Biden family = 'The Sopranos'

Want to understand Joe Biden and his family? Just watch 'The Sopranos'

Tony Soprano and his fictional family would be very proud of the Bidens, their real-life Delaware copycats

Newt Gingrich, Foxnews 

Biden’s problems will only get bigger

Finding Biden’s classified documents is the beginning of the unraveling of his criminal family operation.

Watching HBO’s "the Sopranos" can really help you understand the Biden family. 

Between Hunter Biden’s laptop scandal, and the Bidens’ various shady private-equity schemes with foreign fraudsters, it’s not too hard to make the analogy.

President Joe Biden is clearly the head of a family. He has repeatedly exploited his public offices to make money. His son, Hunter Biden, is like the ambitious-but-dull son who wants to inherit the family business but always screws up. 

Some of what the Bidens have done is clearly inappropriate. Even more of what they have done is an abuse of public office. Most of what they have done is simply secret.

The best example of Bidens’ manipulation of the system for profit surrounds the Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. The center has given the Bidens remarkable access to Chinese Communist Party money. According to reports in the New York Post, the university, "raked in a total of $54.6 million from 2014 through June 2019 in donations from China, including $23.1 million in anonymous gifts starting in 2016."

As the paper reported, about $15.8 in anonymous Chinese gifts came after the Biden Center was announced in 2017. As soon as Biden left the White House as vice president, he was tapped to lead the center and given a professorship. Shortly after the center fully opened, another $14.5 million in anonymous Chinese gifts were delivered in May 2018. 

In another report about this flood of money, The Free Beacon said $61 million in Chinese donations went to the university from 2017 to 2020.

The numbers vary because there is virtually no public accountability or transparency about the money trail. It’s a given that Chinese sources aren’t going to share any information. And the University of Pennsylvania is simply refusing to obey the law and report the foreign donations.

I worked with the Trump administration’s Department of Education on this for several years, and we simply could not get the University of Pennsylvania to open its books and explain where all the Chinese money was coming from. 

Consider that now-Secretary of State Antony Blinken was the manager of the Penn Biden Center. Several other Biden team members were paid by the University of Pennsylvania in the period between Joe Biden’s vice presidency and presidency. 

Meanwhile, in apparent appreciation for setting him up at the center, Joe Biden appointed former University President Amy Gutmann to be U.S. Ambassador to Germany. Similarly, David Cohen, the former chairman of the university’s board of trustees, is now the U.S. Ambassador to Canada.

As Jonathan Turley wrote for the New York Post, the Biden family corruption is exceptional – even for Washington: "Even in a city where influence-peddling is a virtual cottage industry, the Bidens took the corrupt practice to a truly Olympian level," he said.

Turley asserted that the traditional news media, for some reason, is still bending over backwards to protect the Bidens. The elite media spent months pretending that the laptop fiasco was Russian propaganda. They have repeatedly parroted Joe Biden’s claim that he doesn’t know anything about Hunter Biden’s business dealings. But it’s all not true. As Turley pointed out: 

"Dozens of emails, pictures and witness accounts prove the president was not just aware but a possible beneficiary of this corruption. His personal interactions with his son’s business associates include at least 19 visits to the White House by Hunter’s partner, Eric Schwerin, alone from 2009 to 2015, when Biden was vice president.

"Emails on Hunter’s laptop make repeated reference to not only Joe’s knowledge but efforts to hide his involvement. … Emails used code names for Joe Biden such as ‘Celtic’ or ‘the big guy.’ In one, ‘the big guy’ is mentioned as possibly receiving a 10% cut on a deal with a Chinese energy firm. There are also references to Hunter paying off his father’s bills from shared accounts.

"Code names, cuts for ‘the big guy’ and millions in mysterious foreign transactions would ordinarily send the media into a frenzy."

As Turley lays it out, the elite legacy media has become Biden’s – and the larger Democrat Party’s – de facto state media.

The Sopranos would be proud of their Delaware copycats. The Biden family is an influence-peddling center of corruption worthy of HBO fantasy. Unfortunately for America, it isn’t fiction.

Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999 and a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. He is chairman of Gingrich 360. 

Biden pushing trans indoctrination with kids

This is partially what I was talking about the other night at our January LCMB meeting… our kid’s education!

I seldom agree with Bill Maher, but here I do… ‘Dems and allies have completely lost control’ 

Bill Maher says Biden administration 'all in' on pushing trans indoctrination with kids

HBO host says Democrats 'have to answer for' how they 'completely lost control' over schools

Joseph A. Wulfsohn | Fox News. 

"Real Time" host Bill Maher took Democrats to task on the 21st season premiere of his HBO show over how they have "completely lost control" over schools across the nation.

"I thought a great subject to talk about would be schools, because they're in the news a lot," Maher began the panel discussion on Friday. "We live in a prison yard in this country, which is everything is tribal. And like anything that has to do with schools or education is something really the Democrats have to answer for because they control it. I mean, when you look at the Democratic Convention, it's like three-quarters of them are teachers. My sister's a teacher. I'm a big defender of teachers, but what's going on in schools is outrageous, and somebody needs to answer for it."

Maher highlighted a recent incident in Virginia where a six-year-old brought his mother's gun to school and shot his teacher and how the school librarian told the press how "routine" teachers, students and other staff are assaulted. 

"How did we completely lose control?" Maher asked. "How could any kid learn in this atmosphere when you can't even survive? And these are all schools. This is not just inner-city schools. I hear this anecdotally from people. We've completely lost control of our schools."

The HBO star suggested it's the parents who are ultimately the "problem" with how children behave in school but "no one wants to go after" them since they're voters. 

Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., shared how she was labeled a "bad mom" by her kids for taking away their iPhones and called on children to be off of social media, namely TikTok, since it's "literally ruining our kids' brains."

"One thing we used to tell kids was that there is someone in authority. And at some point, you have to take note of that person in authority," Substack writer Andrew Sullivan said. 

"Children who are taught there's no such thing as authority, the most important thing is expressing yourself at all times, are never held responsible for anything or constantly being excused for everything, they're gonna end up this way. They need direction. People need authority."

"Especially kids!" Maher exclaimed. 

"Why does a four-year-old come in, instead of teaching them the colors, you're telling them, ‘Pick your pronoun’? Where on earth did that come from? And who told us it was going to be imposed on children?" Sullivan asked. "More and more, when you look at this curriculum, it's all about that stuff. It's all about identity, it's all about being queer or trans. Children can't understand that stuff, not in kindergarten."

"And you say that as a queer," Maher pointed out with a chuckle.

"I don't want to teach five-year-olds about being gay. I think wait a little bit, and they'll pick it up anyway. It's not like they can't watch the TV," Sullivan quipped. 

He added, "They're not telling them that, they're telling them something worse. They're telling that people can choose to be a boy or a girl or neither or both or something else entirely. That is a lie. You can't. And it's done in order to placate certain special interests in Washington, mainly the LGBTQIA+ people who've also been captured by the far left. We should say no to this."

"I just don't understand why this is the hill the Democratic Party wants to die on," Maher said. 

"Because they're too scared. Both parties are too scared," Sullivan responded. "They're bullied by the extreme right, they're bullied by the extreme left, and no one has the balls to say no."

Maher said this argument isn't "anti-trans" and that "most people" who agree are "liberal people" who accept the trans community, but also stressed that actually being trans is "rare."

"We all seem to have to pretend that we're born- I don't know, jump ball," Maher joked. "It's just bulls---. It's just bulls---."

After the panel blasted how kids are being encouraged to "identify as a tree" and being taught that "boys can menstruate" and that "girls can have penises," Sullivan took aim at the younger generation, who claim he's a hater for opposing the woke ideology. 

"It sometimes gets to me when the younger ones tell me that I'm the dinosaur. Do you know what we of our generation went through as gay men or women? Do you know what we really did?… Do you know the actual oppression of dying in the streets, of dying of AIDS, of fighting for basic civil rights and how they turn around and tell us you are an old has-been, you need to just go away, and not only that you hate trans people. ‘F--- you’ is what I'd say," Sullivan said. 

"But I'm tired of it. I'm tired of it. And the way they can't debate you. They say immediately you hate people. I don't hate people. I would cherish a trans kid. I just don't want a little gay kid to be told suddenly he might be a girl inside. I don't want kids who are not able to make these kinds of decisions decide to have medication, medicalization, sterilization, drugs before they even hit puberty. It's just wrong."

Mace shared how parents back in her state of South Carolina were "bragging" that their kids started transition at ages four-six and pointed to the case of Chloe Cole, the teenage girl who at 15 had her breasts removed because she thought she had gender dysphoria and at 16 realized she made a mistake. 

"And I think the Biden administration is all-in on that," Maher reacted. 

Sullivan pointed out that European countries are more restrictive when it comes to allowing minors to transition and that even the legacy media like The New York Times has expressed skepticism over whether children should receive medical treatment, yet the Biden administration will say "this is essential."

"I don't think Biden is behind this, but he's certainly controlled by people who are," Sullivan added. 

"Well, medical schools are behind this actually," Mace said. "We read stories. They're training these medical students to say that puberty blockers are reversible." 

"And that's, and this is coming from the ‘We're the science people,'" Maher mocked the left. 

Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.

10.9 Million 2022 Midterm Mail-In Ballots ‘Unaccounted For’

 

Have to ask! What could or has gone wrong?

Election Integrity Watchdog Finds 10.9 Million 2022 Midterm Mail-In Ballots ‘Unaccounted For’ in California

'Mail voting practices have an insurmountable information gap'

Rit6a Li, Epoch Times

An election integrity group said 10.9 million out of a total 22.1 million ballots that had been mailed out to registered voters during the 2022 midterm elections went “unaccounted for,” according to a Jan. 18 report.

“Mail voting practices have an insurmountable information gap,” the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) said on Monday. “The public cannot know how many ballots were disregarded, delivered to wrong mailboxes, or even withheld from the proper recipient by someone at the same address.”

The watchdog released the two-page report (pdf) detailing what it called “the failures” of California’s first mass-mail balloting election following the passage of Assembly Bill 37 (AB 37), which requires that ballots automatically be mailed to all active registered voters statewide. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September 2021, makes vote-by-mail ballots, a practice implemented in the 2020 general election in conjunction with the COVID-19 pandemic, permanent for all elections.

California has more registered voters than any other state. Yet its vote-by-mail policies—among the nation’s most expansive—have resulted in large numbers of ballots “disappearing at poll closing time,” PILF’s data show.

“After accounting for polling place votes and rejected ballots in November 2022, there were more than 10 million ballots left outstanding, meaning election officials do not know what happened to them,” reads the Wednesday report.

“It is fair to assume that the bulk of these were ignored or ultimately thrown out by the intended recipients. But, under mass-mail elections, we can only assume what happened,” it continued.

Besides the almost half unaccounted-for mail ballots, data show that 9.8 million were accepted, over 120,000 were rejected, and 1.4 million were counted from in-person voting centers.

The Golden State, which has been a Democratic stronghold for over two decades, mailed out more than 22.1 million ballots to its registered voters—nearly 47 percent Democrats and 24 percent Republicans—during the 2022 elections. A GOP victory in California on Nov. 16 granted the party slim control of the U.S. House.

Mail-In Ballot Rejects

PILF, after finding that election officials in California had rejected 226,250 mail-in ballots during the 2022 primary and general elections, argued that the switch to mail balloting has taken away voters’ rights.

According to the report, the state would reject mail ballots primarily for nine reasons, including mismatched or missing signatures, and double voting when a registrant casts a vote both in-person and by-mail, which took place 813 times in the past midterms.

The most common reason, which researchers said is “endemic to mail voting,” turned out to be late-arriving ballots—taking up 48 percent of all rejects during the 2022 elections, finding show.

Every registered voter in California should receive a ballot in the mail a month prior to Election Day. All ballots returned by mail must be postmarked by Nov. 8 to be counted, and received within seven days by county election officials, who would then verify the signatures on the return envelopes and process ballots through their vote tallying system.

“In the November contests, more than 57,000 ballots arrived after November 15, setting them up for rejection,” PILF stated.

“The official datasets do not differentiate between ballots postmarked too late or delivered too late. The U.S. Postal Service also touts its 2022 performance by claiming that 99 percent of mail ballots were delivered nationally within 3 days to officials for counting once in their custody,” the repost reads, noting that the Post Office sets the success rate at 94 percent for timely delivery of political mail.

“So the failure to deliver ballots on time is not surprising.”

PILF President J. Christian Adams agrees that mail-in ballots can “disenfranchise” voters.

“There are many reasons mail ballots fail ultimately to count. No one casting a ballot at home can correct an error before it’s too late,” the chairman said. “California’s vote-by-mail demonstration should serve as a warning to state legislators elsewhere.”

Mail-in ballots may still be counted when a postmark is missing or illegible, but it depends on the circumstances. Under the new legislation, Californians can also bring ballots to a polling place in person or drop them in an official ballot box, if they wish.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the California secretary of state’s office and Newsom’s office for comment.

Rita Li is a reporter with The Epoch Times, focusing on U.S. and China-related topics. She began writing for the Chinese-language edition in 2018.

A Plan for Rescuing America

First, let's throw out some trash...

A Plan for Rescuing America

Jack Gleason, American Thinker 

Americans who have taken off their blinders now realize that our country is systematically being disassembled from the inside.

Our laws, our morals, our views about life, family and justice, have been under assault for the last 40 years. Our basic freedoms of speech and religion are almost gone along with the right to bear arms.

The institutions that we trusted and relied on to keep us safe have been corrupted. A majority of the press, the media, corporations, doctors, scientists, our education system, and social media now actively work against the best interests of the United States.

Our justice system has been so compromised that a citizen can be given solitary confinement for two years for the political equivalent of jay-walking — without a trial - and a violent criminal with a mile-long rap sheet who attempts murder on a senior citizen is released by a Soros-controlled prosecutor within hours.

No longer can an ordinary American, no matter where they came from, get ahead simply through hard work. Owning a house is now out of reach, under-measured inflation means that saving money for the future is an illusion, investing money in the stock market is a losing game for the average citizen while congressional insiders benefit from every upward and downward swing.

Our dollar is purposely weakened through insane spending bills slid through Congress at the 11th hour containing hidden provisions that weaken our voting laws. Anyone who voted for the recent 4,000-page bill has pinned a badge on themselves as being an anti-American member of the OmniParty.

We think of the competition between the two political parties as a balance of power. Conservatives look at African-Americans and shake their heads, wondering how they could be so blinded to the deception of the Democrat leadership that has ruined the inner cities - while still demanding their votes. Wake up Conservatives, the GOP sees us as just as gullible — they pretend to care about America, but whenever they can, they cave to the Democrats.

There is no two-party system — we are a government of the Elites, by the Elites and for the Elites. Oppose them and you will be destroyed.

Worst of all, we've lost our right to vote to change the system peacefully from the inside.

Their goal is to make patriotic Americans feel hopeless and intimidated, "resistance is futile." America is the ultimate prize and the only obstacle to total world control.

But the truth is that they can only win if we let them.

So what can one person do?

First, realize that you are far from alone. Even liberal polls say over 70% of Americans know that the last two elections were corrupt.

Second, know that we are not helpless, we are Americans, freedom is baked into our DNA. Other countries have histories of tyrants, dictators, czars and kings. We rose out of rebellion to tyranny and have fought it successfully for the last 250 years. Patriots voluntarily join the military and law enforcement in order to serve and protect. Even if they are no longer in service, they're still around.

Third, understand that technology, even though the Elites try to control it, is more powerful than we can imagine. Everyone now has a video camera on their phone and can upload what they see to uncensored video websites (Rumble.com and BitChute.com), which can be picked up by uncensored news websites (American Thinker, American Greatness, Canada Free Press, Washington Examiner, and The Gateway Pundit), and shared through uncensored communications (ProtonMail.com).

Elon Musk, no matter how you feel about him, has given us a platform to use to communicate with each other on a mass level. Use it.

Fourth, nothing beats person-to-person communication. Quietly thanking police officers or military members for their service, a few words at the grocery line about insane prices, a comment in church about political immorality, shows we're not alone and there is hope. Find ways to share this article and others like it that show how to take our country back.

Fifth, the riches of America that the OmniParty tries to control is another key to their weakness. Americans spend trillions of dollars a year on the very institutions that have abandoned us. Turn off Fox News, which is a shell of its former self, spend your money on local and American businesses, even if it costs a few pennies more, take your kids out of liberal colleges, never give another cent to the GOP, instead support Conservative candidates directly.

Finally, get involved politically on the local level. Become a poll worker. Join the GOP and lobby for conservative principles from within, run for school board. Vote for conservatives in local elections — especially for sheriff.

Where should we focus right now?

Our first action is to get the right leader in the House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy is a RINO in sheep's clothing tainted by contributions from FTX. He's suddenly become a staunch Conservative making all sorts of promises, but he hates Trump and worked overtime to undercut MAGA candidates, even when it meant the "Red Wave" became a red trickle.

If he is elected Speaker he'll pretend to be Conservative, but there will always be excuses why he can't fix anything. There will be a vote on January 3rd, and there are five brave congressmen (and seven more) who oppose him and want Andy Biggs as an alternative. Biggs has promised real investigations into all levels of OmniParty corruption.

Even if we get new leadership in the House, there is little we can do legislatively other than to slow down spending, although the Omnibus Spending Bill has tied our hands. But controlling the House has one huge advantage, we would have subpoena power to hold hearings on every issue that is threatening our country. "Sunlight is the great disinfectant" and we need a nationwide solar collector.

The January 6 hearings are the prototype. Each committee in the house can begin investigations and have preliminary hearings on:

COVID and how the science and medical establishment lied.

The FBI and the DOJ conspiracy to suppress free speech on social media.

The pork and hidden voting changes inside the latest Omnibus spending bill.

Inner city crime and how Soros prosecutors have allowed criminals to go free.

The truth about the J6 hearings and how scores of Americans are rotting in prison with no civil rights.

Election fraud, including voting machine vulnerabilities, voter roll inaccuracies, and mail in ballot laws.

Our education system and how they abuse their power to influence our children.

Corporations and investments being pressured to use ESG rules to weaken America.

Insider trading for congress and their staffs.

Each can culminate with a well-organized public hearing where testimony is heard for all Americans to see. Since the media won't cover it, patriots can load the hearings onto Rumble and BitChute and share via email and twitter.

Imagine if there was a new hearing from a different committee every few days. When you turn on the lights, roaches run for a place to hide.

If we can't get back control of the GOP, everyone says that a third party will only be a spoiler. That's right, properly organized, a new Conservative Party would turn the GOP into politics' new CNN — irrelevant. The alliance of independents and conservatives voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, and can strengthen America for the next 50 years.

Jack Gleason is a conservative political writer.  For reprint requests on other websites, inside information for important issues, article requests, or comments, contact him at jackgleason9@protonmail.com.  Recent articles: https://canadafreepress.com/members/1/JackGleason/1249 and https://www.americanthinker.com/author/jackgleason. 

Biden’s Church Of Diversity

 

Biden’s Commitment To The Church Of Diversity Has Saddled Us With Inept, Unqualified Officials

Deroy Murdock, Daily Caller 

Washington’s two biggest stories last week — are beyond embarrassing. President Joe Biden’s widespread abuse of government secrets and the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) first grounding of domestic flights in 21 years illustrate the perils of identity politics at America’s commanding heights.

The White House confessed that Biden’s lawyers discovered unsecured top-secret documents in at least three places: A closet at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, a reputed think tank; the library of Biden’s Delaware mansion, and — the finest comedy writers could not concoct this — inside that home’s garage, beside Biden’s little green Corvette.

Team Biden wants Americans to believe that sensitive documents about Iran, Ukraine and the United Kingdom were all perfectly secure, perhaps nestled between the snow tires and cans of brake fluid.

Facing the toughest questions ever posed to her from non-Fox News journalists, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre withered worse than usual. She evaded and dodged virtually every query on Garagegate.

KJP asserted that Biden “takes classified documents and information very seriously…very seriously…very seriously…” Like a Stepford Wife with a fried circuit board, KJP invoked the “very seriously” defense 15 times during Thursday afternoon’s press briefing. Millions of Americans buckled in derisive laughter.

The Sideshow Bob lookalike’s performance was the most pathetic since Team Nixon created the “modified limited hangout” to drown inconvenient truths about Watergate in clouds of squid ink.

In another humiliation, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg flailed as a faulty line of code in an FAA program forced a nationwide aviation ground stop on Wednesday morning. The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, struggled to explain what went awry and, of course, took no responsibility for this colossal failure.

He should have apologized for wasting his department’s time and the American taxpayers’ dollars to battle “racist roads” and neuter the FAA’s traditional pilot advisory from “Notice to Airmen” to “Notice to Air Missions.”

God knows, the real risk to the flying public was the gender-biased title of an oft-updated FAA safety report.

Now that the testosterone has been squeezed from these announcements — at long last! — passengers can jet across America with no worry greater than whether the stewards and stewardesses will offer Pinot Noir or merely Cabernet Sauvignon.

All seriousness aside, critics “relentlessly mocked” the Alfred E. Newman doppelganger for the airline ground stop, the latest float in Buttigieg’s slow parade of epic fails.

“Pete Buttigieg couldn’t organize a one-car funeral,” Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton laughed via Twitter. “He was never remotely qualified for this role.”

“All flights in America are grounded because of an FAA computer error,” Texas Republican Congressman Troy Nehls observed via Twitter. “Is Pete Buttigieg on vacation again?”

Buttigieg cemented his reputation for sloth when he took a one-month paternity break in August 2021, amid that year’s supply-chain meltdown. Also, last Sept. 1, while a national rail strike loomed, Buttigieg posted a video on Twitter that appeared to show him at a U.S. airport. In fact, he was vacationing in Portugal.

Aside from these matching, hers and his, high-profile belly flops, what else do these two have in common?

KJP and Buttigieg won Left-wing plaudits as key diversity hires in an Administration that just can’t get enough identity politics. Jean-Pierre was cheered from the White House podium as the first black, openly gay person to serve as top presidential mouthpiece.

Likewise, Democrats waved their pom poms for Buttigieg, supposedly, America’s first self-proclaimed gay Cabinet secretary. Republicans quickly exposed this resume inflation: President Donald J. Trump’s Acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell already earned this distinction. Naturally, the Left could not grant the evil “DonaldTrump” credit for making such a groundbreaking appointment.

After this pesky fact was shot and buried, the Left’s hosannas for Buttigieg roared ahead. Buttigieg “shattered a centuries-old political barrier with overwhelming bipartisan support, and that paves the way for more LGBTQ Americans to pursue high-profile appointments,” one former official crowed like a cock.

Not so fast.

Last week’s events, and how these two mishandled them, sloppily delineated the deep-seated problem with identity politics. KJP’s and Buttigieg’s obvious ineptness instantly repeated this question: “Are they in their posts thanks to their talents or merely to help Biden check off a few political boxes and please multiple factions of his base?”

If KJP and Buttigieg each were doing a heckuva job, no one would care about these factors.

But the blazing haplessness of these duds could impede qualified gay Americans who merely wish to be hired for their superior job records — wherever they might sit astride the gender and sexuality rainbow.

Team Biden values demographics above ability.

It officially ballyhooed Alejandro Mayorkas as “the first Latino and immigrant confirmed to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security.” He relentlessly lies that “the border is closed,” even under oath before Congress.

Perjury charges, anyone?

Mayorkas also slandered perfectly innocent mounted Border Patrol agents. He falsely accused these federal officers of using their horses’ stirrups to flog Haitian illegal aliens as they invaded America via the Rio Grande. Although this was thoroughly debunked, Mayorkas kept defaming and disciplining these officials. Despite this malfeasance, the oh-so diverse Mayorkas continues his reign of error at DHS.

Biden personally pledged to nominate America’s first black female to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill Justice Stephen Breyer’s vacated seat. Biden kept his word and named Ketanji Brown Jackson to the post.

This perhaps unfairly led critics to question whether KBJ were prepared for that role (her far-Left jurisprudence notwithstanding) or if she merely filled another politically priceless niche.

In a March 2020 Democrat presidential primary debate, Biden publicly declared that he “would pick a woman to be my vice president.” All hail Biden’s spare: Kamala Harris.

Biden’s communion in the Church of Diversity is reflected across his administration.

By contrast, President Trump largely avoided identity politics. He named John Ullyot as Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs in March 2017 and appointed him chief spokesman for the National Security Council in October 2019.

Trump never mentioned that he made Ullyot, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, one of the highest-ranking gay officials in history — Republican or Democrat. Trump just called Ullyot the best qualified candidate for the job.

And, even when the Washington Post’s three-time plagiarist Lisa Rein cooked up a phony controversy over the VA’s response to the August 2017 Charlottesville race riot, Trump never tried to refute this disinformation by deploying Ullyot’s status as the VA’s highest-ever-ranked gay appointee.

Biden and his team disserve so many of his appointees by stressing their identities over their abilities. This too often raises the question: Can these people do their jobs, or are they here just to be “firsts.”

Biden’s shopworn identity card wounds Karine Jean-Pierre and Pete Buttigieg by unmasking them as demographic giants and managerial midgets.

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

Is the Deep State Coming After Joe Biden?

 

Is the Deep State Coming After Joe Biden?

Josh Hammer, Jewish World Review

The second half of Joe Biden's presidential term has officially gotten off to an ignominious start.

Earlier in the week, CBS News first broke the story that Biden had been storing classified documents, taken from his previous stint as vice president to Barack Obama, at the Chinese-funded Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement "think tank." Those classified documents were first identified by Biden's personal attorneys, CBS reported, on Nov. 2 — a full six days before the midterm elections. Richard Sauber, Biden's special counsel, claimed that the White House counsel's office quickly notified the National Archives, which seized the documents posthaste.

That alone would be bad enough for a president who utterly excoriated former President Donald Trump in the aftermath of last August's unprecedented predawn FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's palatial Palm Beach estate, due to Trump's own classified document retention scandal. Biden openly wondered to CBS' "60 Minutes" news program weeks after the FBI raid "how anyone could be that irresponsible."

The galling hypocrisy from the Penn Biden Center incident would have been bad enough. But then, Joe Biden's week got even worse.

Adding insult to injury, on Thursday two separate tranches of additional classified documents from the Obama-Biden administration were found in Biden's Wilmington, Delaware, personal home. All but one of the documents was found in a storage space in Biden's garage. That garage was "locked," the president quickly pointed out in a flippant attempt at de-escalation, and also housed his prized Corvette. One other classified document was found strewn about elsewhere in the house, outside the garage.

Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the news with the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Biden's misdeeds. Garland, of course, had done the same for Trump almost two months prior, on Nov. 18. At least from Garland's perspective, it seems both men are "irresponsible" enough and present sufficiently politically delicate positions so as to require a special counsel.

But obvious similarities — hence, Biden's egregious hypocrisy stemming from his earlier attempt to seize a moral high ground — in these situations aside, there are some crucial differences. Those differences do not reflect well on the current White House occupant.

By far the most important difference is the constitutional distinction in the statuses of the two men at the center of this two-pronged saga: Donald Trump was president of the United States, while Joe Biden was merely vice president of the United States during the time that he absconded with classified documents.

That distinction may not seem like a big deal, but from a constitutional perspective, it makes all the difference in the world. The president of the United States alone is vested by Article II of the U.S. Constitution with the "executive Power" of the national government. This prosaic textual truism forms the crux of what constitutional lawyers — who, being lawyers, make things seem more complicated than they really are — refer to as "unitary executive theory." The vice president of the United States, in fact, possesses no more "executive Power" than does a Cabinet official, a White House janitor, or even a reader of this column.

The upshot is that, as this column argued after August's Mar-a-Lago raid, "Trump had unilateral, plenary authority to declassify any document that he wanted to declassify — period." Biden possessed no such similar power (he does now, as president). Furthermore, as the same August column argued, "all ex-presidents receive various taxpayer-funded accoutrements, among them a staff with security clearances and secure facilities (SCIFs) for the maintenance of classified records." Biden, as an ex-vice president and not an ex-president, had no such niceties; he merely had a garage with a lock secure enough for his Corvette. What's more, the Presidential Records Act also permits departing presidents to take personal copies of any of their records; the statute affords no such similar protection for departing vice presidents.

From a legal perspective, we will see where freshly minted special counsel Robert Hur goes with his investigation. And from a political perspective, the Biden administration's astounding hypocrisy on this matter will surely face a blowback.

But perhaps the most pressing question is: Why? Why was there a leak to CBS News just now, over two months after Biden attorneys discovered the first tranche of classified documents deep in the bowels of a Penn Biden Center office? Why has there been such a slow, drip-drip, dramatic leaking and reporting of various classified document tranches throughout this whole week?

It is thoroughly unsurprising that the federal law enforcement apparatus and the corporate media buried the news of Biden's malfeasance on the precipice of the midterm elections. The "Democrat-Media Complex," as the late Andrew Breitbart called it, demands nothing less than such complicity.

But the timing of the leak from various federal law enforcement actors now, just as Biden is beginning his second term, suggests there is real internal turmoil over at the Democratic National Committee. Perhaps someone at the DNC instructed deep state spooks that now would be a particularly propitious time to leak sordid details to the media. Perhaps someone at the DNC thought that Joe Biden did his job by shepherding his party through the midterms without succumbing to the much-feared "red wave," but that he is now disposable and should be replaced at the ballot in 2024 by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA). Loath though I am to speculate, it is difficult to think of a sounder explanation as to why, only now, all of this is coming out.

There are many, many open questions here. Here's hoping Special Counsel Hur can provide some answers.

Ashli Babbitt Shooter

 

Ashli Babbitt Shooter

Thousands of Taxpayer Dollars Were Spent to House Ashli Babbitt Shooter and His Pet for Several Months in ‘Distinguished Visitor Suite’ at Joint Base Andrews

Tom Fitton, Judicial Watch 

The shooting death of Ashli Babbitt is discussed frequently by the corrupt liberal media and their allies in Congress. So, it is up to Judicial Watch to uncover the full truth about the ONLY homicide tied to the January 6 disturbance.

We just received 31 pages of documents from the Department of the Air Force that show U.S. Capitol Police Lieutenant Michael Byrd was housed at taxpayer expense at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland after he shot and killed U.S. Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Judicial Watch obtained the records in response to a September 2022 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after Joint Base Andrews, the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, and the FBI failed to respond to three July 2022 FOIA requests about Byrd’s housing at Joint Base Andrews while his name as the shooter of Ashli Babbitt was being withheld from the public by the government (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Justice (No. 1:22-cv-02948)).

In our complaint, we explained to the court that we had asked all three government agencies for all records relating to the billeting of Byrd at Joint Base Andrews during the period from January 6, 2021, to July 2022, including authorization papers, housing, meals, transportation, and visitor logs.

The documents show that Lieutenant Byrd and a pet stayed in a “Distinguished Visitor Suite” at the “Presidential Inn” (part of Air Force Inns) under a “Capitol Police Presidential Inn Reservation” for the period July 8, 2021, through January 28, 2022.

A representative at Joint Base Andrews informed us that a “Distinguished Visitor Suite” is typically reserved for officers at the rank of O-7 (Brigadier General or higher.).

An August 2021 email from the assistant hotel manager indicates that the U.S. Capitol Police had been paying Byrd’s bills by phone “every 10 days.”

In an email thread beginning in November 2021, an accounting officer from the U.S. Capitol Police asks the Presidential Inn’s assistant lodging manager to provide detailed invoices reflecting all of the charges incurred by Lt. Byrd while staying at the Inn, in an email titled “Reservation Information-USCP [US Capitol Police] guest.” The manager then provides “folios” for Byrd’s reservation at the Inn from July 8 through November 11, 2021. When asked to explain pricing changes for Byrd’s lodging, the hotel manager explains that higher rates were due in part to the fact that Byrd moved from a “Temporary Lodging Facility” into a “Distinguished Visitors Suite.”

The records and an email dated November 15, 2021, indicate the cost of Lt. Byrd’s lodging fluctuated: from $161 in July 2021, to $158 for August 2021, to $184 for September 2021, to $185 for October 2021, and to $165 for November 2021.

On February 7, 2022, the U.S. Capitol Police again asked the hotel manager for detailed invoices for Byrd’s stay. The manager confirmed that Byrd checked out on January 28, 2022, and that there were “sundry items that were used in the room that were not paid for before the guest left.

The email appears to confirm that the Capitol Police were covering the cost of Byrd’s stay at the Presidential Inn, when a Capitol Police accounting officer tried to clarify Byrd’s hotel bill, asking the hotel manager, “So the hotel is charging USCP for the room and pet fee for January 28-30, or not?”

These extraordinary revelations forced out by our FOIA lawsuit show Defense Department facilities were used to provide long-term housing for the Capitol Hill police officer who shot and killed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt.

In June 2022, we produced DOJ records related to the shooting of Babbitt that included a memo recommending “that the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia decline for criminal prosecution the fatal shooting of Ashli McEntee [Babbitt],” also noting that the shooter, Byrd, “did not create a police report or documents” related to the shooting of Babbitt. A footnote details missing evidence: “During the debrief of Lieutenant Byrd, he did recall writing a few sentences on an evidence bag the evening of January 6, 2021, at the request of a crime scene officer. To date, the bag has not been located by USCP or MPD.”

In November 2021, we received multiple audio, visual and photo records from the DC Metropolitan Police Department about the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt on January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol Building. The records include a cell phone video of the shooting. An audio file of a police interview of the shooter, Byrd, indicates he declined to cooperate.

We previously uncovered records from the DC Metropolitan Police showing that officers reported they didn’t see a weapon in Babbitt’s hand before Byrd shot her and that Byrd was visibly distraught afterward. One officer attested that he didn’t recall hearing any verbal commands before Byrd shot Babbitt. The records include internal communications about Byrd’s case and a crime scene examination report. Investigators who wrote the January 6, 2021, Metro PD Death Report for Babbitt (identified as Ashli Elizabeth McEntee-Babbitt Pamatian) note that the possible Manner of Death was “Homicide (Police Involved Shooting).”

We are engaged in a comprehensive, independent investigation into the January 6 disturbance:

• February 2022: we filed an opposition to the U.S. Capitol Police’s (USCP) effort to shut down our federal lawsuit for January 6 videos and emails. Through its police department, Congress argues that the videos and emails are not public records, there is no public interest in their release, and that “sovereign immunity” prevents citizens from suing for their release.

• In November 2021: Judicial Watch – in its FOIA lawsuit asking for records of communication between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and several financial institutions about the reported transfer of financial transaction records of people in DC, Maryland and Virginia on January 5 and January 6, 2021 – told a federal court that the FBI may have violated law in its January 6 probes.

Our investigations and litigation are far from complete, so be sure to check back here often for updates.

Great Reset Redux, Uh Oh!

 

Herr Soros hands us our future Globalist vision...

Great Reset Redux: WEF Prepares Robust Globalist Agenda for Davos 2023

Simon Kent, Breitbart 

Banking, finance, cryptocurrencies, climate, racism, artificial intelligence, workplace robotics, global governance, and cybercrime. Are there any issues the unelected, private club that is the World Economic Forum (WEF) can’t tackle on behalf of the serfs?

Clearly not.

When the preening elites fly in to Davos, Switzerland, a week tomorrow expect to see – and hear – about all those topics and more as the WEF seeks to “address the state of the world and discuss priorities for the year ahead.”

Following its foundation in 1971 by German engineer and academic Klaus Schwab, the WEF has met annually to tackle what it sees as the issues of the day and deliver guidance to invited members and guests, and through them influence the world at large.

John Kerry link...

In 1973, the annual meeting endorsed the Davos Manifesto, a “code of ethics for business leaders” which was updated in 2020 to set out the purpose of business in the Fourth Industrial Revolution – itself a concept coined by Schwab in his 2016 book.

This year’s meeting will be no different. It is headlined  “Cooperation in a Fragmented World”  and will follow on from the Great Reset as declared at the Davos summit of 2021.

In the run-up to the 2023 event, Schwab announced last November that Communist China will likely serve as a “role model” for many countries as the global community embarks upon a “systemic transformation of the world,” as Breitbart News reported.

In an interview with the Chinese state-run television network CGTN, Schwab heaped praise on the Communist government in Beijing for being a leading figure in his vision of the aforementioned Great Reset of capitalism to usher in the “world of tomorrow.”

A visit to the WEF’s own previews shows just what is going to be tackled at the luxurious ski resort in a few weeks time, what command and control mechanisms are possible to align the world with WEF objectives, and what has come before.

“Global rules to crack down on cybercrime” is one issue already addressed by the WEF. It has published a paper with that title, looking at how criminals use the online world to fleece innocents of their money.

A “major structural change to the internet” is just one simple solution the WEF points to, adding “We urgently need international rules that are enforced as well as a more expansive approach that fosters cyber resilience.”

Ditto the inherent racism the WEF sees in healthcare, declaring it “can cause avoidable disease and premature death among groups of already disadvantaged people.”

The future course of business is also addressed against a background of Schwab’s previous praise of WEF members as representing the very best of humanity, endowed with the collective means “to change the world.”:(Video found on Breitbart link)

A new WEF paper enthuses that online “bots” can take many of the jobs humans undertake in the workplace today while working alongside them.

It sets out we will all be happier working with robots, alleging:

Digital workers are intelligent software bots that automate everyday business processes like data entry, invoicing, or system queries.

They will take over many repetitive and mundane tasks, creating new opportunities for businesses and workers.

People aren’t just more productive when they work with digital workers; they are also happier.

Just what the future holds for cryptocurrencies is another issue that consumes the WEF.

The organization has a paper on that, announcing “We could now see the handover of crypto technology and blockchain infrastructure to more regulated and established institutions.”

It concludes: “Cryptography and blockchains will continue to be integral parts of the modern economic toolkit, despite the great harm these tools may have caused when wielded by the wrong people.”

The paper does not set out just who “the wrong people” are, although the WEF has previously known just who to groom to help disseminate its message:

WEF video... 

The WEF Annual Meeting for 2023 runs from January 16 to January 20 in the luxury ski resort town of Davos, Switzerland.  Some 2,500 representatives of national governments, businesses and civil society will fly in from around the world to attend.

The “Speaker’s Fight” Was A Modern-day Civics Lesson

 

The “Speaker’s Fight” Was A Modern-day Civics Lesson

Joe Sullivan, LCMB President

Friends…

What took place over the past 5 days in the US House of Representatives was a CELEBRATION OF DEMOCRACY and nothing less!

After YEARS of Democrat controlled lock-step tyranny under Nancy Pelosi and her cadre of socialist drones, many Americans may have forgotten that the government’s business is supposed to be an exercise in seeking COMPROMISE and CONSENSUS…

There really is no matter that comes before Congress where some Representatives will see it as being disadvantageous to their home folks.  In these cases, we expect our Representatives to seek “change” in the legislation to make the law less problematic for their constituents.  Sometimes they win, sometimes they don’t…

SEEKING TO AMMEND (Change) pending legislation is the very definition of “representative government”…  What has been happening in the House of Representatives and the Senate in recent years is legislation being “slammed-thru” by tyrannical leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Charles Schumer is what happens under the “tyranny of the majority”.  This happened where a heavy-handed numerical majority - driven by leadership hell-bent on “winning at any cost” - trampled under any effort by Pelosi’s own caucus to moderate arch-liberal legislation.  Consequently, there are no “moderate Democrats” in Congress anymore.

BY CONTRAST - What just happened in the contest to elect a Republican Speaker of the House is an example of what is SUPPOSED to happen where a relative small - but SIGNIFICANT minority of Representatives held-out against about 200 of their fellow Republicans in order to gain “concessions” from Kevin McCarthy…

Please don’t believe anybody who tells you that this “fight” weakens the Republican Party or Speaker McCarthy’s future leadership…  This result is EXACTLY WHAT OUR REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY IS REALLY ALL ABOUT!

Now that this chapter is over, JUST WATCH WHAT HAPPENS FROM NOW ON IN CONTRAST TO WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING UNDER THE DE FACTO “SOCIALISTS”!

God Bless America…. DEO VINDICI…

Real Facts vs Misleading Statistics

 

Let's Base Policy on Real Facts, Not Misleading Statistics

Michael Barone, Jewish World Review

(Quintile: any of five equal groups into which a population can be divided according to the distribution of values of a particular variable.)

From all those lists of best books of 2022, here's one with the potential to change public policy debate and discourse for the better. It's "The Myth of American Inequality," and the three authors are two Ph.D. economists, former Sen. Phil Gramm and his long-ago Texas A&M colleague Robert Ekelund, and former Bureau of Labor Statistics assistant commissioner John Early. Their subject is government statistics — and how they present a misleading picture of recent economic history.

And the authors' conclusion is that long-standing complaints about the American economy — that the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer, that we declared war on poverty and poverty won — are wrong.

How can that be?

The first reason is that Census Bureau statistics on income, on which just about everyone relies, do not include two-thirds of government transfer payments. That made sense in 1947, when Census started reporting the number, and most transfer programs — food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, the child tax credit — didn't exist.

But today they do, and the bottom two quintiles on the income scale (each quintile is one-fifth of households) get 59% and 24% of their incomes from government transfers.

Second, Census income statistics don't account for taxes people pay. Since the United States has the most progressive national tax system of any advanced economy — because other advanced countries rely heavily on flat rate value-added taxes — the bottom two quintiles of Americans essentially pay no income tax, while the top quintile provides 83% of federal income tax revenue.

When we take government transfers and taxes into account, as "Myth" does, then the "government takes and redistributes enough resources to elevate the average bottom quintile household into the American middle class." The bottom three quintiles have incomes that are not that far apart, and the second-highest quintile is not all that far ahead of them.

In dollar terms, the lowest three quintiles post-transfer and -tax incomes range from (rounded off) $50,000 to $66,000, the second quintile is at $88,000, and the top quintile is at $197,000. That's far more equal than the difference in earned income between the lowest quintile ($5,000, since half don't have jobs) and the top quintile ($297,000).

So the ratio of top quintile to bottom quintile incomes from the Census Bureau's 16 to 1 decreases to Gramm, Ekelund and Early's 4 to 1.

And the poverty rate, which government statistics peg at 12%, is only 2% when you cover government transfers. Many of these are people who "lack the basic mental and physical capabilities to care for themselves and their children" and need not income but "specifically tailored programs to address their specific needs."

The authors also expose another myth, the idea that Americans' incomes have been stagnant over the past two generations. The reason again is misleading government statistics — inflation indexes, especially the oft-quoted CPI-U, that consistently overstate inflation and thus understate real economic growth.

These inflation indexes tend to assume static market baskets of goods and often fail to account for new products and quality improvements. In real life, when apples become too expensive, consumers switch to oranges. And how do you measure the worth of medical care innovations or the capabilities of the latest cellphones?

The argument against adjusting government statistics is that it risks political tampering, which U.S. statistical agencies are proud of having resisted. But using other government statistics to supplement familiar indexes, as "Myth" does to account for government transfers and taxes, is fair game.

If you do that to the average hourly earnings for production and nonsupervisory employees - a statistic that critics seize on to depict a static economy - then "real average hourly earnings would have risen 74% over the last fifty years rather than the official reported number of 8.7%."

Policy implications? One is that we already have plenty of economic redistribution, and maybe too much. Additional spending, such as the Biden COVID package, can cause inflation and encourage idleness. Advocates of universal basic incomes today, like John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s, imagined that people freed from the drudgery of jobs would read great books and enjoy classical music.

Instead, we see jobless men engrossed in video games or mainlining opioids, resulting in reduced life expectancy, family formation and community involvement.

To reverse such trends, Gramm, Ekelund and Early recommend work requirements similar to those in 1990s welfare reforms that increased work effort, earned incomes and family stability. Would there be a backlash for withdrawing such benefits? The lack of blowback from the phasing out of the Biden child tax credit suggests not.

Other suggestions include eliminating unneeded occupational licensing requirements and more school choice, already popular and needed more than ever to repair the damage to disadvantaged children from teacher union-forced public school lockdowns.

There's room here for debate — and debate conducted based on real facts, not misleading statistics — to which "The Myth of American Inequality" makes a useful contribution.

The coup we never knew

The coup we never knew

Victor Davis Hanson, Jewish World Review 

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America's wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?

Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas – furious over a court decision on abortion? How could these mobs so easily throng our justices' homes, with placards declaring "Off with their d—s"?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?

How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?

When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it legal suddenly for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?

Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women ever asked to redefine the very sports they had championed?

When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during a quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?

Since when did the people decide that 70 percent of voters would not cast their ballots on Election Day? Was this revolutionary change the subject of a national debate, a heated congressional session, or the votes of dozens of state legislatures?

What happened to Election Night returns? Did the fact that Americans created more electronic ballots and computerized tallies make it take so much longer to tabulate the votes?

When did the nation abruptly decide that theft is not a crime, assault not a felony? How can thieves walk out with bags of stolen goods, without the wrath of angry shoppers, much less fear of the law?

Was there ever a national debate about the terrified flight from Afghanistan? Who planned it and why?

What happened to the once trusted FBI? Why almost overnight did its directors decide to mislead Congress, to deceive judges with concocted tales from fake dossiers and with doctored writs? Did Congress pass a law that our federal leaders in the FBI or CIA could lie with impunity under oath?

Who redefined our military and with whose consent? Who proclaimed that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could call his Chinese Communist counterpart to warn him that America's president was supposedly unstable? Was it always true that retired generals routinely libeled their commander-in-chief as a near Nazi, a Mussolini, an adherent of the tools of Auschwitz?

Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? Whose idea was it to reboot racial segregation and bias as "theme houses," "safe spaces," and "diversity"? How did that happen in America?

How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob of us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

 

Return of the Babyface

Return of the Babyface

Donald A Jaffa

Our Christmas present this year was on the OPED pages of the LA Times, wherein Adam Schiff crossed the tee and dotted the Eye, but without the Panache of the Tuba player, at the end of Script Ohio. That fellow always merits a round of applause, especially if it is at the annual Michigan-OSU game for the Division Big Ten Championship.  OSU has been beaten by Michigan these last two years, but a possible nose to nose re-confrontation ended when both were eliminated in the CFP semi-finals.  His theory is that the referral to the DOJ and the decision of the Attorney General, will result in a (Finally!!!!) prosecution of Donald J Trump, and hopefully result in his going to jail instead of running against Biden in 2024. Adam Schiff hasn’t a clue as to what is coming in the future.   

A recent biography of Samuel Adams (yeah the one the craft brewery is named after!) delights us with the careful and calculated effort to slowly turn the Crown Colonies from subservience into a nation subject no sovereign authority. When the Royal Governor of Massachusetts was recalled in ignominy, Boston celebrated, and shortly thereafter celebrated the first anniversary of self-imposed non-purchase of British manufactured and taxed goods. It was celebrated with a noon to dusk pig-roast and a total of 15 early and 45 later toasts, and when ended, the carriage line was a mile and a half long returning to Boston.  

Now more than 15 years ago, the first criticism of Donald J Trump by Rosie O’Donnell, was emulated by a plump impersonator who climbed into the ring to berate the crowd with O’Donnell’s misogynistic rants. A Trump impersonator appeared, climbed into the ring, and knocked the O’Donnell onto the mat. The crowd went wild with enthusiasm. The little IDEA light went on in Vince McMahan’s brain so he called Donald J Trump to arrange the so called ‘Battle of the Billionaires!’  

With Trump notoriously vain about his hair, McMahan made the bet that the Loser would have his head shaved a ringside in full view of the entire arena. At the time the most vicious of Vince’s Samoan wrestlers was ‘Umaga,’ who used the Somoan Spike to paralyze using a stab at the throat. Umaga was bad boy who was undefeated. Trump either recruited or was provided Bobby Lashly: a one time Army Sergeant who was a maniacal body builder and became a Hercules.  The match lasted 33 minutes and Lashly pinned Umaga. McMahan was held fast in a barber’s chair already at ring side, and the crowd roared as he was covered in shaving foam and electric razors removed the hair from his head.  

On this New Year’s Eve, the 20th year of ‘Baby Face’ John Cena’s wrestling in the WWE was celebrated with the current generation of the Somoan Wrestling stable. They are all related to the previous generation, so they parade into and out of the wrestling ring as ‘The Bloodline.’ 

Some wrestlers were noted for their non verbal skills, such as the Undertaker’s sitting up straight in the middle of the ring, or in a coffin. But the Maestro in the ring, with verbal skills, was ‘Baby Face’ John Cena. His first WWE match was with Olympic Gold Medal Wrestler, Kurt Angle, who asked the ‘Baby Face’ why he thought he could wrestle an Olympic Gold Medal wrestler. Cena smiled, and replied “Unbridled Aggression,” and proceeded to demolish Angle.  

Cena mastered every variation of buffo performance in the center of the ring, from Hip Hop to whatever the writers in weekly scripting could come up with. For the next eighteen months there would be nothing sweeter than to see John Cena do the warm up every two weeks for Candidate Trump. Any venue would have every seat booked and filled, not just to see Trump, but to want to hear what John Cena would say and do in his warm up.  Not being a politician would enhance his respectability in any political arena, and his record in the ‘Make A Wish’ charity provides a credible barrier against any personal enmity on the political trail. 

Cena’s trademark admonitions to the crowd are what we need in the coming political debates, and in the speaking events: the proverbial ‘never give up,’ and the more provocative ‘You want some, come get some!’

For The FBI’s Problems, Look At The Leadership

 

For The FBI’s Problems, Look At The Leadership

Mark Verbräche, Daily Caller 

The release of the Twitter files has confirmed that the FBI and the intelligence community were collaborating with the social media titan on “content moderation” – or more precisely, censorship. Journalist Matt Taibbi sums it up: “Twitter’s contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive, as if it were a subsidiary.” Further, “Federal intelligence and law enforcement reach into Twitter included the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which partnered with security contractors and think tanks to pressure Twitter to moderate content.”

The FBI has established prudent and pragmatic relationships with private sector industries through the Bureau’s InfraGard program, “a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and members of the private sector for the protection of U.S. Critical Infrastructure.”

Along with the DHS, the FBI informs key sector organizations of emerging cyber, terror, espionage, physical, and other threats identified through the government’s intelligence collection activities. Likewise, private sector entities provide the FBI with tips, trends and anomalies within their operational space.

Government warnings are shared with critical infrastructure owners, operators, and stakeholders usually through unclassified reports and assessments broadly disseminated within the industry. This kind of prudent public/private engagement safeguards the nation’s essential functions.

However, the FBI would never clandestinely assume the role as a “Director of Operations” for private corporations to determine what products, services, or information are suitable for public consumption, until now. The Twitter files not only exposed the FBI’s role in killing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden story before an election, but also its contempt of Constitutional prohibitions on government suppression of First Amendment-protected speech.

Despite possessing Hunter Biden’s laptop since December 2019, the FBI convinced Twitter  through meetings with Twitter Head of Site Integrity Yoel Roth that the New York Post bombshell on Oct. 14, 2020, was Russian disinfo. However, according to Congressional whistleblowers, the FBI never even examined the Biden laptop until after the 2020 election.

Twitter’s strategic hire, former FBI General Counsel Jim Baker, added his support for Twitter’s suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop. As the FBI/Twitter mind meld neared completion, other content viewed as counter to the political objectives of the company, FBI and the Biden campaign, was also moderated away. Finally, a collective blackout by major media outlets refusing to cover or report on the Twitter file revelations.  Is there a pattern here.

Retired agents, like myself, have decades of experience and intimate knowledge of the FBI’s mission and traditions. In our day, agents never voiced political views in the office or on public forums because personal politics or ideology didn’t matter – only evidence. Being an FBI agent wasn’t just a career choice, but a lifestyle commitment. An agent’s integrity is everything.

Certain basic ground rules were universally observed. FBI agents didn’t “leak” to the media. They didn’t lie. The Justice Department issued statements. Before applying the FBI’s immense power and authority, agents had to certify that their investigative activity was pursuant to a violation of federal law — no fishing expeditions for potential violations. In short, we played by the rules. But that’s changed. Here are a few highlights:

An egocentric Deputy Director of the FBI leaks to the media, blames others, and lies to his own agents investigating it.

Bureau executives approve multiple FISA warrants, to investigate a presidential campaign, relying on the debunked Steele dossier and an FBI attorney’s false statement.

FBIHQ officials interview Trump’s National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn, about lawful conversations with a Russian official captured by the FBI. Flynn is charged with false statements.

A senior FBI official at the Washington DC field office posts hyper-partisan rants on social media which bear directly on “matters under the FBI’s purview.”

FBIHQ reportedly “suggested” to the agents who uncovered the damaging Hunter Biden material that their reporting “was at risk of disinformation.”

The FBI raided the homes of journalists to recover Ashley Biden’s diary. When did personal diaries become an FBI priority?

There’s more, but you get the idea.

As former agents, we recall how we applied for, and executed, search warrants, interviewed witnesses, surveilled targets, drafted FISA applications, conducted arrests, drafted 302’s, testified in Grand Jury and Court, and worked with our federal prosecutors. Investigations were run from local field offices, not FBI headquarters.

After 9/11, the FBI realigned its operations. Terrorism investigations were then micromanaged from FBIHQ, undercutting local field offices’ independence and agility. Feeding the (HQ) beast came at the cost of investigative focus.When briefing the chain of command, accuracy and nuance were lost. The command-and-control emanating from FBIHQ continues today with even more disastrous consequences.

In our efforts to understand the Bureau’s constant failures, we are confounded and troubled by the organization we believed in and dedicated much of our lives to. Even the current Director seems more like a passive spectator than a dynamic leader instituting corrective measures.

How can an organization with an international reputation for discipline and integrity become so inept and unbalanced? The FBI has cultivated a new generation of leaders – executive decision makers with a fundamentally skewed notion of the FBI’s role and mission. It has abandoned adherence to the rule of law and Bureau traditions, allowing itself and the organization to become an enforcement arm of the current administration. Their calling is far different from ours.

As divided as many are on the FBI’s conduct, threats of violence towards agents and other law enforcement officials are reckless and only encourage the unstable to act out. A healthy democracy allows for the legitimate questioning of our institutions and holds them accountable, not burn them down.

America needs a competent and trustworthy FBI that rigorously adheres to the core values it espouses, and backed by a Justice Department that applies the rule of law impartially, “without fear or favor.”

Fortunately, the foundational underpinnings of the FBI remain solid and intact. Each day, despite threats of violence and the profound disillusionment of the American people, FBI field agents quietly execute the Bureau’s mission with fidelity, bravery and integrity. Some agents have taken the courageous step of becoming Congressional whistleblowers, calling out those who have betrayed their oath and the American people. The leadership may be the problem, but don’t blame those who are trying to fix it.

Mark D. Ferbrache served as an FBI special agent for 27 years specializing in white-collar criminal investigations. He later worked in the bureau’s National Security Division and CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and held diplomatic assignments in Prague, London and Bucharest, as well as field office assignments in Seattle, New York and the FBI Headquarters in Washington. He is currently employed as a contractor in the U.S. intelligence community.