Tag: Democrats
It’s Time to Break Up the FBI

It’s Time to Break Up the FBI

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On August 8, 2022, the FBI, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the Biden Administration declared war on the principle of equal justice for all citizens, and told at least half the American population that they are persona non grata. With the unprecedented FBI raid on the home of a former President, we witnessed the most evident sign yet of the Sovietization of America that is already in advanced stages. With that declaration of war, it is time for the gloves to come off in resisting this mortal threat to our democracy and if there is to be any chance of saving what is left of what once was America.

There are numerous steps that are essential to win the war to save the country, and the first and most urgent is the dismantling of the corrupt organization known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI has been out of control for years, and the agency’s previous commitment to the equal administration of justice is long gone. With the raid on Mar-A-Lago by at least 30 FBI agents and DOJ attorneys, there isn’t even a pretext of that remaining. It is the single largest lawless element in the U.S. today, largely as a result of the agency’s politicization at the highest levels.

I don’t like to predict future events, but this raid and the abuse of power it represents has galvanized opposition to Biden and the Dems — already at record levels — and has further galvanized support for Donald Trump. Trump is almost certainly going to announce his candidacy for the presidency — making the raid not just on a former president, but on a future candidate for president. Even more certainly, the Dems are going to lose control of the House by a significant margin in November, and very possibly the Senate as well. While the Republicans have shown themselves on more than one occasion as capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, one hopes they will be as energetic at rooting out the very real corruption and unequal administration of justice as the Dems have been in pursuing their chimeras and bogus conspiracy theories over the past six years. All with the complete and knowing complicity of their co-conspirators in the mainstream media.

Dismantling the FBI

The first substantive post on this blog, Threading the Needle Badly, which appeared on June 9, 2017, recounted the malfeasance committed by former FBI Director James Comey. I continued to report on that malfeasance, which included commission of felonies by Comey, both before and after President Trump relieved Comey of his duties. Comey’s successor, current FBI Director Chris Wray, has further weaponized the Bureau against Trump supporters and opponents of the Biden regime (a legitimate word to use now — calling it an administration is a euphemism, at best).

The first step in rooting out the rot should be dismantling the FBI, starting at the top and working down. The organization, over the past six years and beyond, has shown itself as beyond reform and incapable of dealing with its own wrongdoers. Congress, once the Republicans gain control, needs to make reorganization of the FBI its first, but not only, priority.

This would not be without precedent. In the 1970s, the Church Committee, headed by Democratic Senator Frank Church of Idaho, investigated abuses committed by the intelligence community, the CIA, NSA, and FBI. That was a different time, when Democrats were concerned about abuses and civil liberties, a far cry from their highly politicized position today. Another case of agency reorganization was the merger of the United States Information Agency (USIA) into the State Department in 1999.

While the FBI and DOJ conduct their ongoing witch hunts against Trump and his coterie, the blatant criminality of the Biden family is blithely ignored. Just as the egregious criminal offenses committed by Hillary Clinton are ignored. It is only if your name is Trump that the heavy hand of justice is mustered against you. The concept of equal justice under the law no longer applies in this country, which should be a cause for concern for every American.

Once the FBI is dealt with, attention should be focused on cleaning out the rot in the CIA and the rest of the intel community, which has declared itself by its actions as a government unto itself. That has no place in our democracy. And yes, I am a former intel officer (in the State Department), and at that time I was always told there was a bright line between intelligence and policy. That line is now obliterated, and that merging of the two poses a mortal threat to the country on a number of fronts.

The Dems’ War on Ordinary Americans

The raid on Mar-A-Lago is not the only front in the Dems’ war on America. This week they also managed to push through, on a purely partisan vote, their fraudulently named Inflation Reduction Act. A key feature of that law is provision of $80 billion for the IRS to double in size, adding 87,000 new agents and other employees. Part of the fraud is the claim that these new agents will be to conduct audits on the uber wealthy, when in fact they’re coming after you and me. Most audits, by a wide margin, are done on people earning under $200,000 a year, and it is estimated that 60% of the audits to be conducted by the new agents will be on taxpayers earning less than $75,000 a year.

Add in skyrocketing crime rates in cities nationwide, an open border that has allowed a record number of illegal aliens, along with a flow of deadly drugs, terrorists, and human traffickers, to enter the country, and the targeting of parents unhappy with their childrens’ non-education — branded as “terrorists,” by the slimy Merrick Garland and the DOJ — and it’s clear the Democratic Party has set its sights on altering life in America as we’ve known it. And their vision is not a pretty one.

Four years ago I realized I could no longer vote for Democratic candidates, reversing what had been my voting pattern through most of my life. With the sell out of West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema on the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, we see clearly that there are no trustworthy Democrats. If you vote for someone with a D after their name, you are voting for the Sovietization of the country’s justice system and the destruction of our way of life. Sorry, there is no way to sugar coat that. That’s where we are today. We each have to pick our side — I know which side I am on — and the present and future of the country hang in the balance.

Featured Image: The American flag burns, Lukas Gojda via Shutter Stock. Used under Fair Use.

Keeping America in the dark on illegal entries, Adrees Latif/Reuters, via the New York Post. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also appears on my Substack, Issues That Matter. Subscribe here, and there, and share this piece.
Ruining America: It’s By Design

Ruining America: It’s By Design

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If you think the image above is a scene of squalor from some Third World country, you’re right. The name of that country is the United States of America, and what you see is the ideal that many seek to turn the country into.

Recent events clearly dismiss any notion that what is being done to the country is in any way the result of incompetence or misjudgments. At this point, it is unmistakable that all this is being done by design, and is intended to ruin the country. Just take at face value the words of Homeland Security (sic) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in his Congressional testimony on Sept. 22: “We are following our plan.” And indeed, they are. That part was the truth. The phrase that preceded it, “The border is secure,” is such a demonstrably bold-faced lie it needs to be, but won’t be, prosecuted.

Unrestricted illegal immigration is perhaps the most obvious and visible manifestation of this administration’s push for the country’s ruination. But there are lots of other examples: Disgracefully abandoning Americans and our allies in a hostile and deadly Afghanistan. Allowing — even encouraging — terrorists to regain all the territory that American troops died, over two decades, to push them from, and arming them with more than $80 billion worth of the most sophisticated weapons. Encouraging crime to spiral upward across the land. Fostering racial divisions, setting back race relations a half century. Pursuing fiscal profligacy that feeds inflation and impoverishes future generations while feeding wealthy Democratic donors. Restoring the country to dependence on foreign sources for petroleum. And that is to name but the most prominent features of what this current crowd in Washington and across the land is pushing, full speed ahead.

No level of incompetence can explain or excuse such an across-the-board abandonment of American values, disregard for the rule of law, or the wholesale destruction of the country’s well-bring. No, dear reader, this is part of a grand plan, and what you think, if you don’t like what is happening, doesn’t matter one bit to the current administration or the elites who support it and helped put it in power. And Joe Biden is the perfect vehicle for them to accomplish their goals: A valueless, demented tool whose sole interest is, always was, his own power, aggrandizement, and greed, ripe for the true power brokers to use as they wish, the American public or his oath of office be damned.

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase, used by many in the administration, in the Democratic Party, and on the fringe left, “Profoundly transforming America.” A favorite word used by those same people is “dog whistle.” And that’s what that phrase is, a dog whistle for “Destroying America.” Whatever went before, what made America America, its values, its history, even its laws and Constitution, are detested by these people, and they now hold the reins of power to accomplish what has been their objective for a very long time. And things may already be past the point of no return for saving what is left of the country since their intent is to make it into a one-party state where opposition to their orthodoxy is meaningless. Unleashing unrestricted illegal immigration is a cornerstone of accomplishing that.

In this post I’m going to look at just two aspects of this plan — unrestricted illegal immigration and upwardly spiraling crime — and also the utter disregard in which those promoting these policies hold the American people.

Opening the flood gates

Take the situation at the southwestern border, for instance, though at this point it is a misnomer to refer to it as a border. The photos above tell the story of what is going on there. What you’re seeing in the first is an encampment of Haitians under the International Bridge at Del Rio, Texas — more than 15,000 at one point, and they just kept coming, 30,000 in the past three weeks, literally walking like a stream of ants across the Rio Grande, as in the second image. Not coming direct from Haiti, but Haitians that have been living all over South America, in many cases for years, some having been granted political asylum in those countries. And there are another 30,000 or many more following, coming up through Central America and Mexico. All coming at the personal invitation of Joe Biden. Like the other 2 million illegal border jumpers the country is on target to receive this year, a new all-time record. And those are just the ones that get apprehended, and then sent wherever in the country they want to go. It’s solely a matter of speculation how many “got aways” have, and will, make their way into the country.

With this wave of illegals come the drugs being trafficked across the border by the Mexican cartels, which have earned billions of dollars on the illegal trade. And the women and children being trafficked. And the terrorists mingled in with the others, coming from more than 100 countries all over the world. Add to the total tens of thousands of Afghans of all ilk and stripe — few are those who assisted the U.S. in Afghanistan, most of whom were left behind by Biden to be tortured and killed by the Taliban — flown in and released, and you begin to get an idea of the scope of what amounts to a staged invasion of the country. And while Biden dictates COVID vaccination mandates for law-abiding Americans, the border jumpers and others are let in without vaccinations or even much testing. If you think any of this is not by design, you’re deluded and misled. Biden inherited a secure border — perhaps the most secure in our history — from Donald Trump, and on Day 1 of his administration he blew the doors off it. And the flood of migrants quickly followed and has not abated since.

Why, you ask, would a president seek to inflict this on his own people? Simple. The left, which controls Biden, doesn’t believe in borders. They believe people should go wherever they want, and if millions of people from around the world want to come to America, they think that should be their right. They also are looking ahead for when they can finally push through an amnesty act — one is embedded in the monster $3.5 trillion spending bill Nancy Pelosi wants to get passed — that would lead to citizenship for all these millions of illegals. They’re counting on most of them then voting Democratic out of some sort of gratitude to the party that invited them in. And if they do that — the numbers, just this year alone, eclipse the populations of more than 14 states — that will finally realize their dream of a one-party state.

Meanwhile, Biden is in blatant violation of his oath of office, a key part of which is to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Article II, Section 3 of that Constitution says that, among his other duties, the President “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed . . .” One must wonder why this President has not been impeached for his utter failure to faithfully, or in any other way, execute the country’s immigration laws, among others.

Spiraling crime

Another key element of the drive to destroy America is spiraling crime. Beginning with the death of George Floyd in May 2020, crime began rising unabated in many of the country’s largest cities — almost all of which are Democrat ruled and have been for a very long time. As violence tore apart cities from coast to coast, the movement to defund the police took root, and despite many billions of dollars in damage done, and numerous innocent people killed, few people were charged with crimes and fewer prosecuted. Contributing to the problem, a number of jurisdictions across the country, including New York, New Jersey, Illinois, New Mexico, California, and Alaska, abolished or limited their cash bail systems. Add so-called “progressive” prosecutors, helped into office by massive campaign contributions by radical billionaire George Soros and his Open Society Foundations, and reduced charges and penalties for a number of crimes, even decisions not to prosecute certain offenses — leading to scenes such as in the photo above, as thieves walk out of an Apple store in California with thousands of dollars of merchandise — and you have a perfect storm of what seem to be unintended negative consequences. But are they unintended?

You don’t have to be a genius to figure out that demoralizing and reducing the number of police, letting criminals walk free with no inducement not to re-offend, and letting people commit crimes with little or no threat of consequence, is going to lead to an increase in criminality. But like letting illegal immigrants enter the country at will, giving criminals freer and freer rein is going to have negative consequences, especially on the most vulnerable in the society. Thus, we have the latest FBI report that is expected to show a 29 percent increase in murders in 2020, eclipsing the next largest increase, 12.7%, in 1968. And that trend is continuing and accelerating in 2021. Meanwhile, while at least 25 cities have either cut funds, or are contemplating cutting funds, from their police forces, Forbes Magazine found that in 20 of the cities cutting police funding mayors and other city officials are protected, at taxpayer expense, by special police details. And all — I stress, all — of those 20 cities are run by Democratic mayors. So, those mayors and other officials consider their constituents expendable, but they get personal protection since, after all, they’re special, and you’re not.

As Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, clearly one of America’s most useless mayors, put it, “I think that residents of [Chicago], understanding the nature of the threats we are receiving on a daily basis, understand that I have a right to make sure my home is secure.” She, not you, have a right to a secure home. And in Minneapolis, where the 2020 violence originated, leading to a billion dollars in damage to that city alone, three of the city council members who voted to defund the police have private security details costing taxpayers $4,500 a day. And this is going on in at least 20 Democrat-run cities.

Hypocrisy no longer matters

You might remember a time when being accused of hypocrisy actually carried some weight. Well, those days are over. Now those who will dictate our morality to us while flaunting their own profligacy and privilege don’t think even once about being accused of hypocrisy. They know there are enough gullible sheeple, “informed” by a corrupt lackey media, out there that they can get away with just about anything, up to and including outright lying and corruption.

Take the unofficial leader of the so-called Squad of radical left activists in the Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. That’s her up there in that dress, emblazoned with the words “Tax the Rich.” Such a (to some) seemingly noble thought, something to wear to the $35,000 a plate Metropolitan Museum of Art Gala, where not many poor people likely would be in attendance. But AOC is right in her element, having graduated from the life of a barista to membership in the nation’s elite, lording it over those who can’t pony up $35,000 for a roast beef dinner. Hypocrisy? What’s that?

But it doesn’t end there. See the woman standing next to AOC? She’s Aurora James, an established tax deadbeat with dozens of state and federal tax and other warrants lodged against her in a number of states — mostly to do with not collecting or paying the payroll taxes due on her workers, or not carrying required worker comp insurance — and whose employees have accused of harassment and running “a sweat shop” full of unpaid interns. She’s also stiffed her company’s landlords while scoring a $1.6 million residence for herself in L.A. and collecting $41,666 in federal pandemic relief funds.

James — whom AOC terms a “working class” designer — lent her that hypocritical dress, likely worth thousands of dollars, and others contributed the bling AOC wore during the gala. Oh, and did we mention? AOC’s long-time boyfriend, web developer Riley Roberts, also got comped, bringing the total to $70,000 just to get in the door. If all this doesn’t make you want to vomit, what’s wrong with you?

Now one has to wonder, doesn’t all that — from comping the dinner tickets to the dress to the bling — constitute bribery of a public official? Why isn’t there an official corruption investigation being done of the congressperson, who would pick everyone else’s pocket to support her extravagant Socialist schemes while dancing the night away among the uber-wealthy? Can you spell “Democrat,” which seems to provide a pass to the most egregious acts of not just hypocrisy, but blatant corruption?

You see, she’s AOC, and you’re not. And as she and her party go about ruining the country as best they can, you, me, all of us, get to pay for it, in so many ways. If you voted for any of this, if you voted for Joe Biden, AOC, and the rest of their ilk, this is what you voted for. Maybe this isn’t what you were signing up for, but this is what you’re getting, and it shouldn’t come as any surprise to you. But the rest of us, those of us who didn’t vote for this, or had our vote stolen through the fraud of the last election, are paying and suffering for it, too. And when the ship goes down, we all go down with it.

Featured image, Haitians at Del Rio, Texas, by John Moore, Getty Images. Used under Fair Use.

Haitians Cross Rio Grande, Agence France-Presse, via BBC.com. Used under Fair Use.

Thieves Robbing Apple Store, Yahoo News. Used under Fair Use.

Aurora James and AOC at Met Gala, New York Post. Used under Fair Use.

This piece also is posted on my Substack in my community there, Issues That Matter. Subscribe here, and there. And if you like the piece, please share it. Links below.
The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

The Future of America Lies in Your Hands: Vote!

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The choice for America hasn’t been more clear in more than a century and a half. Not since the election of 1860, which led to the victory of Abraham Lincoln, the subsequent Civil War, and the eventual end of slavery, has there been a more impactful election.

The choice can be stated in simple terms: If you’re willing to accept and be complicit in the biggest fraud ever attempted in American political history, then Joe Biden is your guy. If you want to continue the push toward a stronger America, toward sensible economic policies, and toward policies that recognize global realities and how strength promotes prospects of peace without kneeling to the country’s enemies, then Donald Trump is your guy.

I know, I know. You don’t like Trump’s tweets. You don’t like some of the off-the-cuff things he says. You don’t like the name-calling. I don’t either. But if superficial things like that influence you more than things like policies, confronting the political elites (of both parties), mental and physical competence, and not being taken in by bald-faced political fraud, then go ahead and vote for Biden. And don’t complain later when, on the outside chance that Biden wins, you see what you’ve actually voted for. And it won’t be peace or prosperity or togetherness or justice or any of those nice-sounding things. You’ll find how much you’ve been snookered.

If you’ve been following my blog postings over the past two-plus years, you would know why Joe Biden is an utterly unacceptable candidate for President. You would have seen accounts of his misdeeds – all since confirmed in recent revelations – and you would have seen the reasons why he has earned a criminal investigation on a number of counts. And you would have seen the duplicitous and hypocritical and deceitful tactics of the Democrats in Congress and their lackeys in the mass media.

Scary Stuff

If that isn’t enough to dissuade you from voting for Biden, you would have seen the evidence of the man’s ever-more-frequently obvious mental deterioration, rendering him unfit to hold the nation’s highest office. Despite his campaign handlers’ best efforts to keep him sequestered in his Wilmington basement, when Jell-O Joe is allowed out to speak to a smattering of supporters and neutered media representatives, he has taken to speaking – not just in his usual gaffes and misstatements – but in what can only be described as “tongues.”

Here is just one example of that. Listen to it yourself.

And another.

And lots more cited here.

And it’s not just mental. Listen to his labored breathing as he spouts gibberish here.

Scary? I think so. This is the man who would have his finger on the nuclear button. That should get anyone worried. Very worried, indeed.

The inescapable conclusion is that Biden’s supposed running mate, Kamala Harris, is the real candidate, and Jell-O Joe is just a placeholder. He’ll be in the Oval Office until his deteriorated mental state becomes impossible to any longer ignore, and then he’ll be eased out of office with Harris taking over officially. And meanwhile, both Biden and Harris, considered the most liberal member of the Senate, will be subservient to the will and insane policies of the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren. Never mind that Harris couldn’t even muster enough support to make it as far as the primaries or that she is widely disliked, even despised, across the full range of the political spectrum. She, and the radical left, and the Dem power brokers, are whom you’ll really be voting for.

A Tale of Two Campaigns, A Tale of Two Americas

The photos above graphically illustrate the tale of two campaigns, and the two Americas they represent and appeal to. Both photos were taken at recent rallies in Georgia. The top image is the Trump rally held in Macon on Oct. 16, following earlier rallies, attended by tens of thousands of people, the same day in Fort Myers and Ocala, Florida. The bottom image is the Biden rally held in Warm Springs on Oct. 27. In contrast to the vibrant and raucous gathering of thousands of avid supporters – typical of all Trump rallies – we see a smattering of supposed Biden supporters, some of whom are actually reporters, isolated in 38 – count them, 38 – circles, to enforce social distancing, outside on the grass. Compared to a garden party, it looks more than silly. Later the same day, Biden attracted his largest crowd of his campaign, such as it has been, at a drive-in rally in Atlanta – 771 people in 365 cars.

This really is the choice put to voters: Which America do you support? A lively and growing and vibrant and courageous America, or an America afraid to even breathe, cowered into fear, locked down and looking forward to the “dark winter” promised by Biden? An America of hope, or an America of despair? An America where the individual is treasured, or one in which the individual is submerged and devalued and canceled in the dismal swamp of identity politics? An America of tolerance and fairness, or one in which venom and hatred and division are fostered by a corrupt political-media establishment? I know which one I’ll be voting for when I go the polls tomorrow. Do you?

I honestly have no idea how the election will turn out, which of those narratives America will choose. If you believe most of the polls – I don’t – Biden will win. Of course, those same polls said Hillary Clinton would win in 2016. So much for that theory. If you go by the enormous enthusiasm shown to Trump, whether in rallies or in the many impromptu displays like car and boat parades held around the country, contrasted with the lackluster showing of support for Biden, Trump has to take it. If you use such anecdotal approaches as I use, like my Yard Sign Theory, there will be places solidly for Trump and others solidly for Biden. Do the Trump yard signs outnumber the Biden ones? Based on my limited observations in different places, I’d give the nod to Trump.

Something like 90 million voters have already cast their votes, in mail-in, absentee, and early voting. I remain opposed to early voting in most cases since vital information, like what the Hunter Biden laptop contains, often comes in late in the game. I’ll go in person to my local polling place tomorrow and cast my vote, as I’ve been doing in most elections since my first vote when I was 18. I don’t know if we’ll know a winner by late Tuesday night. I suspect not. I suspect, unless there will be enough clear results in sufficient states to determine a clear winner, we may wait days, weeks, perhaps months to know who the winner is determined to be as Americans’ faith in their political institutions is further eroded. I hope that isn’t how things go, just as I hope there won’t be violence in the aftermath of the election, but I have my doubts about both. Many cities already are boarding up in anticipation of that violence.

In any case, I hope the sensibility of the country comes through and voters wind up picking the only acceptable candidate on the ballot. I hope they do that even if it takes having to grit their teeth and accept a candidate who is less than perfect. The alternative is too incomprehensible, too horrible, to even think about. And I hope that sensibility carries through down the ballot, too, to keep the Senate in Republican hands and to turn the House. The country doesn’t need more gridlock, nor does it need the one-party state the Dems have in mind for it.

And it’s not just the future of America that lies in the balance. In many respects, it’s the future of the world. I have had non-Americans writing to me to stress that point, and their concerns and fears mirror my own.

Readers of this blog probably know more about the issues and the opposing views of reality than most. Now go out and apply that knowledge and vote.

Featured image: Donald Trump in Omaha, Anna Reed, The World Herald; Joe Biden in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump at campaign rally in Tucson, Rebecca Sasnett, Arizona Daily Star; Masked Joe Biden waves in Bristol Twp., Pennsylvania, Darryl Rule, LevittownNow.com. Both used under Fair Use.

Trump campaign rally in Macon, Ga., Getty Images; Biden campaign rally in Warm Springs, Ga., Independent Sentinel. Both 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.
Profiles in Cowardice – Part II

Profiles in Cowardice – Part II

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Yesterday I presented my Profiles in Cowardice 8-5. If you haven’t read that piece, which includes an explanation of the Profiles, you should read it first.

Today we present Profiles in Cowardice 4-1.

4. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

Like with Chicago’s Lightfoot, a reasonable person has to scratch his or her head and wonder, how did this overgrown buffoon get to be mayor of America’s largest city? It’s said that New York City has good water, so there must be another explanation. The answer lies with mindless Democratic Party loyalism and the mental frailty known as liberalism.

Back when I lived in New York I came to realize that most New Yorkers, despite the reverie in which some hold the city’s residents, aren’t terribly bright. But even New Yorkers were fed up with the widespread crime and dirt and deterioration that marked Gotham in the 1970s, when I lived in the city. It took a Rudy Giuiani twenty years later to get things sorted and return New York to the realm of habitability after three decades of decline and decay. But that wasn’t something de Blasio could tolerate, and in short order he plunged New York back into the chaos that preceded Giuliani. And then, in a single week at the end of May, he allowed the forces of anarchy and destruction near-free reign, finishing the job he started, and things have only gotten worse in the months since.

New Yorkers report that the homeless have taken over the subway system – the world’s largest mass transit system – child molesters have taken over formerly upscale hotels, and nude men wielding 2 x 4s roam the streets. Thugs knock over elderly people just because they can, violent criminals are released overnight on their own recognizance, only to return to the streets and commit more crimes, and whole blocks of formerly tony boutiques and shops are boarded up. Along with hundreds of other businesses, looters ransacked Macy’s flagship store on Herald Square (yes, Virginia, there is an idiot in Gracie Mansion), and the murder rate has soared to levels not seen in many years. Is it any wonder that so many people are leaving New York that moving trucks are double-parked as they load the furniture of those who have given up on life in New York ever returning to normal?

After urging people to go about their normal lives at the beginning of the coronavirus fiasco, de Blasio continues to keep the city locked-down, and the country’s most populous city remains a ghost of its former self.

In his latest act of cowardly moronicy, de Blasio has announced he will put all top city employees, including himself, on furlough to help ameliorate New York’s massive budgetary shortfalls. But New Yorkers must wonder, in de Blasio’s case, if they will be able to tell the difference.

3. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

If it seems that I’m picking on New York, it’s because it’s so easy to pick on. Cowardice seems to have taken over the state, beginning right at the top with the Empire State’s chief executive. Or Coward in Chief, if you will.

It’s hard to overplay Andrew Cuomo’s cowardice, even harder to overplay his utter, shameless dishonesty. A shell game conman in Brighton Beach would seem like the epitome of honesty and discretion compared with Cuomo.

While Cuomo made small rodent noises decrying the violence downstate in Gotham – more indicative of the antipathy he and de Blasio have for each other – he didn’t do anything about it. If that were his worst offense, Cuomo might have been spared receiving his own Profile in Cowardice. But Cuomo’s offenses are far greater than that.

This recipient of the white feather yowled about how he needed ventilators, needed hospital beds, needed PPE, needed just about everything to deal with the coronavirus pandemic coming to his state. Never mind that, as governor, Cuomo had taken no action to address a possible pandemic. While it’s a matter of some debate whether Cuomo was willfully remiss or was just doing what his predecessors had (or hadn’t) done to prepare, it’s not a matter of debate that Cuomo got everything he begged Trump for, and then some. In return for receiving every ventilator needed – New York wound up with so may ventilators it started sending them to other states – for getting a U.S. Navy hospital ship, which was hardly used, and a complete Army field hospital at the Javits Center which treated about 1,100 patients before being closed in May for lack of need, Cuomo now has come out and accused the President of having “caused” the coronavirus outbreak in New York. Do we want to talk about ignorance with impudence? One need go no further than Cuomo.

Let’s look at the numbers, Governor. The death rate in New York State stands at 1,703 per million population (it’s significantly higher than that in New York City, but let’s just look at the state of New York). The only higher death rate in all the world is across the river in New Jersey, another Democratic state, where it stands at 1,744 per million. Outside the U.S., the highest death rate is that of San Marino, with 1,237 deaths per million, followed by Peru with 935 deaths per million. The death rate for the U.S. overall stands at 607 per million – about a third of New York’s rate, and eleventh in the world.

If the half-dozen states with the highest death rates – all Democratically controlled states – were taken out of the equation, the U.S. death rate falls to about 362 per million, twentieth in the world, down between The Netherlands and Ireland. Now you probably don’t know that, if you get your news from the mass media, who would have you believe the U.S. is the worst case in the world, but those are the facts, if you’re still one of those increasingly rare people to whom facts matter. But we digress.

What you also might not know, and which secures Cuomo’s place among my Profiles in Cowardice, is that it was his order to send thousands of elderly COVID-19 patients into nursing homes, leading to thousands of excess deaths – estimated between 6,400 and as high as 12,000 or more – among nursing home and long-term care facility residents and staff, ostensibly to save space in hospitals, even as the Comfort hospital ship and the Javits Center field hospital went underutilized. Even as the policy was being questioned, Cuomo doubled down on his decision, despite having called nursing homes a “feeding frenzy” for the virus.

“It was the single dumbest decision anyone could make if they wanted to kill people,” said one person whose elderly father had been in a nursing home where 50 people died, before dying of the ailment at home.

The DOJ is now investigating New York, along with three other states – New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Michigan – whose Democratic governors followed similar policies as Cuomo’s.

Cuomo, more than perhaps any other governor in the country, has tried to present himself as the most effective counterweight to the coronavirus, and when you have a brother who is a CNN anchor providing you with journalistic oral gratification, you can try to get away with that. A look at the facts tells a different story, and Cuomo has earned his place on our list.

2. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

We’ve talked about Nancy “Let Them Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi before, and I’m sorry to have to inform you of this, we’ll probably have to talk about her again. Meanwhile, she has earned her place on our Profiles of Cowardice.

If you’re disturbed by hypocrisy, as I am, it’s hard to find a bigger hypocrite than Pelosi. You know when she says she’s praying for Donald Trump, the saints are rolling over in their graves, groaning. When she says she cares about the Constitution while tearing up the President’s speech right up there on the dais, the Founding Fathers are rolling their eyes. When she says she’s looking out for the ordinary people, you can just see her bankers rubbing their hands together as they count her many millions of dollars and her fellow millionaires who are Dem donors doing the same. And when she says she wants to get assistance to the millions of individuals and businesses suffering due to economic dislocation caused by coronavirus shut-downs, if it doesn’t include payoffs to Democractic causes and sacred cows, she’s not in any rush, so suck it up, suckers.

Ice Cream Nancy’s latest display of hypocrisy was another hair styling kerfuffle (what is it with politicians and their hair?) After publicly supporting closure of hair salons to keep from spreading coronavirus, Pelosi was caught on camera trotting maskless around a San Francisco hair salon, which had been closed to the public, so she could get her hair done. After all, she’s Nancy Pelosi, and you’re not. The graceful thing to do would have been to cop to what she did. Even Lori Lightfoot, in her own way, claimed responsibility for her hair salon hypocrisy. But Pelosi is too much of a coward to do that. Reminiscent of the words used by former Washington Mayor Marion Barry when he was caught red-handed snorting cocaine in a hotel room with a prostitute – “Bitch set me up!” – Pelosi used virtually those same words.

“I was set up,” she said.

No one put Pelosi in that stylist’s chair other than herself, any more than the police put Barry in that hotel room. Neither was set up, but both are cowardly liars. Meanwhile, the owner of the salon – it was not her but an independent stylist who let Pelosi in, but it was she who released the security video – has gotten so much hate directed at her that she has to permanently close her salon and leave San Francisco. Not a word of remorse, much less apology, from cowardly Pelosi. No, indeed. It’s Ice Cream Nancy who has demanded the apology from the salon owner.

But Pelosi earned her penultimate place on our list for something much more serious than her hypocrisy. As cities across the country burn, she has blocked every piece of law-and-order legislation that has been brought before the House. If it’s bad for Trump, Pelosi’s arch-nemesis, let ‘er burn. The irony is that Pelosi’s strategy might actually be working in Trump’s favor. It wouldn’t be the first time.

1. Joe Biden

And the winner of the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice (envelope, please): Jell-O Joe Biden.

If you’ve been watching Joe Biden over the past several months, you’ve seen a doddering old fool babbling nonsensically, almost entirely sequestered in his Wilmington basement. Propped up by his wife, Jill, and his faceless political handlers, an unprejudiced observer would call what is being done to Biden elder abuse, all in the cynical pursuit of political power. It’s painful listening and watching this man as he embarrasses himself on a daily basis. The few questions he answers are softball questions that have been scripted or pre-approved by his handlers. Without a teleprompter, he’s lost, even responding to these cream puff questions. He can barely get by with a teleprompter, mechanically reading statements prepared for him.

As a human being, not as a politician, I have sympathy for Biden. I’ve been around dementia and have seen its debilitating effects first hand, and Biden exhibits all the symptoms of it. It’s a difficult and frustrating stage that afflicts many older people. I can see old Uncle Joe having his Jell-O with other kindly elder folk at dinner in a rest-home dining room. Thus my name for him. What I can’t see is him at the helm of the nation in the Oval Office.

Biden, as we’ve previously documented in several postings on this site, has been mired in various corrupt deals and bad policies for much of his political career, most recently during his stint as Barack Obama’s Vice President. Biden’s corruption goes beyond enriching son Hunter, who leveraged his father’s position to fill his coffers and fortunes in Ukraine and China. As former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi ably laid out in detail at the Republican National Convention, Biden has spent a half century in politics enriching various members of his family, much like a crime family boss. It’s impossible to determine his position on any issue since, if you don’t like what it is today, wait a day or two, and it will change. He is the quintessential opportunist.

It’s pretty obvious that the Dem power brokers know Biden can’t possibly serve out a full term, if by chance he is elected President, and they have installed Kamala Harris – another malleable politician who will blow with whatever wind is beneficial to her – as his putative running mate, but who is the real candidate. Speaking in Tampa on Tuesday, in one of his rare trips out of his basement, a befuddled Biden let the cat out of the bag when he referred to the “Harris-Biden ticket.” Doing a verbal dance around the reality, Harris in a recent speech referred to “a Harris administration,” even if she tried to recover with a closing reference to the “Biden-Harris ticket.” Do you wonder who the real head of the ticket is?

It’s not Biden’s corruption, and certainly not his mental state, that earns him the top spot on our Profiles in Cowardice. No, it’s his willingness to put himself ahead of his country, his willingness to be used and manipulated politically, his willingness to do and say anything, just so he can be President of the United States, even with the full knowledge he is not up to the task. He has as much as acknowledged that fact himself, and that was months before his condition had deteriorated to its current degraded state.

If you were on an airliner and Joe Biden was the pilot, you’d get off that airplane. Joe Biden himself would. Yet, he wants to put himself at the controls of the country, be captain of the Free World. And for that, he deserves the top spot in our Profiles in Cowardice.

It wasn’t always like this in American politics. There was a time when those who would run for high office put their country, and not their own political or vain egotistical interests, first. If you’re of a certain age you might remember, as I do, a former Senator from Missouri named Thomas Eagleton. Eagleton was named to be George McGovern’s running mate in the race for President in 1972. And then it came out that Eagleton had suffered over the years from bouts of depression and previously had been hospitalized and given electoshock treatments. After some hemming and hawing and questions about his suitability to be the next in line to have his finger on the nuclear button, Eagleton stepped down.

Eagleton had performed well in all the positions he held, including Missouri AG, and he went on to serve two more terms in the Senate. I’d venture that Eagleton would run rings around Biden given their respective conditions at the time of their nominations. But while Eagleton set aside his political ambitions, Biden refuses to acknowledge what is openly apparent, allowing himself to be used as the figurehead in a political ploy that might well be the biggest act of fraud ever attempted in American political history.

I give you my nomination for the No. 1 spot on the Profiles of Cowardice, Jell-O Joe Biden.

May God (or the American electorate) save us.

Photo credits: White feather featured image, Max Braxmeier, Pixabay, used with permission. The following used under Fair Use: Bill de Blasio, Robert Miller, New York Post; Andrew Cuomo, AP Photo; Nancy Pelosi, greatamericandaily.com; Joe Biden, Kevin Lamarque, Reuters