Throwing Trump under the bus

 

There was no red wave on Tuesday, so many major bloggers are already throwing President Donald Trump under the bus, e.g.:

• Matt Margolia at PJ Media here  ("Trump Mocks DeSantis Again...")
• John Hinderaker at Power Line here  ("Goodbye, Donald")
• Don Surber here   ("Life after Trump")
• UPDATE:  The New York Post

The word “fickle” comes to mind.  

Trump endorsed 174 candidates.  So far, 9 lost.  

So 5% lost.  95% won.  That’s a damn good batting average. 

For those who think that Ron DeSantis is the new standard-bearer for conservatives, please take on board Sundance's deep dive into his campaign contributions (at Conservative Treehouse).

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Corruption at the FBI: It’s systemic.

 

Michael Ramirez cartoon via WashingtonTimes.com

Eric Lendrum at American Greatness reports:

According to the Post Millennial, the multiple agents from the D.C. field office who could be seen kneeling before rioters on June 4th, 2022, were each given $100 gift cards by the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA). This was reported by retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent James Gagliano, who wrote in the New York Post that this revelation was “shocking and appalling on its face.”

“Looked at in a larger context,” Gagliano continued, “this disgusting decision proves the rot and decay at the FBI is not singularly the domain of some senior officials.”

The incident involved a team of armed agents wearing FBI vests, who had been designed as a “presence patrol” to guard the National Archives and Supreme Court as riots raged across D.C., with many buildings being set on fire by the rioters.

When rioters noticed the FBI agents and began reacting with hostility, at least seven of the agents took a knee – a gesture that has come to be recognized as an act of disrespect towards the United States, which has been used most often by black nationalists. In addition, a senior counterterrorism special agent hugged some of the rioters. FBI management defended this display as an act of “de-escalation,” and thus rewarded every agent with gift cards of “modest value.”

“During my 25-year career, I was privileged and honored to work alongside FBI agents who killed or captured Top Ten fugitives and violent, dangerous, murderous felons,” Gagliano wrote. “To my knowledge, not one of these actual heroes received an FBIAA gift card of ‘modest value.’”

“I have come to grips with the fact that my beloved FBI has been irreparably broken by woke activists serving amongst its senior ranks,” the former special agent added. “And with the Justice Department appearing to do this president’s bidding by targeting his political adversaries, it will take a monumental house-cleaning and seismic shift in culture at both the DOJ and the FBI to begin to restore America’s trust and confidence.” . . .

Shut it down.  And read the rest of the report here.

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Discrediting our Founding Fathers: cont’d

 

The headline at the New York Post:  “Founding father James Madison sidelined by woke history in his own home”.  This blog recently linked to a similar reportabout Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia home Monticello.  And reader Ribicon at the Lucianne site – an aggregator – posted this comment and link:

Selection from 45 goals for the takeover of the USA by the communist party, as stated in 1963 [and as entered into the Congressional Record].

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the 'common man.'"

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the 'big picture.'"

The link: https://rense.com/politics6/com.htm [https://rense.com/politics6/com.htm]

Exit question: How many of these goals have been met?  (Spoiler Alert: most of them.)

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Military transports at Burke Lakefront

 

One of our friends has a bird’s eye view of Burke Lakefront Airport.  Over the past week, he has observed large military transports coming into land.  Hmmm.  Shortly after the August 15 Afghanistan catastrophe, former Cleveland Councilman Joe Cimperman, now president of Global Cleveland, announced that (via Cleveland 19):

“You’re welcome here in our city.” “That’s the message non-profit Global Cleveland is sending to Afghan refugees during this crisis.”

Here’s an update from Cameron Fields at msn news from late August:

Afghan refugees are beginning to arrive in Cleveland after landing in the U.S., and those involved in the effort said they are working as quickly as possible to bring more to America.

More than 30 refugees have already arrived in Cleveland from Afghanistan, and more are expected soon, Global Cleveland president Joe Cimperman said. Cimperman said he believes the city is ready to welcome and support them.

Last month, the New York Post reported

There’s a reason the Biden administration is using secret flights to small airports to move unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the border. 

They don’t want voters to know just how many people are being waved right into the country, because President Biden understands that open borders might be the policy of progressives, but it’s not popular among the majority of Americans. 

But you know who does realize these flights are happening? The people of Central and South America. Word travels fast that no one is getting deported, and that’s why they are paying money to smugglers to take their children on a perilous journey north. 

. . .

Just guessing . . .

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Irish Democracy = healthy non-compliance

 

Over at the NY Post, Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, expands on non-compliance:

If regular democracy isn’t doing so well, maybe it’s time to fall back on “Irish Democracy.”

That’s what Yale political scientist James Scott calls the passive resistance of a society that doesn’t like what its rulers are doing to it. In his book “Two Cheers for ­Anarchy,” he writes, “One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called ‘Irish Democracy,’ the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal and truculence of millions of ordinary people, than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.”

Irish Democracy is when the populace simply doesn’t cooperate with the agenda. Sometimes there is active sabotage, sometimes surreptitious monkey-wrenching, sometimes foot-dragging and sometimes outright noncompliance. Sometimes it’s all of those at once.

Right now, we are seeing some of that in response to vaccine mandates, mask rules and various other forms of population control that have been adopted since the pandemic struck. Go almost anywhere with a mask mandate, and you will see some people not wearing masks at all, daring anyone to do anything about it (often, they don’t).

You will also see a lot more with the mask pulled down below their noses, providing the vague suggestion of compliance without ­actually going along. These people will usually pull the mask up if asked, but then pull it right back down again as soon as the asker leaves the vicinity. (Hey, why take it seriously when our elites have made clear that the mask rules don’t apply to them and their gatherings?)

. . .

More of Instapundit’s article is here.

RELATED:  JD Rucker’s “Resistance Is Not Futile” at FreedomFirstNetwork. 

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Media losing power?

 

Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, makes a good case:

Media’s censorious gatekeepers are mad —
because they’re losing power

With Donald Trump out of office and de-platformed, you’d think mainstream media gatekeepers would be happy. You’d think wrong.

Though the media-Big Tech regime is doing its best to silence opponents and seize control of the high ground, the news from within is grim. They aren’t happy with how things are going. 

That’s because they know they’re losing. Some are losing audiences and revenues. But more important, they’re losing control of the narrative.

And since control of the narrative, and the power and self-importance that accompany that control, is the most important thing in their lives, they can’t be happy.

Consider the cri de coeur of Washington Post public editor Hamilton Nolan, inspired by Tesla’s decision to scrap its media-relations department. How could that happen?

Nolan knows how, and that’s what bothers him: Tesla scrapped its media-relations department because the media don’t much matter to it. Tesla has plenty of ways to get its story out without relying on the media, and that makes the media much less important — and much less powerful. And it’s the power part that hurts the most.

. . .

I hope it’s true.  Read the rest here.

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All About Voter Fraud

 

A friend of mine just asked for some links to reports and information relating to voter fraud, especially as it affects this election cycle.  I put together this list of links, most of which have appeared on this blog, but here are key reports for reference.

This Legal Insurrection report cites the claim that voter fraud is a myth. Here is one first-hand account that shows how it is done: “Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots” by Jon Levine at the New York Post.

John Solomon lists cases of recent election fraud at Just The News.

Project Veritas (James O’Keefe) has taped undercover videos about social media and Google interference. 

Robert Epstein is a longtime liberal and an expert on how Google (and FB) can interfere with elections; he is quoted at Breitbart.

And here is how the Democrat party is setting the table; click here.

If you are in Cuyahoga County, click here to learn about temporary employment opportunities at the Board of Elections. 

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Voter Fraud: With Evidence

Deborah Weiss published an article the other day at FrontPage Magazine, “Voter Fraud: With Evidence.  Ms. Weiss used to “work on the congressional committee which deals with contested elections.”  Her article concludes:

It is a lie that Trump and the Republicans want to "suppress the vote." It is clear that he wants to protect the integrity of each citizen's vote. Any effort to ensure vote integrity is framed as voter suppression by the Democrats. The only votes Trump wants to "suppress" are those that are fraudulent and those are the ones that the Democrats need in order to win.

To make matters worse, in their usual Alinskyite way, the Democrats have propagated the narrative that Trump doesn't want post office voting because he wants to steal the election, when clearly it is they who want to do this, as the confusing, diluted, mail-in voting scheme serves no other purpose. In the event that the Democrats win, they'll claim victory even if Trump challenges potentially illegal votes. But in the event they lose, they'll argue that Trump "stole" the election. There's a reason that Biden already hired 700 election attorneys to prepare.

Further, many Democrat states are reducing the number of polling stations drastically, so you'll likely have to wait on very long lines November 3rd. Most will have the option of voting in person early under this new voting regime, and under the circumstances, that is what I suggest. The Democrat scheme to have all mail-in ballots with no safeguards, in my view is designed to cause chaos and confusion in the outcome of the most important election in our lifetimes. It is an attempt to undermine confidence in our system and destabilize our country. Unfortunately, I see only two outcomes: 1) Biden wins and we become a socialist country, losing America as we know it forever or 2) Trump wins and there will be riots across America, amidst accusations of a stolen election. Hillary Clinton has already advised Biden not to concede the election “under any circumstances.” America is no longer "We the people." It is the tale of two cities, with only "us" and "them." We live in scary times.

Read the rest here.

RELATED: “Confessions of a voter fraud: I was a master at fixing mail-in ballots” by Jon Levine at the New York Post.

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Ending the lockdowns now

Ohio is starting to re-open.  Not soon enough, but Ohio is faring better than New York.  New York Post (and Federalist) contributor David Marcus was on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson program yesterday evening to expand on his NY Post op-ed.  He wants New York to get back to work.  He’s right.  Here’s some of his editorial:

By prolonging the coronavirus shutdown long after its core mission was accomplished, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have plunged tens of thousands of New Yorkers into poverty.

It needs to end. Now.

In mid-March, we were told we have to endure a lockdown to ensure that hospitals didn’t get overrun. We did. The hospitals were not overwhelmed. We turned the Javits Center into a hospital. We didn’t need it. We brought in a giant Navy ship to treat New Yorkers. We didn’t need it.

We were told we were moments away from running out of ventilators. We weren’t, and now the United States has built so many, we are giving them away to other countries.

Meanwhile, the Big Apple is ­dying. Its streets are empty. The bars and jazz clubs, restaurants and coffeehouses sit barren. Beloved haunts, storied rooms, perfect-slice joints are shuttered, many for good. The sweat equity of countless small-business owners is evaporating. ­Instead of getting people back to work providing for their families, our mayor talks about a fantasyland New Deal for the post-coronavirus era.

Open the city. All of it. Right now. Broadway shows, beaches, Yankees games, the schools, the top of the freakin’ Empire State building. Everything. New Yorkers have already learned to socially distance. Businesses can adjust. The elderly and infirm can continue to be isolated.

. . .

Read the rest here.  

We also know that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s advice has been wrong every time.  For a listing of his continuing mistakes, here’s a column by Mark Simone posted earlier this month at the 710 WOR website.  Not to beat the dead horse, but today we are reading that “Mastermind of LOCKDOWN Dr. Anthony Fauci NOW says staying closed for too long could cause ‘IRREPARABLE DAMAGE’! (headline quote via Pamela Geller here.)  

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Re-writing History

 image credit: onenewsnow.com

Whether it’s Confederate monuments being torn down, or our language being corrupted into Orwellian terms, or educational institutions from K-12 to advanced learning becoming re-education centers of indoctrination, or jaw-dropping corruptions in the media and government at all levels, these are all interlocking pieces in a master plan. Thaddeus G. McCotter at American Greatness connects all the dots. He starts off: 

Some time ago, I noted the irreconcilable difference between the Left and the rest of America: the majority of our fellow citizens believe America is an inherently good nation that continues its pursuit of a more perfect union; the Left believes America is an inherently evil nation that must be transformed fundamentally into an oppressive socialist state—at best.

For the Left to win this existential argument, it must distort and revile America’s history to destroy the truth of American Exceptionalism. If the past is evil, the present has no choice but to reject America’s history and its defenders; and to embrace the dishonest leftist ideology and the agenda of those who loathe America.

This is a dangerous devolution of the classical American political paradigm, in which both antagonists, conservatives and liberals, agreed America was an exceptional, fundamentally decent nation but differed about how to effectuate a more perfect union. This devolution has several causes, but notable is the incestuous relationship between the leftist media and left-wing academics. 

. . .

What one can expect is this: the New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project.”

According to Mara Gay of the New York Times’ editorial board, the 1619 Project “[i]n the days and weeks to come, we will publish essays demonstrating that nearly everything that has made America exceptional grew out of slavery.”

. . .

Now one understands why the Left rejects the Betsy Ross flag as a symbol of hate. Yet the hate is theirs, not ours. Ergo, why would anyone who rejects the hateful Left subsidize it with their hard-earned money, be it in subsidizing the Left’s brainwashing emporiums or subscribing to its propagandizing fanzines? As the esteemed Thomas Sowell instructs: “We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other.”

The entire article is here.

Related: Lest the reader despair, a Millenial named David Grasso gets it, and there’s hope for everyone. From Mr. Grassos’s New York Post article:

. . . The new crop of self-proclaimed socialist candidates is promising a smorgasbord of programs that are intended to get us out of our “struggle-bus” reality.

Given such a journey, it is easy to see why socialism seduces young Americans. We desperately need change if we are ever going to progress as a generation. The problem is, what the socialists are proposing — more government — is exactly the opposite of what we need. In fact, many of the most prominent obstacles we have faced are the result, at least in part, of heavy-handed government interference.

. . .

I understand why millennials are seduced by populist politicians who promise a better life, but they shouldn’t fall for it.

Growing government is expensive and inefficient, and the government machinery already in place is frequently dysfunctional and prone to be hijacked by special interests.

In the end, our generation will be liable for the staggering bill for these programs. Nothing is free, and working millennials will stand to lose trillions of dollars of wealth if we sleepwalk our way into socialism.

Truth is, young people need exactly the opposite of socialism — pro-growth policies and restrained, common-sense regulation. This will create more economic opportunities and more avenues into the middle class. Socialist policies will only choke economic opportunity and make our tough existence far worse.

Sometimes it’s helpful to read somebody else’s perspectives to prepare for your next conversation with a liberal.

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Good news, bad news

image credit: wgme.com

Good news for our friends in coal country (via Selena Zito at New York Post):

Last weekend in Beijing, as part of his 12-day trip to Asia, President Trump announced that the US and China had signed an $83.7 billion memorandum of understanding to create a number of petrochemical projects in West Virginia over the next 20 years.

If the agreement holds tight, it is an economic game changer for the state.

Bad news for our friends in coal country (via Thomas Lifson at American Thinker):

the mainstream media are able to suppress life-changing news that could rescue the beleaguered economy of an entire state so thoroughly that ordinary folks in street are unaware of it.

. . .

So, this is a deal that would transform economic life for some of the most economically depressed people in the country, and they have no idea at all that it is in process, needs their support, and could be derailed. 

If you have family or friends in West Virginia, downstate Ohio, or western Pennsylvania, forward the news along!

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Art credit: amsimaging.com

Betsy McCaughey is a former Lt. Gov. of New York, author, and frequent columnist and TV news guest. In the months preceding the passage of Obamacare in Congress, McCaughey was one of the critical resources for patriots across the country, who relied on her analyses to prepare for visits to their Representatives and Senators, calls to the congressional switchboard, etc. She published another analysis the other day in the New York Post about the latest document dump of ... over 1,200 pages of NEW regulations on Obamacare. Here is her complete article: 

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ObamaCare: Death by paperwork 

On July 3, with Americans preparing to celebrate freedom, the Obama administration reduced freedom by adding 1,296 pages of new regulations to ObamaCare.

It was a classic pre-holiday document dump, publishing the mind-numbing rules in the Federal Register on the eve of Independence Day, when few were likely to be watching. So much for transparency.

ObamaCare regulations compel doctors and their office staff, business owners, local officials and virtually everyone else subject to the law to spend hours filling out paperwork with no pay for their labor. It’s a colossal theft.

Now four years old, ObamaCare imposes 159 million hours of paperwork a year on the public. That’s the administration’s own estimate, undoubtedly a lowball.

Even so, it’s up by 48 million hours over last year, when fewer regulations had been rolled out. And there’s more to come.

Among the July 3 rules is one that compels doctors who take Medicare to report 18 different clinical measurements on their patients, such as whether they are overweight and have been counseled about weight control.

Doctors who fail to do it will get whacked with lower payments starting in 2015.

The regulators estimate that this single report could take as long as 108 minutes per patient and consume 5.4 million hours a year nationwide. That’s time that could be spent treating patients or calling them to remind them to take their meds.

Instead, the federal bureaucracy is confiscating those hours to serve its own ends.

Small-business owners get hit hard, too. Notably, restaurateurs face 622,000 hours of work to comply with ObamaCare’s menu-labeling rules.

The American Action Forum, a public-policy organization, notes that ObamaCare is in a class by itself, imposing almost three times as much paperwork as the notoriously complex Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and more than 10 times as much as under the Sarbanes-Oxley financial-reform law.

The Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, is the biggest culprit, responsible for 90 million hours a year of ObamaCare paperwork chores. Most are foisted on hospitals, doctors, insurers and local governments.

Because it includes the IRS, Treasury is the No. 2 culprit, with paperwork requirements up 23 percent this year. The IRS is ObamaCare’s chief enforcer; paperwork misery will continue to soar, especially if and when the employer mandate goes into effect.

ObamaCare gives the IRS 46 new functions, including collecting new taxes and exchanging information about you, your family and your income with HHS and state insurance exchanges.

For example, the IRS requires employers to report the value of insurance you get through work in a new box on your W-2, even though it’s not taxable (yet).

And dealing with the IRS is no longer a once-a-year affair. Have a baby, change jobs or get a divorce, and the IRS will be recalculating your insurance compliance and eligibility for premium subsidies.

“It’s unprecedented in recent history, the amount of responsibility the IRS is being given in an area that most people don’t think of as an IRS function,” J. Russell George, a tax official, told Congress last March.

The administration plainly doesn’t want to tell the truth about these burdens.

For example, it claims that people who are uninsured or lose coverage will spend 12.6 minutes a year to comply with the individual mandate. Preposterous: Even when the Web sites work, it takes far longer to shop for insurance and report to the IRS that you’re compliant.

On July 4, 1776, when American patriots signed their Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, they recounted the crimes of the tyrannical British king: “He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”

Nearly 2½ centuries later, our own government is eating out our substance with mandatory paperwork.

Not to mention the drag on our economy.

According to the Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Index of Economic Freedom, America is the only country to have lost economic freedom for seven straight years, now ranking 12th behind Hong Kong,
Singapore, Australia, Canada and seven other nations.

“Burdensome and redundant regulations are the most common barriers to the free conduct of entrepreneurial activity,” Heritage cautions.

But some benefit from this out-of-control regulatory state.

“Government bureaucracies like complexity because it keeps them busy and funded,” warns Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett Packard. She laments that “as a result of these regulations on steroids, innovation, business creation and job growth are being stifled.”

Government bureaucrats are stealing our time, our economic growth and our liberty. Don’t count on Washington to fix the problem.

In the end, only an outraged public can put a stop to this regulatory oppression.

Betsy McCaughey is the author of “Beating ObamaCare 2014.”