Category: Social Commentary
Applying RICO to the Biden Crime Family, the Dems, and the Media

Applying RICO to the Biden Crime Family, the Dems, and the Media

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At the end of my last piece in this space, I promised to discuss why, and how, the RICO statute – the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – can and should be applied to the Biden crime family, the Democratic Party which has protected and furthered it, and the mass and social media that have engaged in a deliberate cover-up of its criminal activities. That’s what I will do in this piece.

Let me make some things clear up front. First and foremost, this is not about partisan politics. This is about corruption and crime that goes so deep that every American, regardless of political preference, needs to be not just concerned, but outraged. As a matter of disclosure, I will say that I support Donald Trump and will vote for him on election day, not so much because I am a huge fan of Trump – though I have more reasons to be one this time around than I did four years ago – but because the alternative is utterly unacceptable, and should be to any right-thinking voter. The pity is that so many people have already early voted without full knowledge of key facts that may have influenced how they voted.

Second, I’m not going to try to detail all of Joe Biden’s wrongdoing. That can take (and has taken) books. I’ve laid out in some detail much of the wrongdoing in my posts over the past year, and I urge to you read the primary stories where I laid out the corruption fostered by Biden in Ukraine and China. Many of the conclusions I drew then and in subsequent stories concerned how Biden’s son Hunter exploited his father’s position as Vice President of the United States to further his own business and profit interests. We now have compelling evidence that not only confirms what I detailed in those pieces, but that goes further to clearly and unambiguously implicate Joe Biden himself in clear abuse of his position and illegal profiteering, with the extent of the wrongdoing taking in many more countries, including Russia, Kazakhstan, Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland.

“Plausible deniability”

Rather than simply repeat information that now is publicly available – though repressed by most in the mainstream media and censored and blocked by the social media giants – I urge you in the strongest terms to go directly to the primary sources (links below) for confirmation that this is not just speculation at this point, and it decidedly is not Russian disinformation, as frauds and liars such as Calif. Rep. Adam Schiff would try to mislead you into believing. Both John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence, and the FBI, the latter of which seized the Hunter Biden laptop in December 2019, have confirmed that the emails are not the product of Russian misinformation.

Foremost in your own investigation, if you did not watch it in real time as it aired on Fox News on Oct. 27, spend the time to listen to Tucker Carlson’s hour-long interview with Tony Bobulinski, a former business partner with the Bidens, who lays out exactly the highly dubious nature of the Bidens’ business activities and Joe Biden’s role in them (Bobulinkski, among other things, confirms that it is Joe Biden who is referred to as “the big guy” and “the chairman” in the emails contained on Hunter Biden’s laptop):

Tucker Carlson interview with Tony Bobulinkski – video and transcript of the full interview on the RealClear Politics site

Read and download the full report (below) of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance – focus especially on the summary, and on pages 65-87 of the report:

Final Report – Homeland Security/Finance Committees

Read the transcript of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi’s speech to the Republican National Convention in August in which she outlines the corruption of Joe Biden and the Biden family

And read the stories in the New York Post about the emails and other items on Hunter Biden’s laptop:

The initial Oct. 14 story about how emails reveal how Hunter introduced a top Burisma official to his father.

Oct. 15 story detailing Hunter Biden’s murky business dealings in China

Oct. 16 story about Hunter’s troubled life and pained soul

Oct. 23 story about how Biden business group eyed N.Y. Gov. Mario Cuomo and Sen. Chuck Schumer for deals

Oct. 27 piece by Michael Goodwin in the Post about Joe Biden meetings

See an index of more of the Post‘s Hunter Biden stories

At one point in the Carlson interview, Bobulinski, a former Naval officer, said this:

“And I’m — I’m thinking about the Biden family, like, how are they doing this? I know Joe decided not to run in 2016, but what if he ran in the future? Aren’t they taking political risk or headline risk?

“And I remember looking at Jim Biden [Joe Biden’s brother and a campaign adviser, and one of the main beneficiaries of the Biden family business] and saying, how are you guys getting away with this, like, aren’t you concerned?

“And he — he looked at me and he laughed a little bit and said, ‘plausible deniability.’ ”

You may recall that the administration of Richard Nixon attempted – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – to cover its tracks during Watergate through application of “plausible deniability,” and it’s been used as a form of cover by the CIA going back to the Kennedy administration.

The RICO Act

The RICO Act was passed in 1970 to combat crime conducted as part of an ongoing criminal enterprise. It targets organizations, and not just individuals, engaged in such criminal activities as illegal gambling, money laundering, bribery, kidnapping, extortion, sex and drug trafficking, murder, counterfeiting, and embezzlement, among others. To obtain a RICO conviction, the government must prove two or more covered criminal acts over a 10-year period, and must show that a defendant was invested in, maintained an interest in, or participated in a criminal enterprise that was involved in interstate or foreign commerce.

Read the full text of the RICO Act here

If you look at the Biden situation, referring to the above sources, several elements appear to fall under the RICO Act:

  • An ongoing enterprise
  • More than two instances of possible criminal activity
  • Involvement in interstate or foreign commerce
  • Potential criminal activities, including:
    • Extortion (using U.S. public funds, adding an additional level to the offense)
    • Bribery
    • Money laundering
    • Tax evasion
    • Violation of FARA (the Foreign Agents Registration Act)
    • Violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
    • Sanctions violations (negotiations to acquire a percentage of the Russian state-controlled energy company, Rosneft)

Any of the actions of the Biden family would be bad enough, but what becomes a matter of grave national concern are the deliberate and coordinated actions of the Democratic Party, Party-affiliated PACs, the mass media, and social media, to cover up the various potential offenses committed by Joe Biden, a candidate for President of the United States, and to prevent a large percentage of the American electorate from gaining knowledge of those offenses. This could have lasting impact on the country, and given the criminal nature of the actions being concealed, these parties are implicating themselves in their conduct and, therefore, should also be investigated for RICO violations.

If you have any doubt that this cover-up is deliberate and coordinated, all you have to do is consider that no mainstream broadcast network, other than Fox News, has spent any time reporting on any of this. Even worse than the usual lack of any kind of journalistic vetting of Biden or his running mate, you would have heard how the whole email thing is a product of “Russian disinformation.” Never mind the enormous resources and time the media spent on the last bout of “Russian disinformation,” waged allegedly to support Trump, which turned out to be a complete hoax. This time around, this matter is far from a myth or a hoax, but no attention is being given to it by the mass media. Publicly supported NPR went so far as to state outright that they won’t cover the Biden email scandal.

It has been credibly reported that officials of Democrat-controlled PACs called major media chiefs following the Bobulinski interview and threatened that they would have no access to a Biden administration if they carried any news of the interview. The result: Zero minutes of coverage on any media network outside Fox News. This goes beyond mere journalistic malpractice, which has become a commonplace. This is extortion, and by being complicit in it the media has become an accomplice to a crime. Given the national interest in the outcome of the election and the ability to make valid judgments about the candidates, and the very real possibility that a Presidential candidate could be compromised with America’s leading adversary, Communist China, I would argue this should at minimum merit a RICO investigation, and possible prosecution, by the Justice Department.

As troubling, Tucker Carlson is reporting as I’m writing this, on the night following the Bobulinski interview, that a package of original documents associated with the case, shipped cross-country from New York to Los Angeles by major national private courier, arrived opened and empty, and a thorough investigation by the courier company could not reveal what happened to the documents or who was involved in absconding with them. These are tactics more associated with Communist China or the former Soviet Union. But this is what is happening in 2020 America, a week before the most critical election in our time.

Bobulinski is reported to be staying at a location remote from his family in order to help protect his family from attacks.

Be aware that at no time has Joe Biden or his campaign denied the existence of the Hunter Biden emails. The best they can do is try to discredit how they came into the possession of the Post, which, of course, is Russia, Russia, Russia. Keep in mind that the U.S. had a Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resign his office exactly 47 years ago this month for corruption that is probably vastly eclipsed by Biden’s corruption. How the country has changed since that time, when such things were taken seriously. What is happening now with the media refusing to cover a major corruption story is unprecedented. The overseas media is covering this story more than the American media, which is scandalous.

Jack Dorsey lies under oath to the Senate

In my earlier post, Democracy Dies in Darkness – which I consider perhaps the most significant piece I’ve written in my 50-plus-year journalism career – I expressed the alarm every American should share at the way the social media giants, Twitter and Facebook foremost among them, have suppressed the Post stories, and retweets of them. On Oct. 28, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey lied under oath to Sen. Ted Cruz, falsely and repeatedly claiming the block against the Post had been lifted. It has not been lifted, and the Post went on to relate how other media outlets were content to stand by as Twitter attempted to get the Post to essentially retract its documented stand, not unlike what would happen in an authoritarian state.

Along with being investigated for RICO violations, one hopes that Cruz and other senators to whom Dorsey lied make a criminal referral for perjury naming Dorsey.

“The time for talk has passed,” said Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. “Take away the special status given these tech companies.”

Hawley has been a consistent critic of the tech companies, and an advocate of removing the Section 230 protections afforded them and which shield them from liability based on their biased actions. But as Hawley pointed out, it was two hours into the hearings when Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even came up, indicative of how Congress has not shown any resolve in doing anything substantive to rein in the enormous power – and damage being done to our democracy – of the tech giants.

Already in a Brave New World

It would be inaccurate to say that we are facing loss of our democracy if these things are allowed to continue. In effect, we are already there, and we have clearly entered this Brave New World where truth is turned on its head and thought control is forced on us. Should there be a Democractic victory, as illegitimate as it might be, in next week’s elections, we are facing entrenchment of these things on a permanent basis, as I described in my last piece where I asked if America is ready for the one-party state Party leaders have in mind.

Perhaps, you might ask, how people can be so ready to sell out their own country and its freedoms in favor of an authoritarian enemy and system? But consider how for decades there were many Americans – and these included journalists, teachers, scientists, artists, and others – who sold out to the former Soviet Union. They did this in support of their ideology, their view of what a “just” society might look like, their belief, as misguided as it was, that Soviet Communism represented a better solution for the country.

Why should we be surprised now that there are those today – including those same categories of people who sold out to the Soviets, and maybe now throw in some politicians, corrupt and otherwise, too – who are ready to toss in with our leading adversary. That includes one of the two candidates for President of the country. After all, Joe Biden himself has said it: “Come on, man, I mean, you know, they’re not bad folks, folks. But guess what, they’re not competition for us.”

Again, the state of affairs in 2020 America.

Featured image: Joe Biden and Xi Jinping, Larry Downing, Reuters. Used under Fair Use.

Tony Bobulinski, Fox News. Used under Fair Use.

Jack Dorsey on the cover of the New York Post of Oct. 29, 2020. Used under Fair Use.
Is America Ready for the One-Party State?

Is America Ready for the One-Party State?

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That is the question that everyone who goes to the polls or mails or drops off their ballot – unfortunately, millions of people have already voted, their minds already made up, apparently, even as vital information continues to come in – should be asking. Is America ready for the one-party state? The danger of that is more than real – it is imminent – should the Democratic Party gain control of the House, the Senate, and the White House in these elections.

How do we know? The party’s leaders, such as they are, both actual and ad hoc, have told us that is their intent. There is no room for lower categories of people, such as rural dwellers, Republicans, or <gasp> Trumpites in the elitist, “progressive” America they foresee and are planning for you.

Before we parse how this outcome might come about, let’s consider how bad an idea this is. And it is.

The one-party state: A very bad idea

One-party states aren’t a new idea, but they have proven to be a universally bad idea wherever the concept has been (and in some cases, still is) implemented. When we think of one-party states, we think of Communist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, Cuba, the PRC, North Korea, and a number of formerly Communist satellite countries in Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia. Or we think of totalitarian dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Imperial Japan. But there have been plenty of lesser-known examples, especially in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.

The idea of the one-party state was widely touted as an embodiment of “national unity” in the initial post-Colonial stage of many former European colonies, particularly in Africa, though also elsewhere around the world. In Africa, they were based on the traditional African concept of consensus, where decisions were to be taken by universal agreement. Some were based on the power of the “strong man,” and were justified as ways of organizing otherwise disorderly societies. But wherever and whenever they have existed, what single-party states amounted to were kleptocracies where the ruling elites were able to bleed their countries dry, enriching themselves and their own tribes, families, or party powerful, impoverishing and repressing the bulk of their populations.

While far from extinct, the general trend worldwide has been away from the one-party state. For instance, a map of one-party states on the African, Asian, and South American continents reveals far fewer of them than existed just 30 or 40 years ago. There are some examples where things went the wrong way, such as Venezuela, but in general the trend has been away from them. There are good reasons for this, not the least of which is that they are dysfunctional, and eventually are either rejected by the population through political pressure or overthrown violently. In some cases – Taiwan and South Korea come to mind – the one-party dictatorship yielded to a multiparty democracy as their economies and political consciousness grew. We see similar cases in a number of formerly Communist countries in Europe, though the transition there took place much more suddenly than in Asia, where it required decades of transformation and evolution.

In the United States, we gravitated to essentially a two-party system, with a smattering of small and largely ineffectual third parties, and this has been the pattern for most of the country’s history. But there are examples of essentially single-party rule in the United States, too. There was the “Solid South” in which Democrats ruled all the Southern States from the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A key element of that one-party state was Jim Crow and disenfranchisement of blacks across the region.

In contemporary times, there is the one-party stranglehold exercised by the Democratic Party over most large cities in the country. Depending on machine and identity politics, there hasn’t been a Republican mayor or administration elected in these cities in anywhere from a half century to a century and a half. During this time, poverty, crime, maladministration, and corruption have all festered in most of these Democrat-controlled cities. For more on this version of the one-party state, I urge you to read my piece Back to the Plantation, which details the deleterious effects single-party rule has had and how it depends on maintaining a permanent underclass, and includes links documenting all these realities.

Whether in Africa or in Chicago, Asia or Baltimore, Latin America or Detroit, it is a kleptocracy that this kind of single-party rule creates, fosters, and entrenches, at enormous cost to the bulk of the population.

If you want to see the results of one-party rule at the state level, one need look no further than California, which has become essentially a one-party vassal state of the Democratic Party. Despite it possessing one of the largest economies in the world and being home to powerful Big Tech, it also has the distinction of possessing (according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure) the highest poverty rate in the country, six of the 10 least educated cities in the country, two of the 10 most dangerous cities in the country, a number of the worst-run cities in the nation, and the biggest homeless population of any state. So-called sanctuary cities provide protection to illegal aliens, including violent criminal offenders, while prejudicing against protecting law-abiding citizens. And to achieve these remarkable accomplishments, the state has the highest state tax rate in the nation and enormously onerous regulations. There shouldn’t be any wonder why Californians are fleeing the Golden State in droves, sadly, in too many cases, taking their stupid ideas with them.

But California is exactly the model that the Democratic Party has in mind to transform the rest of the country into. Are you ready for it? Let’s look now how they intend to accomplish this.

How the Dems plan to turn the country into a one-party state

None of this is a mystery. All of these steps have either been specifically stated by leading Dems, or – as in the case of Presidential candidate Jell-O Joe Biden and his running mate and President-apparent Kamala Harris – telegraphed by refusing to tell the American public what is planned. In their refusal to answer the question, they’re telling you what is planned. Dem Senatorial Leader Chuck Schumer and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the real power in the House (both of New York, another near-one-party disastrous state) both have said that all options are on the table.

“It will be a decision that comes to the Senate,” Schumer has said. “We first have to win the majority before that can happen . . . but everything is on the table.”

So what is on the table and what decisions do Schumer and AOC have in mind? These:

Eliminating the Senate filibuster: For most votes to pass the Senate, it takes 60 votes due to the ability of either party to filibuster any given bill. This comes under what is known as the Cloture Rule. That is a big part of why deliberation can go in much longer and take more compromise for legislation to pass the Senate than the House. But by various means, including majority vote, the filibuster can be eliminated. Known as “the nuclear option,” this would allow Dems, even holding a narrow majority in the chamber, to take it over absolutely. If they also hold the House and the White House, anything they do is virtually guaranteed to pass and become reality.

Adding new states to the Union: Under Article IV, Section 3, of the Constitution, Congress can pass legislation admitting new states to the Union. With a majority in both houses of Congress and a Democratic President, the way would be open to add the District of Columbia (long a Dem issue and Dem stronghold) and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (another Dem stronghold) as the 51st and 52nd states. And there wouldn’t be anything to stop them from adding other territories, such as American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, as states, if they thought it would benefit them politically. The idea would be to add two new (ostensibly Democrat) senators from each new state.

To give you some idea how crazed some of these people are, there actually is a proposal to carve D.C. Into anywhere between 127 and 150 neighborhoods, and admit each as a separate state. This isn’t a satire in The Onion, for instance, but an idea put forth in a serious article published in the Harvard Law Review. With all these new Democrat senators, the way would be cleared to completely alter America’s electoral process, including elimination of the Electoral College, transferring the Senate’s power to a new body where all citizens have equal representation, and an alteration of the Constitutional amendment process to ensure that amendments can be made by states representing the majority of Americans. This lunacy is presented as “a modest proposal to save American democracy.” Never mind that America’s Constitution and the representational republic as a union of sovereign states it created have served the nation for 233 years. These crazy liberal law professors have a better idea. Can’t you see it? And you wonder why radicalized college kids are burning down the cities?

Elimination of the Electoral College: An adjunct to the idea of adding new states to the Union is eliminating the Electoral College. As anyone educated in Constitutional matters knows, the President of the United States is not elected directly by the people, but rather by the states, as represented by electors sent to the Electoral College. Each state decides how those electors are allotted. In some states, it’s “winner takes all” of the popular vote. In others, they’re apportioned according to the proportion of votes won by each candidate. Various restraints on the behavior of electors to vote independent of the vote of their state have been imposed by courts and legislatures, but in the end, these are the people who choose the President. While it might seem like a good idea to eliminate the Electoral College, what will result is that a few big states will wind up dominating the rest of the country, more than they do, anyway. Given the huge differences in values between residents of the various states, the end result might suppress any chance of the smaller states, and their residents, to have any real influence on the nation. The Founding Fathers were clear in their desire to avoid a “tyranny of the majority” (in the words of James Madison) through creation of a republic and a representative form of democracy. There is an expression that a democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting on what’s for dinner, and protection of minority rights is essential if freedom is to be preserved in the U.S.

Packing the Supreme Court: What “packing,” in this case, means, is adding additional justices to the Supreme Court. Neither the Constitution nor any law sets the number of Supreme Court justices. Since it was established in 1789 with six justices, the High Court has varied from a low of five to a high of 10 justices. It has had nine justices since Congress set that number in 1869. An odd number avoids tie votes. Now, upset with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy created by the death of long-time liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who herself opposed packing the Court), the Dems are openly talking about adding additional justices – “packing the Court” – that would be appointed by a Democratic President and confirmed by a Democrat-controlled Senate. The last time this ploy was attempted was in 1937 when Franklin Delano Roosevelt, reelected by a large majority in 1936, attempted to add additional justices to counter the existing justices who had been ruling against parts of his New Deal legislation. The move proved tremendously unpopular and failed, and it was viewed as what it was: An undemocratic power grab. Make no mistake: The current Democratic talk of packing the Court, adding several new justices to it, is no less of an undemocratic power grab.

When asked whether voters deserved to know his position on packing the Court, Joe Biden’s answer was clear: “No they don’t.” It shows what Biden, and his party, thinks of voters, and anyone stupid enough to accept that attitude and answer will get what they deserve should Biden be elected.

Those four changes, by themselves, would be sufficient to create a one-party state in the U.S., with the now-radical Democratic Party ruling the country. Add the near-complete sell out of the mass media and social media in support of the Party, and we’re looking at a Chinese-style totalitarian state.

Are you ready for it?

How far off is this?

I was asked this question recently, how long might it take for the Democrats to create this one-party state. The person asked me how many years it would take to implement. He was surprised when I answered that, if the Dems win the House, Senate, and White House in the elections already under way, we are probably months, not years, away from it. I don’t envisage any delay on the part of the rabid Democrats who now hold sway over the party. Given the absolute power of holding two of the three branches of government, no Constitutional constraints to their actions, what amounts to a supportive state media, and with their left flank biting at their heels, I expect the partisan power-hungry likes of a Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, and AOC and the Squad to act very quickly and not to allow the opportunity to pass, as the opportunity was lost in the initial years of the Obama Administration when the Dems held both houses of Congress.

A lot has changed since 2008. The mass media and social media have even more clearly lined up as a partisan force, blinding much of the country to what really is going on. And the Democratic Party, both those elected to Congress as well as those pulling the strings behind the Biden-Harris candidacies, have become far more radical. Once they do away with the filibuster and exercise the nuclear option, any restraint they faced 12 years ago will be obliterated. And the rest will follow from that.

As I see it, the only thing standing between us and a one-party state is to vote against Democrats at every level, for every office, and most especially voting for Republican Senatorial and House candidates and for the re-election of the President. And that is coming from someone who has always considered himself a political independent (and still does) and someone who previously mostly voted for Democrats. Things have changed in the party, they have changed in the country, they have changed in me – and hopefully, if you voted for Democrats before, they have changed in you, too.

Otherwise, I have to again pose the question: Are you ready for the one-party state?

Coming Next: In my next posting I am going to outline why the RICO statute – Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act – can and should be applied to Joe Biden, the Biden family, the Democratic Party, several mass media and social media organizations, and specific individuals within them, given the organized conspiracy to commit and cover-up egregious criminal activities by Biden and the Biden family, for which clear evidence now exists. Stay tuned and watch this space.

Featured image: Blue America, University of Florida. Used under Fair Use.
Democracy Dies in Darkness

Democracy Dies in Darkness

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Democracy dies in darkness. If you care at all about the very survival of American democracy, you should be absolutely terrified of what is happening right now with the cold-blooded and utterly partisan repression of information being perpetrated by the social media giants, bolstered by the mainstream media. Unprecedented in the nation’s history – in the world’s history – it is not government carrying out this bald-faced censorship, but private enterprises, arguably the most powerful corporations on the face of the earth.

This frightening trend toward non-governmental repression, whether it is from the social media giants, cancel culture, or militant forces on the left such as Antifa and Black Lives Matter, was the subject of my recent posting on Banned Books Week: Canceling of Thought in 2020 America on my Stoned Cherry blog. In just two weeks, its prescience has come to the fore in what I would assess to be the single biggest threat facing our democracy.

When the New York Post broke the story confirming what many of us have long suspected, that former Vice President Joe Biden had used his official position to favor the business and financial fortunes of his son, Hunter, and, worse, may have himself gained vast financial benefit, not just in Ukraine but in China, the social media giants Twitter and Facebook immediately shut down the story. They then went even further, and blocked any attempts to repeat the story, such as through retweets, and even shut down the accounts of the Post itself and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany. The mainstream media, in lockstep, hardly even mentioned, or downplayed, what the Post reported, and Biden and his campaign have been virtually silent on the story, and has not been pressed on it. You can be excused if you feel you’re in Belarus, Russia, China, or even North Korea, and not in the United States of America, with the concerted attempt to keep the public from even knowing about this story.

What we are witnessing is the utter crushing of the free flow of information in this country, and it is coming from private, but extraordinarily powerful, actors. And it is coming entirely from one side of the political spectrum. This is something I have been warning about on this blog for years now, but it has now reached a critical state.

Keep in mind that the Post is not some frivolous journal. Depending on the method and time of calculating circulation, its readership ranks anywhere from No. 1 to No. 6 nationally, and, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, it is the oldest continually published newspaper in the country. Despite allowing dubious stories negative about President Trump to appear and remain on their platforms, including stories based on anonymous sources and illegally obtained (and never verified) information, Twitter and Facebook justified their actions based on these very grounds, as well as the untrue grounds that the Post‘s information had been “hacked.”

This piece isn’t intended to deal in detail with what the Post found and reported about the senior Biden’s involvement in furthering his son’s business dealings, but rather with the egregious repression of the information to keep it from reaching the voting public. I’d direct you — and strongly urge you – to read the actual stories (we, not being Twitter or Facebook, are happy to be a medium for the free flow of information), which, if accurate, confirm in detail what I previously opined about Biden’s abuse of his office while he was Vice President in the Obama Administration:

The initial Oct. 14 story reporting on emails that reveal how Hunter introduced a top Burisma official to his father

The Oct. 15 story detailing Hunter Biden’s murky business dealings in China

The Oct. 16 story about Hunter’s troubled life and pained soul

The Post stories

In brief, the stories report what some 40,000 emails – as well as thousands of texts, videos, and photos, some showing Hunter in “very compromising positions,” including having sex with an unidentified woman while smoking crack cocaine – to and from Hunter Biden reveal about his personal life, business dealings, and the leveraging of his father’s position to further his business interests and prodigious income, both in Ukraine and China. The emails were on a water-damaged laptop left in April 2019 with a computer repair shop in Delaware, and which was never picked up. While the shop owner couldn’t identify the customer as Hunter Biden, the laptop bore a sticker of the Beau Biden Foundation, named after Hunter’s late brother, and the email address was that of Hunter Biden at that time.

The shop owner, after numerous unsuccessful attempts at contacting the customer, eventually informed the FBI of its existence, and the agency seized the laptop in December. Meanwhile, the shop owner had made a copy of the hard drive, which he turned over to Robert Costello, attorney for Trump legal advisor Rudy Giuliani. In due course, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon informed the Post about the emails, and on Sunday Giuliani turned the drive copy over to the Post.

While it is true that the authenticity of the emails has not been confirmed, the Biden campaign initially did not deny their existence or authenticity, pointing only to the action by the social media platforms to block stories concerning them as “proof” they weren’t true. Subsequently, the campaign painted them as promoting some sort of “conspiracy theory.” The Democratic smear campaign went into full “Russia conspiracy” mode, with California Rep. Adam Schiff, Liar-in-Chief in the Congress, hauling out that now long-debunked theory to attempt to delegitimize the emails. That there are people foolish enough to continue to believe that sort of nonsense is indicative of the deliberate failure of the media to propagate truthful information in this country.

As further confirmation of the clear media bias that has taken hold, moderator George Stephanopoulis did not ask Joe Biden a single question about the Post reports during Thursday night’s townhall on ABC, and neither did any of the voters posting their softball questions. How this is not considered journalistic malpractice eludes me. Meanwhile, on NBC, moderator Savannah Guthrie, sounding more like a petulant high school girl than a professional journalist, hurled accusatory statements (often inaccurate) at President Trump who, to his credit, responded to them, and the often challenging questions put to him by voters, with grace and directness. Given that NBC came under attacks both from without and within even for hosting the townhall with Trump, can there be any residual doubt that there is almost no fairness or honesty left in the mass media?

There are so many things wrong with this whole state of affairs it leaves one grasping for what to include and what to leave out, so as not to confuse the issue or wind up going on for thousands of words on the topic. With some 20 million people reported to have already voted in this critically important election, how can it be considered a democratic process when virtually all the powerful levers of information are working to suppress reports that, in earlier times, would have been considered crucial to determining the outcome of an election?

Applying the Twitter standard used to suppress the Post stories, the American public would not have known about the Pentagon Papers (hacked), COINTELPRO (stolen), Watergate (unidentified sources), or the revelations of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks (hacked and unidentified soures), or Edward Snowdon (also hacked and unidentified sources). Would America be a different country today were those revelations suppressed? Undoubtedly. Would it be a better country? I doubt many would even attempt to make that argument. Further underscoring the issue, news of the trial of Assange has been largely ignored in the same media that relies on the First Amendment to defend its egregious actions, posing a further threat to freedom of expression, even more under attack in the U.K. than in the U.S.

Pushing back

There are some efforts going on to bring the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon, all tech giants, to heel before things go further down the rat hole of Chinese-style repression. Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Josh Hawley have called for a subpoena to haul Twitter CEO Jack Dempsey to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Oct. 23, and Hawley – a key advocate for limiting the power of social media to suppress ideas they don’t like – is calling for the Committee to subpoena Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Hawley also has joined senators Marco Rubio, Kelly Loefler, and Kevin Cramer in seeking a clarification of the Section 230 rules which protect platforms from civil liability when third parties post false or misleading information. The argument is that the platforms are abusing the special protection Section 230 gives them and, if they are going to censor third-party posts, then they should be subject to the same liability as any media source not given such protection.

Additionally, the RNC has filed a complaint against Twitter with the Federal Elections Commission, alleging that its censorship of the Post stories amounts to an illegal campaign contribution to the Biden campaign.

I would contend that the time for hearings and testimony has past, and it’s time for action. In any event, note that all the concerns are being raised by Republicans. If you think the Democrats are concerned about protecting free speech, you would be seriously mistaken. When they have the weight of what amounts to state media on their side, they remain unmysteriously silent. Partisanship and the pursuit of power supersedes basic American and human rights, as far as they’re concerned. In the one-party Democratic state of California, for instance, an Orwellian-style “Ministry of Truth” has been proposed to seek out and block what it determines to be “fake news,” and a similar measure has been introduced by a Dem in Congress. They see themselves as the arbiters of what is “truth,” and the less you know about what is really going on, the better for them, they reason. But is that better for you?

How would you feel to learn that Joe Biden used his influence and public funds to have a Ukrainian prosecutor, who was investigating the company on whose board his son served, fired? Or that he lied to you about not meeting with a top executive of that same company? Or that he sold out American interests to companies and institutions controlled by the Chinese Communist Party to benefit his son, and very possibly himself? Who, you might wonder, is the “big guy” referred to in one of the reputed Hunter emails, promised a carve out of 10% of a deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars with China’s largest private energy company? Might it be Papa Joe himself? And have you ever wondered how Biden got as wealthy as he is, living off his government salary for 47 years?

Read the Post stories and see what you think.

If it’s up to Big Tech, the majority in the mass media, and the Democratic Party, you won’t ever find out answers to these, and many other, questions. And you should be very terrified, indeed. Democracy dies in darkness, and night is closing in all around us.

Featured image: Candle in Darkness, Rahul, Pexels. Used with permission.
A Nation of Imbeciles?

A Nation of Imbeciles?

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If you’ve been paying even passing attention, you may have noticed how one side of our political dichotomy thinks this is a nation of imbeciles. And if you haven’t noticed that, or it doesn’t bother you, then maybe you’re one of the people they’re counting on.

While it’s only the latest insult to your intelligence that the Democrats have pulled this year, they figure you have no need to know lots of things, foremost among them whether they plan to pack the Supreme Court or not. Actually, it’s a bit worse than that. It’s pretty obvious, if you’re not isolated on a small Caribbean island inhabited mostly by wild goats, that their intent is to pack the Court if, by chance, they manage to grab control of the levers of power in Washington .Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris confirmed that by refusing to answer the question during Wednesday night’s Vice Presidential Debate. And just to be sure there was no doubt about it, the designated hitter of the Democratic Party, Jell-O Joe Biden, laid it out to reporters the next day.

There are links at the end of this posting to a replay and a transcript of the Vice Presidential Debate.

“You’ll know my opinion on court packing when the election is over,” a masked Biden told reporters while making one of his rare trips out of his Wilmington basement, campaigning in Arizona with Harris. “I know it’s a great question and I don’t blame you for asking it, but you know the moment I answer that question, the headline in every one of your papers will be about that, other than focusing on what’s happening now.”

Well, duh, yeah, it’s a great question. What would be even greater is if the American people could be given the answer to it. One would think people want to see that headline. But, reminiscent of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling you you’d have to wait until the Affordable Care Act was passed to find out what was in it, now the man and woman who would be President and Vice President are telling you that you need to vote for them to find out if they’ll pack the Court. You’re just not smart enough to have that information but they figure you’ll vote for them anyway.

Actually, if you’d still vote for this pair of frauds even being less-than-subtely told you are an imbecile, maybe you are one. There’s a mirror for that.

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s time to stop mincing words about this stuff. The other side certainly doesn’t mince their words, and their hatred and venom is spread far and wide across the republic. It usually doesn’t take reading or listening to more than one never-Trump scree to be immersed in more hatred and ignorance than one should have to put up with in a lifetime. As Trump continues being the most transparent Chief Executive in our lifetime, laying out precisely what he intends to do on matters of public policy, he’s maligned by those who protect and promote those who believe their plans are too problematic for the American public to know. The whole Democratic nomination process this round has been a card trick put together by the party’s hidden puppet-master elites, aided and abetted by their wholly owned media apologists, so what should anyone expect?

Don’t believe your lying eyes

While a majority of Americans, by a margin of two-to-one, polled after watching the Vice Presidential Debate, thought that Vice President Mike Pence had won the debate, the mindless media parrots in thrall to the Dems focused on a fly that settled on Pence’s head during the debate, accused the VP of talking over Harris – which is rich, considering that Harris is known for badgering, bullying, and talking over witnesses appearing in the Senate – and “mansplaining” to her. Apparently that is how one belittles factual presentations over evasion and obfuscations.

Harris was good at those. For anyone counting, she spouted 24 lies or misleading statements in her portion of the hour and a half of the debate. Those prevarications, some of which were such whoppers that it was hard not to guffaw at them, were allowed by moderator Susan Page, of USA TODAY, who would chide Pence for going over his allotted time as he attempted to correct the record. Even given his calm, even-handed approach, Pence prevailed in most cases in getting out the facts. And in the end, despite what the commentators on the likes of CNN and MSNBC tried to lead you to believe, the speaking time of both candidates was exactly evenly divided, within precisely three seconds.

If you listened to the post-debate blather on the liberal networks, you heard that the fly on Pence’s head knew an ally of Satan when it saw one, that Harris showed “a joyfulness in her spirit” – if you consider grimaces and scowls and arrogant, self-serving smirks, which led most viewers to judge Harris as an unlikable figure, joyful – and that Pence showed Harris disrespect because . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . she is a woman.

So women are equal to men, except when they come face-to-face with a male opponent in a debate or negotiation, at which time they are to be treated with deference as if they’re a child or some sort of frail being. The liberal’s view of equality. And this, Harris, is a person who pretends she is capable of being Vice President of the United State – if not President, but we’ll get to that – and dealing with the likes of a Putin or a Xi or a Khameini. Right.

I’ll confess that, unlike those on the Twitterscape, for which this was the biggest take-away of the debate, I didn’t even notice the fly on my 48-inch flat screen. Maybe it’s because I was listening to what the candidates had to say and not just looking for inanities to throw at Pence.

If you want to get some idea of how moronic these people are, read this Salon piece, but be forewarned if you’re not a moron yourself it will take intestinal fortitude to make it through it.

What I did notice, though, was the inanity of two plexiglass screens set up, at the insistence of the Biden campaign, to protect the candidates, already standing more than 12 feet apart, from the hidden plague of the coronavirus emerging out of some unknown source and striking them down. This is the campaign that claims to have science on its side and, if you believe that, you’re one of the voters the Dems are counting on.

This is the same party whose celebrity elites are now stripping naked on screen (I am not making this up) as a way of convincing Biden supporters to actually vote. Imbeciles, anyone?

The Nancy Sideshow

The entertainment never stops. While Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, otherwise known as AOC, the co-chair of the Biden campaign’s climate change task force, railed at Harris for not denouncing fracking during the debate (Pennsylvania and Ohio voters, take note of what the real plan is), and Bernie Sanders was promising he’d be in charge of America’s healthcare (voters everywhere should take note of that), Nancy Pelosi was running her own sideshow. While the nation’s business in a time of crisis is the least of Ice Cream Nancy’s concerns, she was busy furthering her political agenda. As promised, repeatedly, on Thursday, on Friday she announced her plans to set up a process through which Congress could intervene under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to remove a president from office. Pelosi – whose own fitness to hold office might reasonably be questioned – insisted her proposal was not to do with President Trump.

“This is not about President Donald Trump,” Pelosi told the media. “He will face the judgment of the voters.”

Well, it might not be about Trump now, but Pelosi has to be looking ahead for her coup attempt, part II, should Trump be re-elected. But wait. There may well be more to this than meets the eye.

By now, you might already have heard this theory, but rest assured it occurred to me first, before anyone else mentioned it on the air: What Pelosi very possibly has in mind is using this process of hers to remove not Trump, but Jell-O Joe, from office. If you consider this to be the Dem plan all along, that the radical Harris is the real candidate and Biden is just a placeholder, it’s not much of a stretch to see how a case can be built that Biden is cognitively incompetent to hold office and he’ll be pushed out so Harris can take over the position with some (however sketchy) semblance of legitimacy.

As I have called it before, what the Dems are planning is the biggest fraud in American political history, and they’re counting on a sufficient number of imbeciles among the electorate to allow them to carry it out.

Smarten up, and don’t let them do it. The country will never recover from the consequences should they succeed.

Watch a replay of the Vice Presidential Debate here.

Read a full transcript of the Vice Presidential Debate here.

Featured image, Imbecile, historic photo, veryhangry.com, used under Fair Use.
Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

Replacing RBG: Why the Dems Have No Case

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It was not a huge surprise when Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died recently at the age of 87. Named to the high court by President Bill Clinton in 1993, her tenacity in overcoming health conditions that would have killed many less ferocious fighters was remarkable. Given her more recent health issues, I think it’s a reasonable conclusion to draw that she wanted to hold on at least until after Jan. 20 when there might be the chance of a new president, one more receptive to her brand of liberal political views.

We usually can’t plan our deaths, and of course that was the case for RBG, too. While the time and date of her demise could not have been predicted, what was predictable was how, no sooner than she had taken her last breath, that the Democrats would immediately raise a ruckus about how the current president should not name her replacement but should leave that to the winner of the upcoming election. Equally predictable, the word they hauled out to apply to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was “hypocritical” if he proceeded with consideration of any nominee named by President Donald Trump. This because it was McConnell who refused to consider the naming of Merrick Garland to the court by former President Barack Obama to replace Justice Antonin Scalia in the last year of Obama’s term.

The Dems’ wholly owned toadies in the media, as well as the rabble in the street, quickly picked up the same refrain. McConnell wouldn’t give Merrick Garland a hearing, so he shouldn’t give whomever Donald Trump names a hearing, either.

The problem with that line of argument is that it completely ignores long-established precedent, the actual basis for McConnell’s refusal to take Garland up for consideration, and such delicate niceties as the U.S. Constitution. Leave out the details and the facts – something the Dems and their media acolytes have gotten rather proficient at – and it sounds like they have a case. Add in those details and facts, and it becomes clear that they don’t.

“The McConnell Doctrine”

Let’s start with McConnell’s reasoning in refusing to bring Obama’s nominee up for consideration while saying he would consider Trump’s nominee. Sometimes referred to as “the McConnell Doctrine,” it wasn’t, as the Dems have asserted, that he wouldn’t consider a SCOTUS nominee in an election year. It’s that the nomination was brought within the context of a divided government: The Democrats controlled the White House, but the Republicans controlled the Senate. That is not the case now, when Republicans control both the White House and the Senate. That is the reason for the different response, not hypocrisy. And McConnell is relying on two centuries of established precedent.

One would need to go back 132 years in American history, to 1888 and the term of President Grover Cleveland, when a Senate controlled by the opposite party considered and approved the appointment of an election-year nominee to the high court. Facing a backlog of cases in the high court, a Republican Senate approved the nomination of Chief Justice Melville Fuller, made by Democratic President Cleveland. There have been 10 cases in American history when an election-year appointment was made by a President of one party to be considered by a Senate of the other party, including six made before the election. Fuller’s appointment was the only one of those to be considered and approved before the election. Of the four made in lame-duck sessions after the election, three were left open to be filled by the winner of the election. Only three nominees of the 10 were filled after election day in a way that favored the elected President, the earliest in 1845, the most recent in 1956.

The Constitution

The Constitution is the basis for all U.S. law and legal precedence. Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution gives the President the right to fill vacancies on the Supreme Court, with “the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” To wit:

“He [the President] shall have Power . . . and he shall nominate, and by and with Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint . . . Justices of the Supreme Court . . . “

It doesn’t say anything about whether the nomination and appointment takes place in, or not in, an election year. The president is president, and holds the powers of the president, from noon on the first day of his term until noon on the last. And the Senate has the right to advice and consent to the president’s nominations. This isn’t a matter of debate nor is it a matter of interpretation. The Constitution includes no exceptions or qualifications on this point.

Even Justice Ginsburg herself was clear on the subject. In 2016, while offering support for President Obama’s nominee, she said, “The president is elected for four years, not three years, so the power he has in year three continues into year four.” While urging members of the Senate at that time to “wake up and appreciate that that’s how it should be,” she conceded there is little anyone could do to force the Senate’s hand.

The red herring of RBG’s deathbed wish

The Dems, including no less than Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who should know better, have made a big deal out of what has been said to be RBG’s deathbed wish. As reportedly transcribed and released by the late Justice’s granddaughter, Clara Spera, she said, “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”

To which the proper response is a big, so what? As even RBG would have recognized, the hand does not reach far from the grave. All the more so in matters of state, politics, and the Constitution.

Given some of the less-than-judicious things Ginsburg had to say about Donald Trump, before later retracting them, as well as her very liberal views of the law, it’s no surprise that she didn’t want to be replaced by one of Trump’s nominees. But who the person is who replaces her on the court is not up to her, and neither are the conditions of the appointment. That’s just the way it is, sympathy or not for her preferences. Of course at this point we don’t know whether Trump will succeed himself in office or not. We do know he is President now, and has to power to name a replacement for Ginsburg. As he will, and as he should.

Even more irrelevant are the rantings of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Last time I checked, the House plays no part in consideration of or approving a SCOTUS appointment. Nancy says the Dems will “use every arrow in our quiver.” And what arrows are those, Nancy?

The Dems dug their own hole

Until 2013, it took overcoming a Senatorial filibuster – requiring 60 of 100 votes – to approve presidential nominees. That was when then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, not happy because he couldn’t muster enough Democratic votes in the house he led, got rid of the filibuster rule for most presidential appointees, including lower court judges. Old Harry apparently forgot, or never knew, the adage, be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. In 2017 the Republicans, who had taken over control of the Senate, got rid of the filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees. Thus, it only takes 51 votes today to approve whomever President Trump nominates. As of this writing, it looks like the votes will be there, even if not a single Democrat votes in favor of his appointment (that in itself goes against what has happened in the past when nominees of presidents of both parties have often been approved by overwhelming, even unanimous, votes of both parties, indicative of how partisan politics have become in recent years).

The new crop of radical Dems seem to have no sense of history, since they are now advocating packing the court with additional members to give them the edge on rulings by the high court. Since it was established in 1789 with six justices, the number of justices has ranged from a low of five to a high of 10. But since 1869 Congress – which has the power to set the number of justices – has set the number at 9, where it is today. Having an odd number of justices is important to avoid deadlocks, and even RBG supported keeping the high court at nine justices. Said Ginsburg in 2019, “Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time.” With more ethical sense than many of her supporters, she pointed out the danger of packing the court to further Democratic Party interests, saying, “It would be that — one side saying, ‘When we’re in power, we’re going to enlarge the number of judges, so we would have more people who would vote the way we want them to.’”

The last attempt at packing the court occurred under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and it didn’t end well for Roosevelt. With no sense of, or regard for, history, the idea is again being pushed by the radical Dems. If you can’t win on your ideas, win by forcing your ideas on others. Easy-peasy, but disastrous for democracy and our republic.

The need for a full court now

The idea of nine justices and an odd number of justices on the court is perhaps more critically important now than at almost any time in recent memory. With court challenges already being filed over issues related to conduct of the upcoming election, and with tensions and maneuvering to impact the outcome of the vote running high, it is almost inevitable that electoral outcomes in many places across the nation are going to wind up at the Supreme Court. Should the vote divide 4-4 issues will not be decided in final form, and the faith of the American public in the electoral system and process will be even further undermined than it is already. For the high court to be able to rule definitively, whether one agrees with those rulings or not, is essential to settle crucial issues, possibly even including outcome of the vote for president.

“Burn it down, blow it up”

The very existence and legitimacy of the rule of law is already under attack, and not just by the rabble in the street. None other than members of the mass media and commentators given wide attention are advocating a destruction of our current system and imposition of their will by any means necessary, even if Biden and the Dems manage to regain control of the White House and Congress. If you have any doubt about that, listen to the words of none other than CNN anchor Don Lemon, who makes up with chutzpah what he lacks in brain power:

“We’re going to have to blow up the entire system,” Lemon said to fellow host Chris Cuomo. “You’re going to have to get rid of the Electoral College, because the minority in this country get to decide who our judges are and who our president is. Is that fair?” And if you had any doubt about what this rabid segment of the population has in mind, Lemon clarified things for you by saying, “And if Joe Biden wins, Democrats can stack the courts and they can do that amendment and get it passed.”

Some go even further, advocating violence and arson. RBG’s body was barely cold when author Reza Aslan, an Iranian-American scholar of religious studies (sic), tweeted, “If they even TRY to replace RBG we burn the entire fucking thing down . . . Over our dead bodies, literally.” Another author, Aaron Gouveia, who claims to know what it takes to raise happy sons, tweeted, “Fuck no. Burn it all down.” And a member of the Wisconsin Ethics Commission – ethics, Dem style, mind you – Scott Ross, writing to Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey, said, “Fucking A, Ed. If you can’t shut it down, burn it down.” And those are authors and supposed keepers of the national ethics. What about the mindless anarchists who have taken over the streets?

Things have sunken so far in this country that when the President and First Lady Melania Trump went to pay their respects to Ruth Bader Ginsburg – whom Trump has called “an amazing woman” – on the steps of the Supreme Court, crowds booed them and chanted, “Vote him out! Vote him out!”

Meanwhile, the cowardly Jell-O Joe Biden, cowering in his Wilmington basement, has once more blown with the political wind. After previously announcing that he would release a list of names of people he would consider for nomination to the Supreme Court should he be elected, he now refuses to, calling it “inappropriate to do so.” While Donald Trump announced his list of prospective high court nominees as he was running for President the first time – it may have been a key factor in his election – and recently added to it, Joe Biden would rather keep voters in the dark.

Asked by a local Wisconsin reporter during one of his rare and brief forays out of his basement – “Should voters know who you’re going to appoint?”– Biden made it clear what he thinks of voters’ right to know whom he supports. “No, they don’t,” he responded. “But they will if I’m elected. They’ll have plenty of time.”

Do you really need to know more than that about where you stand with Jello-O Joe and his Dem power-broker handlers?

Photo credits: Featured image, Ralph Bader Ginsburg, AP Photo/Jacqueline Martin, used under Fair Use