating confidence that our country once took for granted. While conceding that American martial prowess can be painfully recovered (or at least not entirely ruled out) neo-Axis leaders believe that the timing will never be better for a basic re-ordering of the global order. That new order will naturally reflect non-Western interests and dismiss any weaker set of values.  

Ukraine is already one major stake in this game, Taiwan is surely next while NATO’s newly-minted Baltic states might not be far off. When measured against the potential stakes, who cares if Russian logistical problems persist, if they lose a few tanks or if they sacrifice a few more generals trying to recapture the morale of their troops? As my friend LTG Jim Dubik wrote recently, “Like other raw realists, Putin has no intention of stopping with Ukraine…Raw realists (like him) take what they can, when they can, until someone stops them.” https://thehill-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/thehill.com/opinion/national-security/596614-the-world-after-the-war-in-ukraine-who-or-what-will-stop-putin?amp

I am also a realist of sorts, one who cherishes memories of the West Point faculty but now wonders how far the fault lines extend when five cadets are hospitalized after taking fentanyl-laced cocaine while on spring break. To say nothing of that loser who belatedly forfeited his commission only after posting a selfie that argued, “Communism will win.”  It is also frustrating to see other losers with stars on the shoulders of their World War II knock-off uniforms, who have either forgotten or never learned the harsh lessons of real war.

They now confront an opponent who will shrug off small shortcomings to focus on the larger objective- using traditional Russian reliance on massed troops and massed firepower to compel the enemy’s total compliance or complete obliteration. He will not be stopped by the mindless half-measures or the bloodless counter-moves now passing for “deterrence.”

During a three-decade career, Colonel Allard advanced from draftee to the West Point faculty and Dean of the National War College. The author of four books, he was also an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News.

 

Sunday Standard

Good morning! Here are the top stories from this week that I think you will want to read. Topics include:

  • Elon Musk Speaks Out
  • Wisconsin special counsel: nursing home election fraud
  • Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers
  • UKRAINE MAILBAG: Here's what we know
  • The Price of Gas Skyrockets
  • Biden bans Russian oil imports

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee


DAILY BIBLE VERSE

When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.

Psalm 56:3

If you have a favorite Bible Verse you want to see in one of our newsletters, please email [email protected].


Elon Musk Speaks Out

Lately, Tesla and Starlink billionaire Elon Musk has been showing more common sense and leadership than we’re getting from our own White House. He stood up for increasing American oil production (even though he sells electric cars), and in less than a day, he provided satellite access and equipment for Ukraine to get back onto the Internet. But now, he’s drawing the line at what he sees as doing the same thing Russia is doing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/governments-pressure-elon-musk-turn-assets-russia-tells-bring-gun-next-time/


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Putin signed a new law barring Russian news outlets from reporting on his war on Ukraine. In response, many governments (but not Ukraine’s, oddly) are pressuring media and Internet companies such as Starlink to ban Russian news outlets as propaganda. He tweeted, “We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” He added, “And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.”

I understand the impulse to ban Russian media outlets when we know they’re being forced to censor themselves and air Putin’s propaganda. But if we are aware of that in advance, wouldn’t it be useful for us to know what they’re telling their own people, so we know what we have to counter? Also, you never know when some brave journalist is going to slip in some helpful real information or make a stand that the world should see.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

In America, the Founders gave us free speech and freedom of the press because they trusted the people to have enough sense to know when they were hearing garbage ideas and argue them down and reject them. When the government starts deciding whose ideas are incorrect and unworthy of being spoken, that’s the slippery slope to tyranny.

We were already sliding that way as it is. Letting our government use Russia as an excuse to outright ban certain media outlets from the public square would only move us further down the well-known path of all fanatics, who eventually become what they once claimed to hate.

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Wisconsin special counsel: nursing home election fraud

Special counsels can be appointed at the state level, too, and it appears that one in Wisconsin has found evidence to confirm widespread election fraud.

The Wisconsin Assembly appointed Special Counsel Michael Gableman, a retired State Supreme Court justice, to investigate concerns about the 2020 election, and on Tuesday, his office issued its second interim report, which runs 150 pages. In Chapter 7, it confirms the conclusion of the Racine County Sheriff’s Office last fall that fraud occurred at Wisconsin nursing homes.

https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen/media/1552/osc-second-interim-report.pdf

It was the sheriff’s investigation that led to this broader one. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling held a press conference last October 28 at which lead investigator Michael Luell presented their findings. (Note that this hour-long press conference got mostly crickets from national media.) Luell explained that under Wisconsin election law, local municipalities must dispatch two special voting deputies, or SVDs, to residential care facilities to supervise the voting. These officials are tasked with personally delivering ballots to residents and witnessing the voting process. Under law, only a relative or an SVD may assist a resident with the voting process. Once the resident has voted, the SVD seals the ballot envelope and delivers it to the elections clerk.

This sounds like a great plan to preserve the chain of custody and discourage undue influence. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s investigation found that the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine violated every one of those requirements. Amazingly, the blame for this can be traced back to the Wisconsin Election Commission, whose members had allegedly taken it upon themselves to tell municipalities not to use the SVD system and to instead just mail ballots to residents. Such a directive would be illegal.

So it was up to staffers to help residents complete their ballots, and according to the sheriff, they “helped” them, all right --- improperly completing sections of the ballots, mishandling ballots and failing to secure them, and going beyond just reading the ballots to actively discussing the elections and candidates. In legal parlance, that is a no-no.

As Sheriff Schmaling said during his press conference, his investigation had covered only the Ridgewood Care Center, when Racine County was home to 11 such facilities, and Racine County is just one of 72 counties. “There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “We would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state.”

Several days after their press conference, the Sheriff’s Office announced that they had forwarded their conclusions to District Attorney Patricia Hanson, recommending that five members of the Wisconsin Election Commission be charged with election fraud, including two felony counts. (Only one member was not cited.) Margot Cleveland has details on the specific charges in her report for The Federalist.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/03/wisconsin-special-counsel-finds-widespread-election-fraud-in-2020-nursing-homes/

You can probably guess what happened next, which is to say nothing –- no charges were filed. After several months, DA Hanson concluded that she “lacked jurisdiction” and had no authority to prosecute the commissioners because they don’t live in Racine County and didn’t issue the “allegedly illegal directive doing away with SVD.” So, we're confused, as the sheriff's investigation had concluded they did do that.

And after deciding not to charge the commissioners, Hanson couldn’t very well charge the staff at the nursing homes, could she? She reasoned it this way: “[I]t would be unfair for me to expect these health care professionals would better understand the election law in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin Election Commission.” Never mind that she should have had higher expectations for the WEC; after lowering the bar for them, she was able to lower it even farther for the nursing home staff. Case dismissed!

Here’s some of the fallout as reported by a local news outlet, just a few days before the special counsel dropped his report.

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/four-wis-prosecutors-considering-whether-to-file-charges-against-elections-commissioners/article_b928849a-965f-512a-920c-62f9527b0844.html

Fortunately it didn’t end with that DA, and we now have an eye-opening special counsel report. This would not have happened without the sheriff’s investigation, which had stemmed from a complaint by some individual about potential violations at just one nursing home. Moral: one person speaking up CAN make a difference.

And now, the special counsel apparently has the goods. “Rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities,” his report says.

This conclusion came after his investigation of more than 90 nursing homes in five different counties. We’re talking about blatant violations of the election code by nursing home staff and administrators, such as illegal handling of absentee ballots, illegal assistance in marking ballots, illegally “witnessing” the voting, and possible forgery. According to the report, the fraud and abuse resulted ultimately from the unlawful acts of the WEC’s members and staff, because on June 24, 2020, they did issue that directive to mail the ballots to the nursing homes and just follow the rules for regular absentee voting by mail.

The special counsel found “improbably high voting rates” at nursing homes. He was even able to determine that some of the filled-out ballots did not reflect the intent of the nursing home residents. He found suspected forgeries of signatures and votes by people who had been judged incompetent and could not legally vote. He found votes "cast" by people who were unaware of their surroundings and didn’t even know what year it was.

The WEC had tried to use COVID to justify what it had done, saying they didn’t want seniors ”disenfranchised.” Special Counsel Gableman was stern in his assessment of that: “In no way was WEC’s mandating illegal activity a ‘solution’ to ‘disenfranchisement’ and to suggest that WEC’s actions were a good faith effort at doing so ignores the facts and the law.” He went on to point out that the problems he had found, resulting from their directive, WERE examples of disenfranchisement.

Gableman said that to get the full picture of the significance of the fraud, “a state-wide, complete audit of all absentee votes from all facilities” required to use the SVD system is necessary.

In the 2020 election, Wisconsin went for Biden by a margin of just 20,682 votes. Since about 92,000 people reside in Wisconsin nursing homes, the findings of this investigation cast “doubt on the election result” according to the special counsel report. The Wisconsin State Assembly might authorize Gableman to expand his audit, but that’s not official at this writing. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul called the sheriff’s original investigation a “publicity stunt” and is highly unlikely to do anything with this one. That seems like a great reason for voters to show up in droves this fall and boot him out of office.

Incidentally, the report has chapters dealing with other issues in Wisconsin that we’ve discussed before, such as the infusion of money from Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and potential violations of law concerning ballot security at dropboxes. Look for social media to flag discussions of this report as heretical and news outlets to trash it (Politico and BuzzFeed already have), even though it’s the product of a special counsel investigation and contains, presumably, facts.

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Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?

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UKRAINE MAILBAG: Here's what we know

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has sparked letters touching on stories that are going around. Here are two...

From John K:

“Mike, a history lesson is in order here. Didn't USSR, now Russia, help in [email protected] the Nazis? Some pundits are saying that Russia is now invading European lands. How did that happen? We don't have history on the History channel or Wikipedia. This land was never European land but as I recall it was part of Russia before we sorted that out. The fake new Republic of the World, or as they say the New world Order promulgated by the Sorosbrand and "Progressive Liberals," is or is coming soon to a theatre near you. The play is just starting, so take your seat. I want to sit next to you.”

From Fiorella W:

“I hear many conflicting stories about Putin's real motive. One source says that the U.S. has established 11 biolabs in Ukraine and Putin has taken 7 out... And then, of course, there is the whole Biden family continuing corruption with the puppet regime. What should we believe?

Thanks to you both, and to all who have written. Yes, Soviet Russia did fight against Hitler, after Germany invaded Russia in June, 1941.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/invasion-of-the-soviet-union-june-1941

Technically, the Soviets became our allies when we entered the war. That’s why, with the way people tend to think in “either/or” terms, alliances ever since have been framed in that way. You checked a box: 1) pro-Nazi, or 2) pro-Russia. Later on, it became 1) pro-Russia, or 2) pro-China. The truth: NONE of them deserve our support.

Eastern Europe was carved up in 1945 at the Yalta Conference –- led by FDR (very ill at the time), British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Premier Stalin. They were then looking at terms to induce the Soviets to enter the war in the Pacific. Because of that, and also because Russia had done much in recent days to drive back the Germans, Stalin was seen to have an advantage at the talks.

Stalin refused to relinquish Poland but said he’d permit free elections. Same with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At that time, Soviet Russia was an "ally," but that was exposed as a sham when, in 1945, the U.S.S.R. made it clear they’d be clamping down on Poland and not allowing political freedom at all. Our former “ally” controlled those Eastern European nations and also East Berlin, which they shockingly encased behind a wall topped with barbed wire and snipers. In March 1946, Churchill gave his speech saying an “iron curtain” had descended upon Eastern Europe, marking the start of the Cold War.

Since then, the U.S.S.R. has fallen and Russia’s borders have changed. But we see from this snippet of history that distinctions between so-called “Russian territory” and “Eastern Europe” are likely lost on Vladimir Putin.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

To say Ukraine was once “part of Russia” echoes Putin’s propaganda campaign but ignores the naked, horrific aggression he committed. Some have even said that since Ukraine has corruption, the altruistic Mr. Putin was trying to right a wrong by invading. As if Russia doesn’t have corruption? I have hardly ever heard anything crazier: that Putin is trying to “save” Ukraine from corruption by bombing the daylights out of it. Couldn’t he have just...made a phone call or something?

I say that facetiously to set up a point: that when Trump tried to address corruption through a phone call, he got impeached. Putin wouldn’t have such worries.

Then there’s the story about biolabs. We don’t know --- it’s hard enough finding out about biolabs in China and talking about those freely --- but even if this is real and NOT Russian disinformation, invading Ukraine and killing thousands of innocent people is not an acceptable response. Sounds like a pretext to us. It works well as propaganda, though, because after what we’ve learned about the World Health Organization, it’s believable. But it doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion. Here’s a good write-up by Kyle Becker.

https://beckernews.com/3-russian-ministry-of-defense-claims-it-has-evidence-of-u-s-funded-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine-44303/

We do know that Putin is a sociopath because operatives have killed many of his critics, defectors, and others besides. From the Homeland Security News Wire in 2020: “...Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity in the Russian elite.” They provide a list of murders.

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20200825-putin-s-victims-a-long-list-getting-longer

We’ve long known that Putin is a KGB thug, but there are loathsome factions in the U.S. that avoid criticism of him. Bizarrely, President Biden even has Putin involved in the negotiations for a new “Iran deal,” which we know would lead to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Mark Levin had a great show on this and related matters Sunday night.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299850695001#sp=show-clips

We’ve heard some particularly inane observations, such as that Ukrainian President Zelensky shouldn’t be believed "because he was an actor.” Well, Ronald Reagan was an actor, and he was about as trustworthy as it gets. That doesn’t mean Zelensky is trustworthy, just that the observation is stupid. Putin undeniably is a thug, and Zelensky understandably wants our help with a no-fly zone, but we must anticipate the perhaps-literal fallout. To reject this step does not make one pro-Putin in any way, just pro-using-your-brain.

Trump’s political enemies call him pro-Putin because he’s flattered Vlad now and them, calling him “smart” and such. They fail to understand that this move in itself was smart –- played to discourage Putin from cozying up to China. (Too late now, it seems.) Critics play checkers when they should be playing chess.

Here are more debunked stories...

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/

And here’s a fabulous more-recent Ukraine history lesson, a “premium” article by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke for The Epoch Times. Highly recommended...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/before-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-decade-of-destabilization_4316990.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

(Note that The National Pulse, just for offering facts, feels the need to run a disclaimer: “For the avoidance of doubt, The National Pulse is against wars of aggression, and is not supported financially by any government or entity acting on behalf of a government or foreign interest...”)

As for George Soros, yes, his influence in Ukraine has been huge, starting in 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s been pushing for Ukraine to enter the E.U. We highly recommend Matt Palumbo’s book about him, THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, in which Ukraine gets its own fascinating chapter, with names you’ll recognize from Trump’s first impeachment and even the Steele “dossier.” That country’s full of the kind of secrets you’d expect from a pro-Obama, pro-Hillary crowd.

There are so many unknowns. As we said Saturday, this really is “the first draft of history.” It’s a shame we can’t trust what our own government tells us. Scott Adams, bestselling author and “Dilbert” creator,” called the situation “a big black box that we can’t see into.”

Even so, there's one truth we should agree on: that unprovoked aggression is always wrong. For everything else you might read or hear about this war, ask yourself two questions: 1) Has this person generally been right before, and 2) How can this person possibly KNOW what he’s saying is true?

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The Price of Gas Skyrockets

The price of gas has skyrocketed across America, up 40 cents a gallon in a week in many places. And at one Los Angeles station, regular was $6.99, with premium at $7.29 a gallon.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gas-sits-just-one-cent-away-7-days-record-price-jumps/

It may seem shocking, but this is precisely what the “green” left has long hoped for. For years, they’ve had a dream that if they can just make gas expensive enough, like $8 a gallon, that would cause the public to demand electric cars and mass transit. And somehow, without cheap oil, gas or coal, or any new nuclear power plants (because those are also bad for nostalgic reasons, even though they’re now much safer than they used to be and don’t emit CO2), we’ll magically have breakthroughs in “green” energy that will allow breezes and sunbeams to generate enough power to not only sustain our society and economy, but to charge tens of millions of new electric vehicles.

I didn’t say it made any sense; I said it was a longtime leftist dream. But it’s a nightmare for working Americans and consumers. Of course, there are things we could do right now to fix it, but President Biden refuses.

Last week, I suggested that Republicans in Congress introduce a real emergency bill to fast track the reinstatement of America’s energy independence that was killed by Biden’s executive orders in the name of his “climate change emergency.” I noted then that even if Biden were still stubborn enough to veto it in the face of the Russian oil crunch and skyrocketing gas prices, maybe enough Democrats would be terrified of their reelection prospects to vote for the bill and to override Biden’s veto.

Well, on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz did pretty much what I suggested, introducing what he calls the “Energy Freedom Act.”

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/03/05/ted-cruz-rolls-out-energy-freedom-act-as-bidens-energy-dependent-chickens-come-home-to-roost-n531835

It would fast-track making America energy-independent again by…well, basically going back to what Trump did that made America energy-independent before Biden bumbled into office. It also contains a sop to the left in the form of “generally speeding up solar, wind, and geothermal development.”

I have a feeling Sen. Joe Manchin would back it. As one of that very endangered species, a DC Democrat with common sense, he’s already talking about how fast and easy it would be to get American oil flowing and gas prices back down, if the government would just take its foot off the necks of energy producers.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/manchin-makes-biden-look-silly-with-common-sense-on-russia-n532522

But do enough Democrats in the House and Senate sense electoral Armageddon in those $7 gas prices to vote for common sense and (probably have to) override a Biden veto? I believe in miracles, but that’s harder for me to believe. On the other hand, with November elections growing closer, and the prospect of gas being even higher by then, maybe the wisdom of Samuel Johnson will prevail among a veto-proof majority of Congress members. He’s the one who wrote:

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”


America The Beautiful

God's creation is all around us. To learn more about Acadia National Park National Park, visit its website here.


Biden bans Russian oil imports

As expected, on Tuesday, President Biden announced that he would end US imports of Russian oil. It’s assumed he didn’t want to, since he’s let it go on all through the buildup to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and past the first two weeks of shocking carnage. But after even Nancy Pelosi agreed with Ted Cruz (one of the signs of the Apocalypse) that Congress should act and cut off Russian oil, Biden reportedly asked Pelosi to delay Monday’s scheduled House vote so that he could jump out in front of the parade and pretend to be leading it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/joe-biden-can-beat-putin-transforming-economy-run-56000-electric-cars/

In the speech, Biden warned Americans that gas prices, which shot up even further beyond previous records on Tuesday, would go up even more because of the cutoff of Russian oil. But apparently, his plan is to replace Russian oil with banana oil, because he dispensed so much of it in his speech as he attempted to convince Americans that “Russia is responsible” for a gallon of gas costing more than a Burger King Whopper (I chose that because there were plenty of whoppers in the speech, too.)

The first thing that caught my ear was Biden's carefully-constructed phrase “Putin’s price hikes,” laid on with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old boy standing by a broken vase and pointing at the cat. As the media would say, “Republicans pounced” on that. Jorge Bonilla tweeted a couple of charts, the first one having already gone viral, showing how the price of gas has been climbing since the day Biden took office, with the recent “Ukraine war” spike representing only a fraction of the increase.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/ted-cruz-busts-bidens-latest-sorry-excuse-n533490

The second chart was the same, except it went back even further and showed that the rise in gas prices actually began right after Election Night, when oil futures investors realized that Biden would be replacing Trump. Trump had made energy independence and low gas prices a priority, while Biden had campaigned on destroying our domestic fossil fuel industry in the name of fighting “climate change.” No wonder Trump sent out a message in response that consisted of nothing but the headline about record gas prices, and one sentence: “Do you miss me yet?”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/trump-nails-biden-to-the-wall-with-just-five-words-n533335

But that was hardly the end of the Biden jaw-droppers. I guess he thinks we can save energy by returning to gas lighting, which is the only way to explain lines like this:

“First, it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. It’s simply not true.” Except it simply is true. Thanks to his policies, US oil and gas production are down by more than a million gallons a day. Again, that was actually one of his campaign promises, to kill the fossil fuel industry, and he started doing it with executive orders on his first day in office.

He also tried to blame the oil companies, saying they had 9,000 permits to drill and it was their decision not to use them to produce oil. An industry spokesman replied that that reflects a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the industry works, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Not only are government drilling leases down by about 75%, but a lease doesn’t even mean there’s oil on the land. There’s a long process of development to explore and start pumping the oil, and Biden has not only cut the number of leases but added lots more regulations to hamstring that process even more.

Here’s a former Keystone Pipeline worker who urges Americans not to buy this blame-shifting and reminds us that they tried to warn everyone what was coming. Hey, join the club, pal!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-keystone-pipeline-worker-says-us-energy-crisis-is-result-of-bidens-policies-we-tried-to-warn-you

Toni Williams at the Victory Girls blog also has a good rundown of the many lies packed into that one speech.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/joe-bidens-dirty-lies-about-u-s-energy-production/

And Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com did a good fact-check as well.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/03/09/biden-claimed-his-climate-agenda-isnt-hurting-domestic-oil-production-here-are-the-facts-n2604276

But to me, the biggest tip-off that we are dealing with people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the pain they’re causing for working Americans was that both Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg actually suggested that the solution to high gas prices was for everyone to buy electric cars.

https://www.westernjournal.com/buttigieg-buy-55000-electric-car-dont-worry-gas-prices-anymore/

The average price of an EV is over $56,000; there’s a long waiting list to obtain one just with the demand that exists now; and even if every American could afford and obtain one, they’ve still never answered where we’re going to get the power required to charge them all. It’s as if they think regular cars run on bad, dirty gas but the fuel for electric cars comes out of a wall socket directly from Heaven.

With that argument, Biden, Buttigieg and their house jester Stephen Colbert are all competing for the title of the Marie Antoinette of the 21st century: “So the peasants can’t afford gas? Well, let them buy Teslas!”

https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/stephen-colbert-blasted-for-saying-hes-willing-to-pay-more-for-gas/


I Just Wanted to Say:

Thank you for reading the Sunday Standard.


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About that Florida Bill

March 10, 2022

If you pay any attention to liberal media outlets or celebrities (and I don’t recommend it, it’s bad for your brain and your digestion), you’ve no doubt heard them fulminating against what they call Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Some Florida Senate Democrats even tweeted a video of them all shouting, “Gay!” together, proving that they don’t even know about things that it’s their job to know about.

Megan Fox at PJ Media has an explanation of what this bill really is, and why it’s a “stupid lie” to claim that it bans teachers from saying the word “gay.” What it does is prohibit schools from imposing inappropriate sexual lessons (it doesn’t even specify gay or straight) on young children without parents’ knowledge or consent.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/megan-fox/2022/03/08/florida-democrats-continue-the-stupid-lie-that-republicans-dont-want-anyone-to-say-gay-n1564614

At the heart of the issue isn’t right-wing “hatred” of gays and transsexuals but the question of who is ultimately responsible for the raising of children: parents or schools. Ms Fox offers some shocking examples of how some teachers and school administrators have not only abused public trust but done so in open contempt of parents’ rights, which is why many thought this bill necessary.

It’s a long article, but read it all the way to the end, where she gets into the unconscionable damage that has been done to young people by the movement to confuse adolescents about their gender and then convince them to take hormones and undergo surgery that can cause irreversible physical and emotional harm. And watch the video of the “trans” teen who is trying to “detransition” after realizing she had been misled and disfigured because of other people’s political agendas when what she’d really needed was therapy.

It will make you want to scream at the top of your lungs, too, but not like those juvenile Florida Democrats.

As expected, on Tuesday, President Biden announced that he would end US imports of Russian oil. It’s assumed he didn’t want to, since he’s let it go on all through the buildup to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and past the first two weeks of shocking carnage. But after even Nancy Pelosi agreed with Ted Cruz (one of the signs of the Apocalypse) that Congress should act and cut off Russian oil, Biden reportedly asked Pelosi to delay Monday’s scheduled House vote so that he could jump out in front of the parade and pretend to be leading it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/joe-biden-can-beat-putin-transforming-economy-run-56000-electric-cars/

In the speech, Biden warned Americans that gas prices, which shot up even further beyond previous records on Tuesday, would go up even more because of the cutoff of Russian oil. But apparently, his plan is to replace Russian oil with banana oil, because he dispensed so much of it in his speech as he attempted to convince Americans that “Russia is responsible” for a gallon of gas costing more than a Burger King Whopper (I chose that because there were plenty of whoppers in the speech, too.)

The first thing that caught my ear was Biden's carefully-constructed phrase “Putin’s price hikes,” laid on with all the subtlety of a 10-year-old boy standing by a broken vase and pointing at the cat. As the media would say, “Republicans pounced” on that. Jorge Bonilla tweeted a couple of charts, the first one having already gone viral, showing how the price of gas has been climbing since the day Biden took office, with the recent “Ukraine war” spike representing only a fraction of the increase.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/ted-cruz-busts-bidens-latest-sorry-excuse-n533490

The second chart was the same, except it went back even further and showed that the rise in gas prices actually began right after Election Night, when oil futures investors realized that Biden would be replacing Trump. Trump had made energy independence and low gas prices a priority, while Biden had campaigned on destroying our domestic fossil fuel industry in the name of fighting “climate change.” No wonder Trump sent out a message in response that consisted of nothing but the headline about record gas prices, and one sentence: “Do you miss me yet?”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/08/trump-nails-biden-to-the-wall-with-just-five-words-n533335

But that was hardly the end of the Biden jaw-droppers. I guess he thinks we can save energy by returning to gas lighting, which is the only way to explain lines like this:

“First, it’s simply not true that my administration or policies are holding back domestic energy production. It’s simply not true.” Except it simply is true. Thanks to his policies, US oil and gas production are down by more than a million gallons a day. Again, that was actually one of his campaign promises, to kill the fossil fuel industry, and he started doing it with executive orders on his first day in office.

He also tried to blame the oil companies, saying they had 9,000 permits to drill and it was their decision not to use them to produce oil. An industry spokesman replied that that reflects a “fundamental misunderstanding” of how the industry works, which doesn’t surprise me in the least. Not only are government drilling leases down by about 75%, but a lease doesn’t even mean there’s oil on the land. There’s a long process of development to explore and start pumping the oil, and Biden has not only cut the number of leases but added lots more regulations to hamstring that process even more.

Here’s a former Keystone Pipeline worker who urges Americans not to buy this blame-shifting and reminds us that they tried to warn everyone what was coming. Hey, join the club, pal!

https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-keystone-pipeline-worker-says-us-energy-crisis-is-result-of-bidens-policies-we-tried-to-warn-you

Toni Williams at the Victory Girls blog also has a good rundown of the many lies packed into that one speech.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/joe-bidens-dirty-lies-about-u-s-energy-production/

And Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com did a good fact-check as well.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/03/09/biden-claimed-his-climate-agenda-isnt-hurting-domestic-oil-production-here-are-the-facts-n2604276

But to me, the biggest tip-off that we are dealing with people who are completely out of touch with the reality of the pain they’re causing for working Americans was that both Biden and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg actually suggested that the solution to high gas prices was for everyone to buy electric cars.

https://www.westernjournal.com/buttigieg-buy-55000-electric-car-dont-worry-gas-prices-anymore/

The average price of an EV is over $56,000; there’s a long waiting list to obtain one just with the demand that exists now; and even if every American could afford and obtain one, they’ve still never answered where we’re going to get the power required to charge them all. It’s as if they think regular cars run on bad, dirty gas but the fuel for electric cars comes out of a wall socket directly from Heaven.

With that argument, Biden, Buttigieg and their house jester Stephen Colbert are all competing for the title of the Marie Antoinette of the 21st century: “So the peasants can’t afford gas? Well, let them buy Teslas!”

https://nypost.com/2022/03/08/stephen-colbert-blasted-for-saying-hes-willing-to-pay-more-for-gas/

Probably the surest way to tell when someone doesn’t have a good argument for their point of view is when they’re terrified of letting anyone hear the opposing point of view. In a free marketplace of ideas, people who are confident in their views have no fear of having to defend them. Only those who can’t defend their views want to shut down debate.

This explains why the left – the people who believe in proven disasters like socialism, big government, high taxes, open borders, racial divisiveness, gender confusion, defunding police, releasing criminals, and eliminating oil and gas before having a viable alternative – are so desperate to silence their opponents by banning them from the media and the Internet. And here’s the latest example that has them frothing at the mouth, courtesy of Mike LaChance at Legal Insurrection.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/03/new-conservative-spanish-language-network-has-democrats-and-media-in-a-panic/

Tuesday, Americano, the nation’s first Spanish-language conservative network, debuted on satellite radio, and top Democrats are positively wetting themselves over the thought of Hispanic audiences hearing conservative views without having them spun by leftist reporters. Of course, they claim this is because they’re worried Hispanics will be the victims of “disinformation,” their current euphemism for “information that disproves what we believe.”

Americano founder and CEO Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo fired back that the network isn’t airing “disinformation” or “misinformation,” it’s airing views leftists don’t want Hispanics to hear. He said, “They’re scared. And they should be. Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media. There is an appetite for this. You see it on social media. You see it in elections.”

You certainly saw it in last week’s Texas primaries, where GOP turnout in largely Hispanic border counties was up by as much as 160+ percent. That was before Americano launched, so they obviously weren’t “victimized” by conservative “disinformation.” What moved them was that they saw with their own eyes the results of Biden’s pro-criminal, open border policies.

Besides, as Spencer Brown at Townhall points out, they were blithely unconcerned about all the anti-Trump disinformation like the Russia collusion hoax that was relentlessly promoted for four years by Spanish outlets like Univision.

Extremely Depressing Poll

March 10, 2022

We have enough depressing news without people thinking up more, but Quinnipiac University released a new poll that I find extremely depressing. I think it shows how effective our schools have been at indoctrinating people to hate their country and disrespect traditional American ideals.

The poll was inspired by the brave Ukrainians who are refusing to surrender or flee and instead risking their lives to stay and fight to defend their homeland from superior Russian forces. It asked Americans, if the USA were invaded like Ukraine was, would they flee or stay and fight? At least a majority said they would fight, but it’s a pitifully small majority of 55%. 38% would run away, and I guess the rest couldn’t decide.

https://www.westernjournal.com/poll-democrats-flee-us-invaded-republicans-stay-fight/

It’s sad to think that this is what’s become of a people whose heritage includes George Washington at Valley Forge, the defenders of the Alamo, and the soldiers, sailors and airmen who saved the world twice in the 20th century.

For the record, 68% of Republicans would stay and fight, while only 25% would flee (I’m guessing those are the Beltway Republicans who like to start wars and send other people’s kids to fight them.) Among Independents, 57% would fight and 36% would flee. Only among Democrats would a majority run away rather than defend America with the skedaddlers outnumbering the patriots by 52-40 percent.

Therefore, I have a suggestion: Republican campaign ads should start referring to the millions of illegal immigrants pouring across Biden’s open borders as an “invasion.” Maybe that would scare the 52% of Democrats who think America’s not worth defending into fleeing to Sweden or wherever. Then those of us who are still here could start repairing the damage they’ve caused.

Those of us who used to read the front page of the newspaper, back when it was a literal paper and not a lighted screen with type that moved around, remember what it was like to find interesting juxtapositions of the headlines that in themselves told a story. Maybe in the upper right, there would be a headline like “Scores Killed in Weekend Murder Rampage,” while off to the left, it would say “Drop in Tourism Mystifies City Leaders”

I had a similar experience yesterday, scanning the news aggregator site The Liberty Daily.

The huge story at that moment, in big type right in the middle, was “PROJECT VERITAS: PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING NY TIMES JOURNALIST ADMITS JAN. 6 WAS ‘NO BIG DEAL.’”

Nearby, in the small typeface above the big headline, was this: “DOJ Offers 70- to 87-Month Prison Sentence to American Patriot Photographed with Feet Up in Nancy Pelosi’s Office.”

Farther down was this: “Guy Reffitt, First Political Prisoner to Stand Trial in Mostly Peaceful Protest on Jan. 6, Found Guilty by Democrat D.C. Jury.”

Then this: “Shocking Statement by January 6 Daughter Called by DOJ Political Prosecution: I Never Felt Threatened by My Dad --- The DOJ Wanted Me to Say That!’” Nothing says “politics in 2022” better than all these January 6 stories appearing onscreen together.

Let’s go first to the Project Veritas story. James O’Keefe really has done it again. As J. D. Rucker reports, Project Veritas managed to get undercover video that enables us to watch NYT National Security Correspondent Matthew Rosenberg “spill the beans over drinks.” Pretty amazing, and this is just Part 1. The language gets a little rough, as one might expect from a journalist talking up his work over double scotches, but it’s bleeped.

https://thelibertydaily.com/project-veritas-pulitzer-prize-winning-ny-times-journalist-admits-jan-6-was-no-big-deal/

“I’m so over it,” he says of January 6 with a chuckle. “The left’s overreaction to it, in some places, was way over the top.”

We already knew that corporate media, in their zeal to paint President Trump as evil and unhinged, was milking the January 6 Capitol Hill story for all it’s worth. And Rosenberg’s reporting was very much a part of that. But we see that his own opinion was the opposite. He was supposed to be “traumatized,” he said, but nobody on the NYT staff –- at least the seasoned reporters –- thought they were in any danger. “We were just having fun!” he said. The newbies in their twenties, he said, the “little dweebs,” did not share his cavalier attitude, and he wanted to tell them to just “man up.” He said he wanted to be “like, dude, come on, like, you were not in any danger.” (Editorial note: true, people weren’t in any danger –- unless they were on that stair landing where Ashli Babbitt was shot and killed.)

“They were making too big a deal,” Rosenberg said. “They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.” On the other hand, he said, “There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.” (To his credit, he did actually report that.)

As Rosenberg told his companion at the table, he is an investigative reporter who usually tackles longer-term stories as opposed to single events. The implication: that he’d have a “nose” that might be able to sniff out informants. In fact, he says in the video that because acting CIA and NSA (National Security Agency) personnel can’t talk to the media, he dug into this by talking to former officials who didn’t have to fear the dreaded annual polygraph. So he was aware of the government infiltration.

Being a reporter for the NYT, though, it’s no surprise that he said the left’s overreaction gave “the lunatics on the right” ammunition to say, “Oh, well, nothing happened here.” (For the record: Not being lunatics, we never said that nothing happened. And what DID happen never should have, as the political and personal repercussions for many people touched by this story have been staggering. But it was not an attempt to overthrow the government, nor anything close to the way it’s been portrayed.)

When asked if he’d talked to people who had been arrested, he said their lawyers generally advise them not to talk to journalists. “No good can come of it,” he said. But according to O’Keefe, some of those incarcerated after January 6 have indeed made their voices heard, not to NYT reporters (smart!) but to Project Veritas, about the stunning lack of due process they’ve received, which stems largely from the “overreaction,” as Rosenberg put it, from the media and politicians on the left.

Now, let’s move on to the other January 6 stories:

Richard ‘Bigo’ Barnett, the Arkansas man who was photographed with his feet up at Nancy Pelosi’s desk, has rejected the offer of a guilty plea in exchange for a prison sentence of between 70 to 87 months. That’s for a PLEA, from someone with no criminal record. So he’ll be taking his chances at trial in the fall and, if found guilty, could be in prison for the rest of his life, as he is 61.

This story also highlights the recent suicide of another defendant, Matthew Perna, 37, which we reported last week.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/doj-offers-70-to-87-month-prison-sentence-for-man-photographed-with-feet-up-in-nancy-pelosis-office

Next, we have Guy Reffitt, who went to trial before a DC jury and on Friday was quickly found guilty on all five counts. He’s the first January 6 defendant to stand trial, and this outcome doesn’t bode well for the others. As Julie Kelly points out in American Greatness, it’s hard to get a fair trial in a city that voted nearly 94 percent for Joe Biden in 2020. Afterwards, a juror told CBS News that the case was “simple” and there was “not a dissenting voice in the jury.”

He’d already been incarcerated since his arrest in January, 2021, and could face 20 years in prison for each count of obstruction. He’ll be sentenced in June.

He never entered the Capitol building that day.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/03/08/first-january-6-defendant-to-face-trial-found-guilty-by-d-c-jury/

Finally, there’s the story of how, during Reffitt’s trial, the DOJ called his teenage son to testify against him, as their narrative included allegations that Reffitt had physically threatened his kids about going to the FBI.

Prosecutors had convinced Reffitt’s son to secretly record him at home for eight days before turning him over to the FBI. They had intended to call his younger sister to the stand as well but changed their minds, and the reason seems clear. Outside the courthouse, she said, “I never felt threatened by my father...It hurts me so much that they are saying that.”

She had wanted to be called to the stand to DEFEND her dad, but Reffitt’s court-appointed attorney never called a single witness. This is a shocking story and a must-read.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/03/never-felt-threatened-dad-doj-wanted-say-must-read-shocking-statement-january-6th-daughter-called-doj-prosecution/

So, we have the big-deal NYT reporter, someone who furthered the left’s January 6 narrative while saying in private that it was really overblown, and then we have a heartbreaking travesty of “justice” like this. Matthew Rosenberg should have to sit through all these trials.

Okay, here’s a real “fact-check,” or maybe I should say a punch in the gut with reality: Monday, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US hit a record high of $4.104, surpassing the previous record of $4.103 set in 2008. The best you can say for Biden is that it might not actually be the highest ever when you adjust it for the galloping inflation that’s the only thing he seems interested in fueling.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/u-s-gas-prices-hit-new-record-high

Naturally, the highest price is in deep blue California, where the average price of a gallon of gas is $5.43. That means in many places, it’s much higher, like in the $6 range. And if any alleged “experts” still think Trump’s prediction of even higher prices seems “dubious,” some oil traders are now bracing for oil to hit $200 a barrel by the end of this month.

https://www.westernjournal.com/warning-americans-traders-eye-200-per-oil-barrel-month-report/

Meanwhile, President Biden was finally pressured enough that he will reportedly announce an end to importing Russian oil on Tuesday morning.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-russian-oil-import-ban

But what will he replace it with? Judging by comments from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, buying it from Iran is on the table. He’d rather buy it from terrorists than let Americans pump it. A meme has gone viral that says Biden is scouring the world for any place that has oil other than Texas. That doesn’t even make sense from an environmental standpoint since our oil is much cleaner than Russia’s and doesn’t have to be transported halfway around the world.

Even in liberal Massachusetts, one Springfield man told a reporter that the gas prices made him sick to his stomach, adding, “They’re killing the working man.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-brutal-reaction-gas-prices-bidens-america-sick-stomach/

Biden’s fellow Democrats (the former “friend of the working man” Party) are starting to panic and suggest any gimmicks to try to temporarily lower the price of gas before the November elections.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gas-prices-democratic-bloodbath-midterms-republicans

But they’re still unwilling to do what everyone with a brain bigger than a chicken’s knows we have to do: reverse Biden’s idiotic policies and get our pumps and pipelines back online ASAP. Last week, House Republicans introduced a bill to do that, and Democrats voted it down by 221-202.

https://notthebee.com/article/house-democrats-voted-down-a-major-oil-independence-bill-because-they-prefer-renewable-energy-and-someone-needs-to-tell-them-that-you-can-do-both-its-fine-to-do-both

Maybe those $6-a-gallon gas prices will convince them to hold a do-over and get it right this time by passing Ted Cruz’s Energy Freedom Act. Or maybe they think that keeping gas prices sky-high will prevent all those truckers from reaching Washington to protest them. The big question is, how long will they keep on killing the working man before they finally force themselves to admit that Trump was right and unleash America’s energy industries?

Day 12

March 8, 2022

With our usual caveats that we can’t cover breaking news, and that first reports from war zones are often unreliable, here is today’s continuously-updated feed of Ukraine bulletins from Fox News:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-7-2022

Among the latest developments as Monday starts day 12 of Russia’s invasion:

Russia claimed it will honor another ceasefire, but Ukraine rejected a proposal to evacuate Ukrainian citizens to Russia and Belarus, the equivalent of evacuating out of the frying pan and into the fire. Ukraine is also calling for a worldwide boycott of Russian products.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy held a Zoom meeting over the weekend with 280 US Congress members. With NATO having rejected his request to impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine, Zelenskyy pleaded with lawmakers to introduce an oil embargo on Russia and stop buying Russian oil. He also said if the US had started serious sanctions months ago, there wouldn’t have been any war. That must’ve been an uncomfortable phone call for the Biden backers in Congress.

https://www.westernjournal.com/ukrainian-president-zelenskyy-makes-one-request-us-meeting-change-everything/

Visa and Mastercard announced that they will cease all transactions involving Russian banks. But Robert Spencer at PJ Media argues that that will mostly harm ordinary Russians who might oppose Putin’s invasion. It also sets more precedent for financial companies to deplatform people with unapproved views.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/03/06/why-americans-shouldnt-be-happy-that-mastercard-and-visa-have-suspended-russia-operations-n1564206

Nick Arama at Redstate.com notes that Paypal, Payarama and Adobe have also suspended operations in Russia. Yet President Biden continues doing business with Russia, buying their oil instead of pumping our own.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/latest-shoe-is-a-big-one-to-drop-on-russia-but-joe-biden-is-still-holding-back-n532341

Meanwhile, China was only too happy to step in and fill the void. Russia will start using China’s UnionPay credit card system instead of Visa and Mastercard.

https://news.yahoo.com/russian-banks-switch-chinese-card-161004241.html

The Chinese foreign minister touted China’s relationship with Russia, calling Moscow China’s “most important strategic partner.” Previous Presidents understood that both powers had to be treated with a mixture of praise/diplomacy and ironfisted restrictions because we wanted each of them kept off-balance and dependent on/afraid of us so they wouldn’t align with each other. Previous Presidents understood that it was better to have an uneasy alliance with each against the other than to have Russia and China team up against us. But previous Presidents weren’t Joe Biden.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/china-russia-most-important-strategic-partner-ukraine-invasion

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?

Elon Musk Speaks Out

March 8, 2022

Lately, Tesla and Starlink billionaire Elon Musk has been showing more common sense and leadership than we’re getting from our own White House. He stood up for increasing American oil production (even though he sells electric cars), and in less than a day, he provided satellite access and equipment for Ukraine to get back onto the Internet. But now, he’s drawing the line at what he sees as doing the same thing Russia is doing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/governments-pressure-elon-musk-turn-assets-russia-tells-bring-gun-next-time/


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Putin signed a new law barring Russian news outlets from reporting on his war on Ukraine. In response, many governments (but not Ukraine’s, oddly) are pressuring media and Internet companies such as Starlink to ban Russian news outlets as propaganda. He tweeted, “We will not do so unless at gunpoint. Sorry to be a free speech absolutist.” He added, “And also my sympathies to the great people of Russia, who do not want this.”

I understand the impulse to ban Russian media outlets when we know they’re being forced to censor themselves and air Putin’s propaganda. But if we are aware of that in advance, wouldn’t it be useful for us to know what they’re telling their own people, so we know what we have to counter? Also, you never know when some brave journalist is going to slip in some helpful real information or make a stand that the world should see.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

In America, the Founders gave us free speech and freedom of the press because they trusted the people to have enough sense to know when they were hearing garbage ideas and argue them down and reject them. When the government starts deciding whose ideas are incorrect and unworthy of being spoken, that’s the slippery slope to tyranny.

We were already sliding that way as it is. Letting our government use Russia as an excuse to outright ban certain media outlets from the public square would only move us further down the well-known path of all fanatics, who eventually become what they once claimed to hate.

The price of gas has skyrocketed across America, up 40 cents a gallon in a week in many places. And at one Los Angeles station, regular was $6.99, with premium at $7.29 a gallon.

https://www.westernjournal.com/gas-sits-just-one-cent-away-7-days-record-price-jumps/

It may seem shocking, but this is precisely what the “green” left has long hoped for. For years, they’ve had a dream that if they can just make gas expensive enough, like $8 a gallon, that would cause the public to demand electric cars and mass transit. And somehow, without cheap oil, gas or coal, or any new nuclear power plants (because those are also bad for nostalgic reasons, even though they’re now much safer than they used to be and don’t emit CO2), we’ll magically have breakthroughs in “green” energy that will allow breezes and sunbeams to generate enough power to not only sustain our society and economy, but to charge tens of millions of new electric vehicles.

I didn’t say it made any sense; I said it was a longtime leftist dream. But it’s a nightmare for working Americans and consumers. Of course, there are things we could do right now to fix it, but President Biden refuses.

Last week, I suggested that Republicans in Congress introduce a real emergency bill to fast track the reinstatement of America’s energy independence that was killed by Biden’s executive orders in the name of his “climate change emergency.” I noted then that even if Biden were still stubborn enough to veto it in the face of the Russian oil crunch and skyrocketing gas prices, maybe enough Democrats would be terrified of their reelection prospects to vote for the bill and to override Biden’s veto.

Well, on Friday, Sen. Ted Cruz did pretty much what I suggested, introducing what he calls the “Energy Freedom Act.”

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/03/05/ted-cruz-rolls-out-energy-freedom-act-as-bidens-energy-dependent-chickens-come-home-to-roost-n531835

It would fast-track making America energy-independent again by…well, basically going back to what Trump did that made America energy-independent before Biden bumbled into office. It also contains a sop to the left in the form of “generally speeding up solar, wind, and geothermal development.”

I have a feeling Sen. Joe Manchin would back it. As one of that very endangered species, a DC Democrat with common sense, he’s already talking about how fast and easy it would be to get American oil flowing and gas prices back down, if the government would just take its foot off the necks of energy producers.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/06/manchin-makes-biden-look-silly-with-common-sense-on-russia-n532522

But do enough Democrats in the House and Senate sense electoral Armageddon in those $7 gas prices to vote for common sense and (probably have to) override a Biden veto? I believe in miracles, but that’s harder for me to believe. On the other hand, with November elections growing closer, and the prospect of gas being even higher by then, maybe the wisdom of Samuel Johnson will prevail among a veto-proof majority of Congress members. He’s the one who wrote:

“Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

 

Blessings on you and your family, and from all the Huckabee staff!

Today's newsletter includes:

  • Ukraine: Biden Feels the Pressure
  • Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers
  • This 2020 Trump claim was fact-checked…it turns out he was right
  • And much more

Thank you again for reading.

Sincerely,

Mike Huckabee


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Proverbs 22:6

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3. Ukraine: Biden Feels the Pressure

This is today’s Fox News link for the latest bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-8-2022

Some of the top stories from the past 24 hours: President Biden has FINALLY been pressured into ending US imports of Russian oil, but at this writing it’s unknown whether he’ll take his foot off the neck of America’s oil producers or try to replace it with oil from OPEC or (God forbid) Iran (which would spike gas prices even higher), or just rely on sunshine, windmills and wishes (which would send gas prices to the moon.)

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said some of the responsibility for deaths in Ukraine falls on nations that refused to impose a no-fly zone. The UN estimated that over 2 million people have fled Ukraine. US officials estimate that more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, which is about 1 out of every 300 Russian military members. Ukraine officials claim that Russian forces are shelling a humanitarian corridor established to allow evacuees to leave safely.

For those who want to understand more of what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, Putin’s history and motivations, and what’s likely to happen in the future, Kamil Galeev of the Wilson Center has a series of interesting Twitter threads that take a deep dive into those subjects.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

You might start with this one, which is very eye-opening. All the “Z’s” you see popping up in Russia do not mean the people support Zelenskyy.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1500495309595725831


4. This 2020 Trump Claim was fact-checked, it turns out he was right

Here’s more proof that when liberal media outlets begin a story with “Experts say…” there’s a very good chance you’re about to get a snow job. If it’s a story about anything Donald Trump said, you can count on it. The self-appointed “fact-checkers” were constantly telling us that Trump was lying about something, according to “experts,” when it later became obvious that he was right. And now, here’s yet another example.

Just before the 2020 election, Trump was speaking at a rally in Grand Rapids, where he was boasting about making America energy-independent for the first time and bringing gas prices down to $2 a gallon or less. He then said, “If Biden got in, you’d be paying $7, $8, $9, then they’d say, ‘Get rid of your car.'”

https://www.westernjournal.com/video-trumps-bold-prediction-2020-comes-true-americans-live-reality-bidens-america/

The Washington Post responded with an “analysis” calling the claim that gas prices would spike under Biden “dubious,” adding, “Experts say those fears are overblown,” and that Biden’s policies could ease tensions with Iran and “result in incrementally lower gas prices.”


5. Durham responds masterfully to Sussmann's lawyers

Say what you will about former Attorney General Bill Barr…

https://www.abc4.com/news/national/trump-rips-barr-in-letter-to-nbcs-lester-holt/

...but he deserves credit for his fantastic pick of John Durham as special counsel to investigate the origins of the phony “Trump/Russia” probe. For a long time, we all wondered what he could possibly be doing, as months and months went by without any news. But now it’s easy to understand why the case is taking so long. There’s much more to it than anyone imagined at the outset.

In his latest court filing, made Friday to counter Michael Sussmann’s attorneys’ most recent motions, Durham has shown that he'd make a great archer, as he aims right at the target and hits a rhetorical bull’s-eye. Here’s a link to the whole 16-page document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638/gov.uscourts.dcd.235638.44.0_6.pdf

Recall that Sussmann, conveniently the attorney for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe (Tech Executive – 1), has been charged with lying to the FBI by failing to disclose that he was acting on behalf of legal clients. He maintained that he had brought the (fake) Alfa Bank story to the FBI simply out of his sense of patriotic duty, as a concerned citizen. A couple of weeks ago, in their motion to dismiss that charge, Sussmann’s attorneys said --- try not to laugh --- that their client hadn’t lied, but that even if he HAD lied, the lie was not material to the case and was protected by the First Amendment besides, so, come on, judge, just let it go.

Durham, in his response to the First Amendment argument, took aim and said, “Far from finding himself in the vulnerable position of an ordinary person whose speech is likely to be chilled, the defendant --- a sophisticated and well-connected lawyer --- chose to bring politically-charged allegations to the FBI’s chief legal officer [James Baker] at the height of an election season.

“He then chose to lie about the clients who were behind those allegations. Using such rare access to the halls of power for the purposes of political deceit is hardly the type of speech that the Founders intended to protect. The Court should therefore reject defendant’s invitation to expand the scope of the First Amendment to protect such conduct.”

Is that not great?

As for whether his (false) statements to the FBI were material to the case, Durham was spot-on again. Imagine how things might have gone if Sussmann had been honest about his true connections, given their implied motivations. His ties to the Clinton campaign could --- at least SHOULD --- have had tremendous bearing. As Durham put it:

“Had the defendant truthfully informed the FBI General Counsel that he was providing the information on behalf of one or more clients, as opposed to merely acting as a ‘good citizen,’ the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel might have asked a multitude of additional questions material to the case initiation process.”

It’s hard to imagine information more material to the case than this. As Durham said, the lie was capable of “influencing both the FBI’s decision to initiate an investigation and its subsequent conduct of that investigation.”

Knowledge of these attorney-client relationships, he said, “would have shed critical light on the origins of the allegations at issue.” It goes without saying that this would certainly not have been in the interest of Sussmann’s clients, Hillary Clinton and a man trying in an underhanded way to help get her elected. Sussmann's charade was completely in their interest.

“Given the temporal proximity to the 2016 U.S. presidential election,” Durham said, “the FBI also might have taken any number of different steps in initiating, delaying, or declining the initiation of this matter had it known at the time that the defendant was providing information on behalf of the Clinton campaign and a technology executive at a private company.”

Sussmann’s attorneys had also moved to strike the “Factual Background” in Durham’s charge –- the part that went into detail about Sussmann’s ties with Clinton and Joffe as part of the larger picture. They said Durham had included that part “to politicize this case, inflame media coverage, and taint the jury pool.” We'd thought their attempt to strike that section seemed like a well-we-gotta-try-something move, as they ended up calling MORE attention to it.

Durham made it clear that there was no basis to strike any part of that motion, as the factual background was “central” to proving the allegation of Sussmann’s criminal conduct. He also said that some of it was necessary for explaining the conflicts of interest that were the point of his earlier filing about various people of interest (Sussmann included) being defended by the same law firm, Latham & Watkins.

Margot Cleveland has another great article about the filings in Durham’s case, this one saying he “demolished” the attempt to get Sussmann’s charges dropped.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/07/5-new-special-counsel-arguments-against-a-russia-hoaxers-attempt-to-escape/

Cleveland offers her usual superb analysis, making points seen nowhere else. She offers five “key takeaways” from Durham’s filing:

1. On the issue of materiality, Durham states what the correct standard for that is, stressing that it refers to the “potential,” as opposed to the actual, effects of the lie. And even using the defense attorneys’ very narrow standard, Sussmann’s alleged “misrepresentation” (lie) is still material because it could have influenced the FBI’s decision-making.

Cleveland says denial of the defendant’s motion to dismiss is “inevitable” and that Durham refuted “six ways to Sunday” the claim that Sussmann's lie was not material. It plainly was, he said, “because it misled the General Counsel about, among other things, the critical fact that the defendant was disseminating highly explosive allegations about a then-Presidential candidate on behalf of two specific clients, one of which was the opposing Presidential campaign.” Doesn't get much plainer than that.

2. Durham destroyed the Democrats’ talking point that the FBI already knew Sussmann was an attorney for the DNC. Sussmann had held himself out as a cybersecurity and national security attorney, “not an election lawyer or political consultant,” Durham wrote. So when Sussmann had denied any client relationships, he had made it seem that he was not there in a political capacity, when he was.

3. Durham countered the defense’s argument that Joffe’s status as “a long-standing respected FBI source” made Sussmann’s failure to disclose representing him immaterial. This one is a bit “in the weeds” but really interesting, so if you’re following these arguments closely, do read Cleveland’s piece.

4. Durham countered another defense argument that's also a talking point, the one saying that Trump was not the target because data brought by Sussmann was from before he was President. The special counsel made it clear that this is a distinction without a difference, as Trump clearly was the target.

5. Finally, Durham had some fun with the defense’s assertion that the charge against their client “risks valuable First Amendment speech,” calling a comparison they'd made “absurd.” Sussmann, he said, “as a former government attorney and prosecutor...was well aware that the law required him to honest and forthright when communicating with the FBI.”

I wonder --- is that even possible when furthering the interests of Hillary Clinton?


6. Fact: Average $ for a Gallon of Gas Hits Record High

Okay, here’s a real “fact-check,” or maybe I should say a punch in the gut with reality: Monday, the average price of a gallon of gas in the US hit a record high of $4.104, surpassing the previous record of $4.103 set in 2008. The best you can say for Biden is that it might not actually be the highest ever when you adjust it for the galloping inflation that’s the only thing he seems interested in fueling.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/u-s-gas-prices-hit-new-record-high

Naturally, the highest price is in deep blue California, where the average price of a gallon of gas is $5.43. That means in many places, it’s much higher, like in the $6 range. And if any alleged “experts” still think Trump’s prediction of even higher prices seems “dubious,” some oil traders are now bracing for oil to hit $200 a barrel by the end of this month.

https://www.westernjournal.com/warning-americans-traders-eye-200-per-oil-barrel-month-report/

Meanwhile, President Biden was finally pressured enough that he will reportedly announce an end to importing Russian oil on Tuesday morning.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-russian-oil-import-ban

But what will he replace it with? Judging by comments from Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, buying it from Iran is on the table. He’d rather buy it from terrorists than let Americans pump it. A meme has gone viral that says Biden is scouring the world for any place that has oil other than Texas. That doesn’t even make sense from an environmental standpoint since our oil is much cleaner than Russia’s and doesn’t have to be transported halfway around the world.

Even in liberal Massachusetts, one Springfield man told a reporter that the gas prices made him sick to his stomach, adding, “They’re killing the working man.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/american-brutal-reaction-gas-prices-bidens-america-sick-stomach/

Biden’s fellow Democrats (the former “friend of the working man” Party) are starting to panic and suggest any gimmicks to try to temporarily lower the price of gas before the November elections.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gas-prices-democratic-bloodbath-midterms-republicans

But they’re still unwilling to do what everyone with a brain bigger than a chicken’s knows we have to do: reverse Biden’s idiotic policies and get our pumps and pipelines back online ASAP. Last week, House Republicans introduced a bill to do that, and Democrats voted it down by 221-202.

https://notthebee.com/article/house-democrats-voted-down-a-major-oil-independence-bill-because-they-prefer-renewable-energy-and-someone-needs-to-tell-them-that-you-can-do-both-its-fine-to-do-both

Maybe those $6-a-gallon gas prices will convince them to hold a do-over and get it right this time by passing Ted Cruz’s Energy Freedom Act. Or maybe they think that keeping gas prices sky-high will prevent all those truckers from reaching Washington to protest them. The big question is, how long will they keep on killing the working man before they finally force themselves to admit that Trump was right and unleash America’s energy industries?


7. Barr makes news: Defends cops and says he would vote for Trump over the “progressive agenda”

Former Attorney General Bill Barr is making appearances to promote his new book. Naturally, the media are trumpeting anything he says that reflects badly on Donald Trump, and there’s plenty of that. And he made it clear he wouldn’t support Trump for the Republican nomination. But before they start trying to elevate Barr into the next never-Trump CNN regular, I’ll bet the liberal talking heads nearly exploded when Barr said that if Trump were the nominee in 2024, the “progressive” Democrat agenda is such a threat to America that it’s “inconceivable” that he wouldn’t vote for the Republican, whoever it is.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/03/07/savannah-guthrie-gets-poleaxed-by-bill-barrs-answer-to-her-question-about-the-2024-election-n533046

It must be hard for those people to hear that after five years of blasting Trump with all they’ve got, even someone who doesn’t like him would say in effect, “But I’d still vote for him if that was the only alternative to the walking dumpster fires you people support.”

Barr also probably won’t make many friends in the media with his defense of cops as not being racists but as simply arresting people who commit crimes.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/liberal-media-scream-lester-holt-fights-truth-that-cops-are-where-crime-is


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Targeting DeSantis

March 8, 2022

Last week, Florida’s legislature passed a law similar to Mississippi’s law that bans abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The White House immediately went ballistic over this, with strong statements of opposition from both President Biden and Vice President Harris.

https://redstate.com/streiff/2022/03/07/the-biden-harris-attack-on-the-new-florida-abortion-law-shows-how-much-the-left-fears-ron-desantis-n532641

But as that article points out, this is only one of many recent state laws reining in abortion, some of them more severe than Florida’s. So why the immediate harsh reaction to Florida? Redstate's reasonable theory is that they’re scared to death of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is proving to be a tough, effective, very popular leader who could run for President and draw the same supporters as Trump, only without the years of media-amplified negatives.

That’s why you’re hearing so many anti-DeSantis stories (for example, he “yelled” at teenagers to take off their masks – spoiler alert: he didn’t). Expect to hear a lot more attacks on DeSantis and Florida by Democrats, even as many of them are fleeing to Florida to escape the consequences of their own insane policies.

By the way, kudos to VP Harris for at least having the honesty to use the word “abortion” in her statement. Biden continued the usual liberal fuzzy euphemism game of calling it “reproductive health care.” It’s not very healthy for babies, is it?

When we think of people being arrested and then waiting for months without charges being filed, we think of dictatorships and banana republics. So why is it happening here, in the very capital of the United States of America?

https://redstate.com/leslie-mcadoo-gordon/2022/03/08/doj-rushes-obtain-indictment-for-january-6-defendant-to-cure-illegal-detention-n533107

There’s a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo to weed through, but the upshot of that article is that a January 6th defendant, Lucas Denney, was arrested back in December and still had no idea what he was charged with. His attorney filed for the case to be dismissed because under the Speedy Trial Act, prosecutors are required to issue an indictment within 30 days of arrest. Denney had a hearing set for Monday, but the DOJ rushed through a one-count indictment at the last minute and cited various excuses, such as COVID delays.

The judge ruled on a technicality that he couldn’t dismiss the case that day, but if the law means anything anymore (an open question), the charge should be dropped because the DOJ clearly violated the Speedy Trial Act.

However, the judge sharply rebuked the DOJ, saying that if they’ve charged more people over January 6th than they can keep up with, that’s their fault, not the defendants’. He pointed out that they claim these are such important cases because they’re protecting the Constitution, then they violate the defendants’ Constitutional rights in the process of prosecuting them.

But then, that seems to be a recurring theme in all the Democrats’ zealous drum-banging over January 6th: they’re going to save the Constitution and “democracy,” even if they have to trample both of them to death to do it.

As an aside to the story about the Washington Post saying in 2020 that “experts” found Trump’s claim that oil prices would spike under Biden “dubious,” and that prices would more likely be lower, this is a good opportunity to point out one of the many glaring flaws in the methodology of what currently passes for “fact-checking.” And that is the reliance on so-called "expert" opinion as a substitute for objective facts.

There’s a term for that: the “appeal to authority.” It means claiming that something must be true if one “credible” source believes it. It’s one of the most common logical fallacies.

https://www.logicalfallacies.org/appeal-to-authority.html

(I apologize for citing logic, since we now know that’s just a form of white supremacy.)

Many modern “fact-checkers” rely on this, and media and social media outlets use them to censor any questioning of their pronouncements as if they are unassailable fact, handed down from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. Later, when we discover they were wrong, we’re told, “The science has changed.” But science doesn’t change, we just learn that our original understanding of it was WRONG. And the only way to figure that out is to question authority. Which we’re not allowed to do because that’s known as the “scientific method,” and that’s also now been branded as “white supremacy.”

I’d like to recommend a book that should be required reading for all people who want to declare themselves “fact-checkers.” It’s by Christopher Cerf, and it’s called “The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation.” It’s a history of the many false things that experts once assured us were true, such as that man could never fly, that it would be fatal for a human to travel faster than 30 mph, that there’s no reason any person would ever need a home computer, and many more. And my favorite genius, the Decca Records executive who turned down the Beatles, telling them that guitar groups were on the way out.

Yes, these are the “experts,” the people we now rely on to tell us truths that are so irrefutable that some people want to make trying to refute them illegal. That's why when a "fact-checker" begins with "experts say," I say you should prepare for a snow job. By the way, "experts" assured us years ago that due to global warming, snow would be a thing of the past by now.

Putin's invasion of Ukraine has sparked letters touching on stories that are going around. Here are two...

From John K:

“Mike, a history lesson is in order here. Didn't USSR, now Russia, help in [email protected] the Nazis? Some pundits are saying that Russia is now invading European lands. How did that happen? We don't have history on the History channel or Wikipedia. This land was never European land but as I recall it was part of Russia before we sorted that out. The fake new Republic of the World, or as they say the New world Order promulgated by the Sorosbrand and "Progressive Liberals," is or is coming soon to a theatre near you. The play is just starting, so take your seat. I want to sit next to you.”

From Fiorella W:

“I hear many conflicting stories about Putin's real motive. One source says that the U.S. has established 11 biolabs in Ukraine and Putin has taken 7 out... And then, of course, there is the whole Biden family continuing corruption with the puppet regime. What should we believe?

Thanks to you both, and to all who have written. Yes, Soviet Russia did fight against Hitler, after Germany invaded Russia in June, 1941.

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/invasion-of-the-soviet-union-june-1941

Technically, the Soviets became our allies when we entered the war. That’s why, with the way people tend to think in “either/or” terms, alliances ever since have been framed in that way. You checked a box: 1) pro-Nazi, or 2) pro-Russia. Later on, it became 1) pro-Russia, or 2) pro-China. The truth: NONE of them deserve our support.

Eastern Europe was carved up in 1945 at the Yalta Conference –- led by FDR (very ill at the time), British Prime Minister Churchill and Soviet Premier Stalin. They were then looking at terms to induce the Soviets to enter the war in the Pacific. Because of that, and also because Russia had done much in recent days to drive back the Germans, Stalin was seen to have an advantage at the talks.

Stalin refused to relinquish Poland but said he’d permit free elections. Same with Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria. At that time, Soviet Russia was an "ally," but that was exposed as a sham when, in 1945, the U.S.S.R. made it clear they’d be clamping down on Poland and not allowing political freedom at all. Our former “ally” controlled those Eastern European nations and also East Berlin, which they shockingly encased behind a wall topped with barbed wire and snipers. In March 1946, Churchill gave his speech saying an “iron curtain” had descended upon Eastern Europe, marking the start of the Cold War.

Since then, the U.S.S.R. has fallen and Russia’s borders have changed. But we see from this snippet of history that distinctions between so-called “Russian territory” and “Eastern Europe” are likely lost on Vladimir Putin.

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/yalta-conference

To say Ukraine was once “part of Russia” echoes Putin’s propaganda campaign but ignores the naked, horrific aggression he committed. Some have even said that since Ukraine has corruption, the altruistic Mr. Putin was trying to right a wrong by invading. As if Russia doesn’t have corruption? I have hardly ever heard anything crazier: that Putin is trying to “save” Ukraine from corruption by bombing the daylights out of it. Couldn’t he have just...made a phone call or something?

I say that facetiously to set up a point: that when Trump tried to address corruption through a phone call, he got impeached. Putin wouldn’t have such worries.

Then there’s the story about biolabs. We don’t know --- it’s hard enough finding out about biolabs in China and talking about those freely --- but even if this is real and NOT Russian disinformation, invading Ukraine and killing thousands of innocent people is not an acceptable response. Sounds like a pretext to us. It works well as propaganda, though, because after what we’ve learned about the World Health Organization, it’s believable. But it doesn’t justify Putin’s invasion. Here’s a good write-up by Kyle Becker.

https://beckernews.com/3-russian-ministry-of-defense-claims-it-has-evidence-of-u-s-funded-bioweapons-labs-in-ukraine-44303/

We do know that Putin is a sociopath because operatives have killed many of his critics, defectors, and others besides. From the Homeland Security News Wire in 2020: “...Putin has adopted a milder version of Stalin’s tactics of random killings in order to instill a generalized sense of fear and insecurity in the Russian elite.” They provide a list of murders.

https://www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com/dr20200825-putin-s-victims-a-long-list-getting-longer

We’ve long known that Putin is a KGB thug, but there are loathsome factions in the U.S. that avoid criticism of him. Bizarrely, President Biden even has Putin involved in the negotiations for a new “Iran deal,” which we know would lead to Iran becoming a nuclear power. Mark Levin had a great show on this and related matters Sunday night.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6299850695001#sp=show-clips

We’ve heard some particularly inane observations, such as that Ukrainian President Zelensky shouldn’t be believed "because he was an actor.” Well, Ronald Reagan was an actor, and he was about as trustworthy as it gets. That doesn’t mean Zelensky is trustworthy, just that the observation is stupid. Putin undeniably is a thug, and Zelensky understandably wants our help with a no-fly zone, but we must anticipate the perhaps-literal fallout. To reject this step does not make one pro-Putin in any way, just pro-using-your-brain.

Trump’s political enemies call him pro-Putin because he’s flattered Vlad now and them, calling him “smart” and such. They fail to understand that this move in itself was smart –- played to discourage Putin from cozying up to China. (Too late now, it seems.) Critics play checkers when they should be playing chess.

Here are more debunked stories...

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/

And here’s a fabulous more-recent Ukraine history lesson, a “premium” article by Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke for The Epoch Times. Highly recommended...

https://www.theepochtimes.com/before-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-a-decade-of-destabilization_4316990.html/?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=TheLibertyDaily

(Note that The National Pulse, just for offering facts, feels the need to run a disclaimer: “For the avoidance of doubt, The National Pulse is against wars of aggression, and is not supported financially by any government or entity acting on behalf of a government or foreign interest...”)

As for George Soros, yes, his influence in Ukraine has been huge, starting in 1989, just before the fall of the Soviet Union. He’s been pushing for Ukraine to enter the E.U. We highly recommend Matt Palumbo’s book about him, THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, in which Ukraine gets its own fascinating chapter, with names you’ll recognize from Trump’s first impeachment and even the Steele “dossier.” That country’s full of the kind of secrets you’d expect from a pro-Obama, pro-Hillary crowd.

There are so many unknowns. As we said Saturday, this really is “the first draft of history.” It’s a shame we can’t trust what our own government tells us. Scott Adams, bestselling author and “Dilbert” creator,” called the situation “a big black box that we can’t see into.”

Even so, there's one truth we should agree on: that unprovoked aggression is always wrong. For everything else you might read or hear about this war, ask yourself two questions: 1) Has this person generally been right before, and 2) How can this person possibly KNOW what he’s saying is true?

This is today’s Fox News link for the latest bulletins on the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-3-8-2022

Some of the top stories from the past 24 hours: President Biden has FINALLY been pressured into ending US imports of Russian oil, but at this writing it’s unknown whether he’ll take his foot off the neck of America’s oil producers or try to replace it with oil from OPEC or (God forbid) Iran (which would spike gas prices even higher), or just rely on sunshine, windmills and wishes (which would send gas prices to the moon.)

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said some of the responsibility for deaths in Ukraine falls on nations that refused to impose a no-fly zone. The UN estimated that over 2 million people have fled Ukraine. US officials estimate that more than 3,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, which is about 1 out of every 300 Russian military members. Ukraine officials claim that Russian forces are shelling a humanitarian corridor established to allow evacuees to leave safely.

For those who want to understand more of what’s going on with Russia and Ukraine, Putin’s history and motivations, and what’s likely to happen in the future, Kamil Galeev of the Wilson Center has a series of interesting Twitter threads that take a deep dive into those subjects.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1498377757536968711

You might start with this one, which is very eye-opening. All the “Z’s” you see popping up in Russia do not mean the people support Zelenskyy.

https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1500495309595725831

As we continue to pray for the people of Ukraine, here’s today’s link to continually-updated news on the Russian invasion:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/zelenskyy-video-cheered-at-pro-ukraine-rallies-across-europe-live-updates

Among the major stories: A U.N. agency estimates that 1.45 million people have fled Ukraine since the invasion began. Russia denied an accusation that it violated a temporary ceasefire to protect safe humanitarian corridors for evacuees. NATO rejected imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, calling it a “painful decision” but saying that NATO has a responsibility not to escalate the conflict into a wider European war by engaging with Russia in the air or on the ground. Putin said that any no-fly zone imposed by a third party would be viewed as “participation in the armed conflict.”

A reminder that with any fast-breaking news from a war zone, some stories will turn out to be incorrect through honest mistakes and others may be spin or outright propaganda. If journalism is the “first draft of history,” then this is a first draft written under an impossible deadline while bombs are going off, so take everything with a grain of salt until it’s confirmed.

It’s hard to believe that Washington, DC, would have to worry about a fertilizer shortage, but that’s the latest serious threat. Russia produces about 13% of the world’s supply of potash, phosphate and nitrogen for fertilizer. Prices are already rising astronomically, and Russia is reportedly considering withholding exports, which could create worldwide food shortages, if other nations continue their crippling sanctions. All that reliance on imports still looking like a good idea?

https://www.westernjournal.com/russia-strikes-back-western-sanctions-threatens-world-food-supply-heinous-move/

In a dramatic show of defiance, the entire staff of Russia’s Dozhd or TV Rain news channel ended their broadcast by walking off the set in protest of the government crackdown on journalists reporting on the invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russian-news-walks-crackdown-media

Friday, Putin signed a new law that could fine or jail journalists for up to 15 years for reporting "fake" news about the military and invasion that conflicts with statements from Russian officials. This includes using the words “war” or “invasion” to describe the war and invasion. TV Rain has been accused of "inciting extremism, abusing Russian citizens, causing mass disruption of public calm and safety, and encouraging protests" by reporting on the attack on Ukraine.

I’m grateful we live in a nation with free speech and the Bill of Rights to protect us from out-of-control tyrants who would bully the media into helping silence people under the guise of them spreading “misinformation” that might “cause confusion or sow mistrust” in the government. Thank God that could never happen here.

https://news.yahoo.com/surgeon-general-demands-data-covid-162442216.html

In a related story, CNN announced that it will stop broadcasting in Russia due to the new law making it illegal to air “fake news.” Decide for yourselves whether this is a protest or an admission of guilt.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/04/cnn-to-stop-broadcasting-in-russia-and-the-reason-is-hilarious-n1563873

Special counsels can be appointed at the state level, too, and it appears that one in Wisconsin has found evidence to confirm widespread election fraud.

The Wisconsin Assembly appointed Special Counsel Michael Gableman, a retired State Supreme Court justice, to investigate concerns about the 2020 election, and on Tuesday, his office issued its second interim report, which runs 150 pages. In Chapter 7, it confirms the conclusion of the Racine County Sheriff’s Office last fall that fraud occurred at Wisconsin nursing homes.

https://legis.wisconsin.gov/assembly/22/brandtjen/media/1552/osc-second-interim-report.pdf

It was the sheriff’s investigation that led to this broader one. Sheriff Christopher Schmaling held a press conference last October 28 at which lead investigator Michael Luell presented their findings. (Note that this hour-long press conference got mostly crickets from national media.) Luell explained that under Wisconsin election law, local municipalities must dispatch two special voting deputies, or SVDs, to residential care facilities to supervise the voting. These officials are tasked with personally delivering ballots to residents and witnessing the voting process. Under law, only a relative or an SVD may assist a resident with the voting process. Once the resident has voted, the SVD seals the ballot envelope and delivers it to the elections clerk.

This sounds like a great plan to preserve the chain of custody and discourage undue influence. Unfortunately, the sheriff’s investigation found that the Ridgewood Care Center in Racine violated every one of those requirements. Amazingly, the blame for this can be traced back to the Wisconsin Election Commission, whose members had allegedly taken it upon themselves to tell municipalities not to use the SVD system and to instead just mail ballots to residents. Such a directive would be illegal.

So it was up to staffers to help residents complete their ballots, and according to the sheriff, they “helped” them, all right --- improperly completing sections of the ballots, mishandling ballots and failing to secure them, and going beyond just reading the ballots to actively discussing the elections and candidates. In legal parlance, that is a no-no.

As Sheriff Schmaling said during his press conference, his investigation had covered only the Ridgewood Care Center, when Racine County was home to 11 such facilities, and Racine County is just one of 72 counties. “There are literally hundreds and hundreds of these facilities throughout the state of Wisconsin,” he said. “We would be foolish to think for a moment that this integrity issue, this violation of the statute, occurred to just this small group of people at one care facility in one county in the entire state.”

Several days after their press conference, the Sheriff’s Office announced that they had forwarded their conclusions to District Attorney Patricia Hanson, recommending that five members of the Wisconsin Election Commission be charged with election fraud, including two felony counts. (Only one member was not cited.) Margot Cleveland has details on the specific charges in her report for The Federalist.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/03/wisconsin-special-counsel-finds-widespread-election-fraud-in-2020-nursing-homes/

You can probably guess what happened next, which is to say nothing –- no charges were filed. After several months, DA Hanson concluded that she “lacked jurisdiction” and had no authority to prosecute the commissioners because they don’t live in Racine County and didn’t issue the “allegedly illegal directive doing away with SVD.” So, we're confused, as the sheriff's investigation had concluded they did do that.

And after deciding not to charge the commissioners, Hanson couldn’t very well charge the staff at the nursing homes, could she? She reasoned it this way: “[I]t would be unfair for me to expect these health care professionals would better understand the election law in Wisconsin than the Wisconsin Election Commission.” Never mind that she should have had higher expectations for the WEC; after lowering the bar for them, she was able to lower it even farther for the nursing home staff. Case dismissed!

Here’s some of the fallout as reported by a local news outlet, just a few days before the special counsel dropped his report.

https://journaltimes.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/elections/four-wis-prosecutors-considering-whether-to-file-charges-against-elections-commissioners/article_b928849a-965f-512a-920c-62f9527b0844.html

Fortunately it didn’t end with that DA, and we now have an eye-opening special counsel report. This would not have happened without the sheriff’s investigation, which had stemmed from a complaint by some individual about potential violations at just one nursing home. Moral: one person speaking up CAN make a difference.

And now, the special counsel apparently has the goods. “Rampant fraud and abuse occurred statewide at Wisconsin’s nursing homes and other residential care facilities,” his report says.

This conclusion came after his investigation of more than 90 nursing homes in five different counties. We’re talking about blatant violations of the election code by nursing home staff and administrators, such as illegal handling of absentee ballots, illegal assistance in marking ballots, illegally “witnessing” the voting, and possible forgery. According to the report, the fraud and abuse resulted ultimately from the unlawful acts of the WEC’s members and staff, because on June 24, 2020, they did issue that directive to mail the ballots to the nursing homes and just follow the rules for regular absentee voting by mail.

The special counsel found “improbably high voting rates” at nursing homes. He was even able to determine that some of the filled-out ballots did not reflect the intent of the nursing home residents. He found suspected forgeries of signatures and votes by people who had been judged incompetent and could not legally vote. He found votes "cast" by people who were unaware of their surroundings and didn’t even know what year it was.

The WEC had tried to use COVID to justify what it had done, saying they didn’t want seniors ”disenfranchised.” Special Counsel Gableman was stern in his assessment of that: “In no way was WEC’s mandating illegal activity a ‘solution’ to ‘disenfranchisement’ and to suggest that WEC’s actions were a good faith effort at doing so ignores the facts and the law.” He went on to point out that the problems he had found, resulting from their directive, WERE examples of disenfranchisement.

Gableman said that to get the full picture of the significance of the fraud, “a state-wide, complete audit of all absentee votes from all facilities” required to use the SVD system is necessary.

In the 2020 election, Wisconsin went for Biden by a margin of just 20,682 votes. Since about 92,000 people reside in Wisconsin nursing homes, the findings of this investigation cast “doubt on the election result” according to the special counsel report. The Wisconsin State Assembly might authorize Gableman to expand his audit, but that’s not official at this writing. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul called the sheriff’s original investigation a “publicity stunt” and is highly unlikely to do anything with this one. That seems like a great reason for voters to show up in droves this fall and boot him out of office.

Incidentally, the report has chapters dealing with other issues in Wisconsin that we’ve discussed before, such as the infusion of money from Mark Zuckerberg and the Center for Tech and Civic Life, and potential violations of law concerning ballot security at dropboxes. Look for social media to flag discussions of this report as heretical and news outlets to trash it (Politico and BuzzFeed already have), even though it’s the product of a special counsel investigation and contains, presumably, facts.

The polls have Democrats looking forward to the November elections with as much optimism as bugs look forward to a visit from the Orkin man. So between now and then, their friendly media will be trying to gaslight us in all sorts of ways to convince us that they’re not responsible for the messes they’ve created. You’ll be expected to believe that they never went overboard with COVID restrictions, that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is responsible for Putin invading Ukraine, and that most Democrats in Washington are patriotic moderates who don’t back the far-left radical ideas pushed by “The Squad.”

When you hear that, remember this:

In a move that some pundits are calling “a gift to Republicans,” Senate “Majority” Leader Chuck Schumer forced a show vote on a bill that would have made it legal to perform abortions at any time. It would have wiped away every state-level protection, making it legal to kill a child in the womb at nine months if a doctor says there’s a risk to the mother’s health -- despite the fact that obstetricians say there’s almost no circumstance under which an abortion at that stage is less dangerous to the mother’s health than birthing the baby.

As of that weren’t radical enough, check out this, from the Fox News write-up:

“The bill also claims that abortion rights qualifies as ‘reproductive justice’ seeking to address ‘systems of oppression, lack of bodily autonomy, white supremacy, and anti-Black racism.’ While the bill claims that abortion restrictions ‘are a tool of gender oppression,’ it also clarifies that despite using ‘the terms ‘woman’ and ‘women,’’ legislators intend to ‘protect all people with the capacity for pregnancy—cisgender women, transgender men, non-binary individuals, those who identify with a different gender, and others—who are unjustly harmed by restrictions on abortion services.’”

That’s right: it’s “racist” to oppose abortion, even though blacks make up 14% of the population but black women get 36% of all abortions. Since Roe v. Wade, about 20 million black babies have been killed by abortion, more than the entire black population of America in 1960.

https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2020/02/25/abortion-the-overlooked-tragedy-for-black-americans/

And here’s now all those “moderate” Democrats voted: The House already passed it 218-211, with every Democrat except Rep. Henry Cuellar supporting it. And in the Senate, it was blocked by filibuster from coming to a vote by 48-46. Six Senators didn’t vote. Joe Manchin was the only Democrat to join Republicans in voting against it. And Manchin and Bob Casey (who did vote to bring it to debate) were the only Democrats who didn’t co-sponsor it.

How do these allegedly moderate Democrats who sponsored and voted for it compare to average Americans? A recent Marist poll found that only 17% of Americans think abortion should be available at any stage of pregnancy, as do only 31% of Democrats. The Democrats in Congress are so far left, they’re even out of touch with other Democrats.

So when you’re voting in November, unless you’re voting for Joe Manchin or Henry Cuellar, remember that all that talk about moderate Democrats in Congress is, as our President would put it, “malarkey.”

Wisconsin 2020 Update

March 2, 2022

It’s too late to make any difference now, but in Wisconsin, which Biden won in 2020 by less than 21,000 votes, an audit led by former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman found so much corruption that Gableman said legislators should consider decertifying the vote.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/03/01/2020-wisconsin-vote-should-be-decertified-investigator-says-n1562797

Gableman’s investigation found problems with drop boxes, ballots gathered from nursing homes, and with the $9 million given to election officials solely in Democrat districts by Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, which violated the state’s bribery laws.

Margot Cleveland at the Federalist has more details.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/01/breaking-special-counsel-finds-mark-zuckerbergs-election-money-violated-wisconsin-bribery-laws/

While there’s no mechanism for changing the outcome of the election at this point, this report is valuable because it shows the weaknesses that were exploited in the last election and how the election system needs to be reformed and security tightened. Indeed, as Matt Margolis at PJ Media notes, at least 10 states have already moved to ban or restrict the “Zuck Bucks” that were used to influence partisan turnout in 2020.

It also gives Americans all the more reason to do a little suspicious grumbling when their social media accounts are shut down for spreading “dangerous misinformation” if they express any doubts about the integrity of the last election. I have doubts about the integrity of a lot of things, and that’s just one of them.

This is an interesting article by Tom McTague in the Atlantic, about how Western nations are rallying to support Ukraine and its courageous President Zelensky without actually getting into the fighting themselves.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2022/02/volodymyr-zelensky-courage-ukraine-russia/622948/?utm_source=feed

He makes the point that Zelensky has suddenly come to embody many old-fashioned Western virtues reminiscent of great men of the last century like Winston Churchill: those who were willing to stand and fight against impossible odds for their country and their independence.

For too long in America and other Western nations, we’ve allowed these traits that should be celebrated to be denigrated and for heroes like Churchill to be maligned and “canceled.” Now that we’re seeing one rise in front of our very eyes, people worldwide are rallying to support him. They can see the truth about what’s good and right when it’s not at a distance and being obscured by lies and propaganda. It’s as if nobody needs an old-fashioned hero – until we need one. This has prompted some commentators to ask how we can expect our leaders to fight for traditional Western and American values when they don’t even believe in them themselves anymore.

Of course, this is the Atlantic, so McTeague gets some things wrong due to political bias (for instance, it’s idiotic to claim that the “Trump view of the world” is that China and Russia are no worse or better than the United States. If any politician of recent years believed in American exceptionalism and calling out bad guys on the international stage, it was Trump, and he was roundly attacked for it.) But if you’d like some food for thought, this is at least a good appetizer.

Please continue to pray for the people of Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin’s unconscionable attack has entered its seventh day of escalating force and violence. Sen. Marco Rubio says Russia has launched its largest air assault so far. The mayor of the port city of Mariupol reports mass casualties. So far, over 7,000 Russians have been arrested for protesting the invasion. Fox News has a continually updated page of the latest news, which you can find here:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-day-7

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy called it “beyond humanity” that a Russian air strike destroyed the Holocaust memorial in Kyiv. He had more to say that everyone should read about the horrors and waste that Putin is visiting not only on Ukrainians but on his own troops, 6,000 of whom have already died while attacking their neighbor when they don’t even know why they’re doing it.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/zelenskyy-russian-missile-attack-holocaust-memorial

One bit of good news: that “elite Chechen hit squad” Putin reportedly sent into Ukraine to assassinate President Zelenskyy has been “eliminated.” The Ukrainians got a tip from sources inside Russia’s Federal Security Forces, so apparently, some people in Russia’s government also think their leader has gone off the rails. Thanks to the tip, Ukrainian forces reportedly identified, engaged and destroyed the two Chechen death squad teams.

Last night, President Biden gave his first State of the Union Address. At least, I think he did. I tuned in to watch, and something bizarre happened. I believe due to some weird atmospheric anomaly, my satellite dish picked up a SOTU Address by a totally different President Biden speaking from an alternate universe.

In this parallel universe, the alt-President Biden spent the past year strengthening international relations and the past few months working with our allies to get sanctions in place that have Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian invasion plans on the ropes. In our universe, our President Biden pulled a botched Afghanistan withdrawal without consulting our allies and signaled that America was an unreliable partner (there was also that business with the submarines that ticked off France.) Our Biden admitted just last week that the sanctions, which he waited too long to impose, didn’t work, as Putin enters his seventh day of ramping up his horrific assault on Ukraine.

In the alternate universe, a record number of new jobs were created last year. In this universe, people returned to their old jobs that were artificially shut down by the government, but we’re still millions short of where we were before the pandemic.

In the alternate universe, the House chamber was filled with unmasked people. In our universe, many kids are still forced to wear masks in school, despite even “Saturday Night Live” now admitting they made very little difference.

In the alternate universe, alt-President Biden promotes buying American and cracking down on illegal immigration. In our universe, Trump did those things and Biden called him a racist and a xenophobe.

In the alternate universe, inflation can be cured by ordering businesses to lower their costs while also forcing them to raise wages and pay much higher taxes. In our universe, inflation is caused by the government printing too much money, and wages and taxes actually are two of the biggest costs of doing business.

In the alternate universe, COVID is not a reason for Americans to be divided. In our universe, it’s a reason to demonize people, fire them from their jobs, and refuse them medical care.

In the alternate universe, Biden denounces illegal immigration and skyrocketing crime and calls for more funding for police and gets standing ovations from the Democrats. In our universe, Biden opened the borders, denounced our border guards as whip-cracking racists, wants to tear down the border wall, and secretly disperses illegal aliens by plane all over America under cover of darkness. And the crime waves are in Democrat-run cities where leftist DA’s have actually made crime legal while Democrats defunded the police. Democrats applauding our Biden for vowing to crack down on illegal immigration and fund the police would be like a gang of arsonists applauding their leader for vowing to do something about the problem of how it’s getting really hot in here.

In the alternate universe, President Biden will take action to reduce the cost of insulin. In our universe, Biden reversed a Trump executive order that reduced the cost of insulin.

In the alternate universe, Biden will take swift action to fix long-standing problems like infrastructure and veterans’ care that in our universe dragged on for eight long years under Obama and Biden.

In the alternate universe, “Build Back Better” and the federal takeover of elections are apparently still alive.

In the alternate universe, the Trump-era tax cut benefited only the ultra-rich. In our universe, it gave a huge amount of tax relief to the poor and middle class, with many having their income tax burdens eliminated entirely, while the rich ended up paying a larger percentage of taxes.

The alt-VP Harris stands and applauds the ideas of cracking down on crime and funding the police. Our VP Harris raised money for a fund to bail rioters out of jail.

In our universe, the people looking at an empty chair where family members used to be included the families of 13 military members needlessly killed in Afghanistan. Since they weren’t mentioned, I assume (and hope) that never happened in their universe.

And the most glaring differences of all: in the alternate universe, the state of the union is strong, and President Biden is competent, popular, gets thunderous applause and standing ovations, and can talk for a solid hour. Oh, and Ukrainians are known as “Iranians.”

Now, the big question: How do I get out of this universe and live in that one until 2024?

For those who missed it or want more, here’s a full transcript…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/full-text-biden-state-of-the-union-2022-transcript/ar-AAUunzu

Here’s video of the SOTU Address from whatever dimension it came from…

https://youtu.be/kTPN1sOkWs4

And here are some other reactions by people whose TVs were also apparently picking up the signal from The Twilight Zone. Here’s the Republican response by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds…

https://youtu.be/Ox47VV0olo0

(Incidentally, I don’t think it’s fair that these responses always get slammed for seeming stilted or underwhelming, no matter which party gives them. The speakers have to follow a SOTU with all the pomp, ceremony and mandatory applause and standing ovations, then speak into a camera in an empty room. It’s like being a stand-up comic who has to do his act with no audience.)

I didn’t watch this yet (my brain can only take so much abuse in one night), but here’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s SOTU response from the far, far hinterlands of the far left (Hmm, comments have been turned off for this video. Wonder why?)

https://youtu.be/w7z2MTqDon4

Even liberal media outlets had a hard time sounding enthusiastic, although they tried, bless their hearts…

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/03/02/the-liberal-media-reaction-over-bidens-state-of-the-union-was-forced-predictabl-n2603917?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky3

Spencer Brown at Townhall.com shares eight (only eight?) of the most absurd moments from the SOTU, from Chuck Schumer aborting a standing ovation to Biden warning us that a wall can’t keep out a vaccine to his praise for a “pound of Ukrainian people” who are “ready to fight with every inch of energy they have.” Apparently, they speak a slightly different language in the alternate universe.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/03/02/eight-absurd-moments-from-bidens-first-state-of-the-union-address-n2604012

Kira Davis had the official Redstate.com response:

https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2022/03/02/redstates-official-sotu-response-delivered-by-kira-davis-editor-at-large-n530282

Here are some comments from pundits, plus a CNN instant poll that showed that 41% of viewers had a “very positive” reaction. That sounds good until you learn it’s 10 points lower than last year’s and the lowest “very positive” rating in the past 15 years.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/03/02/even-cnn-had-to-acknowledge-the-problem-with-the-sotu-numbers-for-biden-n530351

And for those who enjoy conservative snark, scroll to the bottom and read toward the top as you relive the SOTU through the various live-blogs of it at Redstate, Townhall and PJ Media…

https://redstate.com/liveblog/2022/03/01/redstate-live-blogs-joe-bidens-first-state-of-the-union-address-n221

https://townhall.com/liveblog/2022/03/01/townhall-live-blogs-joe-bidens-first-state-of-the-union-n222

https://pjmedia.com/liveblog/2022/03/01/drunkblogging-the-2022-state-of-the-union-address-n219

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its sixth day Tuesday, with Putin showing no signs of backing off despite worldwide condemnation, accusations of war crimes, and banking and oil sanctions devastating the Russian economy and sending the ruble plummeting in value. Even Switzerland dropped its famous neutrality and cut off Russian access to Swiss banks.

This is the link for the latest bulletins from Fox News:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-day-6

With his belief that this would be a quick and easy invasion blowing up in his face, Putin seems to be getting more dangerously angry and irrational. He’s even put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. This article by Dennis Santiago at Redstate.com contains valuable information about the relative strengths of the Russian and Ukrainian forces, Putin’s thinking and his tragic miscalculations, and what should be done next to get him to climb down.

https://redstate.com/dennis_santiago/2022/02/28/analysis-as-russias-ukraine-campaign-struggles-the-west-must-neuter-putins-nuclear-threat-n529736

Here are some of the latest developments: The European Union accepted Ukraine’s emergency application for admission, which would allow it access to Europe’s power grid and ally it further with the rest of Europe against Russia.

Satellite images show Russia has sent a 40-mile convoy of “killing machines” to threaten the capital city of Kyiv, and Russia state media are warning of imminent attacks on the city.

Elon Musk sent a shipment of his Starlink Internet terminals to Ukraine at President Zelinsky’s request, to restore Internet access cut off by Russia.

https://nypost.com/2022/02/28/elon-musks-starlink-satellite-internet-terminals-arrive-in-ukraine/

There is a claim that a militia of mercenaries known as the Wagner Group has been flown in from Africa with orders to kill President Zelinsky and other prominent Ukrainians. Key line: “The Kremlin once again denied it has any influence over Wagner and suggested that (its reputed boss Yevgeny) Prigozhin only provides catering services to the Russian government.” I assume that “catering to Putin” means assassinating people.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10559811/Putins-militia-orders-kill-Zelensky-Blood-thirsty-mercenaries-Wagner-Group-revealed.html

The CEO of Shell Oil announced that Shell is cutting its business dealings with Russia and pulling out of the Nord Steam 2 pipeline project.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/shell-is-pulling-out-of-russia-dumping-gazprom-deal

Here’s a photo that went viral that gives you an idea of Putin’s unstable frame of mind.

https://twitchy.com/sarahd-313035/2022/02/28/recent-photo-of-russian-president-vladimir-putin-suggests-that-theres-something-to-all-those-rumors-that-hes-losing-whats-left-of-his-mind/

And as I always remind you, breaking news from a war zone often is unreliable. It can turn out to be an honest mistake or well-disguised propaganda. For instance, we already mentioned that the Ukrainian troops on Snake Island who defied the Russian warship were captured, not killed as originally reported. We’ve also learned that the former Miss Ukraine hadn’t actually joined the fighting but just posed with a prop rifle in a show of support. But all things considered, I'd still rather have her fighting beside me than Justin Trudeau. There are other stories, too, that we didn’t cover but that have since been debunked or amended. The National Pulse rounds up a few, some of them actually from movies or video games.

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/02/28/pro-ukraine-propaganda-floods-social-media/

As he often does, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates succinctly summarized the Ukrainian crisis, telling CNN’s Fareed Zakaria “Our long holiday from history is over.” He should know, having long shaped the structure that suddenly collapsed when Putin savagely invaded an inoffensive, neighboring republic. In a flash, seven decades, innumerable precedents, conventions, untold trillions in defense expenditures, and a pervasive sense of peace vanished in the roar of missiles reaching their targets.

The burning question: How long could the courageous but over-matched Ukrainians hold out before Admiral Nelson’s famous dictum caught up? “Numbers annihilate.”

But from the conflict’s first hours, Ukrainian fighters seemed determined to walk a hero’s path running from Bastogne and the Alamo back to Thermopylae. Thirteen Ukrainian border guards achieved immortality when their wonderfully obscene response to a Russian warship quickly galvanized global websites. There were startling reports of Russian transports being shot down, of armored columns ambushed and destroyed. Yet even as the bristling combined arms force bore down on him, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelenskiy provided a classic demonstration of courage under fire, coolly dismissing an American attempt to evacuate him. “I need ammunition, not a ride!”

Defying early assumptions of Russian cyber-war, the global info-sphere instead carried resounding messages praising Zelensky and his embattled cohorts, while universally condemning Soviet-style aggression. That’s the thing about genuine heroism: Its blinding light immediately reveals and shames anything less. That is why, as the war grinds into its second week, Vladimir Putin is in real trouble. Not only has the outside world turned against him - the ruble plunging to all-time lows - but internal dissent is growing, thousands of peace demonstrators arrested on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg. A star Russian athlete even used his television time to write “No war, please” on the camera lens. Were these people no longer afraid of the gulag and the dreaded secret police?

Far more serious was Putin’s chilling announcement that Russian nuclear forces had been placed on high alert. Was this anything more than an obvious intent to intimidate, invoking the nuclear genie to distract from Russia’s lack of progress on the ground? If so, it didn’t deter Germany - Europe’s center of gravity - from announcing that it would now support the Ukrainian resistance with anti-tank and antiaircraft weapons. Berlin’s stunning reversal - from what had been a deeply ambiguous neutrality - may have been a mortal blow to Putin’s reputation for winning by intimidation. With growing diplomatic and economic reversals now added to military ineffectiveness, there were immediate questions about the strongman’s own survival. Senior American officials like Condoleezza Rice were even wondering about Putin’s mental stability.

So is he crazy or just incapable of making sound decisions? Either way, one looked for answers from Russian history, where popular “elections” mostly ratify previous decisions of the ruling elites. So it was that Nikita Khrushchev, in October, 1962, boldly gambled and placed Soviet missiles in Cuba: but he was forced to withdraw them when confronted by President Kennedy, backed by American military might. Not many months later, Khrushchev was gone, quietly replaced because of his “adventurism” in Cuba. So why should Putin’s fate be any different?

That answer may well depend on the battles now immediately before us. Russia can reinforce its advantages in armor, artillery, hyper-baric rockets and long-range fires to trash major population centers like Kharkov and Kiev - all of it viewed in exquisite detail by an aroused global audience. NATO countries on Ukraine’s borders can reinforce the resistance by covert infiltration routes - also subject to Russian counter-attacks and increasing risks of escalation. The courageous persistence of Ukrainian fighters has already been established: but how long before Nelson’s Law takes effect? Can they win a longer insurgency?

It is a dangerous time, perhaps our most perilous since the Missiles of October, but there is no conceivable way of turning back. Watching these events unfold over this momentous weekend, I kept comparing Putin to the mad Inspector Javert from “Les Miz.” A single tune kept replaying in my mind and perhaps you heard it too:

Do you hear the people sing?

Singing a song of angry men?

It is the music of a people

Who will not be slaves again!

NOTE: Colonel Allard is the author of Command, Control and the Common Defense, winner of the 1991 National Security Book Award. After leaving active duty, he became an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News

The far-left group Occupy Democrats has come out strongly in support of armed Ukrainians using personal weapons, including automatic rifles (I’m guessing they mean semis) to stand up against the Russian invaders.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/02/25/occupy-democrats-are-big-supporters-of-a-heavily-armed-citizenry-in-ukraine/

So if you’re keeping score, to leftwing Democrats, the Second Amendment is good – but only in Ukraine.

And an armed citizenry is the best defense against tyranny and invasion. But only in Ukraine.

Don't Blame Trump

February 27, 2022

For anyone foolish or desperate enough to try to blame Donald Trump for Vladimir Putin choosing to invade Ukraine while Biden is in office (looking at you, Hillary), here’s some video from a 2018 NATO summit meeting where then-President Trump called out European leaders to their faces for not contributing enough to beef up NATO defenses and for enriching Putin by letting themselves be so dependent on Russian oil and gas.

https://www.westernjournal.com/video-trump-2018-spreads-like-wildfire-proof-wanted-hurt-russia-nato-nothing/

FYI: If you’d like to know who’s really responsible for Putin’s well-stocked arsenal and his sway over European nations through control of their fuel supply, read this:

https://the-pipeline.org/how-the-greens-brought-war-to-ukraine/

It’s about how the environmentalist Green Party movement became so powerful in Europe that grown-up politicians quaked when Greta Thunberg said, “How DARE you” to them. They started shutting down clean nuclear power plants and relying on windmills and sunbeams. And when Biden decided the climate was a bigger threat than Russia and shut down our energy industry, Europe (and, incredibly, the US) were left dependent on Russian oil.

And here’s Mark Thiessen with the American perspective on how Biden’s war on fossil fuels has weakened America and strengthened Putin. I’m amazed that this appears in the Washington Post.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/02/24/biden-climate-gas-prices-russia-sanctions

A reminder: we can’t offer up-to-the-minute news on Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but Fox News has continuously updated bulletins here:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/ukraine-russia-invasion-news

As Russia’s assault on Ukraine’s capital city of Kyiv continues, it’s going slower and much bloodier than Putin probably expected. The hard fighting, reports of rising deaths (including children), and video of destruction of civilian areas of the city are also inflaming opposition to Putin, even among Russians who have been cowed and misinformed by their state media.

If Putin thought the Ukrainians would be awed by his mighty firepower and meekly surrender like a Russian TV reporter swooning over his bare torso, he gravely miscalculated. Many are staying to fight with personal weapons or rifles provided by the government, and the Ukraine military is also holding defense lines and drawing blood. It’s always risky to accept any breaking news from a war zone, particularly when both sides have good reason to spin the facts their way. But Ukraine claims they have inflicted casualties of 2800 Russian troops, 80 tanks and 516 armored vehicles just in the first two days, making it one of the costliest military actions Russia has ever suffered in such a short time.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is proving to be a brave and inspiring leader, refusing an offer from the US to help him evacuate. He reportedly told a senior US intelligence official, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.” Meanwhile, Biden’s sanctions on Russia were so weak that the Russian stock market rose after he announced them. And he’s still resisting demands from Republicans that he restart our fossil fuel and pipeline projects he shut down, to take away the money and influence Russia has garnered by selling oil. Some US pundits are asking if we could trade Presidents with Ukraine, but I seriously doubt Ukraine would go for that deal.

It sounds as if the person who made the most accurate prediction of how an invasion might go down was Kurt Schlichter. In addition to being an attorney and humorous topical columnist, he’s also a retired military officer who served in Eastern Europe. He wrote recently that he knew Ukrainian fighters, and they were really tough and would not simply surrender and let Russia take over their homeland. Here are some heroic examples of what Putin is finding himself up against:

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/25/this-is-courage-in-ukraine-n527868

As Russia discovered in Afghanistan, it’s one thing to invade another country, but it’s quite another to hold it when everyone around you is willing to die to kill you.

Hats off to this interviewer

February 26, 2022

Hats off to Irish news interviewer David McCullagh for giving our media a lesson in how to deal with a subject who’s clearly lying to their faces. This article about his interview with Russia’s ambassador to Ireland contains some good background on the Ukraine-Russia conflict, but is also a primer on Russia's phony rationalizations for the invasion and how to destroy them live on air.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ireland-news-host-rte-mccullagh-russia-ambassador-filatov-ukraine-war-invasion

Here’s an excerpt that’s a textbook example of a lying government official caught dead to rights: The Russian ambassador claims the invasion was “not our choice.” McCullagh fires back, “Your forces have invaded a sovereign nation. It absolutely was your choice.”

“Well, it was not our preferable choice…”

How to help Ukraine

February 26, 2022

If you would like to help the men, women and children of Ukraine who have been forced to flee their homes to escape the Russian attack, Fox News has information on three vetted charities that are rushing aid to the refugees:

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/how-help-people-ukraine

Prof. Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit also has a suggestion sent along by a friend: the US should offer to take in up to a million Ukrainian refugees. He says that since Eastern Europeans vote overwhelmingly rightwing, it would be interesting to see the Democrats suddenly turn on a dime and argue that America just can’t accept any more immigrants and refugees.

https://instapundit.com/505550/

Reeder: RIP Sally Kellerman

February 26, 2022

I’m sad to have to report that Sally Kellerman, the beautiful, lanky actress with the smoky voice, died Thursday at 84 after a five-year battle with dementia.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/sally-kellerman-dead-hot-lips-houlihan-mash-1235099282/

She made her movie debut in 1957 in the crime drama “Reform School Girl,” and over her long career, appeared in many TV shows, movies and plays, from “That Girl” and “Star Trek” in the ‘60s through “Columbo,” “Evening Shade” and “Murder She Wrote,” all the way up to “The Young and the Restless,” for which she scored a Daytime Emmy nomination in 2015. Her movies included “The Player,” “Brewster McCloud,” “A Little Romance,” “The Boston Strangler” and “Last of the Red Hot Lovers.”

But of course, she will always be remembered for her two most famous roles: Maj. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in the original movie version of “M*A*S*H” and the teacher Rodney Dangerfield fell for in the classic comedy, “Back To School.” She said when fans saw her in public, they either yelled, “Hey, Hot Lips!” or Rodney’s famous pickup line, “Call me when you have no class!”

Since you count on me for the information other obituaries leave out, here are two cool stories about Sally Kellerman: She recalled being nervous about doing the famous nude scene in “M*A*S*H” where Hawkeye and Trapper dropped her shower tent as a prank. To help capture a genuine look of shock and surprise on her face, when the tent fell, Gary “Radar O’Reilly” Burghoff (the only actor to repeat his character on the TV series) was standing beside the camera, also naked.

Also, of special interest to me, since I co-wrote “Hollywood Hi-Fi,” the history of celebrity singer records (http://www.hollywoodhifi.com), is that Sally Kellerman was a terrific singer. That was her original ambition, and her smoky voice was so good, Norman Granz of the legendary jazz label Verve offered her a contract when she was only 18. But she was too young and lacking in self-confidence to sign. After establishing herself as an actress, she returned to singing in jazz clubs and cabarets and put out two albums, "Roll With the Feelin''' in 1972 and "Sally" in 2009. One of her biggest regrets was rejecting a role in a Robert Altman movie that later turned out to be "Nashville" and would've given her both a prestige role and a chance to sing on screen.

To show how good she was, here's 15 minutes of her cabaret act from 1977. RIP to a beautiful and talented lady.

https://youtu.be/LbVYY7X1XR4h

Deep in Denial

February 25, 2022

Speaking of cocooned leftists who are too deep in denial to accept the reality that there’s evil in the world worse than someone who doesn’t respect their preferred pronouns, the responses on Twitter to Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine have revealed them like a sudden spotlight. Nick Arama at Redstate.com rounded up some of the most jaw-droppingly insulated responses from people who are so spoiled and clueless that they see a potential genocide as an excuse to score “dunk” points about white privilege or unvaccinated people.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/02/24/crazy-meter-breaks-with-liberal-hot-takes-on-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-n527581

But when it comes to clueless leftists who are utterly impermeable to reality, bow down before the queen, Joy Behar of “The View.” Her biggest concern seems to be that World War III might put a crimp in her plans to vacation in Italy.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/02/24/joy-behar-has-a-pretty-selfish-take-on-what-the-people-in-ukraine-are-going-through-right-now-n2603773

If it's any consolation, I'm sure there are millions of Americans who will also be very disappointed if Joy Behar can't go on vacation.

If you have never studied war, then the Russian aerial bombardments might have been shocking. So too the long lines of would-be refugees jamming every highway; even more, the horrid specter of blood-stained Ukrainian citizens desperately seeking to save their lives.

But having studied war for most of my adult life, particularly Soviet and Russian military science, the opening hours of the attack contained few surprises. Just as western analysts expected, the Russians opened with heavy missile bombardments against command-and-control targets. Shortly thereafter, armored forces moved smartly across border outposts, rapidly converging into strategic axes from three different directions. Their probable objective: a decapitation strike aimed at the capital of Kiev, where a Russian puppet would presumably be installed.

However, my dominant initial impressions were that the initial phases of the attack seemed short of the massive firepower - particularly artillery, the vaunted Red God of War - that has always commenced attacks since the Soviet era. As the progenitors of information warfare - explored as “radio-electronic combat” - one also would have expected Internet websites, GPS and all social media across Ukraine to have “gone dark” from the war’s first moments. Why did it not?

Remembering my days at NBC News, I watched as my latter-day successors sketched out the advances of Russian combat formations, some of which seemed more tentative than an all-out blitzkrieg. Occasionally, someone would note that Ukraine is one of the largest countries in Europe. Actually, it’s even larger than Texas, which is where I live. Has anyone remembered to check the scale of those maps, remembering how quickly terrain can challenge even the most mobile ground forces? Remember above all: countries may be easy to invade but much tougher to conquer, particularly against insurgents who are well-armed and intent on selling their lives dearly. Bottom Line: We haven’t yet seen Russian “shock and awe” so stay tuned!

That said: My dominant Day One impression was that Joe Biden is horribly miscast as a wartime president. In his televised remarks from the East Room on Thursday, he mostly conveyed the impression that he was channeling Neville Chamberlain, holding out the forlorn hope that economic sanctions might achieve “peace in our time.” For the record, folks, there are only two kinds of sanctions: the ones that don’t work at all; and the ones that do but cause wars. So which ones are you announcing, Mr. President, and why on earth do you think Vladimir Putin regards you and the people around you with anything less than contempt? My friend Fred Fleitz, formerly Chief of Staff for the National Security Council, said yesterday that Biden needs to sack most of his national security team “because they are second stringers.” Former Speaker Newt Gingrich was one of several Fox analysts to recommend that Biden reverse his support of climate change and use American energy capabilities to drive Russian oil companies out of business.

I smiled when the Speaker said that. While teaching at West Point, I invited a visiting Texas oilman to tell my cadets something I hope they still remember. Raring back in his cowboy boots, the oilman pulled out his wad of greenbacks, brandishing a hundred-dollar bill. “You boys need to remember that the ultimate form of American power is NOT you and your M-16. It’s this thing right here!” Amen!

NOTE: Colonel Allard is the author of Command, Control and the Common Defense, winner of the 1991 National Security Book Award. After leaving active duty, he became an on-air military analyst for the networks of NBC News

Russia Advances on Kyiv

February 25, 2022

Because of the fast-moving nature of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I can’t give up-to-the-minute updates in our newsletter. But Fox News has a page that features the latest bulletins. Bookmark it and check in regularly to stay up to date:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russian-forces-attack-kyiv-explosion-wracks-ukrainian-capital-live-updates

In the meantime, please keep praying for the people of Ukraine. To cover what’s happened since yesterday:

Russia launched an air, sea and ground attack, targeting the capital of Kyiv and the second-largest city Kharkov, and launching troops north from Crimea. President Zelensky reported 137 Ukrainians killed and over 300 wounded on the first day. Among the dead were 13 far-outnumbered soldiers on Snake Island, who when ordered to surrender by a Russian military ship, responded with a message that I can’t repeat here, but that I am sure will be remembered in the annals of military bravery for eternity.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/02/25/russians-ordered-thirteen-ukrainian-soldiers-on-snake-island-to-surrender-heres-n2603775

The Kremlin says that Putin is prepared to send a delegation to negotiate with Ukrainian officials about the “neutral” status of Ukraine, which basically means surrendering and installing a puppet government if they want to stop his army from killing innocent people.

Russia claims it’s now surrounded and cut off Kyiv from the outside world and captured an important cargo airport. It’s reported that saboteurs have entered some neighborhoods where shots and explosions have been heard. The mayor said, “The enemy wants to put the capital on its knees and destroy us." The city has entered a defensive posture, and it’s reported that Ukrainians are fighting back with personal arms.

The Ukrainian Foreign Affairs Minister said he’s working with the General Prosecutor's Office on a war crimes case against Russia, citing attacks on a kindergarten and an orphanage as examples. He said, "We are collecting this and other facts, which we will immediately send to the Hague. Responsibility is inevitable." That would be more comforting if I believed that a thug like Putin who would attack a kindergarten and an orphanage cares what the Hague says about him.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world, which used to be led by America, is still scrambling to formulate a response to the brutal Russian invasion.

https://www.westernjournal.com/nato-members-scramble-invoke-article-4-alliance-hasnt-taken-action-yet/

Some nations seem to be having difficulty even deciding which side they’re on. You’d think that Germany would have figured out by now that invading other people’s countries is bad.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/02/24/germany-spits-in-the-face-of-the-united-states-again-dares-biden-to-challenge-them-n527336

I am trying VERY hard not to criticize our President during a military crisis, but Ukraine’s President isn’t subject to that rule. He ripped the leaders of other powerful nations for “watching from afar” and imposing toothless sanctions while Ukrainians are fighting for their lives against a massive invading army.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-president-throws-shade-biden-us-afar

Let’s just say that Biden’s response was not favorably reviewed as inspiring. It was noted that he contradicted his previous statements by claiming that he always knew sanctions wouldn’t deter Putin from invading.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2022/02/24/after-sanctions-on-russia-fail-biden-lies-about-why-he-imposed-them-n1561649

But then he went ahead and declared that there would be more sanctions. But they won’t include sanctions on Russia’s oil industry which provides the greatest source of revenue for funding Putin’s military. That’s because too many other nations are dependent on Russian oil.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/us-will-not-target-russia-energy-sector-with-sanctions

They’re so dependent on Russia for oil partly because they can’t get it from us, since Biden declared war on our domestic fuel industry in the name of “climate change,” a war he’s refusing to call off, even under a court injunction to do so.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/climate-change-biden-administration-freezes-new-oil-and-gas-drilling-leases-after-court-rules-against-key-tool/ar-AAU7HqZ?ocid=winp-st

...And even though it would give us a freer hand to deal with Russia if we weren’t also now dependent on buying over 600,000 barrels a day of Russian oil. As the Independent Sentinel reports, the Keystone Pipeline would have delivered 850,000 barrels a day, but Biden shut that project down and refuses to restart it.

https://www.independentsentinel.com/22-million-spent-daily-on-russian-oil-keystone-would-have-ended-it/

In short, it’s looking as if there will be a more effective response to Putin’s aggression from the general public than from our voluntarily-neutered leaders. For instance, despite Russia’s harsh oppression of dissenters (Putin is even less tolerant of dissent than Justin Trudeau), some Russians are willingly risking jail to take to the streets and protest the invasion.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/putin-made-have-overplayed-his-hand-by-invading-ukraine-experts

And while Putin has threatened the world with his notorious Russian cyberterrorists, the shadowy hacker group Anonymous seemingly has declared cyber war on Putin. They released a statement directed toward the Russian people saying that they know it’s hard for them to speak out against their government and that their planned smashing of Russia’s Internet servers is aimed entirely at Putin and his government, not them. Never thought I'd be on the side of Anonymous, but in this case, the enemy of our enemy is our friend.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/hacking-collective-anonymous-declare-war-putin-russia-invades-ukraine

A reader asks:

if AG Garland was to interfere with the Durham report, then wouldn't it protect Hillary Clinton instead of old Joe?

– MJ McCauley

Thanks, MJ, for your question. Although the Russia Hoax appears to have originated with Hillary and her close associates, Garland is well aware that the Durham investigation potentially implicates two U.S. Presidents, not just one scheming, pantsuited wanna-be. This will require some set-up.

As we’ve discussed, and as Charlie Martin analyzes in a new VIP report for PJ Media (“Quick and Dirty Durham Explainer”), one huge question is how Rodney Joffe’s company, Neustar, got its “sensitive arrangement” to “access and maintain” the servers of the Executive Office of the President (EOP). This access began under Obama during the campaign and continued during the transition after Trump’s unexpected win and, somehow, even into Trump’s term of office. So, we have to ask: how did Joffe win the contract to do this?

And what information was gathered? Durham’s motion just mentions DNS (Domain Name Service) lookups. These are what look up the interminably long internet addresses we’re really calling when we use the shorter, easier-to-remember-and-type domain names. As Martin explains this, it’s like an automatic Directory Assistance.

Joffe would retrieve these DNS lookups from the White House and send them to Team Nerd (that’s what I call them) at Georgia Tech, where they already had an existing project to look at large amounts of internet data and where they were trying to win a Pentagon contract –- that they later got. Their assignment: to develop a narrative tying Trump to Russia, to give to the “VIPs” Durham identifies as people at Perkins Coie and the Clinton campaign.

This kind of internet traffic is usually “anonymized,” which means people’s identities are concealed. But with his intelligence background, Martin says he’d “bet money” that anonymization can be reversed.

One fake narrative that ended up in the hands of the FBI and CIA was that Trump and his associates were using special “rare” Russian cell phones in the vicinity of the White House. Durham’s motion says the special counsel has no found no evidence for this allegation, but, of course, it didn’t have to be real to be weaponized against Trump at the time.

The rest of Martin’s article deals with details that we’ve already examined and will be familiar to you. He says Durham’s recent motion shows he “is laying out a case that Perkins Coie, through Sussmann and with the active participation of Marc Elias, purposefully MANUFACTURED EVIDENCE against Trump that factored into the four-year investigation into ‘Russian collusion.’” He wraps up with questions: “How many crimes is this? I honestly don’t know,” he says. “Perjury? Mail fraud? How many ways does it hit the Espionage Act? For mere mortals, it would be a long time in prison.”

Yes, prison. Martin’s background is intelligence, but he talked to “several lawyer friends” who told him this looks as though MANY laws were broken --- “too many to list.” The consensus was that there’s enough to “send mere politically unconnected mortals to Leavenworth for the rest of their lives.”

https://pjmedia.com/columns/charlie-martin/2022/02/23/quick-and-dirty-durham-explainer-n1561262

As mentioned, that report is “VIP.” But we also found an interesting piece –- more great reporting by Paul Sperry –- about Rodney Joffe that touches on his relationship with (yes) President Obama. The tech executive managed to have a “sensitive arrangement” with Obama’s White House despite being involved in a mail-order scam that sparked federal and state investigations.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/02/17/the_checkered_past_of_the_fbi_computer_contractor_who_spied_on_trump_816761.html

As Sperry points out, to get such a contract, Joffe had to pass a personal background check and obtain the government’s highest security clearances. The FBI has denied comment, but one factor could be that the scam was decades ago, and Joffe “reinvented himself” as a cybersecurity expert during the 1990s.

Still, he got involved with a company called PlasmaNet Inc. that has had to pay millions of dollars in fines for deceptive advertising concerning an online lotto scam. He’s even still listed on their board of directors. In spite of this, he was able to move to Washington DC and land “lucrative, security-related contracts with the FBI and Pentagon requiring top secret clearance.”

In 2006, he joined Neustar, which secures and maintains internet servers for federal agencies, including the White House. His position gave him access to the above-mentioned DNS logs, though these are proprietary. And he started advising White House officials, including President Obama, on cybersecurity matters. So now we’re starting to see how Joffe was acquainted with the President, how he might have landed a “sensitive” contract like this and how Obama might possibly have had knowledge of what he was doing to defeat Trump.

“By 2016,” Sperry writes, “[Joffe’s] access to proprietary internet logs became of interest to operatives for the Hillary Clinton campaign, who appear to have offered him a plum job in a Clinton presidency for help on an opposition-research project on Donald Trump.” (Recall that Joffe also mined data from Trump Tower and Trump’s Central Park West apartment building.)

Sperry does not speculate here about how Clinton’s “operatives” learned of his access to these proprietary logs.

Durham apparently has an August 2016 email from Joffe to Team Nerd privately confessing that he knows those “pings” between Trump Tower and Alfa Bank were “legitimate” and “just part of the marketing world.” He also has an email from Joffe’s lead researcher that says, “the only thing that drives us is that we just don’t like [Trump].” This researcher made it clear that he believed even the most salacious stories in the Steele “dossier.”

Sperry’s report lays out numerous criminal statutes that could be invoked. Really, it’s a must-read, as it has details we’re seeing for the first time about Durham’s focus on Joffe’s businesses, contracts and employees. It appears that Neustar as a company had “a level of involvement...that has not been explained.”

A career Justice Department official advised Sperry that Joffe “has friends in high places.” Not only did he personally advise President Obama, but he also was friendly with then-FBI Director James Comey and had done projects for him going back some 15 years. Logs show he visited Obama’s White House several times.

He’s admitted to a surprising lack of technical knowledge, saying he mostly just connects clients with resources they need. Durham apparently is looking at all those connections ---WHOEVER they might be. Given the ones we already know, plus the briefings Obama got from the FBI and CIA, it’s hard to believe that he and his Vice President were not aware on some level of what was going on. It’s up to Durham to get the evidence.

Of course, we've long known that both Obama and Biden were in the Oval Office on January 5, 2017 –- with Comey, Brennan, James Clapper, Susan Rice and Sally Yates –- for a briefing on the “Russia” narrative and the Mike Flynn case. (Recall that Yates was surprised to learn Obama already knew Flynn's calls had been intercepted.) This piece by Mollie Hemingway from May 2020 takes on enormous new significance today.

Oh, yes, Durham’s scope has to include Obama and Biden, and this is one prosecutor whom Biden had better not try to get fired.

https://thefederalist.com/2020/05/08/obama-biden-oval-office-meeting-on-january-5-was-key-to-entire-anti-trump-operation/

Invasion for Real

February 24, 2022

As you surely know by now, last night, Vladimir Putin made good on his threat to invade Ukraine. There’s no hair-splitting about it, it’s a full-on military invasion, including tanks and troops crossing the border and the shelling of the capital city of Kyiv, the largest military attack in Europe since World War II.

Before I get into the details, the most important thing I can do is ask you to join me in praying for the safety of the Ukrainian people, for the return of peace, and although this may sound like too much of a miracle to ask, for Vladimir Putin to realize the evil of his actions and change his heart and mind.

I’m not going to attempt to update you on what's happening, because events are moving too fast. For the latest, here’s a link to a Fox News feed of continually-updated bulletins:

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/russia-ukraine-us-allies-sanctions

As of this writing (early Thursday morning), there are reports of dozens of people dead. The leader of a Ukrainian emergency response organization said that it appeared Russia was targeting military locations and not civilians, although there is a crush of panicking civilians trying to evacuate. He said so far, Putin was doing exactly what he said he would do. His best case scenario was that he would just attack the military, install a Russian puppet government and pull back without targeting civilians.

Putin threatened that any countries that interfered in his invasion of Ukraine would face “the greatest consequences in history,” not making clear whether he meant cyber warfare, nuclear attack or something else. He also claimed he was reversing the “Nazification” of Ukraine, a bizarre claim considering Ukraine has a Jewish President and a large Jewish population. I wonder where he could have gotten the idea that an autocratic communist could justify crushing his political opponents simply by branding them as “Nazis” first.

Some who watched his TV appearance said he didn’t seem like the same Putin who’s smoothly played the media and attended summit meetings in recent years. No, he seemed like what he has always been: a former KGB thug and Stalin admirer who wants to reassemble the Soviet Union police state. That shouldn’t be a surprise, but too few people these days know real history. Is it only a coincidence that Putin waited to strike until February 23rd, the anniversary of the first mass protests of 1917 that kicked off Russia’s communist revolution?

Just as Russian media misleads the Russian people into thinking that NATO is a threat to Russian sovereignty (it’s actually a purely defensive force against Russian aggression; believe me, nobody wants to take over Russia, certainly not in February), many young people in America have been misled by their teachers into thinking that communism is just “people sharing” and the real evil in the world is the United States.

Well, kids, those Russian tanks and missiles are your rude awakening to reality. You finally get to see the real face of communism that the rest of us grew up with. It’s a tough way to learn what “violence” and “imperialism” really are, and it's not someone building a Chick-Fil-A on your campus.

Putin will do whatever he wants without regard for any threats from the US or NATO. He’s seen weakness, he’s waited for the perfect moment to strike, and after seeing us leave Afghanistan, he’s decided that this is it. And he’s not the only one. Yesterday, China defended Ukraine as an independent nation only so they could warn the world not to confuse Taiwan with one of those because it’s part of China. They went on to make a not-so-veiled threat that implies Beijing has also been emboldened by our weak dealings with Afghanistan and is watching closely to see what Biden does about Ukraine.

At this moment, we’re still waiting to hear what Biden plans to do, although last night, he did reimpose the sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 oil pipeline that he inexplicably lifted less than a year ago.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-sanctions-nord-stream-2-pipeline-russia-germany

Maybe that will help bring down the estimated extra $1 billion a day that’s been flowing into Putin’s war chest thanks to high oil and gas prices brought about by targeting America’s fossil fuel industry.

The White House warned that due to the Ukraine crisis and coming sanctions, Americans might be seeing even higher prices at the gas pumps. Gosh, if only there were some way that America could produce its own oil and gas so we wouldn’t be reliant on imports from places like Russia.

There’s a lot more that I could say, but there’s an old tradition in America that’s been ripped up in recent years, but I think it deserves preservation: when America is facing a serious crisis abroad, Americans shouldn’t attack their own President. I think we all know why we, and the world, are in this situation now, so I don’t have to belabor it.

Let’s just say for now that I, and I hope all Americans, stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine and behind all those who stand up against this barbaric action by Vladimir Putin. And please, pray for Ukraine.


Romney was right about Russia

February 24, 2022

Say what you will about Sen. Mitt Romney, but he was right when he warned during the 2012 presidential campaign that Russia would be America’s biggest security threat. The media laughed, and Obama mockingly said that “the ‘80s called, and they want their foreign policy back.” Well, Romney just responded to the Ukraine invasion by saying, “The ‘80s called, and we didn’t answer.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/romney-obama-trump-biden-russias-invade-ukraine-80s-called-didnt-answer

He also rightly pointed out how predictable this was because Putin pulled similar assaults against Georgia and Crimea while Obama was in office, not that the media spent much time telling you about that.

Oh, but wait: Mitt just couldn’t get through his statement without taking a slam at Trump and trying to blame Putin’s aggression on Trump’s policy of putting “America First.” So close, Mitt…

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/02/23/mitt-romney-blames-shortsightedness-america-first-putin-invasion-ukraine/

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine might be dominating the news, but whenever one story is taking all the attention, it’s important to ask oneself what other events might be going on behind the scenes. In fact, Hillary Clinton is surely asking herself that very question, as she can’t count on leaks from the special counsel’s office to tell her. Like the rest of us, she has to glean it from the deliberately detailed motions he files.

Recall that Durham was criticized by lawyers for Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann for putting so much detail in his “speaking indictment” against their client and the later motion about conflicts of interest. They created some unintentional humor by saying their client hadn’t lied to the FBI, but even if he did (!), the lie was immaterial so the charge should be dropped. They also asked that Durham’s entire section on “Factual Background” be struck from the record. (One wonders if that might be because Sussmann attorney Latham & Watkins LLP, in a huge conflict of interest, also represents some of the other people mentioned.) But Durham easily defended his inclusion of this section as material to the case.

The question remains, though: why would Durham put so much detail into his court documents at this time, weaving threads with people who haven’t yet been indicted? Former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI Kevin Brock, in an opinion piece for The Hill, speculates that after a year-and-a-half and just a few indictments against seemingly peripheral players, Durham might be seen as unproductive, and that this perception might give Attorney General Merrick Garland enough cover to shut down his investigation, as we all know he’s longing to do.

Brock, in a fine example of understatement, writes, “The Biden DOJ is not friendly to the goals of Mr. Durham.”

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/595235-john-durham-sent-a-message-to-the-attorney-general-and-the?rl=1

“If Durham were to be terminated,” Brock says, “the American people might not even push back much since no one had a clue whether his investigation was bearing meaningful fruit.” But now, the dots he’s connected to the Clinton campaign create quite a stunning picture. Besides providing us with some hope that there might actually be accountability in Washington DC, he also made it much harder for the President or the AG to dump him. Brock offers a brief history lesson on Nixon’s firing of Watergate independent prosecutor Archibald Cox, first accepting the resignations of both the attorney general and deputy attorney general for refusing to fire Cox. At the request of the White House, FBI agents came and sealed off Cox’s office, and those of the AG and deputy AG as well.

(In an interesting bit of trivia, by law the solicitor general acts as attorney general when the AG and deputy AG are absent, so Nixon told HIM to carry out the firing of Cox, and he did. That man was Robert Bork, who was later nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan. Bork’s approval process was the first really vicious one –- setting the tone for future disgraceful hearings such as Clarence Thomas’s and Brett Kavanaugh’s –- with Sen. Ted Kennedy twisting Bork’s opinions to say that “Robert Bork’s America” would be one of “back-alley abortions” and “segregated lunch counters.” Bork was rejected by the Senate, leading to the coining of the word “borked.” One of the senators voting against his confirmation was...yes, Sen. Joe Biden.)

I digress. Anyway, that series of firings, nicknamed the “Saturday Night Massacre,” did not end well for Nixon. Here’s the story as told by the Washington Post in 1973, back when it was a real news organization.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/articles/102173-2.htm

Still, that situation was different from today’s, as Nixon’s AG, Elliot Richardson, and his deputy AG, William Ruckelshaus, were refusing to follow Nixon’s order to fire Cox. Biden’s AG, Merrick Garland, and his deputy AG, Lisa Monaco, are both such political hacks that either of them would fire Durham in a New York minute and not even wait for Biden’s order, thus leaving Biden in the clear. So it’s been important while we wait for the investigation to conclude that they not find any justification to fire him. That seems to be why we’re finally starting to hear compelling hints about the progress he’s made.

And now we know he’s put together the outlines of, in Brock’s words (which suit me fine), “a corrupt conspiracy by operatives linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. The exposed conspiracy allegedly made a contrived, fraudulent and shocking attempt to entice the FBI and CIA to use their powers against the rival Trump campaign and presidency.” It should be noted that this wasn’t just an “attempt,” as Durham will show the FBI and CIA actually were involved. (The CIA is "Agency - 2.")

When Durham included specifics about “Tech Executive – 1,” identified as Rodney Joffe of Neustar, he signaled that at least one person under investigation had “flipped” and given up some information. That’s because much of the “Factual Background” had to come to him either from Joffe or from someone he approached for help in putting together the fake Alfa Bank story.

Right now, Democrats are trying to say that Joffe wasn’t “really spying” because he had an actual contract –- as Lucy said to Charlie Brown, “a signed document” –- to maintain the servers he lifted information from. Joffe gave proprietary government data to a civilian third party. It’s STILL SPYING. Getting the contract is just the way in.

Brock makes the case that Durham must be allowed to continue his work, and says “there will be more squirming to come in powerful circles.”

Speaking of squirming, we said months ago that “journalists” at The New York Times and the Washington Post should have to give back the Pulitzer Prize they received for their coverage of the Russia Hoax. Now the editorial board at the New York Post concurs, in an epic commentary. The “collusion” was revealed as a hoax, they said, “Yet the damage had been done. The liberal media had ‘destabilized U.S. democracy’ more than Russia ever could, by feeding left-leaning Americans a constant, false narrative that their President was a sleeper agent.”

https://nypost.com/2022/02/20/the-absurd-russiagate-pulitzer-of-the-ny-times-and-washington-post/

Something else to enjoy in light of the recent revelations about the Clinton campaign: from Byron York, here’s “A Guide to Clinton Dirty Tricks.” York, with his chronological approach, ties it all together well.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/byron-yorks-daily-memo-a-guide-to-clinton-dirty-tricks

Finally, Margot Cleveland takes what Durham has told us so far that ties in Hillary and says there is more coming. “’Russia Russia Russia’ was a Hillary Clinton enterprise,” she says. We know this because the special counsel has subpoenaed the DNC, the Clinton campaign (same thing), Perkins Coie and, apparently, Fusion GPS. They’ve obtained tens of thousands of relevant documents and prepared reports on over 100 interviews, including one with “a former employee of the Clinton Campaign.”

As Cleveland points out, the media will continue trying to bury whatever comes out of this investigation. Durham knows, of course, the only “win” he (and we) will have is indictments that stick. These people need to pay for their deception and for what they put our country through.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/21/4-special-counsel-revelations-tying-spygate-to-hillary-clintons-campaign/

Mask Hypocrisy

February 21, 2022

Those who insist on forcing children to wear masks indefinitely while flouting their own rules are not all big name politicians and celebrities. Sure, there are plenty of those, and their excuses are as feeble as they are hypocritical.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/02/19/is-la-mayor-eric-garcetti-for-real-with-this-response-on-mask-hypocrisy-n2603535

Even their pet “fact-checkers” come off as clowns when they try to “ackshully…” their staggeringly obvious hypocrisy and privilege away.

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2022/02/19/amazing-politifact-twists-into-a-pretzel-to-debunk-comparisons-of-unmasked-super-bowl-fans-to-kids-in-school/

But mask hypocrisy is hardly confined to A-listers. At a Montgomery County, Virginia, school board meeting, a mom accused a mask zealot board member of hypocrisy, proving it with a photo lifted from Facebook of the member maskless in a crowd.

The board member, like all petty tyrants from Justin Trudeau on down who claim they cherish “democracy” but hate it when the people actually speak up to them, accused the mom of libeling and disparaging (apparently, those are now synonyms for “describing”) a member of the school board, claimed she wasn’t focusing on “issues pertinent to children,” and ordered her to sit down. When she refused, he told a police officer to escort her from the building.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/social-media-erupts-after-school-board-member-storms-out-of-meeting-confronted-by-maskless-photo

But then, another school board member intervened, saying, "She should be allowed to say her piece. I've had to listen to people come and criticize me." At that, the first member stormed out of the room in a huff. Funny, I’m old enough to remember when liberals loved “speaking truth to power.” But then, that was before they came into power.

From the tsunami of support that mom is receiving locally and online, I bet she could easily replace that arrogant school board member in the next election, if she wants the job.

Lesley Stahl of 60 MINUTES owes President Trump a big-time apology.

For anyone who still hasn’t seen why she needs to apologize, here’s the video…

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/02/busted-will-vicious-leftist-lesley-stahl-apologize-america-trump-caught-lying-part-cover-largest-political-scandal-us-history/

Here’s the transcript…

https://www.detroitnews.us/2022/02/14/lesley-stahls-infamous-60-minutes-trump-interview-resurfaces-after-durham-filing-supports-spying-claim/

She needs to apologize for “correcting” Trump for saying he’d been spied on. We say this for a number of reasons, but mainly because special counsel John Durham says in court documents that he has evidence showing that Trump's campaign and transition actually WERE SPIED ON.

Think Lesley will realize her grievous error and come groveling? She won’t. She and her colleagues are too invested in thinking they’re right on this, even when they’re wrong, and The New York Times is helping them delude themselves. More on that in a moment.

Meanwhile, Mark Levin was blunt about the spying on his Sunday FOX News show, just as we have been for over five years: There’s been spying going on, he said, illegal and unconstitutional spying, against a President of the United States. “[Trump’s] campaign was spied on, his transition was spied on, his presidency was spied on. SPIED ON.” The media were part of it and are now trying to cover it up. It’s the greatest scandal in American history, Levin said, and Levin is a historian par excellence.

He speculated that President Obama “had to know a lot,” simply because he, Levin, knew a lot, and they both “read the same newspapers.” Plus, as President, Obama got briefings twice a day from the very agencies that were purportedly spying on a candidate who was in league with Putin. How could there not have been conversations about this? The idea that it wouldn’t have come up is preposterous.

Recall that Obama, in the last days of his presidency, gave the National Security Agency more latitude to share “globally intercepted personal communications” with the other 16 intel agencies, BEFORE applying privacy protections. Never mind the question of constitutionality –- why would he do this on his way out the door?

Levin spoke Sunday with former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe. The whole episode would be good to see if you missed it, but here’s the link just to that excellent interview.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/6298183244001#sp=show-clips

Ratcliffe notes that “the mainstream media is trying to re-use [the report] as a way to...tamp down the idea that the Trump campaign wasn’t spied on because they can’t find the specific reference to that in something that John Durham puts in a federal pleading.”

Here’s something we hadn’t heard: Ratcliffe told Levin that on February 5, 2020 he questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, asking him “point-blank” if, since an FBI agent had lied and there wasn’t really a proper justification to spy on the Trump campaign, the Trump campaign had been illegally spied on. Wray said yes, it had happened, and it was illegal and “totally unacceptable.”

When Ratcliffe became DNI, he asked to see all the evidence there was on Trump-Russia collusion, and there was none. “But we had all kinds of intelligence about FAKE Russia collusion” that was part of what Hillary’s team created to smear Trump. In fact, Ratcliffe declassified then-CIA Director John Brennan’s handwritten notes, in which Brennan mentions that he’s briefing Obama, Biden and Obama’s national security team on it.

He explained that even though some would like to dismiss this as political dirty tricks, when you start taking false allegations to government agencies such as the FBI and the CIA, trying to make it look authentic by opening an investigation, “that’s all sorts of criminal activity.” Lying, conspiracy, possibly racketeering. He knows Durham is looking at all that because they had conversations about it when he was DNI. But he emphasized that it can take a long time to put that kind of case together.

Durham is revealing more of the details now, Ratcliffe said, but the issue of whether or not this happened “has long been settled.”

Devin Nunes, in an appearance on FOX News’ “Sunday Morning Future” with Maria Bartiromo, pointed out that the committee he chaired, the then-Republican-led House Intelligence Committee, had carried out an investigation that led to 14 criminal referrals being made to the DOJ, even though they had to work largely with circumstantial evidence. This was because they “were misled or outright lied to by government officials.” Ratcliffe as DNI was able to declassify documents that now serve as direct evidence that Nunes’ committee should have seen.

Nunes also recalled the disinformation campaign that was run against members of his committee and all who disagreed with the Trump-Russia story. When anyone said the Trump-collaborating-with-Russia story was a hoax, the media would say, “Well, you must be a Russian agent!”

The difference now, he said, is that Durham is working with direct evidence. An example of new direct evidence Durham has would be the missing cell phones that have now turned up from IG Horowitz. (“Durham couldn’t even get to them...for a year and a half,” Nunes said.)

As Nunes explained it, “What they’ve creatively done here...is they set up legal avenues, using lawyers, to essentially launder all of this spying that was done and communicate to top FBI and DOJ officials. And Durham is starting to piece all of that together.” He hopes Durham can bring conspiracy charges, as he sees “a dozen or more laws” broken, “and people need to pay a price for it.”

“For sure by early 2016, all of the high-level people within the Obama-Biden administration knew about this,” he said. “...A lot of these Obama-Biden people have ‘failed upward,’ and they’re now in high-level positions...in the new Biden administration.” These include Biden’s national security adviser, the large-scale Russia Hoax perpetrator Jake Sullivan.

Nunes called this a “classic frame job” that went to all levels of government, “from the FBI to the Department of Justice, all the way through most of the intelligence agencies,” along with “the culpability and the involvement of the media.” This is what turned the already left-leaning media into “a propaganda machine for the left-wing party in America.”

Nunes said we don’t know what other direct evidence Durham has, but because he’s not putting out what he has in leaks but in very strongly-worded court documents, he finds it “hard to believe that he doesn’t have the goods on a lot of people.

“The question will be, how high can he go and who can he get? I think we all want to know that, but we need to let him do his job.”

So, at this point, why won’t Lesley Stahl finally apologize to President Trump for her mistake? Well, it most likely has to do with a collective self-delusion going on with the left. They cannot admit they were wrong about this. So The New York Times ran a laughable piece by Charlie Savage featuring Democrat talking points that he insists show Durham’s narrative to be “off track.” The usual suspects lapped it up: Vanity Fair, CNN, Jimmy Kimmel…

But Margot Cleveland saw it, too, and came back with a great commentary refuting it point by point. It’s a must-read...especially for Lesley Stahl, who still needs to apologize.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/02/18/5-media-lies-about-the-latest-special-counsel-revelations/