If Winston Churchill was commenting on America’s governmentschools instead of the Royal Air Force, he would have said, “never have so many paid so much to achieve so little.”
The good news is that more and more people understand the system is failing, which is why we have seen great progress on school choice in so many states.
The bad news is that the government monopoly continues to resist. Check out this tweet from Corey DeAngelis.
For background purposes, charter schools are basically a halfway
approach to school choice. They are government funded, but can operate
with considerable autonomy and they produce significantly better results than regular government schools.
But teacher unions and other supporters of the status quo resist charters just like they resist private school choice. Protecting the monopoly is always the top goal.
What’s especially nauseating in this case, however, is that the
government schools in Madison County do a very bad job, even when
compared to other Tennessee government schools.
With every passing day it becomes more and more clear that we have a President who has been for years, and may still be, in simplest terms, on the take. Using family members as fronts, and the prerogatives of elected office as bait, he has presided over a bribe-collection business that has leveraged U.S. foreign policy and foreign aid to rake in millions for the clan, mostly or entirely from business interests aligned with the worst of our adversaries on the foreign stage.
In your wildest dreams, could you ever have imagined that the U.S. presidency could sink so low?
And yet, even as the known facts become more and more definitive, and the remaining potential defenses more and more implausible, there continues to be complete unanimity among senior Democratic Party officeholders and their press supporters in the ongoing defense of the President. Is there any set of facts that could cause a few to break ranks?
So rather than re-invent the wheel, let me review where we were in October 2019, and then consider what is new in the past few weeks.
The very first of those posts, on October 6, 2019, discussed key facts that had recently come out, including: that Hunter Biden had taken a position as director of Ukrainian energy company Burisma in April 2014 at a pay of $1 million per year; that that appointment came immediately after Burisma’s president (Zlochevsky) and his patron the Russian-aligned President of Ukraine (Yanukovich) had fled to Russia in something called the “Euromaidan” revolution; and that Hunter’s appointment was also immediately after Vice President Joe Biden had been named “point man” for U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine; that a new President of Ukraine (Poroshenko) then took office in June 2014, and a new prosecutor (Shokin) had been appointed, who was investigating Burisma; and that Joe Biden in early 2016 had arranged to get the prosecutor fired by threatening to withhold vital U.S. aid to Ukraine, and had bragged on a video about that.
My comment at the time:
The truth is that that list of facts would be, in any courtroom trial, sufficient proof that the Bidens are “stone cold crooked.” . . . [Biden] allowed his son to take a position at crazy pay that everyone would view as protection money, and meanwhile the dad would be making the calls about U.S. policy and U.S. aid in the billions of dollars with a direct effect on the son’s position. The whole reason that a high official should not get himself into such a conflict of interest position is that, when an important decision is made that just happens to massively help the son, nobody is going to believe that helping the son was other than the main motive.
The October 2019 posts quoted from various pieces in the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and other sources seeking to defend Biden on the basis that his motives were pure since various (unnamed) sources had alleged that the prosecutor that Biden got fired was himself corrupt. My comment:
[T]here’s a right way to do this. First, Joe Biden needs to tell Hunter that he must resign from the Burisma board today if not sooner; and Hunter must in fact resign. Second, Joe Biden needs to get the next highest ranking available official of the U.S. government (in this case, perhaps Secretary of State John Kerry; but if Kerry was conflicted by his own step-son’s involvement with Burisma, then somebody else — maybe Secretary of Defense) to do the dirty work of telling the Ukrainians that they’re not getting their aid until Shokin is fired. If Joe Biden had followed this protocol, he would mostly have obviated any allegation of corruption, at least relating to the Shokin firing. (There could still be a question of what else Hunter was getting the $600K/yr for.) But Biden didn’t do this. As a result, Hunter got about $2 million more than he would have gotten if Joe had followed these obvious steps.
Over the course of succeeding months, it emerged that Joe Biden’s main defense to the corruption allegation was going to be that the business deals were only Hunter’s as a private citizen, and Joe knew nothing about them and had never discussed them with Hunter. This defense never made any sense — and yet was taken up by the entire leftist press as some kind of gospel. I discussed this preposterous defense in a March 31, 2022 post titled “The Rules About Corruption Just Don’t Apply To The Bidens.” Among other things, I covered how the Justice Department treated payments to sons of government officials when the payees were not named Biden, using as an example a recent prosecution of JP Morgan:
For example, in the early 2000s the investment bank JP Morgan Chase in its operations in China had a program of hiring the sons and daughters of powerful Chinese government and business officials in positions of junior analysts. . . . According to the WSJ, the bank’s idea was that by hiring the offspring of top executives, it would get a leg up in winning investment banking business from those state-controlled firms. The U.S. Justice Department was not amused. There is no mention in the WSJ piece of whether the parents/officials in question either “personally benefited” from the JPM jobs or “knew the details” of the kids’ involvement. But Justice’s position was that the jobs were inherently a corrupt effort to influence the parents. In November 2016 Justice extracted a settlement of $264 million from JPM.
Given this context, the revelations of the past few weeks, while meaningful, really only fill in a few blanks in a story where the key pieces have been known for years. For example, there was the FBI FD-1023 form, released by Senator Grassley on July 20. That form reported on a conversation between an unnamed FBI confidential source and Burisma’s Zlochevsky, where Zlovchevsky clearly admitted that he viewed the payments to Hunter as protection money, and said he paid $5 million to Hunter and also $5 million to Joe, the latter through a chain of banks so complex that it would take years to unravel. Next up is prospective congressional testimony of Hunter’s erstwhile business partner Devon Archer, expected to testify that Joe personally participated in numerous conference calls as to Hunter’s business dealings, thus belying the contention that he knew nothing about them. Finally, we can await the production of further bank records detailing times and dates of payments to various Bidens and/or Biden shell companies.
For me, these thing are mainly valuable for keeping the story in the news day after day. But the essential corruption is definitively established.
Back in August 1974, shortly after the Supreme Court ordered the disclosure of the White House tapes thought to have recorded conversations incriminating to President Nixon, a delegation of Republicans from Congress visited Nixon to tell him that they could not support him in the coming impeachment. A few days later, Nixon resigned. Maybe it’s just me, but I think the Biden corruption scandal — taking payments of millions of dollars from Russian-aligned Ukrainians and from the Chinese — is far worse than the Watergate burglary as a political scandal. But so far, no Democrat in Congress or in the press has broken ranks. Maybe when the bank records come down that might change.
The
release of an FBI informant’s allegations about the Biden family’s
dealings with Burisma finally explains what a Ukrainian energy company
wanted with a corrupt American political clan.
Why was Burisma paying a vice president’s son tens of thousands of dollars a month?
According to the allegations on
the FBI’s FD-1023 form released to Sen. Chuck Grassley by
whistleblowers, Burisma wanted to launch an IPO in the United States and
was looking to first buy an American energy company. Such a move would
have required regulatory approval and would have also potentially been
very lucrative for anyone on the inside.
The allegations by the
FBI informant describes Mykola Zlochevsky, Burisma’s co-founder and a
former minister in the ousted pro-Russian Yanukovych government, saying
that “it costs 5 (million) to pay one Biden, and 5 (million) to another
Biden”.
And yet the rewards could have been even richer.
While
the informant urged Zlochevsky to launch his IPO by forming an American
company or buying a shell company, Hunter Biden had allegedly told the
energy boss that his company “could raise much more capital if Burisma
purchased a larger US-based business that already had a history In the
US oil and gas sector.” Allegedly some Texas companies were on the
table.
Why did Hunter Biden allegedly pitch Burisma on a messier
and more expensive process? An obvious potential answer is that the
Biden family may have hoped to cash in by being on the inside. To
understand Burisma’s plans and those of the Biden family, we need to
look at what was going on with the oil and gas sector beginning in 2014,
when Hunter started being paid a small fortune to sit on the Ukrainian
energy company’s board, through 2016 when some of the initial
conversations that the informant reported to the FBI were first taking
place.
2014 was a good year for oil and gas IPOs. Texas’ Parsley
Energy rode annual revenues below Burisma’s estimated $400 million to a
big IPO, rising revenues and an eventual $4.5 billion sale. Looking at
examples like these, Hunter and Zlochevsky could have envisioned
bringing together a Texas oil company and a Ukrainian oil company united
around a similar political business model. The Biden name would have
cleared the way for permits in Texas and political cover in Ukraine.
Indeed the one thing we know that Joe Biden did for Burisma was threaten
to pull foreign aid unless the Ukrainian government fired Viktor
Shokin, a prosecutor who had been looking into Burisma’s affairs, and
was seen as a block to any successful IPO in America.
The plan,
implied by the FBI informant, was for Joe Biden to clear away Burisma’s
problems in Ukraine and pave the way for the takeover of a Texas energy
company. The Biden family would have potentially been on the ground
floor of the Texas deal (and Hunter and other Biden family members could
have been cut sizable checks or received shares on the American end)
before being on the inside of an IPO for a combined company that would
potentially be worth billions.
But political developments in
Ukraine and a roller coaster ride in the energy markets, made that a
shaky proposition. The Texas deal and the IPO never happened. Burisma
and the Bidens didn’t look like they had much of a future. In the fall
of 2015, Joe Biden held a press conference with Barack Obama at which he
announced that he would not run for president.
This is when the
FBI informant began meeting with Burisma officials and they vented about
Hunter Biden who was increasingly outliving his purpose, but who was
also too dangerous to let go. Only in March 2017 was Hunter’s $1 million a year salary
finally cut. By then Zlochevsky had been entangled in legal proceedings
and a Burisma launch in the United States was impossible.
Any political future for Joe Biden or financial future for Hunter Biden seemed to be equally done.
As
the Burisma deal began falling apart, so did Hunter Biden. His ex-wife
Kathleen Buhle’s memoir describes his transition from alcoholism to
heavy drugs beginning around the start of the Burisma deal. Between the
various memoirs and investigations, it’s widely known that Hunter burned
through a massive fortune.
“The board fee had morphed into a
wicked sort of funny money,” Hunter Biden wrote in his own memoir. “It
hounded me to spend recklessly, dangerously, destructively.
Humiliatingly. So I did.”
But the Burisma millions may have just been the beginning of a much bigger pay day. Before his father visited Ukraine, Hunter wrote of the Burisma arrangements, “this is a huge step for us.”
“We
need to have a plan on how we develop a corporate entity or LLP that
allows us to draw on funds generated here to free us from existing
(under-producing current commitments) and to build our own investment
and expansion strategy.”
Hunter Biden was living like a guy who
expected to be making much more than he was. Burisma, like his Chinese
deals, remained unfulfilled. Hunter may have been out to be more than a
mere millionaire on paper while trying to keep up with payments on his
houses and his Porsche, but aspiring to become a billionaire. The vice
president’s disfavored son had spent much of the Obama administration
trying to monetize his dad’s position for the rest of the family.
Joe
Biden had something Barack Obama did not: a brother and a son who could
hustle aggressively. And yet with the Obama administration approaching
its end, Hunter had come away with only a taste of the foreign money
that the Clintons had gorged themselves on.
Burisma, like the
China deals, had never delivered the big payoff that Hunter had been
chasing. The foreign companies remained foreign and they quickly tired
of paying Hunter. The deal of a lifetime was slipping away even as his
father’s time was drawing near. By the end of 2015, a Biden presidency
seemed wildly unlikely. The smart money was on Hillary Clinton winning
and then serving two terms. As painful as that was for Republicans, it
was even more so for Hunter who was watching the last opportunity to
monetize his father’s career slipping away.
Any chance that Joe Biden had for a future presidential campaign would require big money.
Hunter’s
debts were piling up and once his father left office, they would come
due. It’s not surprising that Hunter’s substance abuse issues, which had
been around for a while, became catastrophic. One way or another the
good life was over and Hunter had decided to go out with a bang. Only
when his father relaunched his political career did the spree become
inconvenient.
Hunter Biden wrecked his last opportunities under
Vice President Biden and made himself too toxic to be able to
significantly cash in with foreign investors under President Biden.
The
FBI’s informant lays out an implied picture of just how much money the
Bidens were chasing. This was not about the millions of dollars, money
that Hunter casually wasted on crack, prostitutes and a lifestyle beyond
his means, but potentially billions of dollars.
It’s not hard to
imagine how a Burisma – Texas deal could have come together and how it
could have benefited a whole circle of Biden family members, associates
and key donors. Had such an arrangement succeeded, Joe Biden would have
gained an incredibly wealthy family and donor circle that could have
given him a shot or later another shot at the White House without
becoming too dependent on the political favors and donors that made him a
puppet president.
When Joe Biden intervened to protect Burisma,
was he just protecting his son’s income stream of five figures a month
or was he looking to gain billions for his family and his political
allies?
The difference is more than just a matter of zeroes.
Democrats
and their media have insisted that Hunter’s sins were his own and that
Joe Biden’s involvement was limited to helping his troubled son. This
narrative has been undermined by not only the FBI informant’s
disclosures, but also by allegations from past business partners, a
WhatsApp message from Hunter explicitly threatening a Chinese business
in his father’s name, and the lengths to which the FBI went to shut down
any investigation of anyone beyond Hunter.
Joe Biden’s defense
has been to argue that no one can show that he profited financially from
Hunter’s business deals. While a web of shell companies was used to
move money around to Biden family members, no one has yet conclusively
proven that money went directly to the man described in various
communications as ‘the big guy’. But the difference between a deal
potentially worth millions and billions would be that the latter
wouldn’t just subsidize Hunter’s Porsche or prostitutes, but Joe Biden’s
future political career.
When Biden told Ukrainian officials,
“we’re leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not
getting the money”, was he hoping to buy his way back into the White
House using Burisma’s money?
Did Joe Biden intervene for Burisma to help Hunter pay off his debts or to become president?
“Americans are free people and we do not take
infringements upon our liberties lightly. The time has come for
resistance and to reclaim our God-given right to free expression. Under
my Free Speech Protection Act the government will no longer be able to
cloak itself in secrecy to undermine the First Amendment rights of
Americans.”Senator Ron Paul.
By Rich Kozlovich
The term blacklisting was popularized going back to the days when the House on Un-American Activities Committee created a list of Hollywood notables who refused to testify at the hearings to expose communists in Hollywood. The Hollywood moguls refuse to hire any of them, and others they believed were communists, or supporters of the communist party.
From the infamous Hollywood ten, the blacklist grew to about 150 and combined with the "graylist" of suspected communists it encompassed around 500 people. While that clearly got out of hand, the fact is a great many of them really were communists, and all communists were expected to be agents of the party in support of the Soviet Union, and all those who refused to testify knew the communist party, and it's members, were actively working to destroy America. There's no such thing as an innocent communist!
“Communism is not an alternative way of thinking. It’s the world’s deadliest ideology.” Jonathon P. Myers,
We now know that's true from the release of the VENONA intercepts in 1996. Oh, by the way, McCarthy didn't have a thing to do with the Hollywood crowd, he was in the Senate and they went after the communists that infiltrated the federal government, and there were a ton of them. It's been claimed the FDR administration was the most heavily infiltrated government in the history of the world. It was the House on Un-American Activity Committee (HUAC), run by the Democrats, that went after Hollywood. The Democrat party of today isn't the Democrat party of your grandfather.
While many of the Hollywood crowd refused to cooperate with HUAC, they railed against blacklisting, but had no problem ostracizing those who did cooperate with the committee and who testified about those they knew were communists. I think you can reasonably call that blacklisting.
Yet, these were the same people who supported Stalin and the communists of the USSR who were among the greatest "blacklisters" of all time, which taking the concept of blacklisting to it's extreme, included murdering and starving to death millions of Soviet citizens, imprisoning millions more in gulags, and millions more who wereexiled to remote and hostile regions of Soviet Russia. They didn't just lose their jobs, they lost their lives in one way or another. And the Hollywood crowd who were outraged at the blacklist never uttered a peep in protest. In fact, the New York Times, through Walter Duranty, claimed none of that was happening, while in fact, they knew it was happening, and that Walter Duranty was a degenerate and a liar. As we read this keep that in mind.
Most aren't old enough to remember those days of Hollywood blacklisting. Days the current crop of Hollywood elites rail against unendingly. But, did you know big corporations have black lists? Did you know the left wants those blacklists? Did you know the left love these corporations for it? Let's explore this.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage has filed an official complaint against the
NatWest, accusing the bank of passing his information to the BBC, which
initially claimed that he lost his account with Coutts for financial
reasons before backtracking to acknowledge that the decision was made in
part due to political reasons.........
They claimed he was "debanked" because his account dropped below a certain amount, yet when this went public others came forward to say their accounts were below that number and they weren't debanked. We now know their claimed reason was a lie.
He was debanked for his political views, because those views "violated their values", secret values, just like the secret "community standards" the social media subscribe to when they delete posts and ban people from their sites.
It also appears this must have been a national corporate conspiracy to violate British
law, how else can anyone explain how this bank not only cancelled his
account, ten others also refused to accept him as a customer?
This bodes some important questions.
How
many others has this happened to?
Who decided banks should be investigating the political views of customers and determining if those views are in harmony with their political views?
Who at these banks initiated that policy?
Would this have become exposed if he
hadn't been such a prominent person?
Who leaked this information to the BBC?
That's what needs to be
investigated. As you read this it must become apparent there's
a gigantic danger to freedom being put into place. Bankers it seems decided they were going to be the primary tool to whip humanity into obedience.....or
else! And anyone resisting their efforts to silence opponents would have to suffer. Apparently that's the message the British government is also getting, and in spite of their leftist approach to reality, they don't like it either.
Top executives in the British banking sector
were “read the riot act” by the government over the politically inspired
debanking of Brexit leader Nigel Farage as Downing Street prepares new
legislation to protect freedom of speech from activist financiers. The fallout of Nigel ‘Mr Brexit’ Farage having his
account shut down over expressing his political views, his friendships,
and even his Twitter use and the subsequent leaks to the BBC from since
departed NatWest banking group Dame Alison Rose continues to intensify,
with potentially major ramifications on the future of banking in
Britain.
Farage is now intending to make this a massive public, political, and moral issue to challenge Big Corporate tyranny and corruption, and the Economic Secretary
to the Treasury and City Minister Andrew Griffith agrees stating:
“It’s not the job of banks to tell us what to think or what political
party we should support. The Government’s been extremely clear on this
in a democracy that relies upon freedom of expression, and freedom of
thought." “That isn’t a legitimate thing for a bank to remove someone’s access
to a bank account – a really important building block of society today
and that’s what I made clear in the meeting that I held with top bank
bosses and the heads of building society’s this morning.”
So, from that meeting alone it's clear this was a planned, organized and implemented conspiracy among Britain's banking industry to censor and punish political speech, association, and views they disprove of. A conspiracy in which there clearly must have been a lot of communication between the officers of these banks. In America that would make it a criminal conspiracy, and a RICO violation. The article goes on to point out banks aren't like ordinary businesses, and especially one such as NatWest, as "it is still almost 40 per cent owned by the UK
taxpayer, and the political and regulatory ramifications of this episode
are likely to ripple out for months to come.”
What is the position of the leftist Labour Party? I'm shocked, shocked I tell you. It turns out they like blacklists after all. Imagine that! They believe banks have every right to censor society. Of course that's only as long as they're censoring those who oppose them, because: “In its heart Labour is with the new establishment that likes to tell you what you can do and think.”
But this can't happen in America!
Actually, not only can it happen in America, it's happening in America. We see this same pattern of thinking, especially in the entertainment, social media, and corporate structures of America promoting whatever is the leftist swill of the moment. Well, it's happening with banks in America also.
At the same time, private mega-corporations friendly to leftist social engineering, like Chase Bank,
are implementing their own "social credit" systems by which they cancel
and punish individuals and groups that dissent from various woke
agendas, from climate change to LGBTQ to anti-gun activism.........
Yet, all the while these World Economic Forum economic catspaws have ignored the human misery, suffering, injustice, and crimes against humanity China's totalitarian government has heaped on their society. A country that's playing an extremely dangerous game with biological organisms that could potentially wipe out tens of millions of people, and they're doing it right here in America.
"Excusing China's totalitarianism and handing the communist nation the
keys to enriching itself from lucrative global markets may well prove to
have been the most consequential foreign policy error in centuries."
We never hear of these banks refusing to do business with those who think China is just a fine and dandy economic partner, a paragon of economic virtue, and the perfect example for governments world wide. Remarkable!
But, as it turns out these same Wokester banks don't want to do business with Trump, because they believe that fiances his run to be President, and the media, while silent of the corruption, degradation, and atrocities perpetrated by leftists, is more than happy to attack any bank that does business with Trump's organization, and in this case a bank they falsely denigrated saying:
"Then a new
partner came to the rescue: a little known, online-only financial firm
headquartered in a suburban San Diego office park."
President Trump has
had a lot of ups and downs in his real estate career, which means his
relations with banks and credit can be pretty dicey. The matter was made
worse for him in the wake of the January 6 protests, where wokester
banks outright cut him off. His Trump Organization financial
operation however did find a bank that would loan to his organization, a
relatively small bank in San Diego called Axos Bank. and that set the
Washington Post scrambling to look for some seedy
Biden-style corruption. They found nothing.
Since it turns out Wokester banks don't want to do business with Trump, they tried to imply this was a political deal, but couldn't find one iota of evidence to show that. This isn't a bank that plays politics.
The bank researched the loans to see if they really could be repaid, and to avoid any claims of favoritism, the Trump organization was required to submit more documentation than usual. The owner, a Republican, who refuses to put political terms on his loans, makes it clear:
“It wouldn’t matter if I was friends with someone, I’m not going to make a loan that’s no good,”......... “I don’t like anyone that much."
Let's never fail to understand this. Leftism has no borders, no boundaries, no moral parameters that will not be violated. In fact, leftism has no moral foundational other than doing whatever it takes to attain enough power to take total control over humanity, with the theme, "you will eat bugs, you have nothing, and you will like it".
Now that the corruption of these banks has been exposed, they're scrambling like the cockroaches claiming they'll fix this and they're so sorry, it won't happen again, please forgive us. Baloney! This has been an insidious criminal scheme that needs prosecuted. The
CEO of NatWest has resigned, but the CEO's and the entire board of directors of this
bank and each and every bank that's participated in this conspiracy
needs to be investigated, fined, sued personally, and prosecuted for the deliberate criminal violation his rights, and the rights of all the others they've violated.
As the EPA used to say, there's no training as good as a good civil penalty. Well, criminal penalties will double down on that, and that's a lesson that needs to reverberate throughout Leftdom.
Americans have been giving up our Constitutionally guaranteed rights going back to the FDR administration. Americans are failing to acknowledge our liberties are dying, and the Constitution is in dire need of protection:
That greed and lust for power is the defining
characteristic of what we call the Swamp. And it was enabled by a
plethora of acts that strengthened and emboldened the apparatchiks who
man it. These included Executive Orders by JFK and Nixon giving federal employees powers or “protections” they’d never previously had, as well as a 1984 Supreme Court case that required courts to defer to federal agencies as it relates to rule-making when there is ambiguity in the legislation.
Western civilization is at that proverbial fork in the road, and is going to have to decide which way it will go. Tyranny or freedom? I'm not optimistic.
Global cobalt demand soared with the advent
of cell phones and laptop computers. It exploded with the arrival of
electric vehicles and now is skyrocketing in tandem with government EV
mandates and subsidies. Cobalt improves battery performance, extends driving range and reduces fire risks.
Demand will reach stratospheric heights if governments
remain obsessed with climate change and Net Zero. States and nations
would have to switch to electric cars, trucks, buses and tractors; end
coal and gas electricity generation; convert gas furnaces, water heaters
and stoves to electricity; and provide alternative power for windless,
sunless periods. Electricity generation would triple or quadruple.
Weather-dependent
wind turbines and solar panels would require billions of battery
modules, to stabilize power grids and avoid blackouts every time wind
and sunshine don’t cooperate.
All that Net Zero
transformation equipment – plus transmission lines, substations and
transformers – will require billions of tons of cobalt, lithium, copper,
nickel, graphite, iron, aluminum, rare earths and other raw materials
at scales unprecedented in human history. That will necessitate mining,
ore processing, manufacturing, land disruption and pollution at equally
unprecedented levels.
Just President Biden’s first
tranche of US offshore wind turbines (30,000 megawatts by 2030) will
require some 110,000 tons of copper, for the turbines alone.
Transmission lines, transformers and batteries are extra. Based on
average global ore concentrations, getting that copper would require
extracting 40,000,000 tons of surface rock (overburden) and 25,000,000
tons of copper ore.
But those 2,500 12-megawatt 800-foot-tall turbines would
provide barely enough electricity to power New York state on a hot
summer day, if the wind is blowing, and before its Net Zero mandates
kick in.
However, the Biden Administration opposes
mining in the United States – even for essential Net Zero materials;
even under stringent US pollution, workplace safety and mined-land
reclamation regulations. The President’s horse-blindered Secretary of the Interior has vetoed mining for materials in Alaska, Minnesota and almost anywhere critical metals and minerals might be found.
The
Administration is laser-focused on ending the “climate crisis” by
switching to “clean” energy. It has few qualms about importing the
critically needed materials from foreign countries, primarily China –
regardless of economic, defense, national security, ecological or human
rights implications. It just wants the dirty aspects of “clean” energy
far away and out of sight.
Cobalt mining involves unimaginable horrors. Cobalt Red, by Nottingham University associate professor of modern slavery Siddharth Kara,
exposes the excruciating realities that Stop Oil and Net Zero
campaigners strive to keep buried – along with the bodies of parents and
children killed in cave-ins or dying slowly and painfully after being
maimed or poisoned in cobalt mines.
Professor Kara took multiple trips to the Democratic
Republic of Congo, risking his health and life to document conditions
for desperate Africans in a region that holds 72% of the world’s known
supplies of cobalt. He estimates that 70% of this cobalt (half the
world’s entire supply) involves some measure of child labor, while much
of the rest involves near-slave labor.
The DRC’s
once-verdant southeastern corner hosts the largest, most accessible,
highest grade cobalt ore deposits known on Earth. For EV buyers, Net
Zero aficionados, and corporate and government elites, the land is
blessed with cobalt interspersed with copper, other Net Zero metals,
uranium, chromium, gold and silver. For those toiling at the bottom of
the Congo food chain, the land is cursed with those metals.
In
DRC mines, “labor is valued by the penny, life hardly at all,” Kara
says. Miners in its big industrial mines get somewhat decent working
conditions, medical care and pay (perhaps $10 per day).
But
almost one-third of Congo cobalt is gouged from the earth by artisanal
miners: men and women, and boys and girls as young as six. They and
their families live and work in a treeless “hellscape of craters and
tunnels patrolled by maniacs with guns.”
Noxious clouds
of gas permeate air that even infants must breathe. Families fish, play
and bathe in – and drink from – rivers and lakes contaminated with
metals and industrial chemicals.
They labor ten to twelve hours a day in sweltering heat and
toxic mud, water and dust, in enormous pits hundreds of feet deep –
hacking at rocky walls and in long, narrow tunnels that collapse with
frightening frequency. Injured miners may get initial medical care; then
nothing.
In some areas, their clothing and skin are
covered with mustard-colored dust – dried sulfuric acid from processing
the ores. Almost everywhere, breast, kidney and lung cancers are rising,
because adults, children and babies are exposed constantly to heavy
metals and uranium in everything around them. High lead levels cause
permanent neurological damage.
Fifteen-year-old Muteba
hobbles on crutches, his shattered, mangled legs dangling below his
skinny waist. He‘s the only survivor from a cave-in that buried his
brother and six others alive. There are thousands more like him –
maimed, paralyzed, disfigured or dead.
“Fair living”
wages? Male artisanal miners receive around $2-4 a day – for output that
might reach two 90-pound (40-kilogram) sacks of heterogenite cobalt
ore. Women and children are typically paid half that, regardless of how
much they produce or the purity of the ore they mine.
Those
who disobey mine overseers can get “locked in a shipping container with
no food or water for up to two days.” At Kanina, two boys who tried to
get more than the usual pittance for their 65-pound bags of ore were
gunned down – murdered – by security guards.
“Here it is better not to be born,” a mother lamented. A
miner reflected, “Here we work in our graves.” Of course we fear the
dangers, said another, “but if we do not work, we do not eat.”
And still mining, tech and EV companies, ESG investment firms,
politicians and climate zealots tell us they require and ensure
“responsible sourcing” of Net Zero supply chains, good wages, safe
working environments, and prevention of child labor and slavery. What
indifferent, self-serving fraud.
No DRC buyer knows or
cares where a quantity of cobalt ore came from, under what conditions it
was mined, or whether children dug it out. The entire marketplace is
designed to collect and mix ores from formal industrial mines and legal
or illegal artisanal operations – making it impossible to trace sources
or tell whether child slaves or brutal militias were involved.
At
least one marketplace is a remote night operation that can have no
other purpose “than to launder artisanally mined cobalt into the formal
supply chain completely our of view.” Every mixed load of ore is then
thrown into acid baths for initial processing – before being sent out of
country, mostly to China.
We hear much about
reparations for descendants of American slaves – but little about
reparations for Native Americans, and zilch about helping these
modern-day slaves.
Nor do we hear from billionaires like Bill Gates, John Kerry,
Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros and Michael Bloomberg. They lavishly fund
“climate crisis” and “clean energy” campaigns. Have they spent one dime
bringing decent wages, working conditions, living standards and medical
care to Congo’s miners?
These human rights issues should top their charitable giving – and the agenda for anyone promoting ESG, Net Zero or batteries.
Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, climate change, environmental policy and human rights.
“Vote
‘yes’ on Issue 1 to require a 60 percent supermajority in order to fend
off the Californication of Ohio and keep our state’s constitution as a
durable foundational document. Tell your friends, family, and neighbors:
voting ‘yes’ on August 8 will align Ohio’s constitutional amendment
process with the wise supermajority requirements enshrined in our
beloved U.S. constitution and simultaneously ensure that Ohio does not
become beholden to special interests on either side.”
On
August 8, Ohioans go to the polls to vote on Issue 1, which is an
amendment to our state constitution that would raise the threshold for
passing future amendments from the currently required 50 plus 1 to 60
percent of voters.
You read that correctly: It is an amendment to protect against future constitutional amendments.
Ohioans
are duly confused about what is as stake. It is understandably
difficult to sort through disingenuous messages from those making the
case for and against Issue 1 for their own pretextual political reasons.
Disregard all of that noise and think for yourself about why almost everyone is trying to get you to vote “no.”
My
organization has been bombarded with questions from well-meaning
Ohioans seeking an impartial and credible explanation for which way they
ought to vote.
We have been reluctant to weigh in publicly because in the first place there should not be August elections on special issues.
Ordinary
folks are wrapping up summer vacations and getting their kids’ school
supplies in order and often remain oblivious to important elections
taking place.
But
our principled and long-held objection on that count is now irrelevant,
and we are mere days away from this consequential special election.
Add
to existing confusion about Issue 1 countless misleading ads and
misinformation distributed by special interest groups on both sides, and
what is a thoughtful yet busy person to do?
I suggest voting “yes.”
Here’s why you should vote ‘yes’ on Issue 1
Constitutions
are subject to amendment as you recall from history class, but those
changes to our fundamental documents must be few and far between — made
only slowly and deliberately over time, which is why the U.S.
constitution requires a significant supermajority of states to ratify
amendments.
We do not want to make willy-nilly updates.
California in Ohio?
California
has a laughably easy-to-amend state constitution that serves as a
warning. California’s constitution has been amended more than 500 times
since the 1870s.
We should not Californicate Ohio’s constitution.
Peruse the United States constitution for yourself.
The
language is what you would expect to find: “Congress shall make no
laws... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press....” These are
principles of constitutional significance—ones that ensure that a
majority does not abuse its power at the expense of everyone else’s
fundamental rights. Now, likewise, go see for yourself by comparison our
Ohio constitution.
There
you will find the definition of what constitutes a table game, the tax
parcel identification numbers of every casino in the state (Art. XV),
etc. That absurd minutiae has no business being in our constitution.
But
it has become the business of special interests to amend our
constitution as frequently as they can — and both political sides are
guilty.
Recent
attempts include the effort to grant marijuana-growing monopolies into
our state’s foundational document. We should not let these one-off
campaigns continue to do so.
With
a simple majority of 50 percent plus 1 being able to make amendments,
Ohio’s constitution will become an increasingly silly document and risks
exchanging the rule of law for the rule of special interests.
Supermajority requirements ensure that people who are out of favor with
the ruling class have protections from the whims of the majority.
Supporting
Issue 1 is responsible, commonsense, and unfortunately unpopular. It is
unsurprising that special interests on both sides are opposed to Issue 1
and doing everything they can to get you to vote “no.”
Defy them.
Face it, you and I and ordinary Ohioans are not going to be the ones amending Ohio’s constitution in the future anyway.
We do not have the time, money, or wherewithal.
It
will be well-funded, organized, and single-issue partisan groups with
axes to grind. We should make it harder for them to meddle in our
state’s constitution. Force them to pass their laws through the usual
democratic process.
Vote
“yes” on Issue 1 to require a 60 percent supermajority in order to fend
off the Californication of Ohio and keep our state’s constitution as a
durable foundational document.
Tell
your friends, family, and neighbors: voting “yes” on August 8 will
align Ohio’s constitutional amendment process with the wise
supermajority requirements enshrined in our beloved U.S. constitution
and simultaneously ensure that Ohio does not become beholden to special
interests on either side.
Robert Alt is the president and chief executive officer of The Buckeye Institute in Columbus.
Founded in 1989, The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and educational institution – a think tank – whose mission is to advance free-market public policy in the states.
The
Buckeye Institute is a non-partisan, non-profit, and tax-exempt
organization, as defined by section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue
code. As such, it relies on support from individuals, corporations, and
foundations that share a commitment to individual liberty, free
enterprise, personal responsibility, and limited government. The Buckeye
Institute does not seek or accept government funding.
I think I can honestly say there's so much going on that's insane and outrageous I find it almost impossible to write articles dealing with all these issues. At least competent articles as each article takes a lot time organizing, researching, and putting them together in a rational, provocative, profound and interesting way. So, I've decided to just offer these links for your perusal instead. Here's the stuff I intended to use as the basis for articles. This Linkwill take you to All ofMy Commentaries
CENSORSHIP ESG BIG CORPORATE CENSORSHIP
Well, it appears this must have been a corporate conspiracy to violate British law, how else can anyone explain how not only did his bank cancel his account, ten others also refused to accept him as a customer? This is an insidious scheme that needs prosecuted, and they all need to be sued, and possibly jailed for deliberately violating his rights. Also, how many others has this happened to? Would this have become exposed if he hadn't been such a prominent person? That's what needs to be investigated. As you read these posts it must become apparent there's a gigantic danger to freedom being put into place. Banking it seems is going to be the primary tool to whip humanity into obedience.....or else! And anyone resisting their efforts to silence opponents, will have to suffer. This Link will take you to my Censorship commentaries.
CBDCs: A Weapon for Debanking the Banked “Even if you think that a CBDC is a good idea, consider that its
power may be turned against you when the political pendulum shifts in
your direction and your views or activities are suddenly considered
taboo or illegal by those in power.” ~ Emile Phaneuf III
‘Shut Up or Else!’ The True Link between Islam and the Left By Raymond Ibrahim - Despite their many outward differences, Islamic authoritarianism and
leftist liberalism are, in fact, very similar, especially in that they
brook no dissent. Here, I’d like to offer a more focused look into their similar modes of operation, especially in the context of belief vs. compliance. For
starters, few Muslims -- including some of the most “radical” -- really
care what anyone else, including Muslims, believes or disbelieves about
Islam. This may seem counterintuitive; after all, isn’t Islam
draconian and in your face concerning its beliefs, subjugating and even
killing those who reject it and its dogmas?........
The New Nazis: Democrats Are the Party of Censorship - A Pew Research poll released July 20 found that 70% of Democrats think
the government should restrict what appears on social media, a dramatic
change from five years ago when a majority of Democrats supported a free
marketplace of ideas.
CRIME
Crime is out of control in San FRancisco, and they're worried about a business sign. We've lost our minds. ThisLinkwill take you to my Crime commentaries.
The goal of leftists has been to destroy the American culture, the American identity, the American economy and overturn the Constitution, and they've just about done it, and did so by corrupting public education, which has been insidiously underway since the late 19th century. And there's no one they won't attack and try to destroy in that effort. This Linkwill take you to my Culture commentaries.
Gallup Poll: Only 18% of Young Adults, 29% of Democrats Are Extremely Proud to Be American - A Gallup poll released Tuesday showed that only
29% of Democrats express “extreme pride in being American,” compared to
60% of Republicans.“Party identification remains the greatest
demographic differentiator in expressions of national pride, and
Republicans have been consistently more likely than Democrats and
independents to express pride in being American throughout the trend,” a
Gallup summary of the poll said.“That gap has been particularly pronounced since 2018, with more than
twice as many Republicans as Democrats saying they are extremely proud.
Republicans are also nearly twice as likely as independents to express
the highest degree of pride,” it said............
Anti-Family Democrats Try to Go After Moms - After they noticed, moms started showing up to school board meetings
demanding to know what the hell was going on. Democrats lied. More
insanity and denials of reality flowed from schools, Democrats lied
about it. Finally, voters led by these mothers tossed out school board
members across the country. That was a bridge too far for the left. Democrats
do not care if you don’t like them, they don’t care if you oppose them,
it’s when you strip them of power that they take the gloves off. The
number of children hurt, the amount of lives damaged does not matter as
long as they maintain their grip on power. Moms, particularly white
suburban moms, turning on them is not acceptable.
DEEP STATE CORRUPTION AND BIDEN
The level and depth of corruption, and seemingly outright treason going on here is truly disturbing, and there only seems to be one honest character in these accounts, a judge, who was a supporter of Hillary Clinton, has the courage to stand for truth, justice and the American way. Federal Judge Maryellen Noreika! This Link will take you to my Deep State Corruption commentaries.
Ex-FBI Agent Rips Media Hypocrisy: Contrasting Steele Dossier With Biden Bribery - 'The left-wing media continues to say, ‘Oh, it's unverified,’ but I didn't hear that during the Steele dossier...'(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) In a scathing critique of mainstream media’s double standards, former FBI Special Agent Nicole Parker appeared on Fox News’s Fox and Friends Sunday on July 24th, blasting the media’s handling of the FD-1023 informant file in comparison to the infamous Steele Dossier. Parker began by stating, “Full disclaimer,
I have never worked on this investigation. I reviewed the document just
like everybody else did on open source, and an FD-1023 is a
confidential human source reporting document.” She emphasized the
significance of human sources in the FBI’s work, stating they provide
crucial information that may not be obtainable through other means...........
Weiss knew in 2020 that the FBI had corroborated the confidential informant’s story of Biden bribery - David Weiss, the US Attorney for the District of Delaware charged with
investigating Biden, has a lot of explaining to do when he testifies before Congress
in September or October. Thanks to the efforts of Senator Grassley, the
public now has the FBI Form 1023, with the account of outright bribery
of the Biden crime family following what sounds like a shakedown of
Burisma. The 1023 account is based on a still-anonymous Confidential
Human Source (CHS) who had previously proven reliable.............
Kevin McCarthy Claims Impeachment of Bribery Biden Is Being Prepared- Is Joe Biden finally about to face the first steps of impeachment?
That’s what House Speaker Kevin McCarthy signaled on Monday evening. While appearing on Fox News, McCarthy laid out the case that Joe
Biden accepted bribes and funneled money through a variety of shell
companies. He then said at the end of the segment with Sean Hannity that
“this is rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.”.......
How Investigative Journalists Have Become Cover-Up Promoters - After the highly touted,
shamelessly self-promoted Washington Post "investigative" Watergate
journalism, thousands of aspiring young people sought to become, like
the legendary Woodward and Bernstein, fearless speakers of truth to
power, uncovering corruption and cover-up without fear or favor. But
fifty years later, these supposed investigative journalists have become
the corrupt actors whom they promised to expose. Have our vaunted good
guys become dirty cops? It sure looks like it. .............
It's time to prosecute the prosecutorsr-
The farther we drift from the constitutional rule in this country, the
less shocking the shocking will become. A few years ago, the notion of
an
incumbent American president prosecuting his political opponent for
so-called "crimes" involving the opponent's speech would have shocked
America's conscience. This totalitarianism tactic happens in Russia,
where Putin jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, or Venezuela, where Nicolás Maduro arrests opposition leaders like Leopoldo López, or Cambodia, where opposition leader Kem Sokha was convicted of "treason," got 27 years in prison, and was banned forever from running for office.
FBI Hands Over Documents Relating to Targeting of Catholics - On Tuesday, the FBI handed over requested documents on its efforts to
target Catholic Americans after another threat from Congress to hold
director Christopher Wray in contempt.As reported by the New York Post,
Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chairman of the House Judiciary
Committee, had subpoenaed the files in question and threatened to hold
Wray in contempt of Congress if the documents were not delivered by the
deadline of July 25th............
Whistleblowers and the Rule of Law - What should law-abiding, patriotic citizens do when it’s clear that the system has stopped working? What do woke liberals do (and apologies for any implication that they
are patriotic citizens) when they don’t like that the system is working?
They riot and kill. That’s what the Black Lives Matter riots were all
about. “They” didn’t like the system, so “they” destroyed about $2
billion worth of property and killed at least 19 people. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and
all the proper pontificating people in Washington, D.C., and the other
bastions of woke-liberal group-think, didn’t bat an eyelash at the
carnage. And so they all became complicit in the venture........
Plea deal falls apart, Hunter pleads ‘not guilty’ as DOJ and defense counsel continue talks with court-imposed 14-day deadline- Federal Judge Maryellen Noreika refused to accept the sweetheart plea
deal that the Department of Justice was prepared to sign off on with no
prison time and only misdemeanor charges. One major issue for Judge
Noreika was ambiguity over whether further charges could be brought, or
if the agreement immunized Hunter from further charges arising from the
issues of the case. Fox News summarizes the discussion in the hearing that lasted 3 hours.........
Hunter Biden Could be Jailed if He Consumes Drugs, Alcohol as Part of Release Conditions - President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, could be
jailed if he consumes any drugs or alcohol, according to the conditions
of his release signed by U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika. Biden appeared in federal court in Delaware on
Wednesday, where he was expected to enter a guilty plea as part of a
deal negotiated between his lawyers and the U.S. Department of Justice
(DOJ) arising out of charges of illegally possessing a handgun and
failing to pay two years’ worth of federal taxes........
Adam Schiff Did Not Just Say That About a Possible Biden- Is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) serious with these remarks about a potential
Biden impeachment inquiry? The pressure is increasing on the Biden White
House under the microscope from all angles. Hunter Biden’s laptop
provided the window into the types of government access deals he and his
father were allegedly cooking up, even when Joe was serving as vice
president. Some of that cash was funneled through shell companies, and
the IRS wanted to charge the president’s son for breaking the law, but
the Justice Department ran interference in any effort to do so. ........
GLOBAL WARMING ENERGY
Understand this. Global Warming, Climate Change, or whatever term they choose to use in the future is predicated on lies in order to impose a form of world governance with leftist maniacs in charge. This Linkwill take you to my Global Warming commentaries.
Solar Panels Don’t Really Help the Environment, but They Do Help Our Enemies - The Biden administration has sunk billions of taxpayer dollars into
“renewable” energy, but a new report won’t surprise Americans who’ve
read any honest research on solar panels. It reveals that the panels are
nearly as carbon-intensive as natural gas. Not only that, investment in
solar benefits America’s number one enemy: China........
The splooting squirrel: a true picture of climate change alarmistsJuly 25, 2023As pampered climate alarmists continue
to find new reasons to downgrade our lives, their latest example of
climate change is fuzzy and ridiculous. Climate change alarmists get more desperate every day. Small wonder
when you consider that the first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970 and
all the gruesome predictions about the climate that came out about that
time have failed to come true. We were told that civilization would end
by 2000, that the environmental crisis would make the earth
uninhabitable, that hundreds of millions of people would starve to death
by 1980, that nitrogen buildup would filter light out of the atmosphere
and render land unusable, that fish would die and polar bears would
drown, that rain forests would disappear, and there would be a new ice
age in which gas stations would no longer have gas. None of those things
have come to pass. However, there is one prediction made in 2000 by Ronald Bailey, author of The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-first Century,
that did come to pass and ahead of the predicted time. Bailey predicted
that, by Earth Day 2030, “There will be a disproportionately
influential group of doomsters predicting that the future—and the
present—never looked so bleak.”.............
A century of 'Climate Change'-
Some of these "world-threatening crises" go back a long, long way. The Washington Post has released a story headlined "Arctic Ocean Getting Warm; Seals Vanish and Icebergs Melt." Highlights
of the article include seals finding waters too hot, there is a radical
change in climatic conditions, temperatures are rising in the arctic,
and glaciers are disappearing. Same old story, and I do mean an old
story — this particular item appeared in 1922. The left has taken umbrage at the
circulation of the story on social media because it was embellished with
a warning that the sea level would rise and coastal cities would become
uninhabitable. It's true that the archived article says nothing about
rising sea levels or the habitability of coastal cities. It is also
true that the mainstream media have been issuing strident warnings that
melting polar ice will render coastal cities uninhabitable. The World
Economic Forum lists cities at risk. CBS News informs us there will be zombie towns from rising sea levels. The United Nations considers melting ice a direct threat to humanity. I
find myself wondering why anybody would have a problem with the
extrapolation of the 1922 article that melting ice will endanger coastal
cities, when that's what we've been told for years and years..............
IN-DEPTH: New Jersey Residents Push Back Against Offshore Wind Farm -Bob Stern of Long Beach Island, New Jersey, is no absolutist on wind energy.He told The Epoch Times that his organization, Save Long Beach
Island, is “not necessarily opposed to all offshore wind development.”Yet, like many others who live and work near the Garden State’s
scenic bays, beaches, spits, and sounds, Mr. Stern fears large-scale
offshore wind farms are coming too quickly and without enough scrutiny. Who and what stands to lose?...........
HOLLYWOOD
In Hollywood everyone must be on board with whatever the latest leftist narrative of the day may be, and anyone out of step with them must be punished. And that includes any perfromance out of step with their insanity, such as that by Jason Aldean, more below on that. But it isn't just the Democrats who are on board with that. Faux conservatives are enablers of this corruption.
The Most National Review Column Ever -I took a pretty liberal girl on a date to see
William F. Buckley back in college, which would probably scandalize the
current senior staff of his National Review, but I bet it would have
made WFB smile. Buckley was also a graduate of the Army's former Ft.
Benning School for Boys,
but since his death, the Officer Candidate School has become Ft. Moore
School for Boys, Girls, and Non-Binary Two-Spirits. This change for the
worse is emblematic of how NR's conservatism has failed to conserve much
of anything. In Buckley's absence, NR has tried to stand athwart
history yelling, "Stop," and instead, the left just gave it a wedgie and
continued on its long march.
The Left Freaks Out Because I Hated The ‘Barbie’ Movie. Here’s The Real Reason Why - As apparently everyone on earth knows, I went to see the “Barbie” movie on Friday. The tweet in which we announced that I had actually seen the “Barbie” movie has roughly 60 million views at this point.The outrage in the media at my review
is astonishing because I did a 43-minute review of the film in which I
went through it point by point. There were articles about my review of
this movie in sources as diverse as Newsweek, NBC News, and The Daily
Beast. Everyone was covering the fact that I did not like this movie.What I did was apparently terrible. Why? Why the outrage over me not liking the film?........
Barbie Is All Emotionalism And Appearance But Lacks Any Rationality - The Barbie movie’s first weekend has gone well. And, in many
ways the movie deserves the attention, but not for what might matter
most to the women who made it. Conservatives have conceded the movie’s
good production values but disliked its moral ones. The real problem,
though, is that it’s not a very good movie. Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives in a safe and beautiful world where houses need few walls and every day is great. But
even with president, lawyer and judge Barbies wearing midriff-baring
clothing without shame, elements of that very human emotion begin to
appear. First, Ken (Ryan Gosling) feels the need to hide his love
for Barbie, because she is still in the phase of life where her
girlfriends are more important to her than is romance with a boy.
Second, Barbie develops intrusive ideas about death. Finally, and to her
greatest shame, Barbie wakes up to flat feet and the possibility of
having cellulite show on her thighs................
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
Buried News: Bums, Illegals, Addicts, and Criminals Double Their Assaults in Hospitals- How's this as a consequence of radical leftist policies that coddle society's troublemakers?As of Sunday, the San Diego Union-Tribune
ran a Page One above-the-fold story by Paul Sisson headlined "Hospitals
in County Look for Ways to Cut Attacks on Workers," which is an
important story indeed because it points to the consequences to innocent
hospital workers of constantly coddling bums, illegals, drug addicts
and criminals, all of whom were named as perpetrators in the piece.For
some strange reason, the story not there on the San Diego
Union-Tribune's website and I looked and looked. I don't think it's a
time delay, as there are other significant Page One stories up on the
site -- one about the sleazy world of "Fat Leonard" who is linked to
corruption in the Navy, and another on Comic-Con, for example......
‘Shut Up or Else!’ The True Link between Islam and the Left - Despite their many outward differences, Islamic authoritarianism and
leftist liberalism are, in fact, very similar, especially in that they
brook no dissent.Here, I’d like to offer a more focused look into their similar modes of operation, especially in the context of belief vs. compliance. For
starters, few Muslims -- including some of the most “radical” -- really
care what anyone else, including Muslims, believes or disbelieves about
Islam. This may seem counterintuitive; after all, isn’t Islam
draconian and in your face concerning its beliefs, subjugating and even
killing those who reject it and its dogmas?......
PANDEMIC FAUCI
85 seconds of video that hilariously show what a liar Fauci was about Covid’s origins - The short video from Matt Orfalea embedded below brilliantly summarizes
the evidence that Dr. Fauci bullied scientists into changing their minds
about what their research showed: that Covid was the product of a lab,
not a naturally occurring virus. It’s one thing to read about the
correspondence among those scientists in print. But seeing their actual
words excerpted and dramatized with exaggerated cartoonish treatment
drives home the point forcefully, especially after the brief clip of
Fauci lying to the nation in a presser...
Left Demands Boycott of In-N-Out Burgers Over Mask Policies - Conservatives successfully boycotted Bud Light, due to the
organization’s explicit political goal. However, it now appears the left
has discovered an alternative boycott objective after becoming enraged
with In-N-Out Burger. By informing staff that the coronavirus crisis has ended, meaning
there is hardly a need for masks in work environments, the fast food
behemoth has drawn the wrath of the left......
"Advertisement">
If Jason Aldean Is Racist: We Need More Like Him-
Six shooting deaths and at least twenty plus others were shot in Chicago this past weekend alone. Wanna guess what crayon color they represented on the color wheel? In one Philadelphia, PA weekend, 6 people were gunned down,
i.e., shot dead on city streets (and an alley), including a 14-year-old
boy. Wanna guess what color they represent on the color wheel?........
Not in this small town - Biden voters are frothing mad at Jason Aldean's latest video, "Try
That in a Small Town." Aldean's video highlights the lawlessness that
Antifa, BLM, and other Democrat groups carried out during the summer of
2020, all while his lyrics tell Dems they'd better not try such
craziness in small-town America. A little background: Recall that after George Floyd died
of a drug OD (May 2020), Democrat cities erupted in months of
destructive riots, firebombing of courthouses, carjackings, murders,
etc. It was frightening to watch the daily destruction by Democrat
thugs as they tore down statues, vandalized and looted businesses,
turned over and torched vehicles, and beat anyone unlucky enough to
stumble upon their mayhem.........
Jason Aldean’s Primal Scream - On July 13, 2023, a country western artist little known outside his
genre stepped into the national spotlight when he released a video of a
song that channeled the feelings of at least 100 million Americans. In
less than a week it was ranked #1 on iTunes and as of July 25 it is the #1 trending music video on YouTube. But you won’t see it on Country Music Television, because it’s been banned. By now the story line is well established. Jason Aldean, 46 years
old, who already had 24 number 1 hits on the US country charts, has released a music video where
against a backdrop of protests and rioting, he sings “don’t try that in
a small town, see how far you make it down the road…” Reaction to
Aldean’s alleged endorsement of vigilantism and allegedly coded racist
undertones has been swift and unrelenting..............
When July 26 turned out to be an ugly day...Growing up in a Cuban-American home acquainted me with a lot of the island of Cuba's history. I guess that's normal in immigrant homes,
but my parents were the type committed to teaching us how communism
destroyed what they lovingly called "la patria" or homeland.Conversations at our family dinners were always about Cuba. My parents would often warn us about leftists by saying "cuidado" or "be careful" because they always tell you what you want to hear.......
‘Shut Up or Else!’ The True Link between Islam and the Left- Despite their many outward differences, Islamic authoritarianism and
leftist liberalism are, in fact, very similar, especially in that they
brook no dissent.Here, I’d like to offer a more focused look into their similar modes of operation, especially in the context of belief vs. compliance. For
starters, few Muslims -- including some of the most “radical” -- really
care what anyone else, including Muslims, believes or disbelieves about
Islam. This may seem counterintuitive; after all, isn’t Islam
draconian and in your face concerning its beliefs, subjugating and even
killing those who reject it and its dogmas?
TRANSGENDERISM
LGBTQ-centric middle school to open in Phoenix - The nonprofit offers a wellness program that promotes child sex change surgeries. -An LGBTQ-centric middle school is set to open in the state of Arizona to offer students an alternative education centered around LGBTQ+ history and curriculum. This comes after the Arizona state legislature passed Bill 2853,
otherwise known as "school choice" last year, which grants parents the
decision on where to send their child to school through taxpayer-funded
scholarship grants, or education vouchers. Through Arizona's education vouchers, middle schoolers will be able to
enroll at the Queer Blended Learning Center in August located in
downtown Phoenix at an LGBTQ+ youth nonprofit called one∙n∙ten, according to AZ Central.........
The Deceptive Advertising of Gender-Affirming Surgery- There is much talk about gender-affirming surgery (“GAS”). A lot of it surrounds the initiatives taken by some hospitals and medical centers to make these surgeries available to teenagers and, reportedly, younger children.
What we seldom talk about is what exactly is going on with these
surgeries. It’s worth working our way down through the products being
sold to the reality behind the sales pitches.
Who will be the innocent who speaks the truth to the transgender crowd? - Make-believe is fun as long as we have the freedom to stop when we tire
of playing. Now, however, the wonderful folks that gave us Sodom and
Gomorrah want to compel us and our children in public schools to agree
with them that their perverse sexual practices and thinking are normal.
They want us to agree with them that women can be men and men can be
women. They want the objectors among us to face job termination and
legal sanctions if we don’t say “amen” to their ever-changing norms...
Dave Chappelle Launches Nationwide Arena Tour After Trans Mob Tried to Cancel Him - Comedy megastar Dave Chappelle has launched a
nationwide arena tour months after a trans mob tried to cancel him over
his comedy calling out the trans hysteria sweeping the country.Chappelle’s tour will kick off at Madison Square
Garden in New York City on August 22, and will wrap up at the United
Center in Chicago on October 4, according to the announcement released Tuesday by TODAY.The announcement comes after a woke mob of trans activists have tried
to cancel the comedian over the years in response to his jokes......
Transvestite Terrorism on the Rise- Four months ago on March 27, Audrey Hale shot her way into the
Covenant School in Nashville and gunned down nine-year-olds Evelyn
Dieckhaus, William Kinney and Hallie Scruggs, daughter of Chad Scruggs,
senior pastor at the Covenant Presbyterian Church. Hale, a woman who thought she was a man, also shot dead Katherine
Koonce, 59, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak, 61, and African American
Mike Hill, 61, the school’s custodian. Hale left behind a manifesto
explaining her actions but trans activists oppose release of the
documents, now in the hands of the FBI. At this writing, the manifesto
remains unreleased but autopsy records enable the murder victims to
testify. Consider first responder Mike Hill.
