A Genuine Case of Collusion

When an American Presidential Candidate Made a Deal With Stalin  

By Benn Steil March 19, 2024 @ Foreign Affairs

Editor's Note: I have not asked for, nor have I received permission to publish this in full, but with all the public trash talking from celebrities, politicians and talking heads, I think this history needs the broadest distribution possible in order to clarify which party has been the party of collusion and totally consumed by communists/leftists of every ilk.  RK

It is a virtual given that Russia will try to manipulate the United States’ 2024 general election. Moscow persists in its brutal effort to conquer Ukraine, and one of the two main candidates—former President Donald Trump—has promised to cut American support for the country, while the other, President Joe Biden, is trying to increase it. Russia, then, has every incentive to tilt the contest toward Trump.

The 2024 election will not be the first one Moscow has meddled in. According to a 1,000-page 2020 report by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee, Russia mounted a systematic effort to ensure an election victory for Trump in 2016. The report did not find that Trump’s campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with Russia, yet it documented extensive covert contacts between Trump campaign advisers and Kremlin operatives. The Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, for example, discussed election strategy and shared internal polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence officer.

In the wake of the report, Democrats and Republicans sparred over whether the web of contacts constituted “collusion” between candidate Trump and Russia. But whether or not the Trump campaign’s coordination effort met that threshold, an earlier U.S. presidential candidate’s efforts most certainly did. That story has not, until recently, been told.

In 1948, Henry Wallace, the former agriculture secretary, commerce secretary, and vice president under President Franklin Roosevelt, bolted from the Democratic Party, took leadership of a new Progressive Party, and challenged President Harry Truman in the general election. He set out to tar Truman as a warmonger, to undermine his foreign policy, and to convince the American public that the nascent Cold War in Asia and Europe might be ended instantly by a Wallace victory. That meant working secretly with Soviet officials—including the Kremlin dictator himself, Joseph Stalin, from whom Wallace took direction.

CLEAR COLLUSION

Wallace had long been enamored of Soviet “economic democracy” and had insisted that Stalin’s aggressive expansionism was driven wholly by a legitimate fear of Anglo-American “imperialism.” For years, Wallace had pined for an audience with the generalissimo, through which he could establish himself as a statesman of peace. As vice president in March 1944, he asked Roosevelt to send him to Moscow, but the closest he was permitted to venture was Siberia. In June 1946, as Truman’s commerce secretary, he sent a trade mission to Moscow, hoping to go himself later that year as the head of a delegation to consummate a deal. But the mission was a failure. The Soviets wanted only unconditional loans to buy U.S. goods—loans that the State Department would not approve in the absence of better U.S. trade access in Eastern Europe.

In Moscow in November 1946, two months after Truman fired Wallace as commerce secretary, the Associated Press journalist Eddy Gilmore—who would shortly win a Pulitzer for his interview with Stalin—told a young Soviet foreign intelligence officer masked as a cultural information officer, “strictly off the record,” that Wallace wished to visit Russia. But the Foreign Ministry saw no political benefit in soliciting Wallace, now only a private citizen, and Wallace saw no benefit in going as a tourist, having to beg for photo ops.

Yet even as Soviet interest in Wallace rose with the prospect of his running for president, neither side would make a move—until 1948. In the spring of that year, Wallace, now a declared presidential candidate, secretly approached the newly appointed Czech ambassador to the UN, Vladimir Houdek, asking for his help in making contact with Houdek’s Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko. Wallace had met Gromyko several times over the years, publicly and privately, and would have had no difficulty getting an appointment through official Soviet channels. This time, however, Wallace wished to keep the contact hidden. His effort succeeded. In late March and again on April 2, Wallace met secretly with Gromyko at the ambassador’s residence in New York.

The 2024 election will not be the first one Moscow has meddled in.

The encounters between Wallace and Gromyko, as I recently discovered in Russian archival documents, are detailed in a cipher cable that Gromyko sent to Moscow on April 2—a cable designated “Strictly Secret,” a level above “Top Secret.” According to the cable, Wallace, at the March meeting, told Gromyko he wished to go to Moscow, leaving open questions of timing and itinerary. At the April meeting, Wallace explained that he “wanted to come to a definite agreement with . . . Generalissimo Stalin on all major problems of Soviet-American relations.”

To Gromyko, such conceit must have seemed breathtaking. He had some time ago concluded that Wallace was, politically, no match for his own ambitions. But Gromyko believed that Wallace was still valuable as a stooge and might, if used wisely, wreak havoc with American foreign policy—and even help replace the Democratic Party with a pro-Soviet one.

Wallace’s aim, according to Gromyko’s account, was to use his “conversation with comrade Stalin . . . to make a definitive statement to the American people.” He would show “that in the case of his election,” there would be “an agreement with the USSR on such and such important issues.” Wallace, Gromyko wrote, stressed “that his Moscow trip would strengthen his position as a presidential candidate,” but “only if he actually reached an agreement [with Stalin] on important issues.” He therefore wanted “to have a preliminary agreement on certain issues prior to his trip.”

Remarkably, however, Wallace insisted that he did not have any particular issues in mind. Instead, Gromyko wrote to Moscow, Wallace wanted “us to list such issues.” Wallace made clear that he sought no actual concessions from Stalin. Under a Wallace presidency, there was to be no Cold War irrespective of whether Stalin did anything that a responsible U.S. government would naturally expect from a partner in peace. There was to be no Cold War simply because Henry Wallace needed American voters to believe it had been created by Harry Truman and that its cessation required only Wallace’s election. As for Stalin, all he had to do to was write his own sequel to the February 1945 Yalta agreements with Roosevelt, in which the leaders had sketched out the future of Germany, Eastern Europe, and the United Nations. Although no one has ever been convicted under the 1799 Logan Act, Wallace’s talks with Gromyko severely tested its prohibition against U.S. citizens engaging in unauthorized negotiations with foreign governments.

ASK AND RECEIVE

After his first two meetings, Gromyko remained cautious, even suspicious, of Wallace. The former vice president’s open invitation triggered a host of questions, including why he didn’t raise any issues of his own. Even after having “borrowed” and copied Wallace’s private diary during his 1944 Siberian tour and finding nothing remotely suspicious, the Soviets could never quite believe that he did not, like all imperialists, have a hidden imperialist agenda. They wondered whether Wallace might be fishing for intelligence.

Gromyko pressed him. “How,” the ambassador asked, was Moscow “to understand his statement that at present he did not mean to name any particular issues to be negotiated?” Did it mean “that in the future he would be able to name such issues?” Wallace continued to insist that Moscow could name the issues. He offered only that “disarmament” might be “one of such issues.”

With the potential rewards high—the prospect of undermining Truman’s credibility—the Soviets decided to press ahead. When Gromyko and Wallace met again on April 20, Gromyko had a list of issues from Moscow. It had been prepared by Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, with Stalin penciling in subject headings, crossing out one item (“the borders of the political influence of the USSR”) as an irrelevant legacy of “fascist” thinking, and designating six items as appropriate for discussion before the U.S. elections.

The first of these was the “question of peaceful policy,” which included “the banning of atomic weapons and the introduction of international control over atomic energy.” This was code for saying that the United States should destroy its nuclear weapons before Moscow agreed to any inspection regime. The second was “the question of non-interference into the domestic affairs of other nations,” which included the “preclusion of military bases in the territory of [other UN nations]” and “the use of . . . methods of economic pressure for political ends.” This was code for saying that the United States should withdraw its forces from Europe and terminate the Marshall Plan. The third was “the question of European recovery,” which included “restor[ing] UNRRA” (the UN Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) to its predominant role. This was code for saying that the United States should revert to funding foreign relief and recovery assistance solely through the UN.

Gromyko remained cautious, even suspicious, of Wallace.

Then, the list turned to particular countries. The fourth item dealt with “the question of Germany,” which included “strict compliance with the decisions of the Crimean and Potsdam Conferences” and the “institution of a united peace-loving German democratic government.” This meant that the United States should expeditiously deliver $10 billion in reparations from western Germany and accept the creation of a Soviet-friendly unified German government. The fifth was “the question of the Far East,” including the “withdrawal of armed forces” from China and Korea. This meant that the United States should remove all its troops from Asia. Sixth, and finally, was “the question of Japan,” which included “the creation of a demilitarized, democratic and peace-loving” country. This meant that Japan must not become a U.S. military ally.

Stalin indicated that “the question of the internationalization of the Dardanelles, the Suez, and the Panama channels” could be discussed after the elections, “as well as that of strategic air bases in Greenland, Iceland, Okinawa, etc.” By this, Stalin meant that the Soviet Union and the United States should share power over key global water channels and that Washington should abandon its foreign military air bases. Stalin apparently considered such realpolitik questions too sensitive for open conversation during the campaign.

Wallace listened approvingly as Gromyko read the list. When Gromyko finished, Wallace assured the ambassador that he “had planned [to raise] almost all those issues” himself.

UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR

Back in Moscow, Stalin issued his final approval for collusion with Wallace. But he deemed it politically wise to keep conducting it at a distance. A “trip may do harm,” Stalin wrote in a veto of Wallace’s travel plans. “A statement,” however, “is useful.” He concluded that it would “better be done by Wallace,” with Stalin subsequently “stating his sympathy.”

And so Wallace wrote an “open letter” to Stalin proposing steps the two sides should take to end the Cold War. Some of those steps had been indicated to him by Stalin himself, and I found documentary proof of Stalin’s approval of, deletions of, or edits to the items Wallace penned. Wallace read the letter before 19,000 supporters at Madison Square Garden on May 11.

One week later, Stalin issued his public endorsement. “The open letter of Mr. Wallace, Presidential candidate of the United States third party,” Stalin said, “is the most important document” among those that had been issued since World War II to further the “consolidation of peace” and “international cooperation.” He contrasted the promise of Wallace’s “concrete program for peaceful settlement of the differences between the U.S.S.R. and the United States” with “the inadequacy” of statements from the current U.S. government. He highlighted over a dozen of Wallace’s proposals (the ones requiring only U.S. concessions), concluding that they represented “a good and fruitful basis” for an agreement between the two countries.

When asked by reporters for his reaction to Stalin’s statement, Wallace did his best to put on an air of humility and surprise. “If I have done anything that moves the world further toward peace,” he told them, “I feel that my campaign will have been a success.” Campaigning in California, Wallace proclaimed “that the Russian government is truly prepared to discuss issues on their merit and is genuinely interested in finding a way for the two great powers to live at peace.” He did not mention that the proposals Stalin had singled out were largely those that Stalin himself had put forward.

Wallace’s collusion with Stalin suggests a red flag for 2024.

Some American political figures suspected the two men were working together. Curtis MacDougall, the Illinois Progressive Party senatorial candidate in 1948, wrote to Wallace years later asking whether he had contacted anyone in the Soviet embassy “to make sure your open letter to Stalin would get a reply.” Wallace denied it. “I had no assurances from anyone,” he wrote back, falsely, “and made no effort to get assurances that Stalin would reply to my open letter which was released in May of 1948 but which was never sent to Stalin.”

The FBI, tipped off by a suspicious State Department about possible collusion between Wallace and Moscow, planted agents at the print shop where the open letter had been copied and determined that Wallace had to have had advance knowledge of Soviet public statements. The collusion was thus proved. But neither the FBI nor the Truman administration took action.

This fact may, at first, seem strange. But by the time Wallace had begun working with Moscow, public opinion toward the Soviet Union had toughened, given its aggressive behavior in Asia and Europe, and had soured toward Wallace and his Communist-infiltrated Progressive Party. A poll taken two weeks before the Stalin-Wallace spectacle of May 11 showed that only ten percent of Americans believed the United States should be “more willing to compromise” with the Soviet Union, whereas 61 percent thought it “should be even firmer.” The Madison Square Garden rally may have energized Wallace’s supporters, yet it hardly helped him with the vast remainder of the electorate. “The whole business,” the journalist Vincent Sheean wrote in The Saturday Evening Post, “was simply a mechanism for giving Stalin’s approval to an American presidential candidate.”

Truman, of course, went on to victory in November. Wallace garnered barely a million popular votes and no electoral votes. He came in fourth—behind the Dixiecrat segregationist Strom Thurmond.

Wallace’s collusion with Stalin in 1948, however, suggests a red flag for 2024. Trump has already said that he would end the war in Ukraine in a day. Just as Stalin wanted Americans to believe that peace in Europe meant rejecting support for “Nazi” elements in western Germany, so Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Americans to believe it means rejecting support for the “Nazi” government in Ukraine. Collusion between Trump and Putin in the form of, say, a bogus peace pledge would therefore make perfect political sense. In light of such a real and disturbing prospect, we can only hope that American voters will be as wary, critical, and discerning as those in 1948.

• BENN STEIL is a Senior Fellow and Director of International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century.

Kamala Harris: “What can be, unburdened by what has been”

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  If you wish to get the full edition, E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free. RK 

Through her word salads, Kamala Harris says enough to let us know that she is a Marxist. Harris often says:

“What can be, unburdened by what has been.” 

That comes from a communist saying frequently used by Soviet communists starting with Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks:

“We have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been, and then to make the possible actually happen.”

In The Communist Manifesto pamphlet, written along with Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx suggested that society must move on from the past for communism to succeed.

Karl Marx did not hide from any of this. In his 1852 essay, “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” Marx wrote: 

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. '“The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”'

Part of Kamala’s statement “by what has been” refers to the democracy and freedom in this country since the passage of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. As you know, Marxist-Democrats often comment about how some sections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are outdated.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Harris’ father was a Marxist economist that taught at Stanford University and was educated at the University of California Berkeley. This explains her contempt for a free-market economy and for the freedoms allowed under the U.S. Constitution.

Speaking on his July 22 podcast, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani discussed Harris’ frequent use of the phrase:

"That's pure Marxism. That comes from Karl Marx. I don't know who came up with the specific line, but it's the absence of history. Get rid of history, unburdened by the past, meaning you forget your history, which assumes that all our history was evil and bad. And what a stupid statement; now she's either stupid, brain injured, or a communist. I don't know if she knows that it comes from Karl Marx. I don't know if she's smart enough to know."

In “Oh, To Be ‘Unburdened’ by Progressive Socialists Any Longer,” Frank Hill writes: There’s no secret Democrats want to expunge U.S. history of any references with which they disagree, or which make them feel “uncomfortable.” Cancel culture, desecration of American monuments, replacing Western civilization history and philosophy classes on campuses with books written by critical race theorists such as Ibram Kendi all follow the same path: Past history in America written by white men based on Judeo-Christian values and Western civilization norms is bad; current enlightened thought “unburdened” by any such historical foundation is good.

Democrats since 2008 have turned their backs on everything considered basic to our shared common life together in America. 

• They have neutered and defunded police enforcement
• Appointed liberal judges who have let thousands of convicted people out of prison unilaterally; flung wide open our southern border to let another 10 million people enter illegally; 
• Canceled tens of billions of dollars of federal student debt without legislative approval;
• Spent trillions in federal dollars on unnecessary programs which have jacked up prices of everything to unreasonable heights through rampant inflation.

When Barack Obama declared “Change has come to America!” the night he was elected in 2008, he was not kidding. They have spent the last 16 years doing it.

There is no other way to put this, except that Marxist Kamala Harris and Marxist Tim Walz want to destroy our Constitutional Republic. Sadly, there are a lot of ignorant voters who believe Harris as she flip-flops on almost every position. My goodness – the Cacklin’ gal has put out commercials embracing Trump’s border wall!

If this doesn’t scare the hell out of Americans, what will? We re-elect Donald Trump or say goodbye to our Constitutional Republic.

• Read “Harris & Walz Are a Devastating Combination for America & Her Kids” By Rebecca Friedrichs and Roger Ruvolo

Kamala The Borg Queen

If it walks like a communist, and if it talks like a communist, it's a communist. 

By Rich Kozlovich,  Tags:

  

The media is doing everything it can to transform Kamala from the twit they all knew her to be, into a miraculous Democrat messianic domestic and foreign relations genius, and the media has abandoned the stunningly small vestiges of integrity they had left.  And you thought with Biden, it just couldn't have gotten any worse.

1. Pro-Kamala Media Ridicule Her Economic Plans: ‘Gimmicks,’ ‘Not Sensible’
2. Exclusive — McCormick: Biggest Problem in PA is Big Government Embraced by Harris-Walz and Bob Casey
3. WaPo’s Rampell: Casey’s ‘Gouging’ Bill Is ‘Kind of Thing’ Venezuela, Soviets Tried

She's promising to give America away, but remember, she's giving nothing to anyone.  The public is being gouged in order for her to give our money away, massively, to those who are undeserving, lazy, corrupt, criminal, and incompetent.  All undeserving including, and especially illegal aliens.  I ask you this.  If given the choice, would you willingly give these leeches your money?  If the answer's no, then why would you allow her to steal it from you to give it to them?  Perhaps we should ask the New Yorkers who can't afford to flee to Florida or Texas if they like spending $5.5 Billion on New York City’s agencies and landlords to house illegal immigrants. 

Kamala is the the Borg Queen from Star Trek, and if she's elected, she will do all she can to turn America into a tyrannous Marxist state.  

Resistance is futile, you will obey, and you will serve. 

Are you willing for that to be your life?  Are you ready for that to be your life?  Her promises are not only empty, but stupid, and disastrous, and it's clear she's a economic ignoramus surrounded by those who are even less competent. 

She rails against price gouging, but let's take a look at the alleged gouging profit margins of one prominent grocery chain.  That's not gouging.  If Kamala starts setting economic boundaries, on food, you had better get ready for food lines and shortages, right along with shortages on drugs, and housing.  Just like it was in the USSR, and it will destroy the force of nature America capitalism is when allowed to innovate and create wealth.   Where in the Constitution does it give Kamala the legal authority to confiscate drug patents in order to control pricing?  End result, no new drugs.  

I was an exterminator for forty years, owning my own company for thirty, and over thirty years ago it cost 300 million dollars to bring a pesticide to market.  One year Bayer tested 25 compounds, and none of them made it to market, that costs....big time.   It costs billions to bring a drug to market!   That money has to be recovered, along with the equivalent amount, and far more for future research for the development of new drugs, and the manufacturers want to make a lot of money.   If there is no money, there is no product!

If you're a moral person that should bother you, since many will not be able to afford these life saving drugs. While we all want perfection, perfection isn't possible, it's never been possible.   So, if you're a rational person you MUST recognize the best we can hope for is the most acceptable imperfection, and that's capitalism.  So, again, if there's no money, there's no product.  It really is that simple.  

We need to take the long view of all this understanding when these products go out of patent the costs will drop dramatically and untold millions of lives will be saved that wouldn't have been saved if these products were never developed.  But those compounds had to be paid for first. 

Ignore the hype and rigged polls, Kamala isn't resonating with America, and without rock stars at her rally, she can barely fill a room.  Catholics are finally getting the message the Democrats hate them, and now we find Congress is investigating Walz for his Chinese communist ties. 

And the hits just keep right on coming.  

Biden’s Labor Secretary Nominee Wants to Ban Freelance Workers

Daniel Greenfield March 10, 2023

 “Freelance journalists in California will either be out of work or face limitations on how much content they can produce,” CNN warned. Independent truckers shut down the Los Angeles-Long Beach port to protest the same disastrous law and are leaving California.

The bill known as AB5 which restricts freelance employment so severely that it’s practically a ban on freelance workers has been blamed for contributing to the mass exodus with California unprecedentedly losing population every year that the law has been in effect.

But California’s bad ideas rarely stay inside its borders.

In 2021, House Democrats under San Francisco’s Pelosi passed the PRO Act which would crush freelance workers nationwide. In his state of the union, Biden urged passing, “the PRO Act because workers have a right to form a union.” Workers already have a right to form a union. The PRO Act eliminates the right of workers to be able to work independently of employers and unions.

To many Democrats who depend heavily on union cash and seek to control the economy by herding workers into serving the large businesses they regulate and receive donations from, freelance workers are a problem. And regulating them out of existence by reclassifying them as employees through the ‘ABC Test’, which is at the heart of AB5 and the PRO Act, is the answer.

Now, Biden has nominated Julie Su, an architect of AB5’s war on freelance workers, as Secretary of Labor. When Biden pushed Su, California’s Labor Secretary, as Deputy Labor Secretary, Republicans challenged her on the $31 billion in pandemic fraud, the worst in the nation, and her ruthless war on freelance workers that devastated workers and businesses.

“If you apply that test nationally, as President Biden said he is committed to doing, you would forcefully reclassify as many as half of all independent contractors, if not more, and jeopardize more than 85 percent of our nation’s GDP,” Senator Tim Scott had challenged Su.

Rep. Kevin Kiley, R-Calif., accused Su of overseeing “one of the largest cases of unemployment insurance fraud” during the pandemic and of implementing some of the “most destructive labor policies in decades” during her time as California’s labor secretary.

California congressional representatives warned that Su’s AB5 has “cost tens of thousands of freelance workers and independent contractors their economic livelihoods.”

As the Labor Secretary, Su will be in a position to help Biden kill millions of jobs. Eliminating freelance workers was one of Biden’s campaign promises to unions. And he’s delivering.

“States like California have already paved the way by adopting a clearer, simpler, and stronger three-prong ‘ABC test’ to distinguish employees from independent contractors,” his campaign had promised. “As president, Biden will work with Congress to establish a federal standard modeled on the ABC test for all labor, employment, and tax laws.”

What does that ‘ABC Test’ mean in practice?

As the Morgan Lewis law firm described, “the PRO Act’s three-part test would eliminate ‘independent contractor’ status for everyone who provides services deemed part of a company’s ‘usual’ business, or is subject to the employer’s ‘control and direction,’ or is not associated with an independent ‘trade, occupation, profession, or business.’”

“Meeting those standards is virtually impossible. Once reclassified, most independent contractors would either be forced into traditional employment under terms likely less favorable than freelancing or be out of that work altogether,” an op-ed at the Iowa Gazette predicted.

“Such reclassification means that overnight, it would become illegal for many of us independent contractors to continue earning a living the way we do today — upending the entire idea of what has been a legal way to earn income since the very founding of the United States,” Fight for Freelancers argued.

“If this legislation passes as-is, it will instead destroy my livelihood by making all my work contracts illegal,” Bonnie Kristian, a national journalist, wrote.

While the PRO Act would face congressional challenges, the Biden administration has been trying to use the Labor Department to create a backdoor assault on freelance workers by reclassifying the status of independent contractors under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

That’s where Julie Su will come in.

In California, Julie Su abused her power to terrorize small businesses and drive freelancers out of work, warning that she would be “doing investigations and audits. That will be on both wages and tax because AB 5 expands the ABC test that way. So we will be doing investigations and audits so that those who want to comply with the need to reclassify can do so and those who don’t will understand that’s not the kind of economy we want in California. So we can issue citations and demand both wages and taxes and other kinds of penalties.”

Su also made the ultimate agenda of mandatory unionization behind the freelance worker ban clear by claiming that “there are some workers who have been excluded from federal protections and California has a really unique opportunity to bring them into the fold and think about ensuring that they have true union protection working side by side with labor and businesses who are interested in doing that.”

Su’s message was the familiar one of mobsters arriving on the doorsteps of small businesses and warning them that unless they hire their approved workers, bad things will happen.

“When we talk about creating a voice for workers, that it’s really a voice premised on union — like a genuine right to a union on the job. If we can accomplish something, it will set a model for the country,” she emphasized. That’s why she’s been chosen to head the Labor Department.

Under Su, the Labor Department will move forward with forcibly reclassifying freelance workers while auditing and fining anyone who resists. This campaign of terror that began in California will go nationwide. Independent truckers will go out of business leading to further grocery shortages and a collapsing supply chain. Countless other professions will also fall apart.

Julie Su has used California’s Labor Department to oversee both unprecedented corruption and abuses, with billions in pandemic payments made to criminals and scammers while people starved, and she has destroyed the economic security and livelihoods of the state’s workers.

In 2021, the Senate voted to confirm Julie Su by a narrow 50-47 margin. Sens Manchin and Sinema both voted in favor. This time around will be the acid test. The economic survival of freelance workers and small businesses will hinge on the votes of Manchin and Sinema.

Manchin and Sinema have claimed that they reject the radical socialism enacted by the Biden administration. Sinema now claims to be an independent while Manchin has been backing away from his Democrat party status. The vote to confirm a leader in the war on freelance workers and small businesses will show whether they stand with American workers or their oppressors.

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.

Key West Celebrates “Hemingway Days”— but Omits His Communist/KGB Credentials

Humberto Fontova Jul 23, 2022

“The annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest began in Key West on Thursday, marking the 123rd anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s July 21 birth,” reports the AP. “Hemingway Days continues through Sunday with events including an offbeat “Running of the Bulls” spoof and the Key West Marlin Tournament.”

Perhaps an “offbeat spoof” of torture and murder in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison would also be appropriate. 

Perhaps some of you weren’t aware that declassified Soviet documents proved that Ernest Hemingway officially signed up with the KGB’s precursor the NKVD as “Agent Argo” in 1941?

Yes, Ernest Hemingway voluntarily joined the most murderous organization in modern history—at precisely its most murderous phase.

OK. But don’t take it from me. After all I’m a “rabidly right-wing-Cuban exile-with-an-axe-to-grind!” Instead take it from the crypto-commie (but well-sourced) UK Guardian.     

According to KGB defector Alexander Vassiliev in a book published by Yale University Press (not exactly a branch of the John Birch Society), “the 42-year-old Hemingway was recruited (by the KGB) under the cover name “Argo” in 1941 and cooperated with Soviet agents whom he met in Havana and London.”

Turns out that Papa failed pathetically at his KGB assignment. But hey, it’s the thought that counts!  And the thought was to be a member of the most murderous organization in modern history during its most murderous phase. (Stalin’s NKVD under Lavrenti Beria.) A singular honor, surely! 

Contrary to the Media-Academia fairy tale about mean ‘ole Uncle Sam pushing the benevolent Cuban revolution reluctantly into the arms of Mother Russia—Raul Castro and Che Guevara had a KGB handler as early as 1956. His name was Nikolai Leonev and until his recent death was often featured with Raul on Cuban media guffawing about the monkeys they made of our crackerjack CIA sleuths stationed in Cuba at the time. To wit: 

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel, 1958).

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s Caribbean Desk chief from 1957 to 1960).

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except [Republican] ambassador Earl Smith” (Robert Weicha, CIA operative in Santiago Cuba).

 “Without U.S. help Fidel Castro would never have gotten into power. The State Department played a large part in bringing Castro to power. The press, the Chief of the CIA Section are also responsible… we are responsible for bringing Castro in power. I do not care how you want to word it" (Earl T. Smith U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, 1957-59).

“Castro’s revolution is very pure and beautiful," gushed Hemingway in March, 1960. “I’m encouraged by it. The Cuban people now have a decent chance for the first time. The Cubans getting shot all deserve it.”

Quite fittingly, when Soviet diplomat Anastas Mikoyan finished his courtesy calls on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Havana in 1960—this long-time Stalin and Beria confidant made it a point to call on Ernest Hemingway. 

Hemingway knew full well what was going on behind the scenes of Castro and Che’s “pure and beautiful” revolution. Accounts of "Papa” Hemingway’s eager presence at many of the Katyn-like massacres of untried Cubans comes courtesy of Hemingway's own friend, the late George Plimpton (not exactly an “embittered right-wing Cuban exile!”) who worked as editor of the Paris Review, (not exactly a "McCarthyite scandal sheet.")

In 1958 George Plimpton interviewed Hemingway in Cuba for one of the Paris Review’s most famous pieces. They became friends and the following year Hemingway again invited Plimpton down to his Finca Vigia just outside Havana. James Scott Linville, an editor at The Paris Review during the 1990s, while relating how this high-brow publication passed on serializing the manuscript that became Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, reveals “Papa’s” unwitting role in the rejection.

“I took the paper-clipped excerpt upstairs to the Boss (Plimpton),” writes Linville, “and said I had something strange and good. As I started to tell him about it, his smile faded. I stopped my pitch and said, 'Boss, what's the matter?'"

"James, I'm sorry," Linville recalls Plimpton replying. A sad look came over him, and he said, "Years ago, after we'd done the interview, Papa invited me down again to Cuba. It was right after the revolution. “There's something you should see,” Hemingway told Plimpton while preparing a shaker of drinks for the outing.

“They got in the car with a few others and drove some way out of town,” continues Linville (who is recalling Plimpton’s account.) “They got out, set up chairs and took out the drinks, as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon, a truck arrived. This, explained George, was what they'd been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway knew the same time each day. It stopped and some men with guns got out of it. In the back were a couple of dozen others who were tied up. Prisoners. 

“The men with guns hustled the others out of the back of the truck, and lined them up. Then they shot them. They put the bodies back into the truck.”

And so it started. Within a few years 16,000 men and boys (some of them U.S. citizens) would fill mass graves after scenes like the ones that so charmed Papa Hemingway with his thermos of specially-prepared Daiquiris. The figure for the Castroite murder tally is not difficult to find. Simply open "The Black Book of Communism," written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither exactly an outpost of “embittered- right-wing Cuban-exiles-with an axe-to-grind!”)

“Pure and beautiful” indeed, Mr Hemingway.

(Reprehensible) Politician of the Year

December 22, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve written before that Connecticut should change its motto from the Nutmeg State to the Taxnut State.  And if you want an example, consider that Democrats in one town ran for reelection (successfully!) using the slogan “Lowest tax increase in 10 years."  Maybe there’s something in the water that produces terrible politicians. Consider, for instance, this bit of state-worship from one of the state’s Senators, Chris Murphy.

That’s a despicable sentiment, but Sen. Murphy may actually be decent and rational compared to Connecticut’s other Senator. Richard Blumenthal actually took part in an event with the Communist Party. I’m not joking. Click on Phil Kerpen’s tweet.

Some highlights of Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal and his introducer at the Connecticut People’s World Committee, an affiliate of Communist Party USA. pic.twitter.com/w5CvV7tGzy

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) December 15, 2021

At the risk of understatement, this is disgusting. Communism is responsible for 100 million deaths and mass impoverishment of hundreds of millions more. It spawned one of the world’s most evil nations, the Soviet Union, and it continues to produce misery today in barbaric regimes such as North Korea and Cuba.  I’m not the only one to be nauseated. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Quin Hillyer explains why Blumenthal’s participation should be viewed as unacceptable.

Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut spoke at a Dec. 11 awards ceremony for the Connecticut affiliate of Communist Party USA. …Blumenthal pronounced himself “really excited and honored to be with you today” while presenting the group’s chosen award winners with special certificates of recognition…

Throughout the event, including in the introduction of Blumenthal himself just 60 seconds before the senator took the microphone, the two co-hosts repeatedly celebrated their Communist Party affiliation and urged listeners to join the Communist Party. …In any rational, morally decent media world, this would be a big scandal. …

This is not some warm-and-fuzzy, well-intentioned (even if slightly impractical) affiliation. The Communist Party USA repeatedly tried to subvert constitutional democracy and spy on the U.S. government while deliberately and regularly colluding with the Soviet Union. …There is absolutely no moral difference between consorting with a Communist Party affiliate and consorting with a white supremacist or neo-Nazi one.

The record of international communist cruelty is indisputable, with its 100 million deaths far exceeding (in number) the genocidal effects of Nazism. …There is nothing remotely defensible in Blumenthal’s enthusiastic participation in the event. His actions were morally depraved.

Amen.

In the past, my “Politician of the Year” award has been somewhat satirical. I’ve highlighted politicians who are mostly guilty of stereotypical sins.

• Special privileges.
• Entitlement mentality.
• Impressive corruption.
• Uncharacteristic honesty.
• Taxpayer-funded vanity.

Senator Blumenthal belongs in a special category, one that merits disgust and disdain.

P.S. It’s quite likely that the Senator was a victim of bad staff work. Some aide or campaign flunky probably booked the event and didn’t conduct the 5 minutes of background work that would have been needed to find the red flags (no pun intended). That being said, he should have walked out of the event when the women who preceded him (and introduced him!) was pimping for the Communist Party.

He gave aid and comfort to an evil, repugnant, and despicable ideology.

Obama's Opiate

Written by Daniel Hannan, 11 December 2013

Last week (12/04), Mr. Obama confirmed the suspicion of many that he is indeed a Marxist by giving a speech claimingthat "income inequality" is, according to him, "the defining challenge of our time."  Yesterday (12/10), the Drudge Report headlined a speech given by David Simon, producer of the HBO show, The Wire, entitled "My Country Is A Horror Show." Marx was right about capitalism, according to Simon, which is why capitalist America is heartless and cruel and doesn't care about the poor.

Thus I was involved in a revealing exchange yesterday. Something I had tweeted about this prompted a series of responses along the lines of "Typical: like all capitalists, you don't like poor people."  I couldn't help tweeting back: "I love all these ‘capitalists don't like poor people' tweets. It's true: we want to turn them into rich people. It's socialists who need their client groups."….To Read More…..