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Question: how does a regime focused on perpetuating and expanding its own power, such as the one currently occupying Washington DC, crush all opposition --- both actual and potential? According to Michael Anton, in his new commentary for American Greatness, it conducts what in national security parlance is a “psy-op,” or psychological operation. This is what seems to be going on right now in our country.

According to Anton, this form of propagandizing is done to demoralize --- THAT sure seems to be happening --- and also “to create other opportunities that otherwise might not present themselves.” For example, to create the opportunity to stop dissent, they first have to criminalize it. And since we supposedly live in a free country, criminalizing dissent poses a problem. This is America, so unless we’re young and brainwashed, we naturally resist attempts to restrict our free speech and persecute us for our politics. So the regime needs a big-time excuse to make that happen.

So, what do Americans hate and fear at least as much as incursions on their freedom? Terrorism. Mob rule. Civil strife. Civil WAR. Ah –- there we are! Americans hate the thought of civil war! In order to rein in political opposition and stifle dissent, an effective plan might be to make Americans extremely concerned about domestic terrorism and, ultimately, civil war.

And since our rulers are leftists, they have to make the perceived threat come from the right.

The main tool a government has for implementing such a propaganda plan is FACT-BASED LIES. It’s a fact that some conservatives truly believe we’re headed down the road to civil war, simply because the country is so divided –- as they say in divorce court, “irreparably broken.” If we’re talking about a violent rebellion, an insurrection, that’s a war that Anton very reasonably explains could not be won. Perhaps an “amicable divorce” as a last resort could be workable if it came to that, rather than give up our freedom, but not civil war, which he likens to “Bambi vs. Godzilla.” Check this out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s3UogfAGg0

It’s also a fact that a relative handful of people from the right really were involved in the January 6 riot in a way that went beyond walking into the Rotunda and taking selfies. But the threat they posed has been so greatly exaggerated by Congress and the media that many Democrats actually believe a small, unarmed group posed a serious threat to “our democracy” and were seriously trying to take over the government.

Of course, that is ludicrous. But I think we’re starting to see that there is nothing so ludicrous that people won’t believe it if it’s drummed into them by their political masters.

Even though there’s no domestic terrorism going on (at least on the right), the federal government has set up a “domestic terrorism unit” to go in search of it (at least on the right). They’re targeting “those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.” Who are those people? So-called “anti-vaxxers”? The unmasked? Parents opposed to CRT? Those who sign petitions for election audits? Conservative bloggers? Subscribers to the Mike Huckabee newsletter?

Importantly, since there are no acts of domestic terrorism being perpetrated by the right, the government is targeting motives, feelings, ideologies --- what people think, not what they do.

We’re even seeing examples in the media of commentaries that defend the use of this “psy-ops” strategy, in the name of “fighting disinformation.”

https://archive.is/3RaHe

Of course, the problem with this kind of content control is that “disinformation” or “misinformation” is anything the government authority says it is. For example, the story that the Bidens really have been in bed financially with Ukrainians, Russians and Chinese, as revealed on Hunter’s abandoned laptop, was quickly censored as “Russian disinformation” to keep voters from knowing about it right before the 2020 election. And it’s TRUE.

I would add that because of the two-tier “justice” system the left has established, people on their team politically who actually DO commit acts of domestic terrorism and other violent crimes against civil society will be released without bail, if they are dealt with by law enforcement at all.

Lately, the “buzz” being generated is that because of angry Americans on the right --- typically white and rural, and shamefully portrayed as “white supremacists” --- our country is being primed for civil war. To maintain this narrative, the left uses the closest thing it has to that: January 6. (We’ve said all along that the Capitol Hill riot played into the left’s hands so well that if it didn’t happen on its own, they would’ve had to make it happen. More about that tomorrow.) As Anton points out, “The regime is trying to brainwash everyone that January 6 was the equivalent of 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. But it’s not working --- three quarters of Americans think is was ‘a protest that went too far’ --- so the regime needs a Plan B.”

Plan B is to create that “buzz,” to talk up domestic strife and impending civil war –- even books are coming out about this –- so that Americans increasingly believe the threat and become frightened. If they’re frightened enough, they’ll start to accept more draconian measures that would normally be unthinkable. I would add that the virus is a great example of this; those who cower in fear of COVID will accept any amount of restriction: lockdowns, vaccine passports, employer mandates, an endless string of booster shots, social isolation, tracking/travel restrictions, censorship, detention or even denial of medical care for the unvaccinated. It’s just a matter of generating enough fear and dread. The same can be done to instill fear in political opponents; in fact, there’s even some overlap, as resistance to COVID mandates is being politicized.

So, if you’ve been hearing more about the threat or even inevitability of civil war lately, it’s not your imagination. And Anton warns that the feds behind this plan WANT you to step out of line --- to do something that they can paint as a prelude to starting a war. That gives them all the excuse they need to respond, with “more censorship, surveillance, no-knock raids, computer and records seizures, asset confiscation, frivolous (but deadly serious) criminal charges, endless pretrial detention, and draconian sentences for misdemeanors and non-crimes.”

So don't play into it. I would recommend thinking of this as a chess game. Our next move has to be "checkmate" at the ballot box.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/18/the-civil-war-psy-op/

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Biden's weakness

January 25, 2022

As I wrote yesterday, Russia smells weakness wafting from the White House, and Vladimir Putin thinks he sees an opening to install a Kremlin-friendly government in Ukraine without having to face much in the way of consequences. Russia has sent over 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border, and has 140 warships and over 50 aircraft taking part in “naval exercises.” But President Biden held a conference call with NATO leaders, and he claims they’re in “total unanimity” about blocking Russian aggression.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-european-leaders-total-unanimity-call-russia-ukraine

Here’s my question: are they also in total unanimity about how to do that? Or do they just unanimously agree that the US will do most of the heavy lifting to protect Europe?

Biden has put 8,500 US troops on “heightened alert” that they may be sent to Ukraine to deter Russia, and is reportedly considering sending up to 50,000 troops via the UN. But what is NATO sending? Denmark is sending one frigate and four F-16s to Lithuania. The Netherlands is sending two F-35s to Bulgaria. France is vaguely “ready to send forces” to Romania. Spain is sending some ships and “considering” sending jets to Bulgaria, and so on.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/01/24/the-nato-response-to-ukraine-proves-how-right-donald-trump-was-n511686

Meanwhile, Germany, which thanks to Biden is dependent on Russia for energy, is actively blocking weapons shipments to Ukraine.

https://www.westernjournal.com/germany-shocks-alliance-throws-wrench-ukrainian-defense/

As the writer Bonchie at Redstate.com reminds us, Trump tried to force NATO members to step up and start providing more money, troops and resources for their own defense. For that, he was excoriated by the same arrogant “smart diplomacy” crowd that’s now bumbled us to the brink of a military confrontation with Russia -- one for which we will apparently be expected to provide most of the equipment and put our brave service members’ lives on the line.

By the way, those of us back home in the US will also be paying dearly for Biden’s weakness and dumb policy decisions, not only by worrying about our loved ones in harm’s way, but also from the risk of Russian retaliatory cyberattacks…

https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2022/01/24/american-troops-possibly-en-route-to-europe-to-defend-ukraine-as-dhs-warns-of-possible-russian-cyberattacks-n512090

…and in the form of even higher oil prices. It’s been little reported, but after coming into office on Day One and launching an attack on our domestic oil and gas industries, Biden ramped up the amount of oil the US buys from Russia. As Nick Arama at Redstate.com reports, in May of 2021, Russian oil imports were increased by 23% to 844,000 barrels a day, or 10% of total oil imports for the month. Only Canada supplies us with more imported oil than Russia.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/25/biden-greenlit-russian-agression-but-its-going-to-hit-us-all-right-in-the-wallet-n511566

So if you thought it was crazy that we’ve allowed ourselves to become dependent on China for our medicines, what would you call being dependent for oil on a country that you’re threatening to go to war with?

This potential war could have been avoided if we had strong leadership in the White House. That alone would've been deterrent enough. Failing that, the President should at least be strong enough to tell NATO leaders that while they have our support, they need to fight their own battles to protect Europe. It’s odd that even as liberals are getting rid of cops in American cities, they still think it’s our duty to be the policeman to the world.

Things are going so badly under the Biden Administration that his own spokesperson, Jen Psaki, suggested that people just deal with their anger, sadness and frustration by going to a kickboxing class or having a margarita.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/white-house-report-card-when-its-so-bad-only-a-margarita-can-help

I’m a teetotaler, and I don’t think I’ll be taking up kickboxing at this stage of life. So I guess I’ll just deal with my frustration by continuing to report on this Administration and counting the minutes until November, when I hope and pray the elections go the way the latest polls suggest that they will.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/downhill-divisive-americans-sour-nation-s-direction-new-nbc-news-n1287888

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-voters-split-congressional-election

But as you can see in that Fox News poll, the Democrats still have the advantage on several issues, in some cases, inexplicably (people actually think they’re better at “uniting the country”?) As I always remind people, the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day (or whenever election season starts in your state), so don’t get complacent. Work, donate, volunteer, and most importantly, vote!

Although I suspect poll-watching will also be pretty important this year.

PS – Speaking of polls, the latest NBC poll is so bad for the Democrats that even Chuck Todd had to admit that most Americans no longer see President Biden as competent and effective, a good commander-in-chief, or even “easygoing and likable.” That must've been painful for him to report.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2022/01/24/chuck-todd-sounds-alarm-dems-in-shellacking-territory-for-midterms-n2602262

Well, that four-year vacation from American involvement in new foreign wars under Trump was nice while it lasted, wasn’t it?

Unfortunately, too many voters let the media convince them that it was important for foreign leaders to love our President, so the Mean Tweeter had to be replaced with the “moderate” lifelong politician who’s been wrong on every foreign policy issue of the previous 47 years. They failed to realize that one of the biggest omens that America is facing big trouble around the world is if our adversaries just LOOOOVE the choice we made for President.

I want our enemies to fear and respect our President, not chortle with delight at their good fortune in our choice of leaders. Right now, anyone wishing America ill is not just chortling, they’re cackling out loud and licking their chops.

In his big press conference last week, President Biden couldn’t have projected weakness more clearly if he’d borrowed the Bat Signal and emblazoned it across the sky. He’d already let the Taliban take over Afghanistan and dictate the terms of our tragic withdrawal. Iran was threatening America and Israel, and North Korea was testing hypersonic missiles, all with barely a peep from the White House.

And then, Biden stood before the entire world and admitted that he probably wouldn’t do much of anything if Russia made a “minor incursion” into Ukraine. Do you think Vladimir Putin didn’t get that “Go" signal? If Trump had sent such a message, the media would have been ablaze with “Trump is a Russian agent” headlines.

Now, we’re facing the grim consequences of having such incredible weakness in the White House. A report by UK intelligence claims that Russia is planning to invade Ukraine and install a pro-Kremlin leader, which is hardly a “minor incursion.” The White House calls it “deeply concerning,” which I’m sure has Putin quaking in his boots.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/russias-purported-plan-to-install-pro-kremlin-leadership-in-ukraine-deeply-concerning-white-house-says

Now, as a consequence of American weakness, the winds of war are starting to blow. Biden’s advisers are reportedly suggesting that he try to clean up his mess by deploying Navy vessels and sending 3,000 to 5,000 of our troops to Eastern Europe. That is, if we have that many left after he forced out all the Trump voters, critics of his Administration, soldiers who think there are only two genders, and those who didn’t want to get vaccinated.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-biden-weighing-sending-troops-to-counter-russia

Meanwhile, NATO has to step up to fill the void of American leadership, so they’re sending some fighter jets and ships to Eastern Europe in hopes of deterring Russia.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/uk-to-withdraw-some-staff-from-embassy-in-ukraine-due-to-threat-from-russia

But of course, Putin has a weapon he can hold over NATO that he didn’t have when Trump was in office and America was exporting oil and gas instead of begging OPEC for it. Rallying NATO might not even have been necessary had Biden not only laid out the welcome mat for Russia to invade, but strengthened Putin by greenlighting a Russian oil pipeline while targeting our own domestic energy industry for destruction, leaving European NATO nations at the mercy of Russia for oil.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/ukraine-crisis-highlights-german-dependence-russian-oil

All of this is setting up the game board for yet another costly, deadly foreign war that could have been prevented by simply having a strong US President that our adversaries took seriously. Unfortunately, that appears to be at least three years away. I shudder to think what the state of the world could be by then. In the meantime, China, which has already cracked down on Hong Kong and is threatening Taiwan, will undoubtedly be watching the US response to Russian aggression against Ukraine with great interest.

Sadly, Democrat “leadership” is proving to be a perfect storm of incompetence, weakness and wrongheaded policies. Many people around the world, from our own crime-plagued cities to Afghanistan and possibly soon in Ukraine, are paying the price with the loss of their rights, freedom and lives. I hope you’ll pray for them. And pray that 2024 gets here double quick. 

I wish to thank Mars --- the corporation, not the planet --- for instantly curing me of my addiction to Peanut M&M’s.

A little background: I try to avoid sugar as much as possible, just because I think it’s healthier to be on a low-carb diet. But one exception I’ve made was Peanut M&M’s. I rationalized that since the candy was just on the outside of each piece, surrounding a peanut, the protein sort of “canceled out” the sugar. And, to some extent, I was correct.

But lately at our house, we’ve been buying not just the little single-serving packages but the big bags, and my nightly ritual was to pour a pretty fair amount into a dish and polish them off after dinner, typically while watching Tucker Carlson. (Tucker can thank me for the plug later.) I even had a little ritual surrounding which colors would be eaten first, leaving one each of green, orange and blue before they were all gone. I am not kidding. And I thought I could stop any time, though I hadn’t yet tested that theory.

But a few days ago, a story came out about the little animated M&M’s mascots getting an “image makeover” for 2022. And my love affair with Peanut M&M’s was suddenly and absolutely over.

https://nypost.com/2022/01/20/mms-g-a-new-look-thats-representative-of-todays-society/

I don’t care if they want to change the look of their characters. But this is yet another example of tedious virtue signaling about “inclusiveness” brought about by the current climate of corporate fear, and I have had enough of it. Mars Inc. had already bowed to pressure and changed the name of its beloved Uncle Ben’s brand rice. The real Uncle Ben was not a slave or a servant –- from the best I can gather, he was a real rice farmer in the Houston area known for his superior product. The model for the picture is Frank Brown, head waiter at a high-end Chicago restaurant when he posed in 1947. But now, in Orwellian fashion, Mr. Brown’s image has been erased, a casualty of wokeness.

But back to M&M’s. From Mars Inc.’s own press release: “M&M’s, a proud part of Mars Incorporated, launches a global platform to increase a sense of belonging for ten million people by 2025, helping to connect and celebrate one another.” Good grief.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/iconic-mms-brand-announces-global-commitment-to-creating-a-world-where-everyone-feels-they-belong-301464475.html

Their release announces “a global commitment to creating a world where everyone feels they belong, and society is inclusive.” Skipping down a bit: “Studies show our desire to belong is as strong as our desire to be loved, and that desire is common for all people irrespective of culture, race, ethnicity, geography or location.” Skipping down a bit more, we see that there will even be more emphasis on the ampersand in M AND M’s, “to demonstrate how the brand aims to bring people together.”

Silly me, I thought we came together because of our mutual love of the candy that melts in your mouth, not in your hand. This is too...heavy-handed.

They say they’ve even updated their “tone of voice” to be “more inclusive, welcoming and unifying, while remaining rooted to our signature jester wit and humor.” I apologize for not having picked up on M&M’s “signature jester wit” in the past. But do you know what destroys wit and humor with a sledgehammer? Fear of not being woke enough.

The Global Marketing Vice President refers to these as their new “evolved” characters, introduced as part of their effort “to create a world where society is inclusive.” Other aspects of their “global [there’s that word again] commitment” are “gender balanced leadership teams, running an independent annual diversity audit of its advertising by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media [I am not making this up], and its role as Vice Chair of the Unstereotype Alliance, part of UN Women, amongst others.”

“The world we want tomorrow starts with the way we do business today,” they say, and I agree with that statement. But this way of doing business is just pandering. It’s yet another case of a corporation drinking the Kool-Aid of wokeness, using the required buzzwords and professing the required intentions. It’s already become a cliché. But as fun as it would be to write a parody of this type of press release, why should I when it already reads like a parody of itself?

When you get down to the actual changes being made to these colorful candy characters, they mostly involve superficial characteristics such as footwear. (Come to think of it, that’s just about all they have to work with, style-wise, as M&M’s are otherwise sans clothing. But the brown one does wear glasses, I assume to make nearsighted people like me feel included!) The green M&M used to wear high-heeled boots, which have been exchanged for sneakers. The brown M&M also wore high heels, but they are lower heels now. Well, it’s about time those poor M&M’s got to be more comfortable! Perhaps their focus groups included an oversampling of podiatrists.

The red, yellow and orange M&M’s all sport shoelaces, with the laces left untied on the orange M&M, to make him/it more casual and “street.” I would have loved to be in on the creative session when they decided which color of candy would get which footwear: “Hey, we can’t put the untied shoelaces on the brown one!”)

Sorry to be flip, but you KNOW they talked about it.

Oh, and they’re doing away with prefixes that might identify gender. They want to “focus on their personalities, rather than their gender.” Maybe that’s why high heels were done away with. But what if a male M&M identified as female, and wanted high heels? Somebody has to think about these things!

As reported in the New York Post, “The characters are changing up their looks for ‘a fresh, modern take’ on their style and ‘more nuanced personalities to underscore the importance of self-expression and power of community through storytelling’...adding that today’s ‘more dynamic, progressive world’ would be reflected in the changes.”

They now have “personalities and backstories...representative of today’s society.” Backstories, really? They’re M&M’s.

As the Gov. said when we brought you this story last week, M&M’s were already teaching the lesson that whatever colors we are on the outside, we’re the same on the inside. I’ve always thought that was a great message, but right now, it’s not the precise message that everyone in business must –- repeat, MUST –- convey. So apparently Mars is the latest corporation to be assimilated, like pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” They’ve all been frightened by the “progressive” (radical) left into parroting the same mandatory messages in the mandatory vocabulary. They think they have to do this to bring their product up to date, but to me it already seems old, lame, dated –- so 2021.

And, you know what? I’ve completely lost my taste for M&M’s. So, thank you, Mars Incorporated, for that.

Laura Ainsworth is a staff-writer at MikeHuckabee.com. You can read more of her work here.

RIP Comic Louie Anderson

January 23, 2022

I’m sad to have to report that on the same day we lost the big man of rock, Meat Loaf, we also lost the big man of comedy, Louie Anderson. He died in Las Vegas at 68, just three days after being hospitalized with large B-cell lymphoma, a form of cancer he had been privately battling.

With his large frame, sweet demeanor and self-deprecating jokes about his weight, Anderson burst into national fame during the comedy boom of the ‘80s with a star-making debut on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show.” He quickly became a mainstay in Vegas; appeared in a number of movies including “Coming to America” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off;” and popped up on many TV talk and variety shows, game shows such as “The New Hollywood Squares” (he even hosted “Family Feud” for three years), and sitcoms. Dennis Miller called him one of the few comics he would leave his dressing room early to watch.

He got three Emmy nominations and one win as Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for playing the mother of two characters in the bizarre FX series, “Baskets” (it wasn’t about transgenderism; he was a male comic actor playing an overweight, older woman.) He also created and voiced the cartoon series, “Life With Louie,” based on his troubled childhood with 10 siblings. It showed how the bullying he endured over his weight helped him develop his sense of humor. He won two Daytime Emmy Awards for his performance. He also wrote four books, all self-help books from his personal viewpoint about dealing with childhood abuse, weight problems and self-esteem issues.

One of my favorite bits of his that remains timely was about how he complained to the government for years about a pothole in front of his house. Finally, he noticed some workmen pouring a driveway, asked if he could borrow a bucket of asphalt, dumped it in the hole himself…and neighbors streamed out of their houses, cheering him and throwing him an impromptu parade.

Those nostalgic for the days when comedians were funny and people didn’t scream about being offended by every joke might get a kick out of reliving Louie’s debut on Johnny Carson’s show from 1984. Here is it on YouTube. RIP, Louie.

https://youtu.be/2bRe1CeGe7g

With the March for Life taking place in Washington this weekend, and today being the 49th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, a new poll from Marist and the Knights of Columbus found that support for unfettered abortion is not so strong as liberals would have us believe.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/21/71-percent-of-americans-want-more-restrictions-on-abortion-not-fewer/

The poll found that while only 12% of American adults think abortion should be completely banned, only 17% think it should be allowed at any time during a pregnancy. A large 71% want more restrictions, not fewer: they think abortion should be heavily limited and only allowed under certain circumstances. 63% oppose allowing abortion drugs by mail order, which Biden’s FDA just approved. 54% oppose taxpayer-funded abortions in the US, despite Biden’s attempts to reinstate them; and a whopping 73% oppose using our tax money to fund abortions overseas.

So when you hear pro-abortion activists accuse pro-lifers of being on the “wrong side of history,” remember that 49 years after the tragic Roe v. Wade decision, the majority of Americans still oppose their view and opposition is growing. It's the abortion supporters who are not only on the wrong side of history, they’re on the wrong side of life.

Tristan Justice at The Federalist confirms what many of us have suspected from the start: Nancy Pelosi’s (highly) Select Committee on January 6th isn’t seriously interested in getting to the truth about the January 6th Capitol riot, but in abusing power to target and harass political opponents and rifle through people’s private communications as part of a fishing expedition for anything they can smear Trump with.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/20/only-10-percent-of-j6-committee-subpoenas-relate-to-the-capitol-riot/

As Justice points out, the Committee has issued 84 subpoenas, but only 8 (fewer than 10%) are to groups or individuals with any connection to the Capitol riot. One is for an Arizona Republican who was nowhere near Washington at the time, but he runs a PAC that’s working to unseat Committee member Liz Cheney. No suspicious conflict of interest there!

Meanwhile, one person who unquestionably bears responsibility for the riot is Pelosi herself, who rejected activating the National Guard to provide security SIX times. But she’s not being investigated. The former Capitol Police Chief said Pelosi’s rejection of proper security fails to fall under the category of “facts and circumstances around January 6th.” Question: is he one of the authorities who cleared the cop who killed Ashli Babbitt without even interviewing him?

And speaking of this committee’s abuses of power, Glenn Greenwald details how they colluded with JP Morgan and its lawyer (former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch) to obtain a private citizen’s financial records without the protection of judicial review.

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/congresss-16-committee-claims-absolute

Greenwald writes that the Committee has been “secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.” They have also been “purposely attempting to prevent citizens who are the targets of their investigative orders to have any opportunity to contest the legality of this behavior in court.”

As added context, Greenwald explains how this is something that the Supreme Court barred Congress from doing in the 1950s, when they found that the House Un-American Activities Committee was conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation unrelated to its mission, and trying to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens.

This is one of many, many reasons why I’m counting the minutes until November, when I hope that Republicans take over Congress in large numbers and literally “clean House.” That hosing out of the stables should include a thorough investigation of these corrupt “investigators.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed that Hillary Clinton has been interjecting herself lately into the political conversation, leading to speculation that she’s setting her sights on 2024, salivating at the prospect of running for President again. (I apologize if you are trying to eat your lunch right now.) Of course, she’s made it clear that she thinks she really won in 2016 –- never mind that doubting the outcome of an election is akin to planning to overthrow the government by force, at least unless you ARE Hillary, or Stacey Abrams, or Joe Biden talking about the upcoming midterms, or any other Democrat questioning a Republican win for any reason at any time.

But just the possibility of Hillary re-running for President brings up all the old questions about the Russia Hoax and her likely role in that, which perhaps will soon be exposed by Special Counsel John Durham. (No doubt her attorneys already have a legal strategy prepared, just in case it is.) Recall that the “Russia!” alarm was first sounded with an allegation that Russia had hacked into a Democratic National Committee server and stolen private DNC emails that showed how the nomination game was rigged against Bernie Sanders. Why, those Russians were trying to make Hillary look bad, Democrats said, because they so badly wanted their boy Trump to win, because Trump was a Russian agent in league with Vladimir Putin! I would hope that to anyone looking back, this lie would seem ridiculous now. (We knew it was ridiculous then.) But in 2016, the lie metastasized and turned into a phony FBI investigation generated by an unverified “dossier.”

So let’s take another look at the story that started it all: the one about the “hacked” DNC server.

Recall that in July of 2016, Julian Assange published thousands of DNC emails on WikiLeaks, and the story they told greatly upset Bernie Sanders supporters. While Hillary needed to defeat Bernie in the primaries, she would need all those good little socialists to vote for her in November, and what the emails revealed about backroom politics alienated many of them.

So to direct attention elsewhere, her campaign pointed fingers at Russian “hackers” and connected the so-called hacking to what they alleged was Trump’s weakening of the Republican platform regarding Russia’s threat to Ukraine. (The irony today is that Biden is showing incredible weakness regarding Russia’s threat to Ukraine.) The DNC turned the information on their server over to a company called CrowdStrike for forensic analysis –- in fact, Clinton attorney Michael Sussmann is the one who did that –- keeping it out of reach of the FBI. Unbelievably, the FBI responded with the equivalent of, “Duh, whatever.”

Later on, Special Counsel Robert Mueller failed to subpoena it as well. You’d think if he were investigating ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign, he would have wanted to know whether or not the Russians had hacked the DNC. But no --- all his team did was make an “assessment,” sort of an educated guess that could be anything they found convenient to say.

To link the events related below with the DNC’s stolen emails is considered by some to fall within the realm of conspiracy theory, but we make no allegations of a connection at this time, saying only that the possibility of a connection has yet to be ruled out. Stifling conversation about this does not disprove it, and, in fact, actually raises more suspicion about it. So we’re going to talk about it.

In the wee hours of July 10, 2016, a 27-year-old DNC staffer named Seth Rich was apparently walking home when he was shot in the back twice and killed. As John D. Connor reminds us in a new piece for American Greatness, the police quickly chalked it up to an attempted robbery gone bad. And that was that.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/19/how-the-left-is-proving-the-dnc-was-not-hacked-by-russia/

If this really was a random attempted robbery, Rich lost his life over absolutely nothing. The would-be thief left behind his wallet, phone, and a $2,000 necklace.

Speculation grew that the so-called “Russian hack” might actually have been an inside job, a leak rather than a hack, and that Seth Rich might have been the one to download the emails and provide them to Assange. That would explain why the DNC wouldn’t have wanted the FBI to do a forensic examination. And though Assange has said he never reveals a source, he has also quite adamantly insisted that Russia was not his source, nor was anyone acting on behalf of any government. He also put up a reward for information leading to the solving of Rich’s murder, which for all we know might be a way of hinting-but-not-revealing. But we DON’T know.

Detective Rod Wheeler, who had been working for the Rich family, suggested that Rich had had contact with WikiLeaks, and this naturally caused an uproar. The family threatened legal action, everybody lawyered-up, the anti-Trump media labeled it crazy, and the discussion was effectively shut down.

Recall that in October 2020, then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe declassified handwritten notes that showed then-CIA Director John Brennan had briefed then-President Obama on Hillary’s “plan” to tie then-candidate Trump to Russia “as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server.” According to Brennan’s notes, Hillary allegedly “approved...a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

Ratcliffe also declassified another document (though it remained heavily redacted) showing that in September 2016, intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral on Hillary purportedly approving “a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections” in order to distract from her email scandal. It must’ve been considered radioactive, as this warning appeared: “This memorandum contains sensitive information that could be source revealing. It should be handled with particular attention to compartmentation and need-to-know...It may not be used in any legal proceeding –- including FISA applications –- without prior approval...” When asked about this later, former FBI Director James Comey said that it didn’t “ring any bells.”

Concerning the Seth Rich mystery, thanks to a lawsuit filed by private citizen Brian Huddleston, the FBI was forced to admit it had documents on Rich. As of April 2021, it had produced only 63 pages but admitted to having 1,093 more, so let’s see ‘em. Recall that one of the pages they released said, “given [redacted] it is conceivable that an individual or group would want to pay for his death.” We certainly don’t know if this is what happened, but we do know this about Rich: he might have been the one witness (besides Julian Assange) capable of destroying the fake “Russia collusion” story that Hillary was counting on.

As we’ve said all along, when it comes to the Russia Hoax –- and Washington DC scandal in general, it seems –- all roads lead back to Hillary. We hope Durham is able to connect all the dots and answer lingering questions about her involvement, and also about just how low her “Russia collusion” strategy sank.

The world was watching a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday, as a rabbi and several members of Congregation Beth Israel were held hostage for almost 12 hours before escaping.

While it took the FBI some time to admit the hostage-taker was motivated by antisemitism, they finally stated the obvious, but Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker, known to his congregants in this suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth as “Rabbi Charlie,” learned it firsthand during the harrowing experience.

You know some of the details --- how a Palestinian-born man with apparent mental problems and known to British intelligence was able to fly to JFK International Airport and travel to the Dallas area to try to get a terrorist released from a Fort Worth prison. After being ambushed during the Shabbat service and held at gunpoint inside the synagogue for many hours, the hostages realized the situation was quickly deteriorating, but Rabbi Charlie managed to save them all by finding the right moment to throw a chair at the terrorist and give them a chance to rush outside to safety. An FBI Hostage Rescue Team rushed the building after the hostages had rescued themselves –- I’ll let the irony of that sink in –- and they shot and killed the terrorist.

For the congregation, this week has been a time for healing, and they've been coming together in that spirit. Rabbi Charlie is a beloved local figure, to his own congregation and to those who simply know him as a neighbor and friend. Rabbi Amy Bigman, who was with Rabbi Charlie’s mother during the stand-off, said, “I’ve known Charlie since he was in high school. He is quite simply a mensch.”

That comment was taken from this excellent profile.

https://www.jta.org/2022/01/16/united-states/quite-simply-a-mensch-meet-rabbi-charlie-cytron-walker-freed-after-hostage-crisis-at-his-synagogue

“Our rabbi is a wonderful human being,” said Ellen Smith, who grew up at Congregation Beth Israel, of Rabbi Charlie while the hostage stand-off was still going on. He’s praised by his local Jewish community but also is well known in Colleyville for his interfaith work. According to this report, local Muslim leaders spoke out in support of him on Saturday.

In fact, here’s another irony: “Alia Salem, the founder of an advocacy group exposing abuse among Muslim faith leaders and a self-proclaimed ‘vocal supporter’ of the movement to free the woman support by the hostage-taker, said on Twitter that she had been a friend of Cytron-Walker and his wife for 15 years.”

She wrote of the couple that “they are the kindest, gentlest and [most] loving people who have been absolutely rock-solid friends and allies, not only to me but to the entire Muslim community through thick and thin.”

The only unflattering thing said about Rabbi Charlie came from Ellen Smith, before it was known how the standoff would end: “He’s the worst singer in the world. He cannot hold a tune to save his life. I hope that he’ll get a chance to pray off-tune very badly during another Shabbat service.” And, of course, he will, with congregants happy to cover their ears.

Another commentary in this same publication might help us get inside the minds and hearts of those who anticipate attending services in their own synagogues this weekend. It quotes Rabbi Charlie as saying that it’s important for synagogues to continue to be welcoming, even as it was his decision to let a stranger through Congregation Beth Israel’s locked door that led to his being taken hostage.”

https://www.jta.org/2022/01/20/united-states/american-jews-prepare-for-a-shabbat-in-the-shadow-of-colleyville

So, how welcoming should they be? At this time of uncertainty, Rabbi Paul Kipnes, of a Reform synagogue in suburban Los Angeles, has adopted a new motto for his staff: “WWRCD?” As in, “What would Rabbi Charlie do?”

Apparently, though, Rabbi Charlie is currently looking for a job, having resigned from the Colleyville congregation last fall after being there for over 15 years. He plans to leave in June. He joked lovingly about this at the healing service they held for the congregation and others in the community on Monday night, stressing that the congregation right now is looking for a way to heal. “We’re really trying to figure out what we need to do,” he said Monday. “We’ve got repairs to make to the congregation and we’re making arrangements so that we can have services this weekend.” He hopes congregants will get professional therapy if they feel they need it.

Rabbi Charlie said claims that he forbids congregants to carry firearms inside the building are not true. He does prefer concealed rather than open carry, he said, adding that “I would have hoped that one of the people in that synagogue that morning, one of the members from the synagogue, had had a gun on them to have things ended a little bit earlier.”

He also says that rumors he has called Israel "an apartheid state" are not true. He clarifies that although it’s a complicated situation, he’s “a huge supporter of Israel.”

He’s quoted extensively in this additional piece.

https://www.jta.org/2022/01/19/united-states/the-texas-rabbi-who-escaped-a-hostage-situation-wants-to-correct-the-record

At noon on Thursday, Congregation Beth Israel hosted a webinar featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray and Rabbi Charlie to talk about some of the same issues, as well as how to address antisemitism and the training offered by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). This was a special edition of the ADL’s “Fighting Hate from Home” series. Interestingly, as well-trained as Rabbi Charlie is, he said he saw absolutely nothing to raise eyebrows about this man when he first came to the front door of the synagogue on that cold morning. The man started out very calm and normal, gradually morphing into someone more hateful and belligerent as the time passed.

One senses the same progression of emotion from calm and casual to freak-out during a phone call the terrorist made to his brother to say “goodbye” near the end of the stand-off. He tells his brother he’s been praying two years “for this” and that he is going to die.

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/crime/article257540768.html

We’re working on obtaining a recorded version of the webinar and will provide the link in an update if we do. Rabbi Charlie said the man clearly had chosen a synagogue for his plan because of a misplaced belief that “Jews hold all the power.” The man spoke of this consistently. He thought that if he took Jewish people hostage, that’s what would get “Lady al-Qaeda” released from the nearby prison, because in America, he said, Jews have so much more power and influence than anyone else.

March for Life

January 21, 2022

Today is the 49th annual March for Life in Washington, held to pray for the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the changing of hearts and minds to once again embrace the sanctity of life, and the 62 million babies killed in the womb since the Supreme Court legalized abortion in 1973. This year carries extra significance because of hopes that the SCOTUS may use its upcoming ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to finally correct its horrific mistake and return the issue of abortion back to the states and the people’s elected representatives.

Some also see it as a hopeful sign that the SCOTUS refused to put a stay on Texas’ heartbeat abortion law while a challenge is working its way through the courts.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-texas-ruling-january

Here are some comments from pro-life supporters about their hopes, beliefs and the importance of this cause.

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/march-for-life-2022-advocates-pray-culture-life-america

Here’s some background on Roe, Dobbs and the legal, medical, political and moral issues involved.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/supreme-court-abortion-march-for-life-pro-life-equality-jeanne-mancini

Here is some information about this year’s March theme, “Equality Begins in the Womb.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/abortion-equality-march-life-minorities

It’s a good way to remind liberals who defend abortion but like to accuse their opponents of racism that Planned Parenthood was founded by a racist eugenicist and that blacks are only about 13% of the population but account for 33% of all abortions. That’s over 20 million black babies slaughtered in the womb since 1973. Liberals blame this on factors such as unequal access to contraception, which has never been easier or cheaper to obtain, conveniently overlooking the way abortion providers target minority neighborhoods in locating their clinics.

Finally, for more information on the March for Life and how you can get involved, visit their website at

https://marchforlife.org

I am very sad to have to report that rock legend and actor Meat Loaf (born Marvin Lee Aday) has died at 74. His family released this statement:

"Our hearts are broken to announce that the incomparable Meat Loaf passed away tonight with his wife Deborah by his side. Daughters Pearl and Amanda and close friends have been with him throughout the last 24 hours."

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/meat-loaf-dead-at-74

Many obituaries and tributes are already flooding the media, detailing his remarkable six-decade career, from his classic albums like “Bat Out of Hell” (it sold 40 million copies and is still one of the 10 biggest sellers of all time) to his dozens of movie appearances, from “The Rocky Horror Show” to “Fight Club.” But I’d like to say something more personal...

Who would have ever believed that Meat Loaf and Mike Huckabee were friends? An “odd couple,” if ever. I first met him when he was a guest on my Fox show several years ago. For some reason, we hit it off from the start. We were as different as could be, but there was an instant bond.

He had moved to Nashville a little over a year ago, and we connected again since I do my TBN show “Huckabee” there. He had been battling several health issues including severe back problems, and hadn’t performed on stage in six years. I persuaded him to come and be on my show, and he came in late September of 2021 and performed three songs with our house band. As I had done when he was on the Fox show, I played bass with the band.

To say he rocked the house is the understatement of all time! No one owned a stage like Meat Loaf. He was the consummate performer, but he was a truly gifted artist.

I will add that he was a delightful human being who became a cherished friend. I loved him for his candor and his raw honesty. He accepted me for who I am, the straight-laced Christian. I accepted him for who he was: sometimes raucous, often a little vulgar, but always filled with sheer joy and awe at life. He was as Nathaniel was described in the Bible as a “man who has no guile.” It’s what endeared me to him. There was no pretense. No double-mindedness. He loved life and lived it bigger than most ever will. He was also one of the funniest people I’ve ever been around. His sense of humor was matched only by his incredible gift to tell a story.

I’m heartbroken by his death. From my conversations with his manager the past few days, I knew it was probably imminent, but I wanted to believe he’d overcome illness yet again and be back on the stage soon. It wasn’t to be. I will genuinely miss him, but I will cherish times with him and will forever treasure his final television performance on my show where he set fire to the stage with his classic charisma and talent. He was in pain from a number of infirmities, but you won’t see it as you watch him perform. It was almost as if he knew he wanted to leave behind something special. And he did! And one of the things he left behind was my abiding friendship and admiration for this one of a kind talented star!

Here are the links to what I assume was his last TV performance, with Tre Corley and our fantastic band on TBN. I’m grateful that we were able to give him the platform to show that he could still rock the world so magnificently, and to enjoy a chorus of praise from his top name musical peers, who called this one of the greatest rock performances they’d ever seen on TV. I couldn’t agree more…

“Out of the Frying Pan and Into The Fire”: https://youtu.be/jn_U6eQJrgg

“Los Angeloser”: https://youtu.be/FUWFjheqVYc

“Mercury Blues”: https://youtu.be/oTXKvUUpESI

And don’t miss the full interview I did with him, where you’ll see he was nearly as great a storyteller as he was a singer: https://youtu.be/UbJCjmEd6oE

The NCAA has reacted to the angry backlash by female athletes and their parents against allowing “transgender” athletes to compete in women’s sports. This has long been a serious issue that’s destroying women’s sports, but because the media and certain politicians are so afraid of the trans lobby, anyone who dares state obvious biological facts is smeared as a transphobic hater. But it finally broke through thanks to collegiate swimmer “Lia Thomas,” who was a male swimmer through three years of college, then “transitioned” and is now mowing down all of Penn’s women’s swimming records.

The obvious, ridiculous unfairness of this finally emboldened parents and athletes to speak up, and the NCAA has responded by changing its policy on transgender athletes.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/ncaa-changes-transgender-athlete-participation-policy

After the usual PC boilerplate about being " steadfast in our support of transgender student-athletes and the fostering of fairness across college sports" (which is blatantly untrue, since there’s nothing fair about a biological male competing against females half “her” size and strength), the NCAA announced that from now on, they will follow a sport-by-sport model similar to the US and international Olympic Committees.

The IOC’s rules state, "Trans female athletes must demonstrate a total testosterone level in serum below 10 nmol/L for at least 12 consecutive months prior to competition and must remain below this threshold throughout the period of desired eligibility to compete in the female category in any event."

Again, this is not fairness or equality or even biological science. The fact that testosterone levels have been artificially suppressed does nothing to reverse the size and upper body strength advantages that a male athlete who’s gone through puberty has before “transitioning.” Real fairness would mean either having everyone compete under their biological sex, or if you want to recognize trans athletes, giving them their own competitions.

All this does is sprinkle a thin veneer of “fairness” rhetoric over the problem. But it does nothing to ensure fairness for female athletes whose rights are being shattered just as surely as their hard-won athletic records are.


Related story:

I think the real reason why Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire is always getting banned by social media may be because he’s too good at dropping truth bombs that the language torturers and common-sense molesters of the left cannot refute and look ridiculous trying.

Megan Fox at PJ Media has a great write-up of his recent appearance on “Dr. Phil” with some transgender activists who were blindsided when he asked them to define the word “woman.” Walsh defined it easily and correctly, pointed out the fatal flaw in their “it’s a subjective concept” claim, and then in one lethal sentence, summed up how they’re trying to appropriate “womanhood” from women.

https://pjmedia.com/culture/megan-fox/2022/01/19/watch-matt-walsh-destroys-woke-gender-narrative-with-one-simple-question-n1551089

As Ms. Fox goes on to discuss, the left insists that “appropriating” someone else’s culture, truth or lived experience is one of the worst crimes you can commit. So why is it okay when this group does it to women? Why is appropriating someone’s race bad but appropriating their gender is courageous and praiseworthy? Why is putting on blackface makeup offensive but putting on Maybelline is to be celebrated?

By the way, I also loved Walsh’s point that if you’re allowed to choose your own pronouns and demand that other people use them, why can’t we force people to use our own preferred adjectives, his being “handsome” and “brilliant”?

This Friday, January 21st, marks the 49th annual March for Life in Washington, DC (January 22nd is the 49th anniversary of Roe. v. Wade.) Thousands of people plan to brave sub-freezing temperatures to peacefully protest (I make that clear so the FBI doesn’t brand them as “domestic terrorists”) and pray for the approximately 60 million unborn babies killed by abortionists since 1973 and for the Supreme Court to realize the terrible mistake it made.

What they will not be doing is eating at Busboys and Poets restaurant.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/01/18/dc-establishment-confirms-its-fine-with-discriminating-against-prolife-group-in-name-of-creating-safe-space-n2601834

A group called Democrats for Life of America (yes, there still are some of those, not that you’d know it from the Party leadership) had a reservation there. But then, the restaurant found out that DFLA is pro-life and canceled their reservation, forcing them to hunt for another place. Busboys and Poets is a chain of restaurants/event spaces with a very “social justice” vibe (their website is plastered with pro-BLM graphics.)

A restaurant spokeswoman told Catholic News Agency that the chain “stands firmly on the belief that women have the right to make their own reproductive health decisions.” (“Reproductive health” is the current preferred vague, fuzzy euphemism for “abortion,” despite the fact that abortion providers often hide the potential dangers to women’s physical and emotional health, as dramatized in the movie, “Unplanned.”)

The spokeswoman continued, “While we welcome conversations from individuals expressing different viewpoints and pride ourselves on being a venue for respectful conversations between diverse groups, we are also a ‘safe space.’ As such, we cannot knowingly accept events designed to fund an agenda which our community members believe to be trampling on the rights of others.”

In short: we support diversity of viewpoints, as long as they’re viewpoints we agree with. And we oppose discrimination, except for people whose beliefs we discriminate against (like those who think that killing children in the womb tramples on their right to life.) So if you are pro-life, you might want to make a note to avoid this joint, as you are not welcome. It might make some poor sensitive soul feel “unsafe” knowing that someone who values life is eating a burger 20 feet away. Also, I don’t think I’d want to eat at any restaurant that dispenses bull manure on the side, as you can readily see in the paragraph above.

Fortunately, the DFLA found a new venue, a restaurant called Harriet’s, which welcomes a range of ideologically diverse groups. Say, is anyone else old enough to remember when liberals used to hold marches to demand that restaurants stop discriminating and serve everyone?

Must-Read Article

January 20, 2022

August Harriman at American Thinker on “The Great College Education Con.”

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/01/the_great_college_education_con.html

As if the pandemic didn’t result in enough wealth being transferred from working people to the upper classes, there’s another move afoot to transfer even more by canceling student loan debt. Of course, the bill will fall to the taxpayers, which means blue collar workers who went to work right after high school will fork over some of their hard-earned wages to pay debts run up by people who spent up to six years in college getting degrees that don’t pay their bills.

Please don’t think I’m unsympathetic to people struggling with student loan debt. While they willingly took on such debt, they were young and naive, and they’d been told that they would never get ahead without that degree. They didn’t realize it came with an anchor of debt. And our society has so over-emphasized college that even some factory and front counter jobs now require degrees, even if you could learn everything you needed to know from a few weeks of on-the-job training. These students didn’t know that what America really needs is truckers, machinists and plumbers, not more unemployed gender studies majors.

But I still don’t think it’s the responsibility of the taxpayers to pay off other people’s debts, particularly when it does nothing but further feed a system that’s resulted in skyrocketing tuition costs and overpaid administrators who are doing a worse job than ever of educating students. (While students in other nations are learning the latest advances in science, our schools are telling them that math is racist.)

Sadly, the idea of “student loan relief” is very popular in some quarters. To take a hypothetical example, try to imagine someone so privileged that even though she’s in Congress and pulling down 174 grand a year plus benefits, she thinks the taxpayers should pay off her remaining $17,000 student loan for her obviously worthless economics degree. Both she and America would have been better off if she’d gone to trade school and become a welder.

Anyway, read the linked article. It tells us how we got here and the shocking costs of this giant back-scratching arrangement between government and academia, both in monetary terms and in the devastating effect it’s having on young people who are forced to delay or forgo marriage, children, homeownership and even saving for retirement. We don’t need a giant transfer of wealth to keep the corrupt, bloated system afloat; we need to change the system. If college students really want to be “woke,” then they should wake up to how they’re being scammed.

As we watch the DOJ launch investigations of concerned parents and 2020 election skeptics with the pretext of countering “domestic terrorism,” it’s easy to see how facile they are at creating issues essentially out of thin air. They do it over and over. Another example of this –- evident in President Biden’s Wednesday press conference –- is the fiction that Republicans, in their opposition to the so-called “voter rights” bill, are trying to suppress the minority vote. That is a detestable lie, made up out of whole cloth, but Biden just keeps saying it, anyway. He’ll say it as long as he and his advisers think he’s getting something out of it.

The Democrats have a singular talent for whipping up huge, complex narratives out of nothing, waving their magic wand to get the media obsessed with them, and keeping them going for years. It’s a make-work program for DC lawyers, keeping their political opponents busy fighting in court, and maintains for the public whatever fiction they choose to tell. They illustrate the accuracy of the statement that if you tell a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. That’s why many in our country actually believe that millions of Trump supporters are white supremacists and dirty Jim Crow-style segregationists. Just turn on MSNBC to hear that idiotic lie.

But there has never been a bigger and more consequential example of this flair for fiction than the Russia Hoax.

While President Biden has been busy this year failing to live up to even the lowest of expectations –- though he brags that he has exceeded them –- Special Counsel John Durham has been quietly looking into the origin of that Biggest of Big Lies, the lie that actually turned into an attempted coup against a sitting President. Aaron Mate at RealClear Communications has just written an excellent commentary that compares the unsatisfactory investigation completed by “Justice” Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz two years ago with the broader probe headed by Durham. The Special Counsel really is getting to the heart of just how ridiculously flimsy the “evidence” was that the FBI exploited to start spying on Trump’s people.

Horowitz, in his report of December 2019, faulted the FBI for its handling of the Russia probe but still, unbelievably, concluded that it was launched in good faith. If that seems laughable now (and it sure does), keep in mind that Horowitz was only conducting an internal investigation, so he was limited to speaking with “Justice” Department employees. That meant Hillary’s campaign and some of their most notorious helpers were essentially out of his reach.

His report taught us a hard lesson, too, about internal investigations in general. When departments investigate themselves, they tend to cut themselves a ridiculous amount of slack. (See “Capitol Hill Police Lt. Michael Byrd.”) In fact, to reach his conclusion Horowitz had to essentially disregard evidence that was included in his own report.

The media loved that conclusion, though, and danced with delight. As Mate tells it, “Horowitz’ report, wrote Mother Jones reporter (and early Steele media contact) David Corn, ‘concluded that the Trump-Russia contacts had been legitimately launched,’ thereby proving that ‘there was no hoax.’”

But we know differently today –- that they used fake information in the unverified “dossier” to launch the probe and later get their spy warrants. So the question is, who is ultimately responsible for the creation of that work of fiction?

“As he documents the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in generating false allegations of Trump-Russia collusion,” Mate writes, “Special Counsel John Durham has also previewed a challenge to the FBI’s claims about how and why its counterintelligence investigation of the Trump campaign began. At stake is the official reckoning within the U.S. government over the Russiagate scandal --- and whether there will be an accounting commensurate with the offense: the abuse of the nation’s highest law enforcement and intelligence powers to damage an opposition political candidate turned president, at the behest of his opponent from the governing party he defeated.”

Horowitz criticized the FBI for using the Steele memos --- taken together, the “dossier” --- but took them at their word that they didn’t use them to actually open Crossfire Hurricane. They had other evidence, he said, that met the “low threshold” needed for opening an investigation.

Recall that when his report came out, we were scratching our heads over that conclusion. How could there be a low threshold for opening an investigation on a major-party candidate RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT? That was not something to be undertaken lightly. It seemed that, if anything, there should have been a higher-than-normal threshold for the FBI to get involved in something that political.

But apparently Durham was scratching his head over it, too. When it came out, he announced that his office had “advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication [reason] and how the FBI case was opened.” And because Durham’s was not just an internal investigation, it was “not limited to developing information from within component parts of the Justice Department” and has instead obtained “information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside the U.S.”

The story about Trump campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos telling Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that the Russians had political dirt on Hillary was so flimsy that it couldn’t have been the pretext for an investigation, as the FBI claimed it was. Besides, we know they got the names Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mike Flynn, who were all investigated, right out of the “dossier.” And while the FBI investigators claimed they didn’t see it until mid-September of 2016, we know that some at the FBI had seen “dossier” material prior to opening Crossfire Hurricane on July 31, 2016.

In fact, Christopher Steele, working on behalf of the Clinton campaign through Fusion GPS, first contacted someone with the FBI on July 5, three weeks before Crossfire Hurricane was opened. That was Michael Gaeta, a senior FBI agent he had worked with before and who was now working as a legal attache in Rome. Gaeta was excited to receive a copy of Steele’s “report” and quickly passed it along to eager colleagues.

Interestingly, Mate reports that before Gaeta took off for London to meet with Steele, he got the approval for his trip from Victoria Nuland, who then worked in the State Department and is now Biden’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Those at the State Department who saw a few pages of what Steele had given Gaeta said, “This needs to go to the FBI.”

It’s hard to know why Horowitz took the FBI’s word when they said they didn’t use the unverified “dossier” to open their investigation, when he’d documented so many of their other lies. Mate outlines these under the subhead, “On Steele, a Pattern of FBI ‘Factual Misstatements and Omissions.’”

The Bureau has already been caught relying on Clinton-funded disinformation and lying about that. It could get a lot worse. Mate anticipates that Durham is in his “final months” of the investigation and is honing in on his ultimate targets.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/01/20/the_tension_over_truth_and_consequences_gripping_the_fbis_trump-russia_reckoning_812321.html

While our “leaders” in DC continue to ramp up the COVID fear and authoritarian anti-virus measures, other nations are starting to recognize that the time may be here to just learn to live with it. I reported recently on Israeli researchers who say too many vaccine shots may actually harm your body’s ability to fight the virus, and on the former head of the UK’s virus task force saying that Omicron is a mild variant, and Britain's mass vaccination effort is a "waste of time" and should come to an end. He said the government should focus instead on protecting the most vulnerable, such as unvaccinated elderly people.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/waste-of-time-to-keep-vaccinating-people-ex-head-of-uk-vaccine-taskforce_4216302.html

Apparently, that message sank in, because yesterday, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Great Britain will be lifting virtually all of its COVID restrictions. Johnson said the Omicron wave has peaked nationally and infections are leveling off. So the UK will end mask mandates and requirements for vaccine passports. He said, “We will trust the judgment of the British people, and no longer criminalize anyone who chooses not to wear (a mask.)” Imagine that: trusting the judgment of the people! Why, it's almost like a free country!

https://www.westernjournal.com/boris-johnson-makes-massive-covid-announcement-forcing-biden-hot-seat/

Meanwhile, our leaders continue to make a bad situation worse by pressing more draconian mandates over strong public resistance.

https://www.westernjournal.com/truck-drivers-become-biden-trudeaus-worst-nightmare-disrupt-us-canada-border-protest-vax-mandate/

Which brings up an interesting discussion: what if the Omicron wave is doing exactly as predicted by spreading natural immunity and ending the pandemic? COVID would become just another endemic problem like the flu that people have to periodically deal with. Will our leaders be willing to give up the unconstitutional power they’ve seized in the name of the “health emergency?” How will Americans react if they don’t? What about Americans who’ve been so frightened of this disease that they’ve become addicted to wearing masks, hiding out at home and finking on their neighbors for just wanting to live their lives?

Dennis Santiago at RedState.com examines those questions and ponders what's next and whether people who’ve adopted a “bunker” mentality will ever be able to come outside, blink at the sun and go back to living normally again.

https://redstate.com/dennis_santiago/2022/01/20/if-omicron-creates-herd-immunity-then-what-n509435

One Year Anniversary

January 20, 2022

Today marks one year since Joe Biden assumed the Presidency. I know it’s my job to comment on things like this, but I was brought up to believe that if you have absolutely nothing good to say about someone, you shouldn’t say anything. So I will try to think of something good to say about Biden’s first year in the White House…

Hold on, don’t rush me…

Okay, I’ve got something! As one gets older, the years seem to move faster. Time starts to rush by, and you wish you could slow it down a bit. Well, I can honestly say that thanks to the Biden Administration, the past year has seemed like an eternity. So, thanks, Joe, for that.

It seems depressingly appropriate that the first year of this snakebit Administration ended with a press conference that critics dubbed a “disaster” and that was occurring even as his quixotic attempts to eliminate the filibuster and nationalize voting laws were crashing and burning in the Senate, thanks to Joe Manchin, and on the filibuster issue, Kyrsten Sinema.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2022/01/19/joe-manchin-takes-to-the-senate-floorin-the-middle-of-bidens-press-conference-n2602082

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called the double rejection of the Democrats’ efforts to kill the filibuster and voter integrity laws “the most important day in the history of the Senate as an institution,” adding that "America can breathe a sigh of relief" because "this radicalism will have been stopped. A good day for America.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2022/01/19/election-takeover-fails-filibuster-remains-as-schumers-nuclear-option-fizzles-n2602092

Meanwhile, back at the podium, President Biden was not having a good day. As one commentator put it, Biden hadn’t held a press conference in months, and now we all understand why.

The debacle ranged from attempts to undermine faith in the legitimacy of the upcoming election (wait, I thought that questioning election results was treasonous?); a shockingly soft comment about Russia that could encourage Putin to make a “minor incursion” into Ukraine; bragging about record “job creation and economic growth” that was mostly due to red states ignoring him and reopening their locked-down economies; insisting that store shelves aren’t empty and he doesn’t believe polls; lashing out at a reporter who accurately quoted his comparison of his critics to racist Democrats of the past like Bull Connor (he denied saying that, but yes, he did, on camera); and making a jaw-dropping claim that no other President has done as much in one year and that he’s “outperformed” what people thought he was capable of.

In the spirit of trying to find something good to say, I’ll just say that in a manner of speaking, that last claim might actually be true.

Here’s a good write-up of some of the most cringe-worthy moments of Biden's press conference and reactions to it.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-press-conference-panned-critics-total-disaster

Laura Ingraham of Fox News, who doesn’t try to follow the “try to say something nice” rule, called this a “quicksand” presidency and described Biden as “completely delusional” and his team as “frighteningly stupid.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/ingraham-biden-press-conference-incompetence-unmatched

Matt Margolis at PJ Media has some thoughts about Biden’s claim that he makes “no apologies” for the deadly botching of the Afghanistan withdrawal.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2022/01/19/joe-biden-makes-no-apologies-for-botched-afghanistan-withdrawal-n1551023

The brutally funny writer Bonchie at RedState.com is always worth reading, and his analysis of Biden’s press conference includes some facts and statistics that prove all that spinning was an attempt to disguise a downward spiral.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/01/19/joe-biden-pushes-deceit-and-division-in-angry-presser-n509168

Finally, as for everyone else who watched the press conference but is not a professional commentator, I think most of them were thinking the same thing: “How are we going to survive three more years of this?”

Democrat Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are under intense pressure to vote to destroy the filibuster and support the “Voting Rights Act” (aka, the “Legalize Vote Fraud Act.”)

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/nick-saban-others-urge-manchin-to-protect-voting-rights

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/emilys-list-refuses-to-support-sinema-for-reelection

Fortunately for America, these two appear to be the Party’s only actual remaining “adults in the room,” and they seem to be standing firm, which will likely deal both of these naked power grabs a defeat.

For the record: nobody is being suppressed from voting in America in 2022. It’s easier to vote than it’s ever been. It’s easier to vote under what Biden ludicrously called the “Jim Crow” voting laws in Georgia than it is in New York or Biden’s home state of Delaware. And a recent nationwide Rasmussen survey found that more than 80% of voters support voter photo ID requirements, having all ballots received by Election Day, requiring voting machines to be made in the USA, and removing dead people and those who have moved from voter rolls.

https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/bidens-jim-crow-20-tour-collides-reality-blacks-strongly-support-voter-id

Manchin also tried reasoning with his angry fellow Democrats. He said of the attack on the filibuster, "I just don't see how you break a rule to make a rule." And he said we already have laws and rules in place to protect voting, and nobody’s going to be obstructed from voting, “that’s not going to happen.” It worked about as well as trying to explain calculus to a rabid badger.

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/01/18/manchin-we-already-have-laws-to-ensure-people-have-voting-rights-voter-obstruction-is-not-going-to-happen/

And as for the filibuster that Democrats have now started branding the “Jim Crow filibuster” (is anyone else offended that they keep eroding the gravity of that term by applying it to everything they don’t like?), they didn’t seem to think it was a tool of white supremacy when they were the minority during Trump’s final year. In 2020, Republicans used the filibuster one time and Democrats used it to block legislation 327 times.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/29/report-democrats-used-filibuster-327-times-while-republicans-used-it-once-in-2020/

For all their vilification of Manchin and Sinema, those two are doing the Party a huge service. They’re protecting one of the strongest tools of the minority, which, God willing, Chuck Schumer will soon be leading.

If you’ve watched the documentary CAPITOL PUNISHMENT, about the Capitol Hill rally and riot of January 6, 2021, you’ve seen the video of Ashli Babbitt smiling and happy, enjoying herself immensely as she participates in a march to the Capitol building. She is effervescent. Even on that cold, gray day, she exudes positive energy.

But you’ve also seen the video of her just a little while later, inside the building, caught in a crush of people on a stair landing and trying to crawl through a broken-out window to the other side of a closed door when she is shot to death.

How to reconcile these two visions? Could this smiling young (unarmed) woman suddenly morph into an angry rioter, a vandal, an insurrectionist, trying to breach the Speaker’s Lobby and prevent Congress from doing its job? Her husband, Aaron Babbitt, looking at a frame-by-frame analysis conducted by The Epoch Times, says no.

That is not what happened.

“After repeatedly forcing myself to watch the murder of my wife,” he told The Epoch Times, “I have come to my own conclusion that Ashli came to a point of realization that she was in a very bad situation and the police weren’t acting appropriately to what she was witnessing.”

He said, “I know my wife very well. She is not destructive. She was not there to hurt anybody.”

“It all comes down to which mental angle a person views it from,” he said. “If they hate Ashli because they believe the lies, that’s all they see: her being part of a mob. Us who love her, know her, know every action and emotion she was displaying --- she realized a minute before her death she was not in a friendly situation and something very wrong was occurring.”

In fact, the video strongly suggests that she was trying to stop the violence, not join in. She had gone up some stairs and, only about five minutes before she was killed, was casually talking and laughing with three U.S. Capitol Police officers. (She had served in the Air Force as a military police officer herself.) But then more people started coming up behind her. Members of a U.S. Capitol Police Containment Emergency Response Team rushed up the stairs as well, in response to a false alarm –- repeat, false –- of shots fired. (No shots were ever fired except by Ashli’s killer.) She was trapped in that mass of people outside the door.

It’s evident in the video that she was horrified by what was suddenly happening. She confronted a rioter identified as Zachary Alam, getting between him and one of the officers guarding the doors to the Speaker’s Lobby. He turned away from her and punched a window in one of the doors with his hand, then punched it again with a helmet to smash it. Her face registered alarm.

According to husband Aaron, an audio analysis of the video shows that she was shouting, “Stop! No! Don’t! Wait!”

Aaron says she was trying to climb through the broken glass because she was in fear for her life. She was trying to escape. U.S. Capitol Hill Police Lt. Michael Byrd shot her as she was partway through the window frame, and she fell backwards onto the landing.

The officers who were supposed to be guarding that door were not there. “The only way we’d ever know why Ashli felt the window was the only way out is if she had been detained by one of the countless police officers that abandoned their post in front of those doors, Aaron said. “That did not happen. She was murdered and robbed of the chance to tell her side of the story.”

There are conflicting reports as to whether Byrd shouted warnings before he shot her. It was so noisy in the stairwell, it’s likely no one could hear anyone else, so we might never know. And Byrd refused to be interviewed or even give a statement for the Internal Affairs “investigation,” which apparently was fine with the investigators ("investigators"?) because they no-billed him, anyway. “We have declined criminal prosecution of the above officer as a result of this incident,” wrote Acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips as part of a three-sentence dismissal.

But Ashli’s family is suing. Their lawyer, DC attorney Terry Roberts, said, “If you’re acting in self-defense, you have to tell somebody you’re acting in self-defense, or it should be quite plain from the circumstances. It clearly was not plain in these circumstances. I don’t believe the officer acted in self-defense at all.”

Another witness, Tayler Hansen, told The Epoch Times that Alam broke out that window because HE wanted to get to the Speaker’s Lobby. He said the only reason Alam didn’t climb through the window before Babbitt is that his glasses got knocked down his face in the scuffle and he had had to stop to reposition them. “He was about to go through that window,” Hansen said. “It was his idea. He was the one shattering it.”

Here’s more about Alam and how the FBI tracked him down. They say if you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything at all, so we won’t say anything at all.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9225389/Man-filmed-smashing-windows-Capitol-rioter-Ashli-Babbitt-arrested.html

In contrast, there’s a lot of good to say about Ashli. Hansen, an independent journalist who knew her and was walking close behind her inside the Capitol, echoed her husband in describing her. “The reality of it is, Ashli wasn’t a violent person. She was a good person, but they’ve demonized her to become this domestic terrorist that she has never been,” he said. “She served her country for 14 years. That’s just insane to me that they can get away with pushing this narrative. They’ve done that by suppressing first-hand witnesses like me.”

So, why had the Capitol Police left their posts at the door to the Speaker’s Lobby? One of them told Internal Affairs investigators that he left because he feared for his life and hadn’t wanted to have to use deadly force. If this was a situation in which officers were afraid for their own lives, it’s easy to imagine Ashli feeling the need to escape it as well.

According to a U.S. Capitol Police sergeant, Byrd and one other officer had taken positions on the other side of the door and had their guns out. This can be seen in the video, but it doesn’t appear that it was visible to Ashli. For her, the shot would have come out of nowhere.

Incidentally, the video that is providing so much detail was shot by the mysterious John Sullivan, also known as Jayden X, who has said he was there to “document” the event. Who he’s associated with and why he was there are questions for another time, but it’s fortuitous that we have his record of what happened.  Otherwise, all we'd have to go by was what the feds and their media minions told us.

The Epoch Times story is a premium report, but ZeroHedge has a detailed account.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/stop-no-dont-babbitt-tried-stop-attack-capitol-speakers-lobby-video-analysis-suggests

Thoughts? Leave a comment below.

Correlating Incompetence

January 18, 2022

Col. Ken Allard, US Army (Ret), had a distinguished career that included serving as Dean of the National War College at West Point and as a military analyst for NBC.

In assessing potential battle outcomes or even deciding to go to war, Russian military science always seeks a “correlation of forces.” Put more simply, Bolshevik revolutionaries were taught, “If your bayonet strikes steel, pull back: But if it strikes only mush, then thrust forward.”

Despite the looming indicators, only Vladimir Putin knows for certain if Russia will really invade Ukraine; but so far, he has struck only mush. Haplessly presiding over the third Obama administration, President Biden appears shell-shocked by the sobering evidence amassed by those few Russian experts not yet re-assigned to studying climate change. Consulting dog-eared order-of-battle files airily dismissed by Democratic apologists, these analysts have watched with growing alarm as 120,000 Russian troops converged on Ukraine’s borders. They can’t be serious - or could they?

Like a slow-motion Cuban Missile Crisis, this ring of steel now surrounds Ukraine from three sides. Should Putin give the order, those forces will instantly roll forward to let the blitzkrieg begin. Russian armies are a well-honed network of “operational maneuver groups” - integrated, armor-heavy, fast-moving mechanized formations built to overwhelm border defenses before spreading out to seize key terrain and exploit any breakthrough. Organic Russian artillery and missiles invoke the proverbial “Red God of war,” indirect fires obliterating any targets or obstacles impeding the armored blitzkrieg.

At the strategic level, Russia’s potent air forces are designed for aerial supremacy, first neutralizing enemy air defenses before eliminating critical infrastructure targets - much as the US did in Baghdad thirty years ago. Lending their own distinctive character are the Russian airborne and Spetsnaz forces, wonderfully mobile, elite formations transported by helicopters or cargo aircraft to seize and hold strategic targets, often deep behind enemy lines. Those well-armed squads of “little green men” deployed to Crimea in 2014 controlled restive populations through direct intimidation. Also from their Crimean bases, Russian amphibious and naval forces can support either limited seizures of key territory or the nightmare scenario of Western analysts: An all-out, multi-phased campaign to end Ukraine’s existence as an independent country.

In their comprehensive study, “Russia’s Possible Invasion of Ukraine,” CSIS analysts Philip Wasielewski and Seth Jones recently identified no fewer than six major options available to the Russian military, ranging from more limited incursions to seize breakaway hot-spots (such as Donetsk) or belts of land connecting Crimea with Odessa, effectively severing Ukraine from any Black Sea ports. But their most comprehensive option is that nightmare scenario: “Seize all of Ukraine and, with Belarus, announce the formation of a new tripartite Slavic union…(Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians).” The more military power Putin deploys, the greater his range of options, the only downsides being a re-energized US or NATO response. Even then, the fate of Ukraine would be grim: “Ukrainians in any occupied territory can expect forced Russification that the nation experienced under…Catherine the Great, Alexander II, Stalin and Brezhnev.” https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukraine? P.3

Should Ukraine manage to mobilize its population and deploy the limited “lethal aid” sent by the US since 2014, Philip Karber of the Potomac Foundation points out that “Ukrainian forces would be hard-pressed to cover a much broader front that stretches from Belarus in the north to the Black Sea in the south…(including) classic tank country where the Ukrainians do not have extensive prepared defenses” (Quoted by Warren P. Strobel, Michael R. Gordon and Nancy A. Youssef, “Moscow Bolsters Weaponry Near Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, Jan. 15, 2022.

And as Russian diplomats have become more truculent, their information megaphones blare louder: Russian military units moving west, video footage of combat drills and even cyber-attacks against Ukrainian government websites with the warning, “be afraid and expect the worst.” Worst of all: Displaying sheer gullibility to Soviet-style dezinformatsiya, White House spokes-person Jen Psaki charged that, "Russia is laying the groundwork to (create) …a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine." https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/expect-worst-ukraine-hit-by-cyberattack-russia-moves-more-troops-2022-01-14

With his innate Russian contempt for weakness, Vladimir Putin must take savage glee from having flummoxed the US and its NATO allies - all at comparatively little cost. By shrewdly guessing how far he can play his hand, Putin can either seize territories through pin-prick attacks or even reach for the whole enchilada, de-escalating for “peace” whenever tactically necessary. As always, the greatest danger is war through miscalculation, why former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld always maintained that weakness is provocative. Those provocations naturally befall a country like ours which no longer drafts its young men or even studies war. Instead, we cheerfully elect a clueless military cipher like Joe Biden to serve as commander-in-chief.

Hey man, what could possibly go wrong?

Prayers Answered

January 18, 2022

We are all very grateful here that our prayers were answered, and the hostage situation at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, ended with all four hostages released safely. The hostage taker, Malik Faisal Akram, was shot dead by an FBI SWAT team that stormed the building. (Full disclosure: this was a particularly harrowing weekend for my writer/researchers, Laura and Pat, since Laura’s sister is a member of that synagogue, and they’ve visited there and met the rabbi who was held hostage.)

Akram was a British citizen who came to the US a couple of weeks ago. He was demanding the release of Pakistani terrorist Aafia “Lady Al Qaeda” Siddiqui, who is serving an 86-year sentence (Akram falsely claimed to be her brother.) British authorities arrested two teenagers in Manchester and questioned them about possible involvement. Akram’s brother said the family was devastated, apologized to the victims, and claimed his brother had mental problems. He also asked how he was able to get a visa and fly on a plane to the US when he has a criminal record. Good question. This is a breaking story, so keep an eye on the news for continuing updates.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10408425/Blackburn-terrorist-Brother-Faisal-Akram-blames-mental-health-struggles-shooters-actions.html

The FBI finally announced this morning that "this is a terrorism-related matter, in which the Jewish community was targeted, and is being investigated by the Joint Terrorism Task Force." I would sarcastically add, “What was your first clue?”

https://www.foxnews.com/us/texas-synagogue-hostage-crisis-is-a-terrorism-related-matter-fbi-says

Please don’t think I’m being flip about this. A lot of people are rightly up in arms about how slow the FBI and President Biden were to recognize an obvious act of anti-Semitic/radical Islamic terrorism. The FBI special agent in charge initially stated, “We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, uh, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, uh, but we’re continuing to work to find motive and, and we will continue on that path.”

Some are calling for the FBI to be defunded and eliminated/replaced for its repeated failure to identify real terrorists and its whitewashing of anti-Semitic and anti-Republican attacks, even as it tries to redefine “domestic terrorists” to mean Trump voters, concerned parents or anyone who speaks out against the Democratic agenda.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fbi-slammed-texas-synagogue-hostage-taker-not-related-jewish-community

President Biden is also taking heat over his initial reaction. While he later confirmed it was a terrorist attack, his initial quote was as bland as a mouthful of oatmeal:

“I don't think there is sufficient information to know why he targeted that synagogue, why he insisted on the release of someone who's been in prison for over 10 years...Why he was using anti-Semitic & anti-Israeli comments."

https://twitter.com/TPostMillennial/status/1482792100441690112

As is typical, Biden initially expressed more interest in where and how the terrorist obtained the gun than at whom he pointed it. How about expressing a little concern for how easily dangerous foreigners with criminal records are getting into the US these days?

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2022/01/17/gun-grabber-biden-joins-long-list-of-democrats-speculating-on-where-hostage-taker-got-his-gun-n507797

Again, let’s all thank God that the hostages are safe, and pray that this will serve as a wake-up call both to our leaders and the misguided people who put them into power that there are real threats in the world, and there is genuine hatred of certain groups in the world. But in order to deal with these threats, you have to start addressing them honestly and looking for them in the right places.

Stephen Kruiser at PJ Media has more on the real “mental illness” that’s currently endangering us all.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2022/01/17/the-morning-briefing-democrats-remain-disturbingly-fond-of-islamic-terrorists-n1550152

Those Racist Democrats

January 18, 2022

Our world changes so much faster than it used to. For instance, Chuck Schumer claimed in 2005 that ending the Senate filibuster would be “doomsday for democracy.”

https://nypost.com/2022/01/09/what-schumer-said-about-the-filibuster-when-the-shoe-was-on-the-other-foot/

It took him all the way until 2022 to claim that keeping the filibuster would be doomsday for democracy. As flip-flops on principles go, that’s practically slow motion.

But things happen so fast now that on Thursday, Democrats spent the morning denouncing the filibuster as an assault on democracy and a tool of white supremacists (Rep. Ayanna Pressley even called it the “Jim Crow filibuster.”) Then, just hours later, they blocked Ted Cruz’s move to sanction Russia’s Nordstream 2 Pipeline by using the filibuster. It had 55-44 support but failed because it didn’t reach the 60-vote threshold to overcome the Democrats’ filibuster. Those racists!

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/01/14/something-incredible-happened-yesterday-after-democrats-demanded-an-end-to-the-filibuster-n506425

Note to famous Russia fanboy Bernie Sanders: When you have 55-44 support and still lose, you can at least legitimately gripe about the minority thwarting the will of the majority. When you lose 52-48, you’re the minority.

Remember when liberals believed in “My body, my choice”? Apparently, that applies onto to abortions, sex and recreational drugs. If you object to taking a vaccine, even if you might have medical issues or already have natural immunity, too bad: you will submit or else. At least that seems to be the opinion of a number of Democrats in a shocking new Rasmussen survey.

https://summit.news/2022/01/17/poll-finds-close-to-half-of-democratic-voters-want-covid-internment-camps-for-the-unvaccinated/

The survey found that 29% of Democrat voters would favor the government taking children away from parents who refuse COVID vaccines, 47% favor a government tracking program of the unvaccinated, 48% think the government should be able to fine or imprison anyone who publicly questions or criticizes the efficacy of current vaccines (FYI: I don't even favor imprisoning people who criticize ME), and a majority, 59%, favor allowing the government to force unvaccinated citizens to remain confined to their homes at all times, except for emergencies. Fortunately, that last one is opposed by 61% of all likely voters, including 79% of Republicans and 71% of independents, both of which are still frighteningly low percentages.

But if you want to put anything COVID-related other than vaccines into your body, then may God have mercy on you, because the government doesn’t. Daniel Pisano has been on a ventilator at the Mayo Clinic in Florida for 28 days. He’s been given less than a 5% chance of survival. His family wants to try the FLCCC plan that includes Ivermectin, but the Mayo Clinic refused. His family went to court to try to force the clinic to let an outside doctor give it to him, but the judge denied it. They’re now left with no alternative but to leave him on a ventilator and hope for the best.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2022/01/16/family-fights-for-ivermectin-for-dying-loved-one-courts-say-no-n1549942

If you remember, President Trump signed the “Right To Try Act” that allowed terminally ill patients to try experimental treatments when there was no other hope. Ivermectin is on the WHO’s list of essential medicines, it’s been used on humans since the 1980s and it’s the 420th most-prescribed medicine in the US. Despite claims that it helps save COVID patients, the FDA and CDC deny its efficacy and say it’s not approved for treating COVID.

My question: even if there's no approved studies showing that ivermectin helps, shouldn’t a person have a “right to try” it when the only alternative is to gasp for breath on a ventilator and “hope for the best”?

The NCAA has relented and will consider unvaccinated athletes who’ve had a documented case of COVID in the past 90 days as “fully vaccinated” so they can participate in the basketball playoffs.

https://trendingpolitics.com/breaking-a-return-to-sanity-ncaa-to-allow-those-w-covid-herd-immunity-to-participate-in-sporting-activities-ethom/

This may defy the continuing narrative that ignores the efficacy of natural immunity, but it makes sense. A recent study found that natural immunity provides 90% protection against previous versions of COVID and nearly 60% protection against reinfection with the Omicron variant, which is still better than the protection vaccination provides. It was also found to provide “robust” protection against hospitalization and death from all known variants.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.05.22268782v1

But why the 90-day limit? Another recent study found that while natural immunity does wane a bit over time, it’s still protecting people better from reinfection and hospitalization than the vaccines, even when infection happened as long ago as March 2020.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v1

The linked story at Trending Politics theorizes that this 90-day timeframe still allows any athlete who tests positive in the next 90 days to play, which will save March Madness, the NCAA’s biggest money maker. Even if so, in this case, “following the money” might actually result in the NCAA following the science better than some people who claim to follow the science are.

Despite the Supreme Court’s split ruling that OSHA doesn’t have the power to mandate vaccinations but the HHS can mandate them for healthcare workers, this court battle might not be over yet for all healthcare workers.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/maine-health-workers-latest-to-take-vaccine-mandate-to-supreme-court_4214387.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-01-16-1&utm

In a subscriber-only story, the Epoch Times reports that the Liberty Counsel has filed a brief with the SCOTUS on behalf of 2,000 health care workers in Maine who are seeking religious exemptions from the vaccine mandate. They’re using the same argument that succeeded in a Texas federal court against the Defense Department: if you allow for medical exemptions, people getting those exemptions pose the exact same risk to the state’s goals as those seeking religious exemptions. The virus doesn’t know the difference. So to allow secular exemptions and deny religious exemptions is unconstitutional religious discrimination.

I’ll keep you apprised on how this case goes. In the meantime, there are indications that support for vaccine mandates may be waning. For instance, there's this prominent person in the UK who says that considering that Omicron is a mild variant, Britain's mass vaccination effort is a "waste of time" and should come to an end. He says the government should focus instead on protecting the most vulnerable, such as unvaccinated elderly people.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/waste-of-time-to-keep-vaccinating-people-ex-head-of-uk-vaccine-taskforce_4216302.html

Now, before I get censored and demonetized for spreading "misinformation" from some quack, I should quickly note that those comments came from Dr. Clive Dix, the former chairman of Britain's Vaccines Taskforce.

Am I allowed to report on this? Six House members and Sen. Ron Johnson are demanding to question Maj. Joseph Murphy about the leaked report obtained by Project Veritas that, if true, would upend many official narratives about the origin of COVID-19 and the government’s response to it.

https://redstate.com/jenvanlaar/2022/01/13/sen-johnson-wants-to-interview-maj-joseph-murphy-about-documents-released-by-project-veritas-n506165

I wrote about this several days ago, and have been waiting to see if it would be picked up by the media. I didn’t present it as verified truth, but as a story that deserved further investigation because, if true, it would be a bombshell story about government lies and cover-ups involving the loss of millions of lives. So you’d think the media would be all over it. But the old days of reporters chasing after the story have given away to reporters looking nervously to their favored authority figures for permission to cover anything that might upset the official narrative.

This story bubbled under on conservative media outlets for several days before it finally gained enough traction for Congress members to demand answers. And so I ask again, in all sincerity: am I allowed to write about it without being censored by social media? You see, I’m old enough to remember that when elected members of both Houses of Congress were demanding answers from another government official about a bombshell accusation, it didn’t matter whether the accusation was proven yet or not. The very fact that Congress is launching an investigation qualified as “news.”

But I searched Google for the words “Ron Johnson DARPA Joseph Murphy,” and it returned only two hits: a statement on Sen. Johnson’s website and a story on the conservative site PJ Media. With all the vast resources of ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and all the other media outlets, Google found nothing else about this story.

And they really wonder why the public trusts them less than a guy selling “Rolexes” out of his car trunk?

Biden's Brain

January 18, 2022

Some people have expressed concern about the faltering health of President Biden’s brain. And by “Biden’s Brain,” I mean the nickname that’s been given to his Chief of Staff, Ron Klain.

Last week, the Supreme Court specifically cited Klain’s retweet of a description of the OSHA mandate as being the ultimate “work-around” in finding that the Administration knew it was unconstitutional. You’d think that would teach him to think before pressing “Send,” or inspire his staff to hide his phone, but no…

https://www.westernjournal.com/ron-klain-retweets-ridiculous-analysis-bidens-inflation-crisis/

Klain’s Twitter account is a marvelous fantasyland where the economy is booming because inflation didn’t rise quite as fast this month as last month (actually, it’s even worse than the government admits…)

https://asiatimes.com/2022/01/worst-us-inflation-since-82-is-huge-underestimate/

…and there was a tiny increase in the labor participation rate! Of course, that might have just been from Amazon having to hire more workers to resend all the packages that are being looted off of trains in L.A.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/train-thieves-downtown-los-angeles

But as Ron Klain might tweet, that’s good news: we have full employment for thieves! And they’re reducing smash-and-grab store crime by eliminating the middleman and stealing merchandise right off the trains! Under Biden, even thieves are becoming more efficient! It’s the best of all possible worlds!

Mr. Klain had better hope his gross of pig lipstick doesn’t get looted off the train.

Gervais knows

January 18, 2022

Controversial comedian (and by that, I mean, “says true things powerful people don’t like,” which used to just mean, “comedian”) Ricky Gervais believes that the ratings implosion of TV awards shows isn’t due to pandemic downsizing, since even the ones that still have big stars and production numbers are cratering. Gervais blamed the audience tune-out on all the PC wokeism and leftist politics.

https://dailycaller.com/2022/01/12/ricky-gervais-awards-shows-suffering-people-sick-virtue-signalling

Gervais pulled big ratings when he hosted the Golden Globes, but while his gleeful mockery of Hollywood hypocrites was loved by viewers, it ticked off the celebrities, so he was replaced. Since then, the Globes have gone from one of the most star-studded nights in Hollywood to a Twitter thread announcing the winners that hardly anyone noticed. This was largely because of attacks on the awards organization, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, for not being diverse enough. But that was hardly the reason that TV audiences gave up on it.

Writing in the British newspaper The Sun, Gervais said people “just got sick of virtue signaling…The people with nothing became tired of being lectured by people who had everything…They think, ‘Why are these people lecturing me? They’re going?? to an awards ceremony in a limo and are telling me to recycle?'”

Assessing the damage woke virtue signaling has done to Hollywood’s image, Gervais wrote, “The first time I did it, ten years ago, everyone was like, ‘Ah, how can you talk to these wonderful multi-millionaires, how can you talk to these beautiful people, like that? We love celebrities.' By the last one it was like, ‘God, give it to them, we hate celebrities!'”

Gervais said you can’t predict the future, and maybe awards shows will enjoy a return to popularity. But I doubt it. If Hollywood can’t even figure out that they shouldn’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars making movies that insult America and expect Americans to pay to see them (they don’t, by the way), or hire stars who spew hatred of half of Americans on Twitter and fire those who defend them, what are the odds that anyone will ever want to watch them give themselves awards for doing that?

President Biden is now openly calling for more social media censorship, saying, “I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets — please deal with the misinformation and disinformation that’s on your shows. It has to stop.”

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2022/01/14/biden-calls-for-opposition-to-be-censored-n2601852

As a reminder, I recently linked to a commentary at Instapundit that outlined a legal pathway to suing Big Tech companies for violating conservative users’ freedom of speech. These companies claim that they’re not subject to First Amendment protections because they aren’t government entities. However, we’ve already heard reports of White House staffers meeting with these companies to help formulate guidelines for who gets censored.

In addition, as the linked article points out, Biden is also in violation of a 1973 SCOTUS ruling that the government “may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally forbidden to accomplish.”

As we’ve seen many times, the definition of “misinformation” and “disinformation” is often “things that the powers that be don’t want anyone saying, but that later turn out to be true” (see “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” to cite just one of many examples.) There is a legal case to be made that if these companies are colluding with government authorities to determine who gets censored, then they’re acting as de facto government agents. If so, then they are bound by First Amendment protections. If so, then “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of lawsuits!”

And if the White House wants to claim it hasn’t been telling these companies who to censor, someone should inform the President not to go on TV and tell them who to censor.

Remembering January 6

January 18, 2022

It’s been just over a year since a protest over the lack of transparency of voting in the 2020 election turned violent on Jan 6 in our nation’s Capitol. Of the tens of thousands of those who were there to protest, the number of those who actually crossed the line of peaceful protest into criminal trespass, vandalism, or assault of a police officer was a tiny fraction in the hundreds. But to hear Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris or the mainstream media describe it, it was the darkest day in American history, equaling or surpassing 9-11, Pearl Harbor or the Civil War. Super-charged and hyperbolic rhetoric is normal in politics, but things said about Jan 6 of 2021 have ventured into the Twilight Zone and deep into Crazy-Town.

First, what happened that day was most certainly NOT an “insurrection” if one means there was an attempted takeover of the government. Webster does define “insurrection” as “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government.” It was an instance of revolt, but most certainly not an attempt to overthrow the government. If it were, it was an even dumber effort than I first stated when I called it the actions of some over-heated chuckleheads who behaved in bone-headed, hurtful and destructive behavior. And it did in fact sometimes cross the line into criminal actions. But are you aware that despite the pearl-clutching hysteria of Nancy Pelosi, there were no firearms confiscated from protestors that day? Did the people who breached the security lines that day really believe they could take down a nation that possessed a standing army of about 1.5 million personnel armed with highly sophisticated weaponry, tanks, bombers, ships and nuclear weapons and do it with some flagpoles and fire extinguishers they grabbed off the wall?

And you’ve probably heard the repeated lie that several Capitol police officers were murdered that day by the rioters. That’s a lie. Officer Brian Sicknick was pepper sprayed but returned to his office that day and reported that he was fine. He died the next day, but the coroner ruled that his death was unrelated to the riot. There were two people who were killed by violence that day. Both were protesters. One was Ashli Babbit, an unarmed Air Force veteran who was shot at close range by a Capitol police officer. He refused to participate in an internal affairs investigation and his name was kept private for months, but he was cleared of wrong doing anyway despite the many questions that linger as to why he gunned down an unarmed woman. The other was Rosanne Boyland a protester from Georgia who was crushed and trampled when the crowd was pushed back by police officers who continued to advance against the protesters despite repeated cries for help to be given to her.

I haven’t and I won’t defend those who breeched security at the Capitol or who broke doors or windows, or who occupied Congressional offices. But neither will I be silent when the real insurrectionists who use their government-funded offices to shred the Constitutional rights of free speech, freedom of religion or protection against illegal search and seizure against citizens, some held for months in untenable jail conditions without proper medical attention or access to their attorneys for misdemeanor charges.

I forcefully spoke out against those who broke the law on Jan 6 of last year who assaulted police officers, destroyed public property, or broke into Congressional offices or threatened elected officials. But don’t insult the intelligence of the American people by pretending that the actions of a few that day were worse than Pearl Harbor while ignoring the fact that if was an insurrection, not one person has been charged with that crime or even the crime of terrorism. And some who espouse such nonsense defended the riots that happened throughout the summer of 2020, including Kamala Harris, who actually raised money to pay bail for rioters who burned police cars, assaulted cops, and looted private businesses.

Law and order ought to be the same for everyone no matter their political views. And it also ought to be the same for elected officials. Maybe especially for elected officials.

Direct TV will reportedly no longer carry the conservative OANN (One America News Network) after its contract expires in April. Since that’s the channel’s major distribution outlet, it could put OANN out of business.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/15/directv-drops-the-hammer-on-oan-which-may-do-them-in-n507025

YouTube has temporarily suspended and demonetized Dan Bongino for spreading COVID “misinformation” for saying that masks have been “useless” in stopping the spread of the disease. Which is obviously ridiculous. Look at how well they’ve worked!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10407065/Fox-News-host-Dan-Bongino-suspended-YouTube-spreading-COVID-19-misinformation.html

MyPillow founder Mike Lindell claims that two banks are trying to force him to close his accounts, not because he’s done anything wrong financially but because they don’t like his political views and comments about the 2020 election.

https://www.westernjournal.com/mike-lindell-says-banks-gave-30-day-ultimatum-issues-defiant-challenge-instead/

And podcaster Joe Rogan is under assault for allegedly spreading “misinformation” about COVID. A letter stating that has been widely circulated that’s supposedly signed by 270 “physicians.”

But blogger Jordan Schachtel examined the signers and reports that he could find only about 100 of them who have qualified medical degrees, and most of those work at universities and don’t actually practice medicine. Of the two who co-authored the letter, neither has a medical degree. One has a masters and the other is a Ph.D. academic who researches psychiatry.

Last week, we looked at the charge of “seditious conspiracy” filed against members of the Oath Keepers and what that charge is actually supposed to mean within our legal system. Saturday, National Review published a commentary by legal analyst Andrew McCarthy in which he agreed that the charge of seditious conspiracy is not appropriate. We’ve certainly seen no evidence that Trump supporters --- at least the REAL Trump supporters, even those who entered the Capitol Building --- intended to forcefully interfere with a lawful exercise of government authority. Some have said they were trying to make a statement that they hoped the certification would be “paused” while certain irregularities were examined. They certainly were not trying to overthrow the government or anything close.

McCarthy, being the seasoned legal expert that we are not, was able to explain very precisely why “seditious conspiracy” is the wrong charge. It requires two conditions be met, he said: 1) that there is an agreement to use FORCE (not just “rambunctious” protest), and 2) that there is an attempt to wage war against the United States or oppose the LAWFUL authority of the United States.

And even if the actions that took place might be (wrongly) interpreted that way by some, it’s another thing to prove criminal intent. “Seditious conspiracy is the rare criminal offense in which motive matters,” McCarthy said. January 6, he explained, “involves people who committed serious crimes but believed --- however foolishly --- that they were saving the country, not waging war against it. Far from opposing the lawful authority of the government, they believed --- not irrationally --- that they were acting at the behest of the President of the United States.”

Here’s where I deviate significantly from McCarthy’s view of the protesters’ state of mind and Trump’s role in what happened. It WAS irrational for them to believe that President Trump wanted them to riot, break windows and vandalize the Capitol. Never did he “behoove” them to do such a thing.

Anyway, last summer, after the feds had set up what they called their “Sedition Task Force” (!) to address the events of January 6, 2021, McCarthy wrote that “the rioters will be punished appropriately, but not punished as if they were terrorists who were trying to overthrow the United States government.” Au contraire. That is exactly what the Biden administration is trying to do now. In fact, the last time a charge of sedition was made, it was against actual Islamic terrorists with bombs.

As it happens, McCarthy himself prosecuted that case, in 1995, against the Blind Sheikh’s jihadist cell after their bombing attempt on the World Trade Center and a later plot to bomb other New York City landmarks. Our current administration is trying to put the very same label of “seditious conspirator” on Trump supporters upset at what looked to them like blatant election fraud. They were expressing opposition to something they clearly believed was unlawful.

A bit of history: The law against sedition was first codified during the Civil War, to target Confederate sympathizers in the North who were helping the South –- a very different situation, with people literally at war with each other. “Our sedition law is designed to address conspiracies formed by anti-American enemies to attack our country and its government in an unambiguously hostile and violent manner,” McCarthy explained. The terrorists I prosecuted, in the course of plotting and conducting mass-murder attacks, were willfully at war with the United States and said so unabashedly. That is not true of the January 6 rioters.”

“Let’s be real,” McCarthy wrote in June. “With due respect to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Capitol melee is by no stretch of the imagination the greatest threat to our democracy in living memory. It is not 9/11. It is not the Boston Marathon bombing. Indeed, the June 14, 2017, Washington baseball field shooting spree, in which a radical leftist tried to mass-murder much of the Republican congressional delegation, bore more hallmarks of a terrorist attack --- albeit one that, like the deadly Black Lives Matter riots of last summer, the media-Democrat complex always remembers to forget.”

McCarthy did note “forcible entry, vandalism, and some theft of government property” on the part of some Capitol Hill rioters. He called it “a national disgrace.” At that time, some charges had already been filed and some participants had pleaded guilty, but none of this involved sedition. Oath Keepers founder Jon Ryan Schaffer had pleaded guilty to two charges: 1) obstructing a congressional proceeding, and 2) trespassing on restricted federal grounds while armed with a dangerous weapon (bear spray, which there is no claim that he actually used).

Last summer, McCarthy blamed President Trump for the riot, and he still does, as he sees Trump as responsible for making his supporters believe Biden hadn’t really won the election. I disagree, believing people are responsible for their own foolishness. If we’re going to attribute their anger to some outside force, how about the courts, for refusing to look at the evidence? Whether or not Trump had said the election was stolen, we saw enough jaw-dropping irregularities –- just on election night –-to generate enormous doubts. In fact, those doubts have grown with time, in part because of the stunning lack of transparency regarding the process, with over half of Americans now suspecting there was enough interference to change the outcome. Taking that “pause” would have been a good thing, instead of pushing ahead to formalize a "win" that millions of people saw as a likely fraud.

Finally, if you haven’t yet seen the documentary film CAPITOL PUNISHMENT, about the events and aftermath of January 6, I highly recommend you watch that. Nick Searcy, who was there that day and stars in the film, was a guest on my TBN show this weekend, and we had a great discussion. The film has lots of amazing “you-are-there” video from that day and interviews held later with participants who describe the shocking FBI raids they and their families endured, in which they really were treated like terrorists. There’s an enlightening segment on Ashli Babbitt, including video of her smiling and happy on her way to the Capitol just a short time before she was killed, and an interview with her husband that is not to be missed.

https://capitolpunishmentthemovie.com

In what I hope is the first ripple of a coming tidal wave, a Florida professor has resigned as president of the American Psychological Association’s Society for Media and Technology, in protest of how the APA’s bowing to leftist ideology and wokeism has trumped medical science in ways that are “actively harmful” to patients.

https://redstate.com/alexparker/2022/01/13/a-former-president-scalds-the-american-psychological-association-over-wokeness-worthy-of-shame-n505734

It is astounding to think that these are the people who are supposed to help others improve their mental health when they sound like Grade A wackjobs themselves. In addition to the APA's demonizing of men, traditional values and America as irredeemably racist, the professor cites their PC language edicts, which are baffling.

For instance, you can no longer say “blind person,” you must say “person with blindness.” That seems to accomplish nothing except to bolster George Carlin’s observation that people think things become less painful if you just add more gaseous syllables to their names (the way “shell shock” gradually morphed into “post-traumatic stress disorder.”)

The professor also complained, “We’re not to talk about birth sex or people being born a boy or girl (‘assigned female/male at birth’ is the language of choice now.)”

I could actually agree with that: you are assigned female/male at birth…by God, via your genitals and chromosomes. But I doubt that would earn me a welcome to the American Psychological Association. Which is fine with me, since it sounds like the inmates are running the asylum there.

President Biden's week

January 15, 2022

President Biden’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week continued Thursday with the lid likely being nailed shut on the coffin of both his “Legalize Vote Fraud” bill and his push to kill the Senate filibuster to get it passed.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-white-house-policy-flops-defeats

Biden was set to visit the Senate to urge them to kill the filibuster, but before he even arrived, Arizona Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema brought down the hammer, saying that while she supported the election bill, she would not vote to kill the filibuster.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stephen-kruiser/2022/01/13/sinema-wraps-filibuster-dagger-in-dem-talking-points-then-sticks-it-in-n1549212

She also had this great comment about the current political scene: “It’s more common today to demonize someone who thinks differently than us rather than to seek to understand their views.” Ironically, I think this was probably lost on the leftists who thought they could bully her into changing her mind by harassing her. It was certainly lost on her colleagues, who responded to her defense of the filibuster (which was previously defended by Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama, back when it was to their advantage) by claiming she was now on the side of “white supremacy.” So it’s official: “white supremacist” now means nothing other than “someone who refuses to vote the way I want her to.”

But Sinema wasn’t alone: Sen. Joe Manchin also said on Thursday, "I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster." And that makes the vote 52-48. Game over. Or it should be, but don’t bet that we won't see another attempted "work-around" the Constitution.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/01/13/joe-manchin-twists-the-knife-a-little-bit-more-n506255

(Incidentally, what does it say about the state of your party when only 2 out of 50 of its Senators have the courage and integrity to publicly refuse to blow up the institution of the Senate for short term partisan gain? That’s a 1-25 integrity ratio.)

In comments to the press afterward, Biden didn’t take his defeat well. I don’t know if he even realized that by inexplicably barking that election reform laws are about “who gets to count the vote! Count the vote! Count the vote!” he was reminding everyone of communist dictator Joseph Stalin, who reportedly said votes didn’t matter, all that matters is who gets to count them.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/01/13/watch-joe-biden-appears-visibly-flustered-defeated-in-post-sinema-speech-interview-n506167

By comparison, that appearance made Kamala Harris look like the star of “I Love Lucidity.”

I wrote this week, complaining that the Supreme Court’s delay in ruling on the Biden/OSHA vaccine mandate had allowed it to go into effect: by waiting until the Monday deadline passed, they left businesses no choice but to enforce it or risk ruinous fines if the SCOTUS upheld it. That criticism still goes, even though the Court did issue a ruling Thursday striking down the mandate on businesses with more than 100 employees (they allowed the mandate on health care workers at hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid payments. More on that below.)

It was a better-late-than-never ruling that still should’ve come sooner. But at least it was properly decided. Naturally, the left wing of Twitter went ape, accusing the Court of allowing millions of people to DIE!! As usual, they missed the point, which wasn’t whether vaccines are a good thing but whether OSHA has the power to order Americans to take one whether they want to or not. These are two separate issues (as I always point out, I’m vaccinated myself, but I don’t believe Washington bureaucrats have the power to force it on people who object.)

(A writer/producer for “The Daily Show” even tweeted his complaint that this SCOTUS doesn’t care that “a lot of legal experts on here gave assurances that Biden’s vaccine mandate was clearly allowed by law and precedent.” Commenters reminded him that the Supreme Court are the legal experts, and they didn’t take advice on this case from random people on Twitter. Well, maybe Sonia Sotomayor did.)

Rebecca Downs at Townhall.com has an excellent summary of the legal reasoning of the majority (the three liberal Justices followed their usual judicial philosophy of “If it feels good, do it.”)

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2022/01/13/justice-gorsuch-highlights-a-key-point-about-oshas-authority-in-concurring-opinion-n2601827

Citing the unanimous 1819 McCullough v. Maryland decision, Justice Gorsuch wrote that the federal government doesn’t have unlimited general powers but must cite a constitutionally enumerated authority when it regulates. Mandating a vaccine on 80 million American workers, many of whom object on religious or other grounds, is such a sweeping expansion of federal power that it would have to come from the people’s elected representatives. Gorsuch said far less consequential rules had run afoul of this test, Congress clearly did not delegate such powers to OSHA, and a majority of the Senate even voted to disapprove of OSHA’s ruling.

Quoting the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Gorsuch said these safeguards “serve to prevent 'government by bureaucracy’ supplanting ‘government by the people.'"

It’s unfortunate, however, that Justices Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the liberals to hand Biden a win in allowing his health care worker mandate to stand. They ruled that since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that issued the mandate fall under the Secretary of Health and Human Services, who has the power to impose conditions on receiving those funds, the mandate is allowed. I'd say that's an awfully expansive definition of "conditions."

https://www.westernjournal.com/justices-handed-biden-win-vaccine-mandate-health-care-workers/

In his dissent, Justice Thomas reminded his colleagues that the exact same principle applies: this case wasn’t about whether vaccines are good, it’s about whether federal appointees have the power to “force health care workers, by coercing their employers, to undergo a medical procedure they do not want and cannot undo.” He noted that just as with OSHA, if Congress had wanted to grant that power to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, it would have done so, and “it did not.”

That decision is being touted by the White House as a big win for Biden. Considering his other news this week includes the SCOTUS killing the vaccine mandate on businesses, record inflation, a new record low approval rating and the collapse of his push for killing the Senate filibuster and legalizing vote fraud, by comparison, it is.

Postscript to the SCOTUS ruling: Justice Gorsuch made reference to the plaintiffs’ argument that the government knew that its mandate was unconstitutional because Biden Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who has been nicknamed “Biden’s Brain” (boy, there a title you don’t want on your resume!) retweeted a tweet boasting about it being the ultimate legislative “work-around.”

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/13/glorious-scotus-spanked-ron-klain-today-too-n506254

Apparently, it’s not enough for Twitter to censor conservatives from saying what we believe. If they want to save the Democrats, they’ll have to start censoring them from telling us what they believe, too.

"Domestic Terrorist"

January 14, 2022

It appears that our “Justice” Department needs some sort of remedial instruction in what the term “domestic terrorist” means. They seem to believe that if you throw a Molotov cocktail at an occupied federal building, you’re a peaceful protester; but if you complain at a school board meeting about your kid being indoctrinated with leftist, racist, anti-American propaganda, you’re a domestic terrorist. In fact, the threat is so dire that the DOJ just announced the creation of a new “domestic terrorism” unit. That would be okay if I believed they had a realistic definition of domestic terrorists. But I think this article makes it pretty clear who they’re really planning to target.

https://www.westernjournal.com/garlands-secret-police-anxiety-abounds-doj-forms-new-unit-watch-us-citizens/

If you remember, this all started with a letter to Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland from the National School Board Association, a letter they later apologized for and Garland tried to downplay. But it’s obvious that it served its intended purpose, as grounds to politicize and weaponize the DOJ against justifiably angry parents.

There were previous reports that the NSBA had colluded with the White House to craft the letter. But the latest twist came Tuesday when the group Parents Defending Education released an email they'd obtained through the Freedom of Information (remember that?) Act that revealed that NSBA interim CEO Chip Slaven "told the officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by (Education) Secretary Miguel Cardona."

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/education-secretary-cardona-resign-nsba-letter

Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted, "Stunning. The original source of the letter lobbying the Biden admin to use the Patriot Act to target parents as domestic terrorists? THE BIDEN ADMIN ITSELF. Biden Education Secretary: in effect, ‘Please ask us to treat Moms & Dads as terrorists.’"

Cardona’s office denied that he solicited the letter, but it hasn’t stopped calls for him to resign. Sadly, another way the Biden Administration is like Obama’s is that there is zero accountability for its appointees. Still, top Congressional Republicans are demanding that Cardona turn over his correspondence with teachers’ unions so we can all see whether he really was the source for this outrageous attack on concerned parents.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mccarthy-foxx-demand-biden-education-secretary-teachers-unions

It will be interesting to see if he complies with that request or if he tries to cite “executive privilege,” a right his boss recently undermined because he thought it would hurt Trump. Again, thinking ahead to consider the consequences of their partisan actions is not these people’s strong suit.

Democrat Disasters

January 14, 2022

I miss the days when Democrats used to ruin things slowly, through corruption, graft, incompetence and a misguided belief in failed ideology. That long lead time at least made the eventual disasters look almost inadvertent. These days, the minute they take office, they leap straight to openly destroying systems that are working, without even bothering to try to appear rational or reasonable.

For instance, if you ran a state like California, which so many residents are fleeing that U-Haul can’t keep vans in stock, would you think it’s a good idea to double the already crippling taxes to pay for a state-run socialized health care program, the type that a couple of states tried then quickly abandoned after demand and costs spiraled “beyond expectations?” Well, of course, that’s exactly what some Democrats in California want to do.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/california-wants-to-double-its-taxes/

And take President Biden (please!) He inherited a domestic energy industry that thanks to Trump’s policies had brought down gas prices and made the US energy independent. Through a flurry of executive orders, he immediately strangled it, creating shortages and skyrocketing prices, which he blamed on oil company price gouging. Of course, he had to do this to force us to switch to unready and unreliable “green energy” alternatives, like sunshine, windmills and unicorn flatulence. When the people began to revolt, his solution was to beg OPEC to pump more oil (ironically, they told him to go pound sand.)

So how does he react to the inevitable disaster caused by his own policies? By doubling down on stupid. His Bureau of Land Management just killed a deal that’s been in the works for years to develop resources in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. This blindsided and infuriated Alaskans and their elected representatives, since Biden didn’t even bother consulting with them before throwing his policy grenade.

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-blindsides-red-state-kills-game-changing-energy-plan-may-solved-usas-gas-crisis/

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski said the plan had been carefully crafted over years to protect sensitive areas of the Reserve. Fellow Sen. Dan Sullivan called Biden’s action “not only arbitrary and contrary to good science” and a sop to placate “radical extreme environmental groups who care nothing about Alaskans,” but also harmful to the very indigenous communities his Administration claims to care about.

Indeed, all these actions that drive up the cost of energy are most harmful to the poor and middle class. But they’re popular with wealthy green activists who want to force everyone to buy an electric car without thinking far enough ahead to figure out what we’re going to plug them all into. They can't all be powered by Greta Thunberg's electrifying smile.

The only rational explanation I can see for this latest action is that Biden must figure if nobody can afford to buy gas, we can’t drive to the polls and vote these maniacs out. I have news for him: at this point, a lot of us would walk a mile over hot coals to do that.

RIP Ronnie Spector

January 14, 2022

As the pop culture icons of the ‘50s and ‘60s enter their 70s and 80s, it’s inevitable that we’ve started losing them. I’ve had to write a number of obituaries recently, and here’s another particularly tough one: Rock Hall of Famer and one of the great voices of girl group pop/rock, Ronnie Spector, has died after a battle with cancer at 78.

https://variety.com/2022/music/news/ronnie-spector-dead-dies-the-ronettes-1235152801/

Her family issued a statement reading, “Ronnie lived her life with a twinkle in her eye, a spunky attitude, a wicked sense of humor and a smile on her face. She was filled with love and gratitude. Her joyful sound, playful nature and magical presence will live on in all who knew, heard or saw her.” Tributes are flooding Twitter from countless musicians, from Joan Jett to Brian Wilson (who actually wrote the Beach Boys classic “Don’t Worry Baby” for her) to La La Brooks of the Crystals, who remembered her as “so sweet…a hoot, like a firecracker” who had “the most unique voice” and was at her happiest on stage.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/la-la-brooks-ronnie-spector-tribute-1283853/

Born Veronica Bennett, she was performing with her sister (she said they purposely played up their flirty sex appeal, getting longer eyelashes every time it worked) when they auditioned for megaproducer/homicidal nutjob Phil Spector, who immediately shouted, “That’s the voice I’ve been looking for!” He created the Ronettes to showcase her, and they quickly scored a string of hits that are still heard today on radio, TV and films, including “Be My Baby,” “Walking in the Rain” and “Baby I Love You.”

Ronnie had much in common with Tina Turner: a powerful, sexy voice that could cut through Spector’s Wall of Sound, an overtly sexy image, an ‘80s career revival and a marriage to an abusive, manipulative husband. Ronnie married Spector, and he kept her a virtual prisoner in his house, driving her to alcoholism before her mother forcibly rescued her from his home, a harrowing experience she described in her 1990 memoir, “Be My Baby.”

Sadly, unlike Tina, Ronnie’s ‘80s revival was mostly limited to guest appearances on her admirer’s records like the Eddie Money classic, “Take Me Home Tonight,” since radio wouldn’t play her solo releases. The only silver lining is that that means there are a lot of great records that most people have yet to hear. Many involve big name stars who greatly admired her, like the 1980s LPs “Siren” (with its great cover) and “Unfinished Business;” the 1990 EP co-produced by Joey Ramone, “She Talks to Rainbows;” the 2006 EP of Marshall Crenshaw songs, “Something’s Gonna Happen;” and the 2016 album of British Invasion hits, “English Heart.”

Rolling Stone compiled a good playlist of 15 essential tracks, ranging from the biggest hits to terrific lesser-known titles, like her 1977 single of Billy Joel’s “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” (which was inspired by “Be My Baby”) with the E Street Band.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/ronnie-spector-ronettes-best-songs-1283633/

And my favorite must-hear ‘80s song is her duet on “You Mean So Much To Me, Baby” with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. If you love great ‘60s-style, horn-drenched, soulful Jersey rock songs like those that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band cover, only with better vocals and no political lectures, this is a slice of musical Heaven.

https://youtu.be/4JabbiFhBAE

Finally, someone put together a compilation of her interviews and performances on David Letterman’s show from the 1980s through 2010. Great quote: in a joint appearance, Eddie Money said he wanted her for “Take Me Home Tonight,” but figured she was unavailable (Ronnie snorts at that!). But he called her and asked, “What are you doing?” She replied, “The dishes.”

Watch and be reminded of what great pop singing with no need for AutoTune sounds like. RIP, Ronnie.

https://youtu.be/GM5r0Ve8Las

Steve Harvey said that cancel culture has “killed comedy,” and it’s caused him to step away from doing stand-up. He says that every joke these days allegedly hurts somebody’s feelings, and that when he finally does another stand-up special, he’ll probably have to call it “This Is It” because he’ll never be allowed to do another one.

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/steve-harvey-cancel-culture-stop-doing-stand-up-political-correctness-killed-comedy

Personally, while I understand his viewpoint, I believe that now more than ever, we need comedians to step up and tell as many jokes as possible about the “woke” left. Knuckling under to them only gives them a greater sense of their own power to censor and intimidate. Comedians have always been society’s greatest weapon against arrogant tyrants, and just because the tyrants are self-righteous “activists” with Twitter accounts instead of politicians or military dictators, that shouldn’t make them immune to richly-deserved ridicule.

In a related story, here’s a must-read article by Bari Weiss at Substack about the dire situation in Hollywood, where leftism and wokeism have many people terrified of saying anything that might offend someone and get them blacklisted (just using the word “blacklisted” can now get you blacklisted.)

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/hollywoods-new-rules?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web

It’s gone beyond a welcome openness to writers and creators of more diverse backgrounds to the point where there’s blatant discrimination against white job applicants. That means more racially diverse writers, but also means that good, experienced writers are being shut out, which helps to explain why so much of what we’re now seeing on our screens isn’t fresh, creative, thrilling or entertaining, it’s just transparent leftist propaganda that feels as if it were written by freshman UCLA film school students. It’s why, if you want well-written stories with sharp dialogue, original stories and believable characters, you’ll need a subscription to Turner Classic Movies.

Referencing George Wallace

January 12, 2022

One more comment on the outrageous carpetbag of lies that President Biden unpacked in Georgia: Who thought it was a good idea to use that reference to George Wallace? That may be the one thing in the speech that was actually written by Joe Biden. I like making arcane references because I figure my target audience is older people with lots of knowledge and experience and curious younger people who’ll Google something they don’t know to learn about it. That’s definitely not the crowd the Dems are targeting with this drivel.

Trying to convince young voters to be scared of Republicans by invoking the name of George Wallace is a Grandpa Simpson-like idea that could only sound good to a 79-year-old man who remembers 1968 better than he remembers what he had for breakfast. Here are three things wrong with that reference:

1. He’s talking to young Americans who learned “history” in liberal-run schools, about something that happened nearly six decades ago, involving a politician who died two years before the turn of the century. How many of them turned to one another and said, “George Wallace? Is he that black stand-up comic my parents like?”

To use my own reference that young people won't get, on his first album, Steve Martin told a Nixon joke then admitted it felt like telling “Ike” jokes. At that time, it had been only three years since Nixon resigned and the reference already seemed dated. At least Biden didn’t attack Ike. I like Ike.

2. George Wallace was a Democrat. In fact, he was a Democrat who wanted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever,” just like so many current “progressive” Democrats do. (FYI, Biden also made scary references to such other historic figures as Jefferson Davis and Bull Connor, who were both – you guessed it – Democrat segregationists.)

3. Maybe Joe’s understandably forgotten, but when he was in the Senate, he was quite chummy with segregationist Southern Democrats. When campaigning in the South, he liked to tell voters that he was called one of the outstanding young politicians of America by none other than Alabama Gov. George Wallace.

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2022/01/11/analysis-brandon-biden-tells-us-who-he-really-is-in-train-wreck-of-a-speech-in-georgia-n505109

While I can understand why people would be frightened of Republicans if they thought they were anything like segregationist Democrats, it’s simply not true. Those are yours, Joe. Our Party was formed for the specific purpose of making your Party give up their slaves. So knock it off.

All right. That is just it. President Biden lied so much during his “voting rights” speech in Georgia Tuesday that the gloves have to come off. On my radio show, my slogan was, “I’m conservative...but I’m not mad at anybody about it.” Well, circumstances have changed since I did that show, and today, there’s plenty to be mad about.

“I ask every elected official in America,” Biden said from the podium, “how do you want to be remembered? ...Do you want to be on the side of Dr. King, or George Wallace?”

https://twitter.com/jtLOL/status/1481025019752947723?t=fm7qLs5FKo4H3JDOmmuEyw&s=19

That remark is so offensive, it’s hard to accept that this seems to be the level of discourse today for political speech --- at least the uncensored speech that comes from the left.

First of all, virtually all conservatives agree with the philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Do you know who’s NOT on the side of Dr. King? Any adherent of Critical Race Theory, which teaches that we must look first at the color of someone’s skin, not the content of his or her character. CRT stands for the opposite of what Dr. King stood for. So Biden is lying in his implication about Republicans. He offends me deeply with that, lie, not that he cares.

Here’s the full video of both Vice President Harris and President Biden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMCOV5t-G10

Harris says, “I have heard your outrage, about the ‘anti-voter law’ here, and how many voters will likely be kept from voting. And Georgia is not alone. Across our nation, anti-voter laws could make it more difficult for as many as 55 million Americans to vote.” (NOTE: Did you know that Biden’s home state of Delaware has more stringent election laws than Georgia does?)

Tell me, Kamala, where does that number, 55 million, come from? Are there 55 million qualified voters in America who don’t have or can’t get an ID? Who can’t scrawl a signature that can be verified? Who can’t apply for an absentee ballot, rather than just having an unsolicited ballot arrive in the mail for anyone to fill out? The only safeguards we want for the voting process are those minimal ones that help keep it honest. And those are the very provisions you want to do away with. That tells us something very important about you. In more confrontational words, we’re on to you.

Harris accuses the GOP of interfering with elections to get the outcomes they want. Really? This is something I would think the Democrats know exactly how to do. It’s what Marc Elias spent the entire year of 2020 on, getting election laws changed, and what he’s doing now in anticipation of the election this year. The stated mission of The Elias Firm is TO GET MORE DEMOCRATS ELECTED TO OFFICE.

The “assault on voting rights” Harris accused Republicans of is as vapid and made-up as the “Russia Russia Russia!!” hoax. Repeat: there is no assault by Republicans on the freedom to vote. It is MADE UP. It is FAKE NEWS. Democrats’ frantic “voting rights” campaign is based on nothing.

I won’t spend more time on Kamala’s speech, because few Americans take her seriously, anyway. Let’s go to what President Biden had to say, even though most don’t take him seriously, either. Watch the whole thing if you can stomach it --- you’ll see Biden, early on, refer to the VP as “President Harris” --- or else read our list of his most offensive remarks, below, with our notes...

(Biden referring to the Jan. 6 “insurrection”) “...when a dagger was literally held at the throat of American democracy.” (NOTE: aside from this being a gross exaggeration, when will the left figure out what “literally” means?)

“…But then, the violent mob of January 6, 2021, empowered and encouraged by a defeated former President, sought to win through violence what he had lost at the ballot box.” (NOTE: That is a LIE. As you know, President Trump offered Speaker Pelosi up to 20,000 National Guard troops to keep the peace that day. She turned his offer down.)

“...for...the first time, to stop the peaceful transfer of power.” (NOTE: That is a LIE. Trump and his supporters wished only for a peaceful pause to examine some huge irregularities in the result before certifying the vote.)

“...We’re here today, to stand against the forces in America that value power over principle, forces that attempted a coup, a coup against the legally expressed will of the American people by sowing doubt, [unintelligible] charges of fraud, and seeking to steal the 2020 election.” (NOTE: That this was a coup is another LIE. And we all had doubt, after what we saw with our own eyes the night of November 3.)

“They want chaos to reign.” (NOTE: He must be talking about HIS party, which thrives on chaos.)

“The battle for the soul of America is not over. We must stand strong and stand together to make sure January 6 marks not the end of democracy but the beginning of a renaissance of our democracy.” (NOTE: Is he out of his mind?)

(After talking about the denial of voting rights to blacks and women) “...And now, the defeated former President and his supporters use the Big Lie about the 2020 election to fuel torment [?] and anti-voting laws [NOTE: we think he misread the teleprompter here], new laws designed to suppress your vote, to subvert our elections.” (NOTE: That is LIE. The votes likely being suppressed are the ones being canceled out by fraud made possible by Marc Elias’s “reforms.”)

“To them [Republicans], too many people voting in a democracy is a problem.” (NOTE: another LIE. We just want them qualified. And preferably alive.)

It just goes on. Biden points out that Trump himself voted by mail in the White House. Good grief --- does he think Trump got an unsolicited ballot in the mail, or that it wouldn’t be possible to verify his signature?

Dropboxes are, Biden says, “safe, convenient, and you get more people to vote.” Sure, but they have to be supervised, with a chain of custody. Is that so hard? And you don’t get them funded by Mark Zuckerberg.

Then Biden again refers to election safeguards as “Jim Crow 2.0.” “It’s no longer about who gets to vote,” he says, “it’s about making it harder to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote, and whether your vote counts at all." (NOTE: who COUNTS the vote?? I would say that was definitely the problem in 2020.)

“The goal of the former President and his allies is to disenfranchise anyone who votes against them,” Biden lies.

Well, you know how fond I am of saying, “We watch the news, so you don’t have to,” but, honestly, we just can’t subject ourselves to any more of this –- not without donning hazmat suits. It’s so toxic, it makes long covid look like the sniffles.

I assume Kurt Schlichter forced himself to watch this pack of lies, because it made him even punchier than usual when he wrote his commentary. He’s figured it out, too: Dems are doing this because they want to cheat.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/01/10/hey-dems-we-got-your-election-reforms-right-here-n2601597

On Tuesday, the offensive individual who currently occupies the White House gave such a nasty, dishonest and divisive speech about so-called "voting rights" that our commentary turned out to be part of a huge and richly-deserved backlash.

On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell said that while he has "known, liked and respected" Biden for many years, he "did not recognize "the man at the podium yesterday." Here are Sen. McConnell's remarks from the Senate floor --- highly recommended reading.

https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/melanie-arter/mcconnell-biden-less-year-restoring-soul-america-has-become-agree

We're mystified as to what it was in past years that caused Sen. McConnell to respect him, as Biden has been telling lies for a very long time, but whatever it was, it appears to be over now.

"The President did not get a mandate to transform America or reshape society," McConnell said. "But he did arguably get a mandate to do just one central thing that he campaigned on. Here's what that was: bridge a divided country, lower the temperature, dial down the perpetual air of crisis in politics...It is the one job citizens actually hired him to do."

McConnell is right --- Biden was presented during the 2020 campaign as the amiable, low-key personality who would calm things down and bring us together. That "unifying" persona was marketed to America like a box of bland, comforting cereal, and unfortunately a lot of Americans bought it. It's undoubtedly the main reason Biden got the support that he did. But in just one year, especially with his vile race-baiting rhetoric, he has "fundamentally transformed" that fake persona he was using and given us a look at who he really is. It's not pretty.

New York City voters just got a harsh double-whammy lesson in what “bait and swtich” means. Fed up with Bill DeBlasio’s socialist mismanagement that’s resulted in skyrocketing crime and fleeing residents, they voted in some new Democrats who claimed they would be different…and then the minute they were in office started giving the people DeBlasio 2.0.

First, new Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg announced that he was basically decriminalizing every crime short of murder…

https://nypost.com/2022/01/04/alvin-braggs-green-light-for-anarchy/

And now, new Mayor Eric Adams announced that he will not oppose a controversial new plan to allow up to a million non-citizens to vote in local elections after just 30 days’ residency. Ironically, some critics are from the left and claim it will further dilute the voting power of black residents. While some smaller blue cities let non-citizens vote in municipal elections, San Francisco is the only major city that does, and that’s just for school board elections. New York’s move would be a major change in eroding election standards.

https://www.westernjournal.com/slap-face-eric-adams-approves-massive-rule-change-nyc-elections-swelling-dem-rolls/

Supporters say this is legal because it only applies to local elections, but it’s already facing a lawsuit that claims it violates the New York state constitution.

Even Nancy Pelosi once said that in New York, even a glass of water could get elected if it had a (D) by its name on the ballot. Maybe it’s time for New Yorkers to stop voting for Democrat glasses of water and realize that what they’re really doing is drinking the Kool-Aid.

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Joe Biden Did That

January 11, 2022

The CEO of a major New York-based supermarket chain said that Omicron and the supply chain disruption are not only causing higher food prices, but could lead to shortages of meat and eggs over the next six weeks, especially in the Northeast.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/billionaire-ceo-meat-egg-shortage-omicron-supply-chain

The Wall Street Journal also reports that home builders are struggling with shortages of many necessary supplies, including paint, bricks, appliances and garage doors.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/supply-chain-issues-leave-new-homes-without-garage-doors-and-gutters-11641724201

Meanwhile, as if the President weren’t already being dogged enough by the “Let’s Go, Brandon” trend,

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-benny-johnson-travels-delaware-discovers-biden-see-every-time-goes-vacation/

a new hashtag is trending on Twitter: #BareShelvesBiden. Many users are adding it to photos taken in their local stores of shelves that are empty or nearly empty of merchandise.

https://www.westernjournal.com/americans-unleash-biden-chilling-encounters-grocery-stores/

This tsunami of bare shelves photos is savage revenge on liberals who ridiculed someone a couple of weeks ago for posting a photo of bare shelves that they said was just an aisle that had been cleared to make way for Valentine’s Day merchandise. One of my writers noted that he’s been taking such photos in stores around Dallas, and he’s really looking forward to seeing the romantic new lines of dry spaghetti and cat food that must be coming for Valentine’s Day.

Big Tech bias

January 11, 2022

Fox News reports that according to Federal Election Commission records, 94% of donations from top employees of Google (which owns YouTube) go to Democrats, as do 99% of donations from Twitter employees.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/google-twitter-employees-donations-democrats

It’s no surprise that both platforms are routinely accused of silencing and censoring conservative voices. When called on it, they deny it, or claim that it was a “mistake,” as YouTube just did after reinstating a song critical of Biden’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal. Gee, remember when songs criticizing the government were considered classics of the ‘60s?

https://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/youtube-takes-down-john-ondrasik-video-criticized-biden-afghanistan-withdrawal

YouTube claimed that the video's images might be “offensive to some audiences.” Mostly Biden campaign aides, I would imagine.

Still, even with the growing likelihood of a Republican takeover of Congress, many GOP voters are discouraged that Republican Congress members publicly complain about Big Tech leftist censorship but will not change any laws to stop it or make them legally accountable. But there might be another way to force Silicon Valley to end its biased business practices.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/496111/

That is a post by Charles Glasser at Instapundit, explaining how people who have been harmed by Big Tech censorship might be able to get around their Section 230 immunity and sue (BTW, they should have lost that immunity long ago for their blatant violation of the requirement not to act as editors of content.) It’s a complicated legal argument, but well worth reading. In a nutshell: If the Administration has been colluding with these companies to silence users they disagree with – which it seems obvious that they are – then there’s precedent to show that they are acting as de facto government agents rather than private businesses, which means they are required to obey the First Amendment.

And if they can be held legally accountable for every time they’ve violated a user’s right to free speech, the floodgates of lawsuits will be thrown wide open. Couldn’t happen to a more deserving group of defendants.

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Bob Saget RIP

January 11, 2022

We are sad to report that actor/comedian Bob Saget has died at 65 of as-yet unknown causes. He was found dead in his hotel room in Orlando after a performance at a comedy club. Police said there were no signs of foul play or drugs, and he had tweeted just hours before about how happy he was to be doing stand-up again.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/bob-saget-found-dead-in-orlando-hotel-room

His family issued this statement:

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/bob-saget-family-statement-death

Saget was beloved by millennials as a father figure for his role as Danny Tanner on “Full House.” He also hosted the top-rated show, “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and was the narrator of the long-running hit series, “How I Met Your Mother.” But his first love was stand-up, and fans who knew him primarily from “Full House” were often shocked when they went to see him live and discovered how gleefully raunchy his club material was. It was similar to an earlier generation of fans who knew Buddy Hackett only from talk shows and then saw him in Las Vegas.

He was certainly beloved by his peers, who are filling Twitter with tributes, calling him one of the nicest and kindest people in Hollywood. Our sincere condolences to his family. We will update this story when more is known.

UPDATE:

The Orange County, Florida, Sheriff’s Department has released some more details about the circumstances surrounding the death of comedian Bob Saget at 65.

https://www.westernjournal.com/sheriffs-office-releases-preliminary-report-bob-sagets-death/

But coroners say it could take weeks to determine the cause of death. In that news vacuum, rumors are swirling that he might have had a heart attack caused by a COVID vaccine booster shot. Again, we still don’t even know what caused his death or if he had any underlying health issues, so there is certainly no evidence that it was vaccine-related. I know it’s tempting for many to jump to conclusions, but let’s hold off on assessing blame, at least until we know what he actually died of.

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Biden in Georgia

January 11, 2022

President Biden is set to make a speech today in Georgia on voting rights, and apparently, his current approval levels are so toxic that even Stacey Abrams found something better to do than show up and stand next to him.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-pans-biden-message-on-inflation

This is surprising, since claiming that laws that ensure elections are secure and trustworthy are evil is definitely her thing. And that’s the take that Biden is pushing: the idea that voter integrity laws are racist, fascist attempts at voter suppression, and never mind that polls show vast majorities of all ethnic groups support basic election integrity laws such as voter ID.

(Incidentally, if Biden cares so much about loosening voter laws, why is he in Georgia? It’s easier to vote in Georgia than in his home state of Delaware, so why not go there?)

Biden is pushing hard to get Congress to pass what I like to call the “Legalize Vote Fraud Act,” because that’s a much more honest title for it. It would unconstitutionally federalize election laws that are supposed to be set by the states, and allow the Democrats to permanently enshrine practices such as banning voter ID requirements and legalizing ballot harvesting that they think would cement them into power forever. They claim this is to protect “democracy,” which would be hilarious if it weren’t such a serious threat. They’re trying to take away the power of states to run their own elections, and circumvent the obvious shellacking they’re about to get at the polls, while claiming they’re doing it to “protect democracy.” It’s like a bank robber claiming he’s emptying the vault to keep thieves from taking your money.

Remember, this is the same party that’s opened the borders while pushing to let non-citizens vote, and yet claims this is not part of a plan to change the population so they get elected. It’s also the same party that claims that Joe Biden got an unprecedented 82 million votes for President legitimately, and then claims the Democrat vote is being suppressed. And now they’re trying to convince us that keeping elections honest is the equivalent of violent insurrection.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/09/pelosi-pulls-jan-6-card-on-voting-but-clyburn-and-her-own-actions-reveal-the-truth-n504053

Fortunately, for all the hype and hot air this issue is getting, I can’t see Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema going along with this assault on election integrity laws, or with changing the filibuster rules, so this legislation is likely going nowhere.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-democrats-voting-rights-filibuster-schumer-manchin-sinema

The real function for which it’s obviously intended is distraction: to rile up the Party’s base over a phony issue and get them furious enough at the evil Republicans to turn off their brains, forget all the real problems we’re facing, and vote Democrat one more time, only afterwards to realize how they’ve been had again.

Will it work? They have to hope so because they have zero successes to run on otherwise. But I question whether even their most loyal voters are gullible enough to take yet another running kick at that football like Charlie Brown and end up on their backs one more time.

The Democrats gave it their all on the anniversary of January 6, and then, from somewhere deep within their bowels, found even more to keep their narrative going over the weekend.

This was in service to their push to federalize elections with what we call the “Legalize Voter Fraud Bill.” Even before that day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was setting the stage by saying January 6 was “a symptom of a broader illness, an effort to delegitimize our election process.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/schumer-to-use-jan-6-anniversary-to-make-push-for-federal-voting-rights-bill

Schumer was lying. As wrong as it was to resort to violence on that day, it was not an effort to delegitimize our election process. It was the opposite: a reaction to what people saw as an attempt by the LEFT to delegitimize our election process, and the refusal even to look at problems with the vote.

But Schumer was lying in service to his goal: passing unconstitutional election legislation. “...The Senate must advance systemic democracy reforms to repair our republic or else the events of that day will not be an aberration --- they will be the new norm.” They have to pass this bill “to save our democracy.” Schumer's even set January 17, Martin Luther King Day, as the deadline for Republicans to work with them to keep them from considering “changes to Senate rules” (ending filibusters) to get the bill passed. All to “protect the foundation of our democracy: free and fair elections.”

Attempts by Republicans at the state level to safeguard the vote against cheating have been recast by Schumer as voter suppression. That’s another lie. If any protection against cheating is going to be characterized as voter suppression, that means there can be no protection against cheating. See how that works?

On Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to offer another version of the same lie: “What the Republicans are doing across the country is really a legislative continuation of what they did on January 6, which is to undermine our democracy, to undermine the integrity of our elections...”

Never mind that Trump’s rally was FOR election integrity, protesting the staunch refusal to examine what appeared to be highly suspicious activity. THEY were protesting the undermining of democracy. And unless Pelosi’s brain is even foggier that we think, she is well aware of that.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pelosi-republicans-legislative-continuation-jan-6-voting-bill

Pelosi then said something much more applicable to her party than to the GOP: “They [the GOP] are not only suppressing the vote, they are nullifying elections, saying, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter who gets more votes; it matters who the three people we appoint to analyze that, what they decide.’” Doesn’t that sound like what DNC superlawyer Marc Elias wants to do to keep duly-elected Republican members of Congress from being seated? He wants to go to judges to disqualify GOP candidates from serving in office if they’ve offered any support or approval to Trump and/or his rally, saying that violates their oath of office. (!)

One of those duly-elected congressmen, of course, is Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, one of Pelosi’s “rejects” for her Jan. 6 committee. Jordan has written a letter to the chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, after the committee asked him to provide information about his communications with Trump. He essentially told them to pound sand.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/rep-jim-jordan-tells-jan-6-panel-pound-sound-rejects-legitimacy-investigation/

The committee wants to talk to Jordan “in detail” about every communication he had with Trump on January 6. He said he talked with the President all the time, so it wouldn’t be unusual for them to talk that day. “This request is far outside the bounds of legitimate inquiry,” Jordan wrote, "violates core constitutional principles, and would further erode legislative norms.”

The committee is supposed to investigate only as it pertains to “legislative purposes.” Jordan made it clear: “As you well know, I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose.”

Even the committee itself is illegitimate, with no ranking GOP member. Liz Cheney of Wyoming has actually claimed to be the ranking member, which is untrue. As Mollie Hemingway tweeted on the 6th: “Holy crap! Liz Cheney just falsely claimed she is the ranking member --- the top representative of the GOP caucus --- on the J6 committee. In fact, she was hand-selected by Nancy Pelosi and is NOT the ranking member. Huge, huge legal implications associated with this lie.”

Democrat Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina lied, too, going on FOX News Sunday to say it was appropriate to tie the election bill to the events of January 6 because elected officials swore an oath to protect the Constitution from any “domestic terrorists among us.” NO ONE has been charged with domestic terrorism, let alone convicted. He’s trying to imply that anyone who opposes their bill is pro-domestic terrorism. But if Democrats are so all-fired set on protecting the Constitution, why are they pushing a bill that is so clearly unconstitutional?

Kamala Harris, in her speech Thursday, beat the same tinny drum, saying that “the American spirit is being tested” and that “we must pass the voting rights bills that are now before the Senate” on order to “secure and strengthen our democracy.”

Then the Vice President went on PBS for a softball interview with Judy Woodruff. Political hack Woodruff played her role well, praising Liz Cheney for holding Trump fully responsible for the riot and suggesting that Trump should face criminal prosecution.

https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/tim-graham/2022/01/09/pbs-anchor-coddles-kamala-very-forceful-16-speech-wants-trump

Okay, here's a palate cleanser: The Epoch Times, in a premium story, offers an analysis of the competing January 6 narratives, saying it “...Depends on Who Tells the Story.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/jan-6-narrative-depends-on-who-tells-the-story

So, why were Trump supporters at the Capitol that day? To make their voices heard? Register their concerns about voter fraud and inaccuracy? Or overthrow the government? It depends on who wants to know and the answer they want to hear.

But the excellent point this piece makes is that it’s TRUMP SUPPORTERS, in particular those who were caught up in the Capitol breach and are still suffering the consequences, who are in the best position to answer that. Former Pennsylvania legislator and retired Air Force officer Rick Saccone, who with his wife rode a bus to the rally and never even knew there had been violence until he was headed home, says it was mostly just senior citizens peacefully demonstrating. He thinks the ones who actually got violent were not true Trump supporters.

Jake Lang of Sullivan County, New York, has been a (yes) political prisoner held without bail since January 13, 2021, and he has his own story to tell. He’s charged with assaulting a police officer, but he says he was trying to save a woman named Roseanne Boyland, who later died. His father says he’s grown thin in jail, with a scraggly beard that’s now down to his chest.

Boyland is the woman who it was said had died of a drug overdose. Now that video has emerged, there’s serious question about that.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/videos-shed-light-on-death-of-rosanne-boyland-at-us-capitol-on-jan-6_

Anyway, if we’re going to have competing narratives about January 6, how about looking at the one told by people who were actually involved, rather than by those who twist the truth in pursuit of a political agenda?

This is an interesting and overdue article about Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton, and how he is routinely attacked and mocked by the media as a rightwing nut, only to have whatever he said proven to be correct.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/its-time-for-the-press-to-take-tom-cotton-seriously

He was assailed for suggesting that COVID could have escaped from the Wuhan virus lab, and he was savaged for suggesting that federal troops should be deployed to help police deal with rioters (the media later cheered such troops being deployed in DC after January 6th.)

In the most recent case, Washington Post “fact-checker” Glenn Kessler gave Cotton “Four Pinocchios” for claiming that the Democrats’ COVID relief bill would give checks to convicted criminals and terrorists like the Boston Marathon bomber. He introduced an amendment to prevent that, which the Dems rejected. And last week, we learned that the Boston Marathon bomber did, indeed, get a $1400 check from the taxpayers.

Incredibly, Kessler refused to retract the article, instead only revising it to “One Pinocchio,” claiming that Cotton’s claim “lacked context.” No, it was 100% correct. He read the bill, he warned what it would do, and he tried to no avail to stop it. Sen. Cotton had the facts, which has now been proven, and the “fact-checker” was wrong. Cotton’s office is demanding a full retraction, but perhaps they don’t understand that WaPo “fact-checks” aren’t about facts, they’re about making conservatives look bad.

And that’s what’s known as “context!”

Related: before we get too far into the new year, here’s a look back at seven of the most humiliating instances of the liberal media getting their facts completely wrong in 2021. Yes, I’m thinking the same thing you are: “Only seven?”

https://www.westernjournal.com/look-7-humiliating-fact-checks-leftists-got-2021/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

You get what you pay for

January 7, 2022

You get what you pay for, in this case racial divisions and spiraling crime rates. And someone paid plenty to buy that for America.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/ari-j-kaufman/2022/01/05/new-york-times-offers-stunning-report-on-left-wing-racial-fundraising-n1547195

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times (!) just published an investigative report called “The Law of Unintended Political Consequences Strikes Again” that tallies up the amount of money that “progressive” elites and philanthropic entitles showered onto divisive, racial groups after the killing of George Floyd. The total was nearly $25 billion (yes, “billion” with a “b.”)

It’s the largest outpouring of “philanthropy” ever spent on a single cause in such a short time, probably by a factor of 10. And aside from vastly enriching a lot of so-called socialists and grifters, it’s also torn the country apart, aggravated racial divisions and gotten a lot of criminals released (I question whether those were unintended consequences.) It's also gotten a lot of innocent people killed, many of them black (murder victims in blue cities are disproportionately black, and black neighborhoods are suffering the most from reducing the police presence there.) It’s also helped fund the most radical left elements of the Democratic Party, pushing the party so far to the left that it’s likely about to get wiped out in the next elections.

So at least something good may eventually come of all the money that was parted from all those fools.

PS - Speaking of voter backlash and unintended consequences, look at what blue state COVID policies are doing to Florida voter registration. Looks like these refugees don't need to be reminded not to vote for the same policies that drove them out of blue states.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/01/05/jaw-dropping-gains-for-gop-in-florida-as-covid-refugees-register-red-n1547078

A reader writes:

Hi, Gov. Huckabee. Thank you for your daily newsletter. Regarding Jan. 6, which was an unfortunate event, I saw a clip of [Texas] Sen. Ted Cruz referring to this as a "terrorist attack," which to my mind would equate it with Pearl Harbor and Sept. 11, which is nonsense. I know Democrats are committed to keeping Jan. 6 alive as the worst day in American history, but when Republicans start jumping on that bandwagon, I get greatly concerned, especially someone like Cruz who should not be engaging in exaggerated rhetoric. (Could it be he is planning on running for President in 2024 as a challenge to Donald Trump?) God bless.

Marilyn M.

………….

Thanks for writing, Marilyn. Only Sen. Cruz knows what he thought he personally had to gain by describing the rioters of Jan. 6 as “terrorists,” but it must have been something. We’d expect to hear this from, say, Liz Cheney, but whatever is going in Cruz’s mind right now is baffling. Of course it was nonsense –- we’ve shown with hard facts over just the past couple of days how ludicrous it is to compare the Capitol Hill riot with a real terrorist attack such as 9/11 –- and Cruz had to KNOW it was nonsense before the words left his mouth. He said it anyway, very deliberately, fully aware that it was ludicrous, so there must be some method to his madness.

But madness it is.

Cruz went on Tucker Carlson’s show Thursday night to try to help himself, and I’m being charitable when I say that it did not go well. Tucker didn't buy his explanation that he’d been “sloppy” and made a mistake with his poor choice of words, because Tucker knows that master-debater Cruz doesn’t EVER choose words sloppily. Also, this isn’t even the first time Cruz has used the word “terrorist” in this context; nearly a year ago, he called the incident “a terrorist attack” and “an assault on the citadel of democracy,” which, frankly, sounds more like something Chuck Schumer would say. So, to his credit, Tucker didn’t let Cruz get away with it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/groveling-ted-cruz-fails-to-convince-tucker-carlson-that-calling-jan-6-a-violent-terrorist-attack-was-a-sloppy-mistake?

“I don’t believe you used that word accidentally,” Tucker told him. Cruz then tried to walk it back by saying that’s the term he uses for people who attack police. Carlson still didn’t let him off the hook, noting that even those charged with assaulting officers are not actual terrorists and that no one associated with this event has been charged with terrorism. (Note: nobody’s been charged with insurrection, either.)

“Why did you use that word?” Tucker asked Cruz. “You’re playing into the other side’s characterization.”

Tucker's right --- that’s exactly what he was doing, and the "why" is a real head-scratcher. If it’s true he’s planning to run for President in 2024 and assumes he'll likely be challenging Trump in the primary, this has got to be the worst way to go about it. It makes him look bad, it fractures the GOP, and, perhaps most of all, it plays into the disgusting lie that’s become the new fake anti-Trump mantra to replace the old fake anti-Trump mantra, which is to say, “Russia Russia Russia!!”

As it is, whether or not Trump is the candidate –- we know, of course, that anyone else will be tarred as a proxy for Trump –- we’re going to hear, day in and day out until Election Day '24, the lie that Trump supporters are terrorists and a threat to “our democracy,” And that leads right into our next story...

Dr. Robert Malone, one of the inventors of the mRNA technology used in COVID vaccines, says that if you believe in God, the Omicron variant looks like a Christmas present. He said it’s so infectious, it’s blowing right past all the vaccines, but so mild that to his count, it’s caused only 10 deaths worldwide, and is spreading natural immunity to everyone who gets it. Malone said it’s acting like the kind of vaccine scientists might design on purpose, and “This is about as good as we could possibly want right now in terms of outcomes.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/good-news-mrna-scientist-says-omicron-looks-like-something-vaccinologist-design-purpose/

What a hopeful, positive message about a possible end to all this pandemic fear and paranoia. No wonder he was banned from Twitter.

No, I’m just being facetious. Here’s what actually got him banned from Twitter.

https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/12/31/robert-malone-twitter-ban-pfizer-clinical-trial.html

Yesterday, we had one word to say about President Biden’s “Jan. 6” commemorative speech: DISGRACEFUL. (Well, it was the one printable word we had.) Honestly, it was just too nauseating to write about right then, but perhaps it’ll be a bit less gag-inducing now, with a little distance put between us and it.

Biden repeatedly lied in his roughly 25-minute speech from the hallowed Statuary Hall inside the Capitol complex.

“For the first time in our history,” he lied, “a President had not just lost an election, but tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.” Trump did no such thing and, in fact, was working within the process laid out in the Constitution. His rally was peaceful –- he TOLD participants to be peaceful –- and as such it was an expression of his constitutional right to peacefully protest. Biden implied in his speech that Trump had wanted his supporters to breach the Capitol, to physically prevent the vote from being certified, and had even personally engineered this. That is a lie.

He said Trump had sat in the White House dining room, “doing nothing for hours” with “the nation’s Capitol under siege” and the mob “hunted down members of Congress.” A timeline has been established that shows this, too, is a detestable lie.

Biden went on to lie about the election, too, and its aftermath. As Sophie Mann reports in Just The News, “Biden said there is no evidence, anywhere, to suggest that the results of the election were altered, flawed or in any way untrustworthy.” That claim is false, and recent polling shows most Americans don’t believe it. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest interference in a variety of creative ways. Was the election stolen outright, by strategically rigging the outcome in carefully targeted locations? We can’t say until enormous questions are answered and essential materials are provided to auditors. The lack of transparency is in itself suspect.

https://justthenews.com/government/white-house/anniversary-january-6-biden-says-trump-tried-prevent-peaceful-transfer-power

Biden didn’t hesitate to get personal about his predecessor, either, and that’s when the speech became shamefully unpresidential. Trump, he said, is someone who “values power over principle.” By refusing to accept the results of the election, he said, Trump is rejecting “the will of the people.” On the contrary, Trump believes the will of the people has been thwarted by those who would get into the White House by hook or by crook.

This pathetic speech was Biden’s own attempt to hold onto power as his presidency is clearly failing. A new Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows that only 28 percent think Biden will be re-elected. Another 21 percent think he’ll resign before the next election. And a plurality of 38 percent think he’ll lose to the Republican candidate. As The New York Times wrote in December, “On top of concerns about Biden’s age and general unpopularity, there is an overarching fear among Democrats of the possibility of a Trump comeback --- and a determination that the party must run a strong candidate to head it off.” Could there BE a weaker candidate for re-election than Joe Biden?

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/01/06/only-28-percent-voters-think-biden-will-be-reelected/

Though the histrionics we saw yesterday seem ridiculously out of proportion to what actually happened (especially when that is compared to many months of BLM/Antifa violence), Glenn Greenwald warns that the Democrat Party and “the dominant wing of the U.S. corporate media” will play this for all it’s worth. “The orgy of psychodrama today was so much worse and more pathetic than I expected --- and I expected it to be extremely bad and pathetic,” he writes. And later, “Far too many centers of political and economic power benefit from an exaggerated and even false narrative about January 6 to expect it ever to end.”

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-histrionics-and-melodrama-around

The only thing I can think of that might cause this, if not to end, to at least recede a bit, is the revelation that protesters were “helped” past the barricades and into the Capitol that day, a scenario that seems more plausible all the time. We’ve brought you the excellent National File reporting on that, and here’s another report from Red State that raises more questions...

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/06/whatever-happened-to-alleged-capitol-rioter-john-sullivan-n502773

If that’s what happened, it doesn’t excuse Trump supporters for playing along on an extremely ill-advised adventure, but it certainly adds a whole new dimension to the story. One thing Biden never mentioned in his speech was the fact that Trump offered thousands of National Guard troops to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that day –- you know, to keep things peaceful and under control –- and Pelosi, who was in charge of security, turned him down. No, he never said a word about that.

Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court heard arguments for blocking or upholding the Biden/OSHA vaccine mandate on businesses and health care workers. The conservative Justices seemed open to the idea that states have the power to impose such mandates in a health emergency, but were skeptical that an unelected federal agency does. They seemed to think that such a sweeping and destructive edict, one that is decimating businesses at a time when they’re already struggling with worker shortages and supply chain disruptions, should at least have to come from Congress. The plaintiffs’ attorney pointed out that the Post Office is seeking a waiver from the mandate because it will make it so hard to deliver the mail, proving that not even the government can comply with its own mandate.

Possibly the most shocking part of the oral arguments, however, was not that the liberal Justices seemed open to a dictatorship of unelected federal bureaucrats (big surprise), but just how confused about the law and how filled with stunning misinformation they were.

Justice Sotomayor seemed especially clueless, admitting to not understanding the distinction between state and federal powers (Gorsuch had to explain it.)

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/justice-sotomayor-claims-not-to-understand-the-distinction-between-state-and-federal-powers/Supreme

But Sotomayor also spewed a number of false COVID claims that would get her banned from Twitter for life if she were a conservative pundit. Among them: that the vaccines prevent disease and transmission in the workplace, that Omicron is just as deadly as Delta, and that there are over 100,000 children in the hospital with severe COVID, many on ventilators (there are currently 3,342 children nationwide in hospitals who’ve tested positive for COVID, and most are incidental to the real reason they’re there.)

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2022/01/07/sonia-sotomayor-loses-her-ever-loving-mind-at-oral-arguments-over-bidens-vaccine-mandate-n503133

Even that stunning array of misinformation takes a back seat to Justice Breyer, who seemed to think that the OSHA mandate would block 100% of all new COVID cases. He also said hospitals are at near-capacity (they’re slightly above average capacity), and most jaw-dropping of all, that yesterday, there were 750 million new cases of COVID in America. He later corrected himself to 750,000, which is good, since 750 million is more than twice the entire US population, so every American would have had to get COVID twice in one day. Wow, that Omicron variant really is transmissible!

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/07/it-wasnt-just-sotomayor-breyer-was-in-fantasyland-as-well-on-vaccine-mandate-n503226

When you consider that the liberals on the court are from the same background, social circles and mindset as the liberals who came up with this policy, the odds that it’s intelligent, well-reasoned, based on facts and consistent with the law and the Constitution seem lower than Kamala Harris’ approval rating.

First AOC, now Rep. Eric Swalwell is the latest far-left Democrat from a locked-down blue state to go straight from blaming the pandemic on Republicans to being caught vacationing maskless in the reviled free state of Florida.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/eric-swalwell-spotted-maskless-mandate-free-florida

This hypocrisy is as blatant as it is unsurprising to anyone who follows these people closely. But many Americans don’t follow politics all that closely (lucky them), and are shocked that anyone could be such obvious hypocrites.

Kurt Schlichter had a great comment in a subscriber-only article at Townhall.com about why merely pointing out their hypocrisy isn’t enough:

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/01/05/leftists-love-groveling-n2601345

“Let’s not fool ourselves that they will somehow be shamed into suffering the same inconveniences (as) their lessers, i.e., everyone else. They won’t. At some level, they want us peasants to see that they are beyond the rules they make for mere mortals. To whine about it for the sake of whining about it is to practice helplessness…When we point out their hypocrisy, we need to have a purpose, and that purpose is to wake up everyone else. Hypocrisy means nothing to us because we already know these are bad people. But it is powerful juju when it comes to people who have yet to gobble the red-pill and see the members of our garbage ruling caste for (what) they are.”

Scott Adams, best known as the creator of the DILBERT cartoon strip but also a bestselling author, trained hypnotist and professional prognosticator who predicted (like us!) Trump would win in 2016, made some interesting points about January 6 in his Thursday podcast (Episode 1615) of “Coffee With Scott Adams.” Worth quoting at length, so we will:

“...There were a ton of people there who didn’t even know they were breaking the law because the fences were down before they got there. They were just...protesting. So if you’ve got a President who is presuming without the benefit of a trial that these people were there for insurrection, you have put the assumption of guilt on citizens from the highest office in the land. The highest office in the land, the President, just put the assumption of guilt on a bunch of people --- some of ‘em were guilty, some, some. But most of them, not so much. Most of them were trying to do what they thought was preserving democracy, by postponing the certification until some audits could get done.

“Now, of course, when the fake news reports about it, they act like the idea was that they’d just take over and change the government. No demand like that ever happened. The only demand was, ‘Can you give us a few days to audit some suspicious stuff. That is PROTECTING the republic, at least in the minds of the people there.”

Also this: “We’re giving the states the presumption of innocence when they’re not giving us an auditable election. That’s backwards. The presumption has to be that the election is corrupt if you can’t audit it. That doesn’t mean it is...[but] the government has to prove they’re not guilty. They’ve gotta open the books.”

Darn right.

...............................

Last but certainly not least, this: “...You are in the middle of a massive brainwashing operation. I don’t know the degree to which it is organized, but it looks organized. It looks as if the whole January 6 thing is to keep Trump out of office and to keep Trump supporters and Republicans in general demonized by keeping that story in your head. Because it creates the situation where Democrats can do anything to Republicans, ‘cause dammit, those Republicans deserve it --- look at them and their insurrections!”

I don’t envy the poor media handmaidens of the Democratic Party having to try to convince their viewers that the violence last January 6th was the worst thing to happen in the history of ever. The Democrats are trying to turn this into the biggest melodrama since Hollywood was turning out Technicolor tearjerkers like “Magnificent Obsession,” but it’s coming across more as “Ridiculous Obsession.” As the Federalist notes, it’s clear that it's not about “protecting democracy,” it’s about branding their political opponents as domestic terrorists so they can silence them.

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/04/corporate-medias-jan-6-anniversary-coverage-is-all-about-silencing-republicans/

But how can the media make this fake “insurrection” seem as historically horrific as the Dems are making it out to be? Especially since, as Todd Starnes pointed out, a full year later, not a single person has been charged with insurrection, sedition or treason.

Well, one way is just to flat-out lie about it, like Joy Reid of MSNBC, who repeated the debunked claim that officer Brian Sicknick died of injuries inflicted by protesters. He actually died the next day of a stroke.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/01/04/joy-reid-show-tells-blatant-lie-about-the-death-of-officer-brian-sicknick-n501895

(Note to Twitter: I believe you call this “misinformation,” and ban people for spreading it. So why is Joy Reid still on Twitter?)

You’ll also likely see a lot of references to at least five people dying that day, without telling you that they’re including people who died of natural causes and who weren’t even in the Capitol. The only person who died a violent death in the Capitol was Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed protester shot in cold blood by a Capitol Police officer.

That’s worthy of further investigation, along with the bad decisions of people in charge of security that day, but since those people include DC’s Democrat mayor and Nancy Pelosi, we’re still getting nothing but stonewalling from that sector.

https://www.westernjournal.com/house-republicans-turn-jan-6-tables-nancy-pelosi-major-accusation/

So what are the Democrats doing to goose their ratings? They’re trying to force a personality from a news channel people actually watch, Sean Hannity, to testify to their committee.

https://www.westernjournal.com/jan-6-committee-asks-grill-hugely-famous-conservative-despite-fact-nowhere-near-capitol-riot/

Hannity was nowhere near the Capitol, had nothing to do with the violence, and condemned it on his show. But they want to grill him about his private texts with Trump and other sources close to him, to try to bolster their nonsense claim that Trump was planning a violent insurrection. This is dangerously close to stomping on the First Amendment protection of freedom of the press, but somehow, I doubt that protecting Constitutional rights of conservatives is a major concern for the people involved in this committee.