FBI, You Got Some Splainin To Do!

By Rich Kozlovich

I Love Lucy was the all time greatest situation comedy in the history of television, and set the pattern for all sitcoms that followed.  Lucille Ball and her real life husband Desi Arnaz played husband and wife on the show, and Lucy was always scheming something or other, which when caught created one of the great lines in the  history show business:  Lucy, You Got Some Splainin To Do, and while that was another one of those lines, like, "Play it again Sam", that was a misquote, it nonetheless became iconic.  

Well.......FBI, You Got Some Splainin To Do!  

On August 28 I reported in my article,  It's Time We Disarm the FBI,  saying:  

On Sunday Jim Hoft reported that on the morning of August 16 the FBI raided the home of a disabled veteran and killed him.  Why?  There are still no answers from the FBI on why they found it necessary to raid the home of a disabled US veteran and shoot him dead on the morning of August 16th. Theodore Deschler was shot and killed when FBI agents raided his home near Henderson, Tennessee. Now Deschler’s family are looking for answers. There is still no news from the government on why they had to break out the windows, toss smoke bombs into the home, and then shoot Deschler who was unarmed at the time........

When the lady asked why they were doing this she was told it wasn't any of her business.  The FBI conducts a military style raid on their home and it isn't any of her business why?  Really? And why is that?  Because the FBI is out of control, and far more dangerous than we knew, and more dangerous than the people they're attacking.  They've even been involved in interfering with elections, and it's clear they don't intend to stop. 

Yesterday, August 30, 2023 this follow up piece appeared, Family of Disabled Veteran Killed by FBI Demands Answers was published with the author noting:

There was a time not too long ago when I would naively dismiss stories like the one below as nothing much to see. Today, many of us find ourselves questioning every action from the Department of Justice in general and the FBI in particular. Instead of trusting that national law enforcement will only use force when absolutely justified, it seems more likely that they engaged in unnecessary or even criminal actions that led to the death of an unarmed man.

According to the author:

Earlier this year, Deschler had been arrested as a suspect in a gas station stabbing in a nearby town, according to the Selmer Police Department. However, details of the attack and any charges resulting from it remain unclear.

Okay, maybe that happened and maybe it didn't, but either way, why would the FBI be involved in an alleged local criminal matter, and while the FBI says this is all under review, the author has this to say about this "review".

But this isn’t about who to believe between the FBI and the family. It’s about the lack of information being put forth by the FBI. If they believe they were justified in killing Teddy Deschler, they needed to come out with information backing that claim immediately following the incident. If they believe they were wrong and Deschler should not have been killed, they needed to declare an investigation into the incident within 24 hours. The fact that the raid is two weeks old and we have heard next to nothing is completely unacceptable.

The FBI and the local police are lockstep silent and the family is considering going to court.  Is this a pattern with the FBI?  Yes, it is.  On August 28, 2023 by Lloyd Billingsley published this piece, Biden’s FBI Shoots First – Avoids Questions Later saying:

The Bureau escalates deadly violence. On August 9, “The FBI shot and killed a Utah man who allegedly made online threats to kill President Joe Biden and New York prosecutor Alvin Bragg.” In establishment media reports on the FBI action, “allegedly” gets a workout.

The FBI shot dead Craig Robertson, a 74-year-old woodworker who had allegedly threatened other politicians, including Gavin Newsom and just about every Democrat except Jimmy Carter. Reports on the shooting did not include original-source documentation of the alleged threats.......... As it happens, deployment of deadly force is longstanding FBI practice.

He goes on to discuss some history about the FBI's violent mindset saying: 

This month marks 31 years since the FBI deployed massive military force against a single family. For choosing to live in rural Idaho, U.S. Army veteran Randy Weaver and his family were smeared as “white separatists.”  In the Ruby Ridge siege of 1992, brought on by an ATF entrapment scheme, the FBI deployed some 400 heavily armed agents, helicopters, and armored personnel carriers against Weaver and his family. The rules of engagement allowed deadly force against any family member seen with a firearm, but in effect it was shoot on sight.

An FBI sniper murdered an unarmed woman holding a child, and it was just "unfortunate".  And the sniper was praised.  Then Billingsley goes on to list the FBI's massive failures involving terrorists, their involvement in attempting to prevent Donald Trump from being elected, and this 25–member FBI SWAT team that showed up at the residence of pro-life activist Mark Houck in the early morning hours with 10 or 15 marked and unmarked units. 

“Long guns pointed at me, heavily armored vests, ballistic helmets, ballistic shields, a battering ram.” Houck, a father of seven children, spotted an FBI agent in the back of the house, and at least five federal agents on his porch “with M-16s pointed at me and now my wife as she entered the opening of the door.”

 

What threat did this peaceful family man pose to the FBI?  None whatsoever, and he was found not guilty, but such blatant corruption by the FBI in their efforts to destroy those who exercise their Constitutional rights, and in this case over abortion, someone at the FBI should have been charged criminally over this. But that's not going to happen, and here's why.

“Desire to wage war on ordinary Americans—to disadvantage them and even to kill them—had long been bubbling in the ruling class’s basements,” wrote the late Angelo Codevilla in 2019.  Branding ordinary Americans as white supremacists, domestic terrorists, and violent extremists is a prelude to deadly violence against them.  Look for more of the same as the 2024 election approaches. The struggle against FBI violence is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

This is part and parcel of the FBI's attack on Christians, and in this particular case, , Catholics who attend mass, and especially those who attend the churches with the traditional Latin mass, who the FBI brands as "extremists" and the church faithful as "domestic terrorists".

FBI, You Got Some Splainin To Do!

Evidence of Ties to the Michigan Democratic Party?

Newly Obtained Muskegon Police Report Reveals GBI Strategies Was Hired by “Empower Michigan” Project that Shares Address with MI Dem Party

by Patty McMurray Aug. 30, 2023 8:00 am 544 Comments

On August 8, the Gateway Pundit revealed a major fraudulent voter registration operation that had been under investigation for almost 3 years in Michigan that spanned several cities across the state. Although the investigation was involved lead investigators working for Michigan’s Democrat Attorney General Dana Nessel and at least one analyst working for Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, the true depth of the investigation and the shocking details uncovered by the MI State Police and Muskegon Police Department were hidden from the public. 

Publications like The Detroit News downplayed the investigation and wrote an article to debunk a MI STATE POLICE REPORT titled, Michigan probe into fraudulent voter registrations referred to FBI, suggesting that the Gateway Pundit was a conspiracy site for daring to report on the details found in the MI State Police report we obtained exclusivley from Phil O’Halloran of MI-District 9 and Director of Election Integrity for the MI GOP.

Detroit News (Democratic Party spokesperson who identifies as a journalist) Craig Mauger, published what looked more like a press release by AG Dana Nessel’s office than a serious report on what many are saying is evidence of the biggest, multi-state voter fraud ring since he 2020 election. Mauger and MI AG Dana Nessel’s Press Secretary Danny Wimmer co-wrote the response to the Gateway Pundit’s bombshell article:...............To Read More.....

Veronique de Rugy: The dwindling difference between our two parties on spending

By Veronique de Rugy Aug 18, 2022 @ The Northern Virginia Daily

Editor's Note:  I've enjoyed this author's views for some time, but I've not asked for nor received permission to publish this in full, but given all the recent events dealing with Vichy Republicans, I think this is an important piece.  If the author of the The Northern Virginia Daily object, I will break in down to a link.  RK

For a few years, I have sounded the alarm that a growing wave of conservatives are working to make Republicans indistinguishable from Democrats on social spending. Some say that to win elections, Republicans need to pay more attention to families — by which they mean dole out ever more money to families like the Democrats do. Exhibit A for this development is the newly reintroduced New Parents Act.

The Act was recently reintroduced by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah. It's a massive handout to parents, pretty much regardless of income level. If adopted, it would significantly expand the role of the federal government as it further swells the deficit and national debt.

The proposal has many parts, but two illustrate my point best:

First, it would create a federal paid-leave program that would allow new parents to advance themselves up to three months of parental-leave benefits today by drawing funds from their Social Security retirement benefits. This scheme is based on misconceptions that are hard to explain away. Romney and Rubio ignore the reality that the private sector, not the federal government, is the best provider of paid leave.

In fact, a majority of women today are paid during their leaves by their employers through various and flexible arrangements and programs. A government program would be unlikely to solve the issue of most concern to those workers who still do not have leave. That's in part because they work with a very small business, are self-employed or are temporary and/or part-time workers. By forcing the matter with all employers — no matter who eventually picks up the tab — it could cost this vulnerable group of women jobs and promotions, as we have seen in many countries with national paid-leave programs.

It is amazing that the senators would even consider using Social Security, a program that is already insolvent, to provide paid leave, and that they believe the advanced benefits will be repaid decades down the road. We can't tie the hands of future Congresses, and it's likely that future politicians will cave to the pressure to forgive these debts when they come due. When that happens, the cost to Social Security will become enormous.

Second is an extended child tax credit that goes to most families, even rich ones. The cost would be extreme. According to the plan, "Parents would receive a credit of up to $3,500 per child, and $4,500 per child for children under the age of 6." Imagine an enormous credit, fully refundable, with no work or marriage requirements. A family with four kids, for instance, wouldn't start paying taxes until they make over $118,000. Over time, the expanded CTC amounts to $69,000 per child. If you're concerned that this boondoggle might disincentivize work and marriage, you would be correct, as shown by the work of American Enterprise Institute economist Scott Winship.

The budgetary cost is astronomical, too. A friend of mine has six kids between the ages of 4 and 13. Both she and her husband work and are comfortable enough to have taken on the responsibility — and joy — of a large family. But as she recently told me, under the Rubio-Romney regime, "that would mean other people would have to pay $414,000 in taxes to support the family that I chose to have." The Act's elimination of the state and local tax deduction would do very little to recoup the cost.

It is unclear if some version of these handouts will be enacted. Democrats support the extended child tax credit, but they don't support using Social Security to deliver paid leave. (They prefer an even more expansive and distortive program, like the FAMILY Act.) However, the risks are high precisely because underneath each policy is an identical support for using the government to shell out money to every family, even if the evidence says it will backfire.

Between some conservatives and Republicans' push for federal family subsidies and their newfound embrace for bailouts and industrial policy, the difference between the Right and the Left on economic issues is narrowing significantly. If many more of them cave into the pressure from their more radical peers to reject economic liberalism altogether, the political transformation will be complete.

Veronique de Rugy's column is syndicated by Creators. 

China's Economy Is Struggling. Still Want to Emulate it?

  Veronique de Rugy

China's economy is struggling post-COVID-19. Growth is slower than expected, demographic trends are negative, youth unemployment is high, overbuilding has created a housing crisis and government indebtedness is ballooning. These are only a few of the symptoms ailing the country, and things could get worse. Did any of the Americans who not long ago wanted to implement some of China's top-down economic policies see this coming? Of course not. We've seen these pessimists make similar mistakes before........ The only question that remains to be answered is this: Why do we Americans always seem to believe those who tell us that industrial policy is a surer path to prosperity than economic freedom?.........To Read More.....

 

 

Learning about the Constitution

 

August 31, 2023 By Greg Maresca

During Joanne Stehr’s rookie campaign last autumn for state representative from Pennsylvania’s 107th District, one request by her ensuing constituents stood out. “People requested a class on the Constitution,” said the first-term representative. “The Constitution is the foundation on what this country was built upon; a roadmap that protects all of the nation’s people.” In order to get things done, Stehr enlisted the help of Johnathan McLaughlin, a Central Pennsylvania native who volunteers as a constitutional coach, a title he earned as a graduate of the Patriot Academy in Dripping Springs, Texas.

McLaughlin is a realist who understands his volunteerism and outreach is not going to change anything overnight, but it is a solid first step. “So many people are unfamiliar with what the Constitution says and what it represents,” McLaughlin underscored. He cited the citizenship test that all prospective immigrants must pass in order to obtain citizenship, while pointing out Prager University’s video on YouTube that questioned college students’ civic knowledge that was anything but flattering.......To Read More.....

How the Trump Indictments Destroy the Constitution

August 31, 2023 By Don Brown

Perhaps the greatest danger emerging from the maniacal prosecutions against President Trump involves the left's all-out war against Trump's lawyers, which marks a broader constitutional threat to all Americans. In the Mar-a-Lago documents prosecution, former Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran, "according to multiple sources," took copious notes of his conversation with Trump.  Then, going full-blown Judas Iscariot, he betrayed Trump by surrendering confidential notes to Jack Smith's power-hungry little prosecutors.  The New York Times, on June 11, wrote "Trump Indictment Shows Critical Evidence Came From One of His Own Lawyers," adding, "M. Evan Corcoran, who was hired to represent the former president after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, could be a key witness in the trial."........So Trump hires Corcoran, entrusting him with  confidential conversations.  But then Corcoran flips against Trump, becoming a "road map" for prosecutors in "building their case.".........Thus, Smith takes a hot blowtorch to the attorney-client privilege, pitting lawyers against clients......To Read More....

Trump: Victim of a Radically Transformed Federal Judiciary

By Steve McCann August 31, 2023 @ American Thinker

Editor's Note:  I've not asked for, nor have I received permission to publish this in full, but this article needs as broad a distribution as possible.  If the author or American Thinker object, I will break it down to a link.  This is further proof the nation is in serious need of a 28th Amendment to impose term limits on the federal judiciary, many of whom are in my opinion blatantly guilty of treason.  RK

The judicial persecution of Donald Trump has exposed the blatant political bias that animates many Federal District Court judges. Packing the Federal Judiciary at all levels with left-wing judges is the cornerstone of the Marxist Democrat Party strategy to permanently transform America.  If they win the presidency in 2024, they will have succeeded in packing the Federal Judiciary by the end of the term on January 20, 2029.  

This process began in earnest with Barack Obama. He came into office determined to fill the judiciary with left-wing judges, and he succeeded, as virtually every one of his appointments has revealed their bias and leftist ideology while serving on the various courts. Joe Biden has followed in Obama’s footsteps by nominating equally if not more ideologically bound left-wing judges.

The following federal judges are not animated by upholding the law or the Constitution but instead are motivated by political considerations and their allegiance to statist ideology.

District Judge Beryl Howell (Obama appointee) coordinated with the Department of Justice to deny Trump his constitutional rights and indict him on specious criminal charges pertaining to document retention and January 6^th, 2021. She deliberately, knowingly and egregiously violated his due process rights.

District Judge Tanya Chutkin, (Obama appointee) who is overseeing the trial of Donald Trump in Washington D.C., has unapologetically made numerous incendiary comments about Trump nor has she hidden her bias and willingness to work with the Justice Department in delaying trials and sentencing January 6^th protesters to extraordinary long and unjustified jail terms. She is now, at the behest of the Biden Justice Department, accelerating the trial date for Trump in order to torpedo his candidacy and ability to win the general election.

District Judge Beth Lapson Freeman (Obama appointee) claimed that an ordinance passed by the San Jose, California city council mandating all gun owners in the city be required to purchase liability insurance did not violate the 2^nd Amendment, thus placing an impediment to gun ownership in clear violation of the language of the 2^nd Amendment which states: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”

District Judge Jon Tigar (Obama appointee) ruled that U.S. immigration authorities cannot deny asylum to migrants regardless of how they arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border nor can they be forced to wait in Mexico, thereby eviscerating any viable immigration enforcement at the Southern border.

District Court Judge Deborah Boardman, (Biden appointee) recently ruled that parents do not have the right to opt their children out of mandatory LGBTQ+ lessons or classes in public schools in a gross violation of their First Amendment rights.

There are 667 District Court judges throughout the United States. Obama and Biden (to date) have appointed 371 with 63 vacancies that Biden will, with a Democrat-controlled Senate, fill before the end of his term. Thus, between Obama and Biden they will have appointed 434 judges or nearly two thirds of all District Court seats.

The only check on the District Court judges are the Circuit Courts of Appeal and ultimately the Supreme Court. However, the appeals process is lengthy and oftentimes drawn out. For example, if Trump were to be found guilty of any of the innumerable charges against him, he would almost certainly win an appeal, but by the time the appeal is heard or ruled on the 2024 election would be far in the rear-view mirror.

Currently among Circuit Court of Appeals judges nearly half have been appointed by Republicans as have six of the nine Supreme Court justices. Which is why the Circuit Courts, and the Supreme Court are currently the last bastion of constitutional governance and liberty as well as the primary target of the American Marxists.

Based on historical averages, if Biden or any Democrat wins the 2024 election he or she will appoint upwards of 170 District Court judges and nearly 35+ Circuit Court of Appeals judges by 2028. Resulting in as many as 595 District Court judges, or 89% of the bench, and 126 Circuit Court of Appeals judges, or 70% of the bench, being appointed by a Marxist-controlled White House since 2008 -- thus transforming the entire Federal Judiciary into a de facto enforcement arm of the Democrat Party.

Additionally, the two oldest and most conservative Supreme Court justices, Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, will be 80 and 78 years old respectively by 2028, thus opening up the distinct possibility of the Democrats appointing their replacements, thus swinging the Court to the radical Left and abetting the implementation of the American Marxist political and societal agenda.

The prospect of a grossly compromised judicial system is the death knell for this or any civilized nation, as injustice will be directed at virtually anyone who oppose the policies of a one-party socialist state or who dares to contest any manipulated election the party in power wins. When there is no fair and equitable justice system, the inescapable outcome is violence and national disintegration.

This nation is perilously close to that inevitability. If the judiciary is captive to the Marxists, there is no turning back.

 

Congratulations To Germany On Achieving More Than 50% Of Its Electricity Production From "Renewables"!

August 29, 2023 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

On the march to Net Zero carbon emissions from usage of energy, the key first step is to eliminate fossil fuels from the generation of electricity, replacing them with the magical “renewables.” Or so we are told. Once electricity generation is fossil fuel-free, then all energy use can be switched to electricity, without any of the evil emissions. Voilà — Net Zero!

But somehow, in the places that have tried to go this route with wind turbines and solar panels, the push to get more electricity generation from “renewables” has seemed to stall out at around 40 - 45%. (Some small countries with lots of hydropower get higher percentages by counting the hydropower as “renewable.”). Countries may build more and more solar panels and wind turbines, but somewhere in the 40s the percentage that those things contribute to electricity generation just doesn’t seem to budge very much any more.

And that’s why it’s so exciting that in the first half of 2023 Germany finally crashed through the 50% barrier, becoming the first significant country with little hydropower to achieve more than half of its electricity generation from “renewables.” With a simple internet search, you can find large numbers of news sources relaying the great news. For a few examples, here are Reuters, June 27 (“Renewable share of German power use climbs to 52.3% in first half”); Fraunhofer, July 3 (“German Net Power Generation in First Half of 2023: Record Renewable Energy Share of 57.7 Percent”); Clean Energy Wire, June 27 (“Renewables covered more than half of German electricity consumption in first half of 2023”); and Solar Quarter, July 5 (“Germany Achieves Record 57.7% Renewable Energy Share in Net Power Generation for First Half of 2023”). Why the exact percentages vary a little from article to article, I cannot explain; but they are all at least a little in excess of the key 50% figure.

So this is surely Germany continuing to lead the way to the green energy transition. Certainly, Germany has only accelerated its pursuit of the idea that the route to Net Zero is the building of more and yet more solar panels and wind turbines. A site called Renewable-Energy-Industry.com compiles data on additions to Germany’s wind and solar generation capacity just in the first half of 2023: “Record Additions in Germany: 8,000 MW of New Wind And Solar Capacity in The First Half of 2023.”:

[S]olar energy in particular is booming in Germany. From January to June 2023 alone, around 465,000 new solar plants with 6,500 MW capacity . . . went into operation and produce electricity, more than ever before in a six-month period. . . . In the first six months of 2023, just under 350 new wind turbines with a capacity of around 1,750 MW went into operation. . . .

The addition of 8000 MW of generation capacity in just six months is a huge increment in a country where peak electricity usage is less than 85,000 MW (or 85 GW).

So are these large additions to capacity what has succeeded in pushing Germany over the 50% threshold? Unfortunately, if you read deep into the Reuters piece linked above, you will start to get a very different understanding. It turns out that Germany’s percentage of electricity from renewables increased not because the production of electricity from renewables increased, but rather because Germany’s economy is shrinking. After decades of effort and hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies and greatly increased consumer electricity prices, the contribution of wind and solar energy in Germany’s economy remains almost insignificant.

Despite all its new solar and wind facilities, Germany’s production of electricity from those sources has lately been going down rather than up. Here is the story for the first half of 2023) (from the Reuters piece linked above:

Renewables, at 137.5 TWh, represented 51.7% of total output, up from 46.4% in first half 2022, even as green power production volumes decreased by 0.6%.

The 137.5 TWh of electricity that Germany’s “renewable” facilities produced in the first half of 2023 is a pitiful percentage of their supposed theoretical capacity. A chart at Clean Energy Wire here gives Germany’s generation capacity of solar, plus onshore and offshore wind as 130.8 GW as of 2022. (In a country with only about 85 GW of peak usage!). Add the new 8 GW of capacity added in the first half of 2023, and you would have 138.8 GW of wind and solar capacity, or 602.9 TWh hours of capacity (138.8 x 24 x 181) for the 181 days in January to June 2023. That would mean that the wind and solar facilities combined produced at a rate of only 22.8% of capacity over that period.

So if production of electricity from “renewables” actually decreased, how could the percentage of electricity production from the “renewables” have increased from 46.4% to 51.7% of the total? Easy — the production from all other sources (fossil fuels and nuclear) went down dramatically:

Conventional energy sources - nuclear, coal, natural gas and oil - provided 128.4 TWh of output, down from 160.0 TWh a year earlier.

They ran the conventional generators less because the demand for electricity was not there:

The fall in conventional production reflected the phase-out of nuclear energy by mid-April and operators cutting output to match weak demand.

The change from 160.0 TWh to 128.4 TWh from conventional sources would be a 19.75% decline. That’s rather enormous in one year. Now, how could it be that Germany is experiencing that kind of a huge decline in the demand for electricity? You might check out the big front page article from today’s Wall Street Journal, “Germany’s Shrinking Economy Sparks a Struggle for Solutions.” (different headline online). The world leader in the supposed “green energy transition” turns out also to be in the unique position of having an economy that is shrinking, and not by a little:

Germany will be the world’s only major economy to contract in 2023, with even sanctioned Russia experiencing growth, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The WSJ piece goes into a variety of factors that may be contributing to the shrinking economy. But self-inflicted high energy prices turn up again and again:

Energy costs are posing an existential challenge to sectors such as chemicals. . . . Energy prices in Europe have declined from last year’s peak as EU countries scrambled to replace Russian gas, but German industry still faces higher costs than competitors in the U.S. and Asia.

And meanwhile, with Germany’s massive investments in wind and solar electricity generation, are those sources actually making any major inroads in the overall market for primary energy in the country? Here is an extremely revealing chart, again from Clean Energy Wire, with data from 2022:

In the “renewables” category for all primary energy (not just electricity), we learn that they include “biomass” as a “renewable.” Probably, that’s mostly wood, used for heating homes, and hardly a zero carbon source. The amount of energy produced from the “biomass,” at 1,040 PJ and 8.8% of primary energy, far exceeds the combined total from wind and solar (713 PJ and 6.0% of primary energy).

The whole “more than 50% from renewables” mantra turns out only to apply to electricity (far less than half of primary energy usage). And rather than representing the advance of the mythical wind and solar, the whole thing is just an artifact of a shrinking economy, largely itself caused by the destructive build-out of the wind and solar facilities. They are destroying their economy, and have almost nothing to show for two decades and hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the useless wind and solar farms.

 

The rebirth of ethics in America

By Duggan Flanakin August 31st, 2023

Thirty-five years ago, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas wrote a book entitled The Death of Ethics in America, citing (among many others) a 1987 Wall Street Journal headline, “Ethics can be nice, but they can be a handicap, some executives declare.”

In the book, Thomas was effusive about the ethical standards of the founders of a country which saw itself as having a “manifest destiny” as God’s chosen nation. He laments that two centuries of materialism, relativism, and secular humanism had left America rudderless and called for the re-establishment of ethical standards to guide leaders at all levels into wiser decision making.

Thomas’ book, while perhaps too steeped in religious terminology, zeroed in on his observation that the loss of a sense of responsibility beyond our own profit and pleasure had brought about a callousness to wrongdoing that weakened the nation Ronald Reagan once called “the shining city upon a hill.”

In its place has emerged a potpourri of assertions and demands that have fragmented the nation and left little room for respectful discussion, let alone debate on even the most pressing matters of national survival and purpose. Let’s face it – We now see a return to mudslinging and finger pointing that obscure significant graft and mismanagement from public view.

For example, it is arguable that only a society lacking in ethical standards could produce the recent FTX customer funds scandal; and worse, when charged with fraud and conspiracy, the CEO could honestly (yet naively) say, “I don’t think I tried to do anything wrong.”

And yet, despite perhaps veering off the ethical course our forefathers sought for us, in politics, academics, business, and in life, on the horizon, there are optimism and tangible prospects for lasting change.

Brian Peckrill, the interim Executive Director of the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund, has overseen the Fund’s 14-year-old Fellows Program since 2021. McGowan chooses one second-year MBA candidate from each of ten participating university business programs for intensive training using a teaching method which draws from the Center for Creative Leadership’s internationally recognized leadership development methods.

Named for MCI founder William G. McGowan, the Fellows program began in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, which was blamed in part on an ethical collapse. The McGowan Fund wanted to nurture aspiring leaders who would count social impact as well as shareholder value in their decision-making.

Peckrill says the McGowan Fellows program flips the typical MBA model by devoting only 10 percent of students’ time to classroom activities and another 20 percent to coaching that focuses on teaching McGowan’s six principles of ethical leadership – character, integrity, courage, accountability, self-awareness, and empathy.

The bulk of the program consists of fieldwork via challenging stretch experiences that move the students outside of their comfort zone and press them to look at life from other perspectives. Back in January, the ten second-year MBA candidates provided outreach for a youth shelter, handing out fliers, sanitary kits, and other items valued by the homeless in the Windy City’s zero-degree weather.

The students learned first-hand that quality, career-sustaining jobs can lift even the most disadvantaged people out of homelessness. They visited youth shelters and listened to residents, learning their stories and their dreams and desires for a career and a better future.

Peckrill notes that many former Fellows are already moving into “C class” corporate and other leadership positions and bringing their ethical standards with them. When asked what other academic institutions might do to revive ethical standards for their own students, Peckrill was quite blunt.

“I don’t think just having a class focused on ethical leadership is enough. What we at McGowan believe,” he said, “is that, as students go through their life experiences, ethics should be embedded in all that they learn. Even marketing and finance courses are not immune to ethical challenges. Ethical leadership bleeds into all areas of business.”

He concluded, “business schools seeking to teach ethics should take a holistic approach to integrating an ethical framework across the entire curriculum”.

But then again, ethical leadership is bigger than just business or politics – all industries and societal sectors would benefit from the presence of individuals – especially in leadership positions – who apply an ethical framework in all their actions and decisions, which have impacts far beyond what lies right in front of them.

Peckrill explains that the hands-on approach of ‘learning by doing’ enables McGowan Fellows to better determine what is fair and just. By learning how others less fortunate live and cope with their challenges, these young future leaders learn for themselves the impact of their leadership decisions, and how to respond to the challenges they will face as they climb the ladders of success.

As the Fellows program enters its fourteenth year, Peckrill asserts that ethical leadership is critical for building a sustainable, successful society. People need to see ethical leadership as a positive and honor and celebrate ethical leadership – from the boardroom to the classroom to the workroom.

Toward that end,  two years ago McGowan began honoring the “Ethical Leader of the Year Award,” announced at the annual meeting of the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM), as a way to celebrate ethical leadership at its highest level in society. “I think,” Peckrill said at this year’s award ceremony, “that our country is crying out to celebrate and honor individuals who are ethical leaders.”

The Fund, in choosing their honoree, considers their adherence to the six principles of ethical leadership and their contributions to society, their management and leadership of people, and their establishment of ethical processes. This year’s honoree was Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian; the inaugural honoree a year ago was Prudential Financial Chairman and CEO Charles F. Lowrey.

Peckrill praises SHRM for its own commitment to ethical standards. Johnny C. Taylor, Jr., president and CEO of SHRM, agrees that, “The key to a great leader is one who builds a strong workplace culture with personal accountability and a commitment to setting an example in words, decisions, and actions.”

In the whirlwind of today’s political and social confrontations, ethical leadership may make the difference between future prosperity or societal collapse.

It only takes one moment of arrogance to start an irreversible conflict and the destruction it can bring with it.

Only ethical people with ethical leaders can accept the compromises that iconoclasts before us believed were absolutely necessary for society to persevere through trials and tribulations.

This article originally appeared at The Opinion Pages

Author

• 
  Duggan Flanakin

  Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas. A brief history of his multifaceted career appears in his book, "Infinite Galaxies: Poems from the Dugout."

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HollyWeird: Hollywood Is Hungry! Food Drive for Striking Staff

Actors and writers still on strike, as negotiations stall and staff can’t afford essentials. 

By Kelli Ballard August 30, 2023 

Note: Whether on screen or off, Hollywood can always be counted on to keep us entertained. This is especially true when it comes to politics. Liberty Nation’s HollyWeird column shines the spotlight on Tinseltown’s A-listers and their wild and wacky takes on today’s events.

The Hollywood strike is having an effect not only on moviegoers and Netflix bingers but also on everyday workers in the industry who haven’t had an income in months. It’s not the A-listers who are suffering; it’s the staffers who get paid the lowest in the industry and now can’t afford basic necessities.

In California, striking workers cannot get unemployment benefits and they are not eligible for SNAP food benefits unless they qualified pre-strike. Support personnel, such as those who work on the set and provide transportation for actors, “tend to be low-paid,” Liz Hsiao Lan Alper, co-founder of Pay Up Hollywood and a Writers Guild of America West board member told The Hollywood Reporter. “So much of the compensation that they receive is, no one’s going to say it, but it’s implied to be food-based,” such as complimentary food provided in the writers’ rooms, agency kitchens, and conference rooms. “It’s invisible compensation that just went away when the work stoppages happened.”

Keith McNutt, executive director at the Entertainment Community Fund, whose donors include Steven Spielberg and Seth McFarlane, claimed there has been a huge increase of people requesting help for basic living expenses. “Before this started, we would do about 50 grants out of the L.A. office a week,” he told The Reporter. “Now we’re getting 50 applications a day.” He added, “This is happening right after the pandemic, which drained a lot of people’s savings.” The fund has already distributed $3 million to more than 1,500 workers as of Aug. 1.

A lot of organizations have come forward to help the struggling strikers.

The strike, which started in May, has made it difficult for staffers to make ends meet. Food drives and other financial resources have coalesced to help those in need. On July 28, 1,740 food boxes to feed about 8,700 people were distributed that day alone. Another food drive was held in August to help more than 1,000 households.

Pay Up Hollywood, on June 7, relaunched its COVID-19 Hollywood Support Staff Relief Fund and has so far distributed nearly $45,000 in one-time financial grants, giving recipients up to $1,000 each.

SAG-AFTRA Foundation offers emergency help, including grocery gift cards, to its union members. In addition, the organization has already made a “seven-figure donation to the Foundation early in its strike to assist these efforts,” The Reporter explained, and the WGA West provides its members with emergency loans.

Groceries for Writers, administered by Humanitas, has given out more than 1,100 gift cards to WGA members since May. Humanitas Executive Director Michelle Franke told the outlet that “many of these writers have left notes indicating they’re in very urgent financial situations.” She continued:

“Writers describe struggling with student debt, falling into eligibility gaps with CalFresh and EDD [state unemployment assistance], eviction notices, writing teams splitting low pay, having only just moved to Los Angeles and not having a large local support network as a consequence, dwindling savings.”

Drew Carey, host of The Price Is Right, has vowed to pay for all striking writers dining at Bob’s Big Boy in Burbank as well as at LA’s Swingers Diner while the strike continues. Inspired by the actor’s generosity, Glen Curado, CEO and founder of World Harvest Food Bank, told The Reporter he is offering free food to striking writers and actors as well, serving a daily average of 150-200 members.

The writers and actors are on strike for several reasons, including better pay and working conditions. One of the biggest concerns is the studios’ use of artificial intelligence, which threatens jobs and reduces creativity. Currently, negotiations are stalled.

Tune in next time to see what else Tinseltown has planned. For more HollyWeird, click here.

 

Read More From Kelli Ballard

 

Nothing Sacred

By Daniel Greenfield August 30, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Since 2001, suicide rates increased by around 40% and religious identity fell by 25%. These seemingly random statistics are data points in a web defining America’s postmodern malaise.

Within a generation a nation that had been a global model of a modern society has imploded. Old demons like racism have come roaring back in a country that is more divided than ever. Another civil war, once a farfetched science fiction tale, now seems almost inevitable. In nearly every statistic that touches on our social bonds, America has become a disaster area.

From individuals to our families to our cities to our nation, we are coming apart. Suicide rates, drug overdoses, urban collapse, crime waves, hate, violence, fear and economic decline are everywhere. The majority of Americans don’t believe that the future holds anything better.

There are many explanations for what is happening, but a basic one is that we are the plane plummeting from the sky after all the rivets holding it together had come out. The rivets were those things which politicians blather about, the ones that hold us together, and without them we are defined only by those things which divide us. We’re separate parts falling down to earth.

Religion was a fundamental unity. Commonalities of faith allowed America to weather crises like the civil war or the civil rights struggles because underlying the anger were shared values. We no longer have shared values and while religion is not the only issue, it is a major indicator.

The deconstruction of country and faith left us with little more than accidents of geography, social class, race, tastes, politics, and the other things which divide us as our defining identities.

The moral motive force of a deconstructionist society in which nothing is sacred is to be defined by what we are against. Negative outrage, rather than any drive for the good, came to be the highest value. After the fall of Communism, the leftist ideology that transformed the country lacks any credible vision of a better world. The feeble gesturing toward Europe’s health care or China’s rapid trains quickly give way to a movement that is defined by its hatred of what is.

The class warfare conspiracy theories, tales of oppressed workers, strikers battling with the bosses, bomb throwers sabotaging capitalism, revolutionary vanguards overthrowing kings is where the moral passion of leftists always lay, but in the past this had been dismissed as a temporary stage. Now the violence and hate have become not the journey, but the destination.

Anti-racism contends that racism will exist as long as whiteness does. Wokeness holds out no hope of a better world, only a resistance that destroys the old but, even if it eliminates all the white people or heterosexual males, will likely never be freed of the intellectual residue of whiteness, patriarchy, heteronormativity, cisness and other thought crimes yet to be revealed.

Wokeness is an admission inherent in the long failed drives toward ‘True Communism’ in Russia, China and other totalitarian red states that utopia will never arrive. All leftists can do is sign up for an Orwellian perpetual cycle of purges against the enemies of their ideals.

That sort of ‘Oppositionism’ was the inevitable consequence of trying to actively realize an impossible ideal and then, out of the throes of its failure, defining the movement around a perpetual hostility to conservatives and traditionalists with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Oppositionism is what remains in a society where nothing is sacred and all that’s left is hatred of the other. If nothing is truly sacred and there is nothing higher to aspire to, then what defines us is what divides us, and we no longer need to know who we are, only what it is we hate.

The madness of oppositionism leads Democrat moms to take their toddlers to drag shows and buy them copies of Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Anti-Racist Baby’ board book because these are the things that the people they hate now hate and so it’s incumbent on ‘progressives’ to embrace them.

At the rate we are going, if conservatives came out against child sacrifice, there would be a line all through wealthy woke suburbs to deliver their children to Moloch. In a society where things like human life and the innocence of children are sacred, such things would be inconceivable, but in a ‘nothing sacred’ society, what appears sacred must give way to what we hate.

Nothing sacred, certainly not religion, but not even that which even the most primitive barbaric tribes value, like the protection of women and children, can stand up to the power of hate.

And the need to destroy what we are to differentiate ourselves from that which we hate.

A generation ago, few college women would have been willing to throw away the hard won feminist privilege of female sports to cater to a handful of mentally ill men. But the combined forces of woke identity politics and, almost as importantly, conservative opposition made it a tenet of faith that men who say they’re women have transcended biology and questioning that is a hate crime.

The postmodern moloch of wokeness asks of its followers that they sacrifice what is most precious to them, children, born and unborn, masculinity, femininity, athletic opportunity, honor and morality, in order to not only signal their virtue, but to differentiate themselves from the hated other tribe that they have been cursed to temporarily share parts of the country with.

The ancient pagans castrated themselves to worship the ‘goddess’ while the new pagans castrate themselves to reject toxic masculinity, traditional gender roles and everything that they have been taught is evil. The end result of people who define themselves by the rejection of what they hate is that they lose themselves and destroy their bodies and their souls.

That is what is happening to America.

The idea that some positive unifying vision would emerge in the twilight of religion was always a delusional fantasy. Religion was replaced by cults of personality, like that of Hitler and Stalin, and more contemporary examples, by a cannibalistic consumerism, and by a politics that pervaded everything.

Leftists promised that their politics could realize what religion only promised in exchange for total commitment and submission. Their failures cost a hundred million lives as a down payment. With the theoretical underpinnings in ruins, the politics is still everywhere, its promise is the destruction of everything else. Only when everything is gone, something better might emerge in some undefined fashion. But no one holds out any real expectation that it will.

This is oppositionism at its starkest, with no hope and no future, only the ruins of victory.

A sacred society is working toward something while an oppositionist society is nihilistic, existing for the destruction of its enemies, hoping and dreaming for nothing except death. Oppositionism cannot win because it has no concept of what victory even looks like. It barely bothers to dwell on the subject because deep down it has despaired of man and doesn’t believe that it can win.

The decline of religion, of the conviction that there is a ‘sacred’ worth building and protecting, has left behind passing emotions, mob movements, and outbursts, but nothing that endures. The sacred conviction of one moment, as in the aftermath of 9/11, is discarded when a new outrage comes along. And in oppositionism, there are always new outrages and convictions.

A sacred society is not a call for a theocracy, the coming together of the church and state is unhealthy for both, but for the importance of what we believe in. Movements, like wokeness, that cannot even summon up a plausible conception of the positive tend to form in societies that have lost the knowledge that life matters and that there is a higher purpose to our existence.

The sacred imagination looks in awe beyond the horizon in search of what moves us to be more than we are, while the oppositionist imagination is bent on dividing us to justify its cynical view of human nature. To the sacred, we are children of a higher power, while to the oppositionist we are biological meat machines driven by genetic predestination and crude impulses that are easily manipulable to those with the cleverness and the daring to impose their will on us.

That is the unexpected but fundamental breach between the sacred and the radical: is man free or a slave, was he made for better things or to be part of a mob, can we rise above ourselves?

Answer the question and you understand the movement, its nature and its misery.

Why shouldn’t biological slaves denied the hope of sacredness or transcendence destroy themselves? Why should they believe that tomorrow holds anything better than today? The icebergs are melting, capitalism is collapsing, extinction is coming and mankind will vanish. What’s there to really stay around except spite and violence against the other tribe?

Religion, true ideals, redeem us from this barbaric despair. Oppositionism, when its grandiose promises have failed, plunges societies back into that despair, and offers nothing more than the opportunity to burn it all down in a final funeral pyre in the ultimate act of social suicide.

This is the final end, individual and communal, of a society in which nothing is sacred.

The outcomes of civil wars are measured not only by what is destroyed, but by what is built. Out of a civil war between loyalists and rebels, came the United States of America. As we approach the precipice of a civil war, we may wish to consider what construction would arise from it.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

 

ADL Joins Sharpton for Crown Heights Pogrom Anniversary

Daniel Greenfield August 31, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog 

In August 1991, racist mobs roamed the streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, attacking anyone they thought might be Jewish. Black rioters stabbed, stoned and beat their victims. Community members huddled in their homes watching gangs smash their windows. Al Sharpton appeared to denounce the Jews at an event that included the banner, “Hitler did not do the job.”

In August 2023, the ADL ignored the anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom and instead joined Sharpton in Washington D.C. The ADL urged its members to take part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ headlined by his National Action Network and co-chaired by the ADL.

The ADL not only failed to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom, it partnered with the hatemonger who was front and center at the pogrom. ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt issued a press release together with Al Sharpton about the recent murder of three people in Florida, while forgetting about the three people who died in Crown Heights.

They include Yankel Rosenbaum, a visiting Australian student, who was surrounded and stabbed to death, Anthony Graziosi, an Italian-American salesman, dragged from his car and murdered because his hat and beard make him look like an Orthodox Jew, and Bracha Estricher, a Holocaust survivor who seeing the thugs pounding on her door committed suicide rather than fall into their hands. Not to mention a woman who suffered a miscarriage after being chased by the mob.

“Hate still exists,” Greenblatt declared in D.C. at an event headlined by the most lucrative bigot who used the Crown Heights Pogrom as a springboard to running for president, becoming a Democratic Party kingmaker, and securing a role as Obama’s envoy. He implied that critics of the ADL’s relationship with Sharpton were practicing “cancel culture”, when what we really needed to do is “embrace them” and “educate them about our history.”

Like the time that Sharpton taunted, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.”

The ‘March on Washington’ was not Greenblatt’s first collaboration with Sharpton. The two men have repeatedly worked together and participated in joint appearances, events and press releases on various leftist causes, often having nothing to do with either Jewish or black issues, such as condemning the Trump administration’s efforts to secure the border in 2018.

But co-chairing an event with Sharpton’s hate group on the 32nd anniversary of the Crown Heights Pogrom is an unforgivable expression of contempt for the victims of the violence. On another August after a mob shouting, “There’s a Jew! Get the Jew! Kill the Jew.”, chased down and killed Yankel Rosenbaum, the ADL boss is eager to dismiss this as a mere matter of “differences”.

While it’s entirely conceivable that Jonathan Greenblatt, an Obama administration veteran ignorant of Jewish issues who steered the ADL into intersectional wokeness, did not know what else Sharpton had done in August (the last time the ADL commemorated the worst antisemitic riot in America history was in 2021), this is not the first time that this has happened.

The ADL and Greenblatt had come under fire for taking part in Sharpton’s ‘March on Washington’ in 2020 some months after BLM riots had targeted Los Angeles synagogues. When the pogrom was first taking place, a rabbi had blasted the ADL for ignoring the violence and instead “issuing a press release about skinheads in Idaho”.

In 2016, Norman Rosenbaum, an Australian prosecutor who had come to America to fight for justice for his murdered brother, condemned the ADL and future New York City Mayor Eric Adams for marking the pogrom with a “community festival” offering fun for all.

After securing a federal civil rights trial for his brother’s killer, who had gotten a pass from a friendly local jury, Rosenbaum passionately held establishment groups like the ADL accountable. When Sharpton was invited to events, he would challenge those who did it, reminding them that, “it completely disregards the pivotal role that Al Sharpton played in inciting the riots which took my brother’s life.”

Norman Rosenbaum passed away in July 2020, freeing up the ADL to work on Sharpton’s March to Washington that year. With him gone, the ADL boss felt no shame in using the 32nd anniversary of the pogrom to party with Sharpton in Washington D.C.

In one of his last messages, Norman Rosenbaum wrote in 2019 that, “It was a mob of about 30 who attacked and murdered Yankel, of which 28 have never been brought to justice. And as he parades around as a supposed leader and champion of civil rights, Sharpton has never once called on his supporters to turn in to law enforcement the remaining 28 people. But that is not a priority in Al Sharpton’s world.”

Nor is it a priority for the ADL.

The ADL’s Jonathan Greenblatt claimed that he had come with Sharpton to Washington D.C. to stand up for justice. Sharpton has never faced justice, not for Crown Heights, for the Tawana Brawley hoax, or the Freddie’s massacre in Harlem which killed 7 people.

The last time the ADL commemorated the Crown Heights Pogrom was two years ago while refusing to use the correct term “pogrom”, instead choosing to use the media’s distorted politically term “riots” in order to evade the responsibility of the political establishment, including Mayor David Dinkins, New York City’s first black mayor, in having the police stand down.

The ADL’s press release stated that “one of the enduring lessons of the Crown Heights Riots is in acknowledging the responsibility to confront antisemitism, no matter where it is and who is perpetrating it.” Two years later, the ADL is co-chairing an event with an antisemite who was at the epicenter of the worst antisemitic riot in the nation’s history.

In Washington D.C., Sharpton began his speech with, “No justice, no peace”, the same slogan that he had brought to Crown Heights three decades ago and which Charles Price, who was convicted of inciting the Rosenbaum murder had shouted, along with, “Let’s get the Jews”.

The Jews were on the ground, courtesy of Greenblatt and fading actor Sacha Baron Cohen, most famous for singing “Throw the Jew down the well” in the persona of ‘Borat’. “Many of you are probably wondering what the hell is a white Jewish comedian from England doing here,” he asked, after first opening with a tiresome joke about performing at the Rosenberg bar mitzvah.

“I promise that this is not a prank on you,” he assured the crowd. “It might be one on me.”

That was an adequate summary of Jews showing up to Sharpton’s event.

“Today was a day to show our strength,” Sharpton boasted and vowed to fight for racial preferences in corporations. “We are not going to let you take affirmative action.”

While Sharpton and his allies show their strength, the ADL and the Jewish organizational establishment show their weakness. That is as true today as it was 32 years ago.

The ADL’s actions are not only a moral disgrace, they’re also a betrayal. Why is the ADL joining an antisemite’s campaign in support of racial preferences which primarily discriminate against Asians and Jews? (The successful campaign against affirmative action was waged by Edward Blum, a Jewish conservative, and Asian-American plaintiffs.) What interests are served here?

When the Crown Heights Pogrom took place, the ADL had waited a week and a half to condemn it. Abe Foxman, the ADL’s longtime leader, explained that the group had remained silent in the face of days of antisemitic violence, assault and murder out of “a quest for social justice”. Social justice, or more accurately, leftist politics, is still the priority for the ADL.

Jewish lives don’t matter, social justice does.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

My Take - This goes beyond antisemitism and racism.  Those of us old enough to remember this outrage didn't appreciate just how insidiously dangerous this was.  

By allowing these murderers and thugs to get away with all this, especially Sharpton, this helped lay the groundwork that turned America's major cities into an unrecoverable disaster, because they're not only refusing to prosecute criminals, they're promoting them, and then turn around and blame everyone else.

As for the ADL and similar groups I have to wonder what's behind their insanity.  Who in the world keeps funding a group that is so destructive to those they're supposed to be supporting? 

We’ve lost our minds and entirely lost our way when these kinds of murderous events are celebrated, and  by default, the murderers are lauded.

What's even more disgusting is Sharpton, who is dumb as dirt, is treated like wise senior counselor to the nation by the media and the left, who, as impossible as it may seem, are even more stupid and more disgusting than Sharpton. 

The Bloody Ukraine Finale

August 30, 2023 By Frank Friday

There are important developments coming out of in Ukraine this month. It appears their battle to push south to the Sea of Azov has reached “culmination,” as the Ukraine reserves are breaking past Robotyne and the main line of Russian resistance. Russia has committed its last reliable reserves, the already beaten-up 76 Guards Air Assault Division. Reports are that most of the soldiers still fighting for Russia in this sector, however, are just support units, not infantry.

For some reason though, many conservatives, Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk among them, continue to fall for the nonsense peddled by Douglas MacGregor, aka Col. Blowhard. He insists Vlad Putin is just a traditional Christian, and the war is dragging on because he wants to “go easy” on his Ukrainian cousins. Col. Blowhard predicted this month there would be a massive Russian offensive that would capture Odessa. When that did not happen, he claimed Ukraine had suffered 400,000 soldiers killed, effectively ending their army’s chances. Another fairy tale he could not defend.............To Read More

Deter This

August 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson

The corruption of every major American institution by the left has picked up speed under the Biden administration. In its morning newsletter, the Washington Free Beacon notes: 

WHAT WE’RE WATCHING: Making plans for a symposium on deterrence, U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM) decided that a top Iranian official cum Princeton professor, Hussein Mousavian, would make a good keynote speaker. Mousavian last made headlines when he was captured on Iranian television smirking about the regime’s threats to assassinate U.S. officials. He showed up in Nebraska to lavish praise on the defunct nuclear agreement and urge mutual nuclear disarmament. Our Adam Kredo has the story.

The Beacon’s note draws attention to Adam Kredo’s story “US Strategic Command Hosts Former Iranian Official Who Bragged About Efforts To Assassinate US Leaders.” Subhead: “Hussein Mousavian headlined STRATCOM’s Deterrence Symposium.” ............ To Read More.....

 

Bernie Sanders: To Protect Democracy, Democrats Can’t Afford Democracy

Democracy is too important to be left to the people. 

By Daniel Greenfield • August 28, 2023

Remember when Senator Bernie Sanders (I-DPPK) was the perennial fruit fly in every political salad, running doomed campaigns designed to divide the party he was temporarily claiming to be a part of? But all that is in the past. Bernie is all in on Biden which ought to tell you that Biden is really all in on Bernie’s agenda.  And, despite the fact that most Democrats, Americans, and oxygen-breathing lifeforms on the planet want another candidate who isn’t a senile 80-year-old with a propensity for corruption and hair-sniffing, the Democrats and Bernie Sanders don’t believe that there should be any competitive primaries.

Why? To protect democracy...........To Read More....

The Republican Debate Was Unsatisfying Because No One Addressed The Most Important Issue

August 30, 2023 By Greg Salsbury

The first Republican debate was a disappointing disaster—for the candidates and America. Not one of the questions addressed the elephant in the room. In fact, the list of questions selected by Fox News, which likely received enthusiastic approval from the Democrat Party, helped highlight the elephant. Candidates were asked about a viral blue grass song, inflation, Ukraine, China, Israel, and other foreign relations issues, crime, energy, the border, climate change, abortion, and more. But as important as these things are, they pale by comparison to the single most important issue, the one posing the greatest threat to our Republic since the 1850s.

The greatest threat to our Republic, to our democracy, to our country as we know it is the unholy alliance that has been exposed between the Democrat Party, federal agencies, and the media—resulting in the greatest level of corruption we have ever witnessed.................Russiagate was not an isolated scandal that is now old news. Rather, it was a very large signpost showing a deep level of corruption within our government. That corruption has not faded away. Quite the contrary.............To Read More............

Pompous Pence’s Rewriting of His January 6 Heroism - As he makes his actions on January 6 the centerpiece of his campaign, Pence appears to have a different recollection than those of his top aides. But Pence appears to be rewriting the history of what he did on January 6. Contrary to his portrayal as one of the good guys on January 6, in reality, Pence is one of the bad guys. He intentionally delayed release of a letter outlining why he did not have the authority to reject electors from contested states. Rather than publish the statement the day before or early on January 6, Pence made it public right before the joint session of Congress convened at 1:00 p.m. (He claimed Trump caused the delay since Pence wanted to wait until the president was done speaking at the Ellipse before sending the letter. Trump took the stage about an hour later than planned.)............

Why Mike Pence Is No Hero - - Pence was a failed governor of Indiana headed to obscurity when rescued by team Trump. He was largely undistinguished as vice president, culminating with his losing debate performance to, of all people, Kamala Harris. His overt religious zeal, while commendable, is often excessive. He did however have an appropriate loyalty to the Trump administration, at least up to the end when it counted the most.   At the debate, in between taking unjustified bows for Trump successes, he answered questions about the activities of Jan. 6 by simply saying, “I followed the Constitution.” But of course, in this day of lazy journalism, this follow up question was never asked: “Sir, tell us, which section of the Constitution did you follow?”............     

Post-Indictment Poll: Trump Holds Enormous Lead over GOP Rivals in Georgia, DeSantis’s Slide Continues - Former President Donald Trump is closing in on 60 percent of support among likely Republican primary voters in Georgia and towers over the rest field, according to a poll taken after his indictment in Fulton County. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll, conducted by the School of Public & International Affairs (SPIA) at the University of Georgia, finds that 57 percent of likely primary voters support Trump for his third consecutive nomination. He gained six points of support since the SPIA’s April poll when he pinged at 51 percent...........

Trump Open to Ramaswamy as Vice President: 'I Think He's Great' - Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday praised GOP candidate Vivek Ramaswamy when asked if he would consider the 38-year-old biotech engineer as a running mate. "I think he's great," Mr. Trump told conservative talk show host Glenn Beck. "Look, anybody that's said I'm the best president in  a generation ... and he said it a couple of times ... I have to like a guy like that............

My Take - I hope that's rhetorical and not actual because I have some serious misgivings about this guy.  

Jon Voight Slams Biden’s ‘Corrupt’ Admin: ‘This Is a Civil War’ The current administration is a “corrupt mob” perpetrating a “disgusting scheme” against former President Donald Trump, according to Academy Award-winning actor Jon Voight, who warned of a “civil war” taking place against “all of us.” In a slightly over two-minute clip posted Tuesday, the Hollywood legend — featured against the backdrop of an American flag — began by questioning if we have become a “nation of destructive behavior.”  .........