2. Which one has done more to improve your life?

Thanks to Instapundit for drawing attention to this Substack post by James Pethokoukis.

https://fasterplease.substack.com/p/imagine-an-america-with-steep-billionaire

Inspired by President Biden and other Democrats demanding a steep tax on billionaires (some even claim there should be no such thing as a billionaire), Pethokoukis examines the question of which one has done more to improve your life: the government or private billionaires? You know what the government does with your money, and no matter how much they take, it’s never enough, hence the $32 trillion national debt. It keeps pouring ever-increasing amounts of money into outdated programs, whether they’re working or not.

On the other hand, billionaires have given us everything from smart phones to Pixar movies. One billionaire alone whom Democrats vilify and want to destroy – Elon Musk – started out by helping create PayPal and making banking and payments far easier, faster and more convenient. He took his profits from selling that and sunk them into creating Tesla, which started the electric vehicle revolution; and SpaceX, which revitalized the space industry, brought satellite Internet to the world, and even provided surveillance and communications that have enabled Ukraine to fight off Russia. Democrats may hate him for fouling up their censorship efforts by buying Twitter, but he’s singlehandedly restoring free speech and the First Amendment to the Internet.

Now, imagine what the government would have done with his money if they’d been allowed to take it all. All down ratholes to enrich cronies, buy votes and sustain the bureaucracy. It’s often said that the hallmark of Democrats is that they believe the government knows how to spend your money better than you do. Just compare how Musk spends his money to how Biden would spend it for ironclad proof of how wrong that is.

3. RMVE's

The FBI has rescinded an “intelligence report” by its Richmond field office that appeared to lump “traditional Catholics” into a group known as RMVE’s (Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists.)

https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/02/10/fbi-rescinds-intelligence-report-linking-traditionalist-catholics-with-violence-but-that-isnt-enough-n701825

The national FBI office claimed this was only meant to apply to Catholic off-shoot groups with extremist beliefs. But since it’s based on guidance from the Southern Poverty Law Center, that’s dubious. The SPLC is notorious for increasing its donations by smearing mainstream faith-based organizations that they disagree with as violent hate groups, like those dangerous Nazis at the Family Research Council.

The national office released a statement claiming the report had been removed from their databases and that “the FBI is committed to sound analytic tradecraft and to investigating and preventing acts of violence and other crimes while upholding the constitutional rights of all Americans and will never conduct investigative activities or open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”

I’d like to believe that, but in light of their recent behavior, I suspect that’s all a lot of weasel words that can be translated to “We got caught! Shred the evidence!”

4.This One Is Toooooo Cold!”

President Biden allowed millions of illegal migrants to enter Texas. Texas bused a few of them to New York City. They found that the place was full of drugs, crime and homeless people, and not a place to achieve the American dream. So the mayor of New York gave them bus tickets to Canada. But they arrived in Canada in February and not surprisingly, the Latin American migrants didn’t like the extreme cold and knee-deep snow, and now they want to leave Canada and head back south. That might be hard; I hear we still have a few guards on the Canadian border.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11733337/Migrants-bused-Canada-NYC-free-TURNING-getting-frustrated-weather.html

The illegal migrants might discover that Southern red states are the only places to live if you want to work hard and achieve the American Dream. Ironically, the same thing a lot of American citizens already figured out.

 5. Democrats spout same, lame talking point: “That’s just your opinion!”

If you’re a regular reader of this newsletter, you know how much we respect law professor Jonathan Turley, who testified at Thursday’s “Weaponization of Government” House committee. He calls them as he sees them, not as a partisan advocate on either side would, and these days it’s hard to find anyone who has both the will and the skill for that.

During Thursday’s hearing, Florida Congresswoman and former DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz tried to challenge Turley’s credibility as a witness...

DWS: “So essentially, your responses to the questions here today were your own opinion and pure conjecture.”

JT: “No, I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I try to base them on what we know from the ‘Twitter Files’---

DWS: “---But you said that you don’t have any specific or unique knowledge of Twitter, but you spoke as if you did. You were asked very specific questions about the way Twitter functions and the decision-making that they make, but yet you don’t have any unique or special knowledge about Twitter and have never worked for them, and so this is only just your opinion, would you say, as a Twitter account user?”

JT: “No, I come to give legal analysis based on facts that are in the public domain, and I was really referring to what, I was asked---”

DWS: “---Legal analysis is another word for opinion.”

Turley appeared Friday night with HANNITY guest host Pete Hegseth to comment on this exchange. He said it was clear that none of the Democrats in the hearing wanted to talk about the subject of the hearing, which was the censorship program the FBI helped direct. “We have proof,” he said, “that the United States government sent lists of names of citizens and postings that they wanted to be censored. And so the Democrats did not want to talk about that, so they attacked the witnesses.”

“I got off light,” he said, noting that former Sen. Claire McCaskill, appearing on MSNBC, accused three members of the committee of being ‘Russian sympathizers’ and one of being ‘a Putin lover.’” (Note: this return to “Russia Russia Russia!!,” which Turley calls “Red Scare 2.0,” seems like the ultimate mark of desperation. How many times are they going to go to that dry well?)

“It’s trying to get people not to look over here by saying there’s a Russian over there,” Turley said.

He thought the approach was “otherworldly.” “The question to me,” he said, “was, what did these Twitter files say about ‘censorship by surrogate,’ which is what I was testifying on, and what I talk about in case law. Those are Twitter files. Twitter has confirmed the authenticity of those files.” The question to him had been, what does this evidence say about censorship?

He said that to imply he couldn’t testify about this unless he had worked at Twitter was like saying he couldn’t testify about the Pentagon Papers unless he’d worked at the Pentagon.

He found it “sad” that Democrats, who used to fight for civil liberties such as free speech as “the very touchstone of what the party meant,” didn’t seem concerned about these very serious allegations. In fact, the calls for censorship are coming FROM them. He noted that “at least 80 different employees” (!) of the U.S. government may have been participating in this censorship scheme, when the government is not supposed to censor. “It got so intense that Twitter employees complained about it.” We would add that their complaints led to them being paid $3.5 million in federal funds for all that extra work!

“We should be concerned about our government in the business of silencing citizens,” Turley said. “But there was not even a peep of objection coming from the Democrats. And I must tell you, I was surprised.”

He noted that polls show the American people are concerned with the FBI’s involvement in political activities, and also censorship. “But suddenly the Democratic Party has become this anti-free speech party.” He’s openly dismayed by this because he grew up in a family of Democrats. “I don’t know what happened to my party,” he said.

I wouldn’t want to put words in Prof. Turley’s mouth, but he sounds like a lot of people who say they didn’t leave the Democrat Party --- the Democrat Party left them.

Here’s Turley on “FOX & Friends” from Friday morning, saying it was “completely absurd” to say he didn’t know what had gone on at Twitter because he’d never worked there. “The whole premise of my testimony,” he said, “was that Twitter has now authenticated and confirmed these facts.”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/turley-fires-back-democrat-attacking-credibility-house-hearing-completely-absurd

The Democrats’ argument that witnesses appearing before this committee are just giving their “opinion” must’ve gone out in a memo to all their media friends, CNN included. “Hopefully,” Jake Tapper said, the GOP will be able to “produce some evidence” on allegations that the federal government is being “weaponized” against conservatives. What?

Here’s the exchange between Tapper and CNN reporter Sara Murray. “What we heard were a lot of their personal grievances,” she said dismissively. “...A lot of what we heard were personal opinions, not so much evidence to back up Jordan’s claim.” Never mind that the committee came to these hearings already armed with the evidence.

https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/09/jake-tapper-jim-jordan-cnn-weaponization-subcommittee

What more do they need? It reminds us once again of that scene in THE MAN WITH TWO BRAINS, in which Steve Martin asks for one little sign, just any kind of sign…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkcKQmr7kRc

This article from THE DEFENDER provides a good summary of Thursday’s testimony. If you weren’t able to watch, I hope you’ll read it, especially the summary of testimony from former FBI agents Thomas Baker and Nicole Parker. (They were on the same panel with Turley, whose testimony is also summarized.) Both ex-agents expressed disillusionment with the change in culture at the FBI.

“Culture is where it starts,” Baker testified. “This widespread deleterious behavior over the past several years describes a culture --- not just the work of a few ‘bad apples.’” Of course, Democrats will immediately discount that as simply his opinion, though it’s based on what he has seen after 33 years in the FBI.

Parker, who worked for the FBI for 12 years, said that “the FBI’s trajectory transformed...the Bureau’s mission remained the same, but its priorities and governing principles shifted dramatically. The FBI became politically weaponized, starting from the top in Washington and trickling down to the field offices.”

“It’s as if there became two FBIs,” she said. “Americans see this and it is destroying the Bureau’s credibility.” Again, that’s her opinion --- mine as well --- but it’s based on evidence and firsthand knowledge. And when the Democrats try to blow it off, their credibility is right down there with the FBI’s.

(By the way, former Florida AG Pam Bondi spoke glowingly of former agent Parker on Friday: “I worked hand-in-hand with her on the Parkland shootings. She’s one of the best, brightest, most compassionate agents I’ve ever worked with...and the FBI, they’ve LOST HER. She resigned because of the weaponization of the FBI, and that’s going to keep happening...until the entire Department of Justice is held accountable.”)

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/weaponization-federal-government-hearing/

This account from JUST THE NEWS highlights additional moments from both Wednesday and Thursday…

https://justthenews.com/government/congress/two-fbis-whistleblowers-accuse-dc-hq-trampling-constitution-field-offices

Committee member Anna Paulina Luna, a freshman congresswoman from Florida, gave Twitter executives the what-for as they sat at the witness table, pelting them with yes-or-no questions. When they hesitated to answer, she answered for them and pointed to the evidence of secret back-door communications, through a private Cloud server, with a government agency. What Twitter did is “highly illegal,” this firebrand said. “You were all engaged in this action, and I want you to know you will be all held accountable.”

https://rumble.com/v291z50-joint-state-actors-this-is-highly-illegal-anna-paulina-luna-bodyslams-ex-tw.html

Naturally, the WASHINGTON POST has done a hit piece on her. They tried their best (worst?) to take her down, but Jennifer Oliver O’Connell at REDSTATE responded by taking THEM down, showing WAPO’s piece for the pathetic hackery it is.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2023/02/10/the-takedown-of-anna-paulina-luna-is-not-going-as-planned-n701703

And now, WAPO is taking it back…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/02/11/wapo-hit-piece-on-anna-paulina-luna-completely-falls-apart-corrections-made-n702051

6. "Cancel This"

After becoming a victim of cancel culture and losing the hit ABC show she created over one politically-incorrect tweet sent when she was on Ambien, Roseanne Barr is returning to stand-up comedy next week with a Fox Nation special called “Cancel This!”

https://www.foxnews.com/media/roseanne-barr-returns-standup-going-more-offensive-weve-ever-been-before

At the link, she talks to Tucker Carlson about the insidious effects of woke censorship on comedy, and how people whose careers she made turned their backs on her. I noticed that ABC refused to accept her apology while giving dozens of “second chances” to liberals like Alec Baldwin who behaved much worse, I suspect because they weren’t Trump supporters like Roseanne.

I’m glad to see that the tyranny and fear of the cancel culture mob is finally crumbling. I’m also proud to note that when everyone else was knuckling under to them and boycotting Roseanne, we defied them by booking her as a guest on “Huckabee” on TBN three years ago. Here’s a reminder of that memorable night:

https://youtu.be/kof1Vt2SzGs

I JUST WANTED TO SAY: