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Immediately after Monday’s brief speech, President Biden went back to his Camp David vacation, and the White House continued its silence. For those who wonder how the Administration can just shut down at such a time, conservative commentator Ian McKelvey believes that both the Afghan debacle and the silence are intentional.

https://twitter.com/ian_mckelvey/status/1427232830103371778/photo/1

McKelvey unearthed an article in The Atlantic magazine reporting that Biden had always been the strongest advocate in the Obama White House for pulling out of Afghanistan, regardless of the consequences for the Afghan people because he didn’t think there would be any political price to pay for it. Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, wrote in his diary in 2010 that when he reminded Biden of America’s obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied, “F--- that. We don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam; Nixon and Kissenger got away with it.”

So if he seems uncaring about the fate of the Afghan people who trusted us, he is. And if he refuses to talk to the media for a week or let anyone in his Administration talk, maybe it’s because he thinks that after a week of silence, the lapdog media will just let this story “blow over” and forget about it.

You know who won’t forget that we have a weak President who puts political calculations ahead of principle and commitment to our allies? Every enemy we have on Earth, starting with China, which claimed it shows that the US abandons its allies and pointedly asked, “Is this some kind of omen for Taiwan’s future fate?

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/afghanistan-withdrawal-china-taliban

No matter how we feel about social media or what our level of awareness is about how it operates, its algorithms still manage to shape our conversations, if only by inspiring us to find work-arounds against the political censorship we know is happening.

In time, it starts to become second nature to refrain from using “trigger words” and go only so far, not over the line on certain subjects, even if we have solid reasoning behind what we want to say. Over time, we start to build a lawyerly sense of where that line is. The distinctions can be very subtle. For example, a person comes to understand that it’s permissible to say there was some evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but not that there is evidence that Trump really won the election. That will be labeled by agenda-driven “fact”-checkers as “misinformation” and “conspiracy theory” and get that person suspended, demonetized, perhaps cast adrift to find an “alternative” platform.

To cite another example, for a long time, it was not permissible to say there was evidence that COVID-19 originated in a virology lab in Wuhan, China, where they were studying bat coronaviruses, rather than a nearby “wet market” as the CCP continued to insist. That would have been labeled by “fact”-checkers as “misinformation” and gotten a person similarly suspended, demonetized, etc.. If a person wanted to communicate candidly about this, it was necessary to find another platform, one with far less reach.

Oh, but then it turned out that this “misinformation” about the origin of the virus was most likely true.

Were the “fact”-checkers chastened by this turn of events? Did they say, “Oh, we’re so sorry! We realize the error of our ways and from now on will respect your free speech rights and leave you alone to present your own opinions and evidence, and just stay the heck out of it”? No, they went right on as they had. No apologies.

And the scrutiny never stopped. Over time, we of the conservative persuasion gradually learn to sense automatically when we need to pull back from what we wanted to say. If we’re still going to be on, for example, Twitter, we know this is what we have to do. It becomes an unconscious process.

And that’s exactly what Big Tech wants of us, especially if we are conservative. Their goal is for us to exercise self-censorship, as automatically as Winston Smith did in front of the telescreen. (I know, I apologize for yet another Orwell reference.) They’re training people to do it. It makes their job SO much easier.

Even some people on the left have figured this out, after becoming victims of the left's obsession with ideological purity and its inclination to eat its own. Glenn Greenwald and Naomi Wolfe are two who come to mind. And that’s what makes them worth reading. This link introduces you to Wolfe, if you don’t know her, and also provides links to various alternative social media platforms.

https://www.nationandstate.com/2021/07/30/naomi-wolf-on-censorship-vaccine-passports-and-the-reversal-of-my-body-my-choice-teaser/

All of the above is primarily to set the stage for a story in the WASHINGTON FREE BEACON about a function of social media that apparently is not being interfered with at all: organized Islamic terrorism. As this report says, Taliban leaders have had no problem spreading propaganda and establishing control over Kabul as they continued their takeover of Afghanistan. It was easy; they used Twitter. Also WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/taliban-leaders-used-twitter-and-whatsapp-to-help-capture-kabul/

While conservatives on social media were busy trying to find a way just to say what was on their minds, members of the Taliban were using it to pave their own way into Kabul after President Biden abruptly left it to them, boldly spreading lies to the citizens there to get them to give up with little resistance. As they entered the city, a Taliban spokesman tweeted out that the residents of Kabul were welcoming them in.

Their propaganda apparently even snowed observers in our own country and around the world. As Ned Price, our State Department spokesperson, shakily announced, the U.N. Security counsel issued a joint press statement calling for a new government that was “inclusive” and involved the “full and meaningful participation of women," as if that's going to happen. He went on to say that “the Council spoke with one voice, to underscore that Afghanistan must abide by its international obligations, including international humanitarian law for the safety and security of all Afghans and international citizens.” Also, pigs must fly.

I wonder what President Biden is going to do when the Taliban fail to follow instructions. Make them pay, after we just pulled out? After they've taken all the military equipment we just left there? Biden won't do anything. The Taliban knew Trump would've hit them hard, but, as with China regarding Taiwan, they don’t have to worry about him now.

But back to social media, and the role it plays here. As the FREE BEACON reports, the Taliban have been using WhatsApp and Twitter for years, to share their official statements. Now, they’re using these platforms to announce new rules to the people of Kabul. They even used WhatsApp to set up an emergency broadcast system. Isn’t technology wonderful?

Twitter and Facebook regularly ban ISIS from their platforms, but they appear to be letting the Taliban broadcast without incident. This is happening even though Twitter has a policy banning “hateful conduct” as well as “threatening or promoting terrorism.” The spokesperson who told this to the FREE BEACON did not say whether or not they consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization. A Facebook spokesperson weaseled out of a specific answer, saying that they take action against accounts belonged to “sanctioned” groups but refusing to comment on specific cases.

To quote the BEACON: “Several Taliban spokesmen have maintained Twitter accounts for years, regularly tweeting updates on negotiations and regional battles. The accounts often post photos and videos from frontlines, which are then copied and shared by pro-Taliban accounts.”

The ultimate irony: This is going on while former President Donald Trump continues to be banned by both Twitter and Facebook, who blame him for the unrest at the Capitol Building on January 6. The reason: “incitement to violence.”

History Made

August 17, 2021

The Biden Administration now has a humiliating, tragic, international disaster on its watch that will go down in history (if we still have any honest historians) alongside the Bay of Pigs, the fall of Saigon and the siege in Benghazi. If any book is written about Biden’s handling of this latest and most tragic of his string of disasters, it could easily be named “Profiles in Fecklessness.” Biden has ordered 5,000 US troops in to help evacuate people, and there are reports of attacks by US bombers, but not on the Taliban. They're blowing up our own military planes and other weapons that the Afghan forces abandoned before the Taliban can seize them.

Biden was on vacation at Camp David when Afghanistan began to fall apart, and his silence was deafening (even his spokesperson, Jen Psaki, is gone for the week.) Filling the void were replays of his now-notorious July 8th press conference in which he assured us his Afghanistan pullout would be orderly and it was unlikely the Taliban would come back. Other high Administration officials also assured us that a Taliban takeover could be repelled because it wasn’t the type of thing that could happen between a Frida and a Monday --- which is precisely what happened.

https://www.westernjournal.com/former-cia-officer-looks-back-bidens-july-speech-infamous-devastating-news-conference-us-president/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-lying-just-ignorant-said-asked-taliban-takeover/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Biden is facing heavy criticism from across the political spectrum in the US and internationally.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/biden-admin-faces-bipartisan-criticism-over-collapse-of-afghanistan_3949755.html

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/boris-johnson-blames-us-and-biden-for-afghanistan-collapse

Former President Trump called on Biden “to resign in disgrace for what he has allowed to happen to Afghanistan, along with the tremendous surge in COVID, the Border catastrophe, the destruction of energy independence, and our crippled economy.” There have also been calls for the resignations of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley for bungling Afghanistan while focusing on wokeness in the military, Trump’s nonexistent “coup” plot and Tucker Carlson. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was reduced to imploring the Taliban to act civilized, which is like begging a charging rhinoceros to behave itself and not trample you.

https://redstate.com/jerrywilson/2021/08/15/secretary-of-state-antony-blinken-embarrasses-us-in-front-of-the-taliban-again-n427090

In return, Biden tried to blame Trump for sticking him with the Afghanistan pullout decision, which I guess was the only Trump policy he thought was not reversible.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/08/16/no-biden-cant-blame-trump-for-the-afghanistan-withdrawal-disaster/

But while it would be easy and politically expedient (and not unfair) to blame Biden for this catastrophe, the truth is that the real failure here is of our “intelligence” agencies and the current military leadership. Trump also planned to remove troops from Afghanistan, and his plans also relied on the “intelligence” he was receiving about the relative strength of the Taliban (although I assume that unlike Biden, he would have paid attention to military leaders who’d actually been there.)

Those agencies were completely blindsided by the Taliban’s swift advance and by news that they already had shadow governments set up in various cities and were paying off officials to surrender. Any President’s decisions are only as sound as the “intelligence” he’s given, and both Trump and Biden were assured that the Afghan government was strong enough to hold and any assault would take months and could be repelled. They were devastatingly wrong on every count, and a lot of people should lose their jobs over it, not that anyone is ever held to account anymore.

Biden’s not responsible for the failure of intelligence, but he is responsible for being caught flatfooted and freezing when things began to spiral out of control.

Countless lives will be lost and innocent people tortured, raped and enslaved, and other nations will hesitate to trust us again, because our CIA and top military brass failed miserably. Maybe they were too preoccupied with trying to frame the last President and his associates, or focusing on the “real” threat to America (white supremacists), and couldn’t be bothered to notice what was happening in Afghanistan. In a better world, they’d be going to prison, but let’s hope and pray that the next Republican President – in 2024 – will at the very least issue a blizzard of pink slips to the FBI, CIA, NSA and Pentagon, and have these deadly incompetents and useless political operatives forcibly escorted off the premises.

Evil Triumphs

August 17, 2021

The horrific military and humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan is unfolding so rapidly that by the time you read this, it’s likely the situation will already have greatly changed. Simply having to write about it is one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do since getting into the media.

It sickens me to think of the magnitude of this disaster: the swift triumph of evil and the Taliban’s humiliating mocking of America as they seize our advanced weapons and vow to spread radical Islam worldwide from the Presidential palace on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11 (yes, the Taliban was speaking to the press while President Biden was hiding out)…

https://www.westernjournal.com/absolute-victory-taliban-boldly-proclaim-new-direction-islamic-law-will-come-not-just-afghanistan-world/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

…the pain that our soldiers who sacrificed so much to help the Afghan people must be feeling as they watch everything they fought for unravel within days; and most of all, the terror of the people of Afghanistan, especially those who helped and trusted us, abandoned to face the wrath of pitiless conquerors. Some were so desperate to escape, they tried to cling to the sides and landing gear of an American plane taking off from the Kabul airport. There were reports that at least three fell to their deaths.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/16/horror-at-the-kabul-airport-n427145

https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/live-updates-taliban-gain-more-ground-in-afghanistan-as-they-close-in-on-kabul

And of course, as the Taliban took control of Kabul, one of their first orders of business was to release imprisoned al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorists so they could go back to killing and enslaving innocent people.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/terror-on-the-rise-taliban-frees-thousands-of-prisoners-from-former-u-s-base

Afghanistan’s first female ambassador Roya Rahmani tried to reassure American soldiers that their sacrifices were not in vain. She told Fox News, “You made a huge difference…in lives of people you haven’t met and will never meet," reminding them that Afghan girls were once banned from going to school or leaving the house without a male escort. Sadly, I fear that will happen again.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/afghan-ambassador-roya-rahmani-veterans-devastated-taliban-insurgency

She also noted that 70% of the population is under 30 and has only known life under the protection of the US forces. That makes it even more tragic to think what might happen to them with the return of the brutal Taliban. It should send a chilling lesson to every over-privileged, Ivy League, America-hating socialist that if you tear down this country and its institutions that give you a level of freedom unprecedented in the history of the world, you may be shocked at how swiftly things can change for the worse. If you think you're "oppressed" in America, try Afghanistan under the Taliban. We already have China and Russia as threats, and now it appears we’re about to have a newly-empowered Taliban armed with our weapons. Do you still think Trump voters and the weather are our biggest worries?

As the Taliban zeroed in on Kabul, Afghanistan, in one of the most distressing examples of American military failure in our lifetimes, it was interesting to find out what the Department of Homeland Security is really concerned about.

It appears they’re worried about you and me.

On Saturday, conservative writer/news editor Jack Posobiec tweeted a screen shot of an NBC graphic that showed the DHS’s list of “Potential Terror Threats” in a “national terrorism alert” in advance of “the 9/11 20th anniversary.” Funny, this list of terror threats didn’t mention the Taliban or any other militant Islamists. Here’s what it listed as tip-offs that someone might pose a terrorist threat:

1. OPPOSITION TO COVID MEASURES

2. CLAIMS OF ELECTION FRAUD, BELIEF TRUMP CAN BE REINSTATED

3. 9/11 ANNIVERSARY AND RELIGIOUS HOLIDAYS

The DHS is warning of the danger posed by “grievance-based groups.” As reported in BREITBART NEWS, an ABC news bulletin said that DHS’s National Terrorism Advisory System bulletin, issued on Friday, warned of threats from common domestic terrorists --- individuals engaged in grievance-based violence, “including grievances over public health safety measures and perceived government restrictions.”

Wait a minute. “PERCEIVED” government restrictions? There have been some very real restrictions on personal behavior, but you’d better not chafe at them, even just a little bit. or the government might "perceive" you as a threat.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/08/14/dhs-labels-opponents-of-covid-measures-as-potential-terror-threats-during-protests/

Let’s take a look at just the first two of these bullet points. (NOTE: I'm prefacing the following analysis with a strong sarcasm alert.) First, “opposition to covid measures.” I assume this would include any such measures that the government chooses to impose or even talks about imposing, including lockdowns, restrictions on the size of gatherings, “vaccine passports,” and face masks. In Philadelphia, starting September 1, the city government will be requiring unvaccinated employees to wear TWO masks, a cloth one OVER a surgical one. I am not kidding. (I guess they should just be glad they aren’t getting fired; must be a contractual thing or you could safely bet they would be.) And new employees will have to show proof of being fully vaccinated as a condition of their employment. I assume that policy applies whether or not they’ve already had covid.

Here’s the report in the WASHINGTON EXAMINER. The city also announced that all Philadelphia health care workers and all university students, staff and faculty must be vaccinated by October 15.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/philadelphia-all-employees-vaccinated-two-masks

If you have a problem with such requirements, you just might be a POTENTIAL TERROR THREAT.

On Friday, flag-waving protesters showed up at the Washington State Capitol building for a protest against Democrat Gov. Jay Inslee’s forced vaccine mandate for local healthcare systems. Similar protests occurred in Kentucky and Tennessee, over both vaccine and mask mandates. “We want to have our own right and have our own decision...to wear a mask or not,” said one woman in Tennessee.

Well, I just don’t know about this lady --- she sounds pretty dangerous to me. And they were waving American flags, like those "insurrectionists" at the DC Capitol Building, so they must be hotheads. It’s a good thing Homeland Security is monitoring people like this woman who dare to question official mandates instead of just quietly falling into line.

And if you agree with her, you just might be a POTENTIAL TERROR THREAT.

Let’s move on to the second indication of potential threat: “claims of election fraud, belief Trump can be reinstated.” The HHS sees danger signs in “conspiracy theories on perceived election fraud.” (There’s that pesky word “PERCEIVED” again.)

Well, apparently “the MyPillow Guy,” Mike Lindell, is on HHS’s terror watch list. Don’t you feel safer knowing the Department of Homeland Security is keeping their eye on him, and people like him? I wonder if he gets subjected to enhanced security measures at the airport or perhaps is on the no-fly list. Come to think of it, he has his own plane. That might be the only way he can get around.

Recall that we were one of the few news/opinion sites that gave Lindell the time of day; we covered all three days of his conference as objectively as possible and kept an open mind about the evidence he presented. And there IS a lot of evidence suggestive of fraud. Though we never for one minute thought that Trump could be reinstalled as President –- the Constitution doesn’t provide for that –- we know there was fraud. Heck, there probably has been some amount of fraud in every big election since the Flintstones voted on stone tablets. This time, though, with all the mail-in balloting and rule changes (let alone any problems with the electronic voting), there was a lot. Did it change the outcome? We can’t say for sure, but as observant and thinking human beings we do have our doubts about how it turned out.

Uh-oh...we just might be a POTENTIAL TERROR THREAT!

As startling as it was to see this graphic, the Homeland Security's focus on those of its own citizens who dislike unproven and punishing covid restrictions and have doubts about the 2020 election is not new. In a DHS advisory about Domestic Violent Extremists (DVE’s) posted in January –- on the heels of the January 6 debacle at the Capitol Building –- they singled out “anger over COVID-19 restrictions” and “the 2020 election results” as motivating issues.

https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-january-27-2021

Ned Ryun, founder and CEO of American Majority, called this new DHS bulletin “a read-between-the-lines threat” on Tucker Carlson’s Monday show. He saw it as “targeting Americans for ‘wrongthink.’” He observed that “the elite deeply resent us questioning their narrative.” He personally has questions about the obstacles being placed in the way of election audits, for example, and also about the real covid mortality rates for younger people who don’t have a serious co-morbidity. Should he be considered a potential threat just for asking the questions? When you’re trying to make half the country be defined as domestic terrorists, he said, it “does not end well." They would understand this, "if they would actually study history, instead of gender studies...”

Uh-oh; he’s probably on the watch list, too. Rest assured that even at a time when Biden’s total debacle of a Presidency makes us weaker and more vulnerable to terrorist attacks --- REAL terrorist attacks --- the Department of Homeland Security is keeping us safe from the MyPillow Guy and plain-spoken conservatives like Ned Ryun. And you, and me. And about half the country, for one thing or another.

Last week, the Texas Supreme Court made news when it ruled that the nearly 60 Democrat state legislators who ran away to Washington, DC, to prevent the vote on a Texas election integrity bill could be civilly detained and returned to the Texas House chamber.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/texas-supreme-court-allows-for-arrest-of-democrats-who-dont-show-up-to-legislature

They lifted a district judge’s temporary protection order that had blocked the threat of arrest for those legislators. Not only had they been lying shamelessly about the bill, calling it “the voter suppression bill” and, of course, “Jim Crow” when it is nothing of the kind, but they were staying away from the Capitol so the Republicans wouldn’t have the requisite 51 Democrats for a quorum. The Court made it clear, however, that in evading their responsibility, they were in the wrong. Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said, “We look forward to the Supreme Court upholding the rule of law and stopping another stall tactic by the Texas Democrats.”

The Democrats had said that while they were in DC, they would be busy lobbying for federal election legislation. As we’ve discussed here, the Constitution clearly intends state legislatures to run elections, not the federal government. But since when have Democrats cared what the Constitution intended when that was at odds with what THEY intended?

Anyway, now to the breaking news, which again involves the Texas Supreme Court. On Sunday, they issued another ruling, this time regarding the ongoing power struggle between Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been fighting for personal choice in the response to COVID-19, and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins, who has taken just the opposite tack with his reimposition of compulsory mask-wearing in schools, government offices and indoor business locations. To cut to the chase, Abbott won this round.

https://trendingpolitics.com/breaking-texas-supreme-court-sides-with-gov-abbot-and-says-mask-mandates-illegal-knab/

I’ll walk you through the legal steps that led us here.

On July 29th, Gov. Abbott issued an executive order that “removed local authority over measures to lessen the severity of the pandemic,” effectively prohibiting local mask mandates throughout the state. Importantly, the ban didn’t prohibit anyone, anywhere in Texas, from wearing a mask if they preferred to; they just couldn’t be MADE to. Parents who wanted to mask-up their kids before sending them to school were perfectly free to do so.

Judge Jenkins, set on requiring masks for everyone, declared a “local emergency,” which he argued gave him the power to issue such a dictum. (You’d think everyone would see the problem with one person, a county judge, being able to hand himself the authority to exert that level of control on personal behavior.) He did this on the basis of a reported surge in covid cases and the threat of the new “Delta” variant, which, though apparently more contagious than the original covid, has not been shown to be more virulent.

On Friday, a decision by the 5th Court of Appeals allowed local officials such as Judge Jenkins to require masks in schools and indoor spaces, so Dallas businesses geared up to enforce mask-wearing with their customers, some of whom they knew would be angry about it. But what could they do? For your entertainment pleasure, here’s a portion of a message one exasperated Dallas business owner sent out to his clientele and posted on the door of his building...

“Dearest Clients:

"On Wednesday, August 11th 2021 at 2:11 PM, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued an executive order requiring all commercial businesses to develop and implement a health and safety policy. This policy must require at a minimum universal indoor masking for guests and employees alike. This notice will serve as [our] health and safety policy.

“In accordance with the above executive order, effective the moment we swing open our doors on Thursday, August 12th, all team members and clients will be required to wear a mask while inside the [building]. Don’t give us any sh** when you come in, don’t complain and don’t start trying to enlighten anyone about the risk/reward of wearing masks.

“We don’t care. We’re as sick of wearing and talking about them as you are. However, we have neither the time nor inclination to mount any kind of resistance.”

This message should give you some idea of how divided and on-edge the citizens of Dallas are about this issue. For many months, business owners bent over backwards to comply with lockdowns, “distancing” and mask-wearing. Many Americans lost their businesses, some for good. And after all that, after a year-and-a-half, when people seem to have pretty much come to terms with the risks and were starting to live their lives somewhat normally again, a local judge acts all by himself to slap them down once more.

There’s one big problem, though, with using covid infection rates to declare a state of “local emergency” in Dallas County. Judge Jenkins is also welcoming immigrants who cross illegally at the Texas-Mexico border, many infected with COVID and not being tested, let alone vaccinated, before they arrive in Dallas. They are being bused here from the Rio Grande Valley, and Jenkins apparently has no problem with the threat posed to public health by this.

It’s happening because the border city of Laredo, Texas, sued President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security in July in the Laredo Division of the Southern District Court of Texas for making them accommodate thousands of people crossing illegally in the Rio Grande Valley. Their city just wasn’t equipped to do this, they argued. So they reached a settlement with the DHS --- which I assume pleased Laredo but which involved busing the immigrants to Austin, Dallas and Houston instead! Buses reportedly arrive throughout the day now in Dallas, with no word on when this might ever stop.

https://myrgv.com/local-news/immigration/2021/08/10/laredo-dhs-reach-compromise-on-migrant-lawsuit/

If Jenkins wants to argue that rising COVID rates are causing a “local emergency” in Dallas County, doesn’t he also have to do something about the busloads arriving there every day filled with untested, unvaccinated migrants, many of whom are surely infected and highly contagious with the “Delta” variant? Mexico’s infection rates are very high.

https://www.infobae.com/new-resizer/dP_PAg_9vWWCtE7YBXtiwoViURM=/1200x628/filters:format(jpg):quality(85)//cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/KYYQAVEXL5CS7HX4XUQGI5PYXQ.jpeg

And yet the buses keep rolling into Dallas. Austin and Houston, too.

Either we are fighting a pandemic, or we’re not. Either covid is an emergency, or it’s not. I hope that in making their final ruling in this case, which could take weeks or months, the Texas Supreme Court will think about that.

From the border to the economy to America’s energy independence to Middle East stability, the Biden Administration has been acting like a giant wrecking ball, from day one reversing every policy Trump put in place, even if it was working perfectly, because “TRUUUUUMP!!!!” And now, with the disasters starting to pile up, it appears that President Biden can’t even keep track of all the messes he caused himself.

https://www.westernjournal.com/humiliation-biden-stopped-trumps-insulin-executive-order-now-scrambling-make-things-right/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

On Thursday, Biden gave a speech lamenting that “right here in America, we pay the highest prescription drug costs of any developed nation in the world.” As an example, he went on at great length about a diabetic small business owner named Gail from Denver whom he met recently, and who has to pay high prices for insulin.

He used that as a springboard to talk about the 34 million other Americans suffering from high insulin prices and his plan to lower the cost.

It didn’t take long for many people online to remind him that one of his first actions as President was to inexplicably reverse a Trump executive order that would have lowered the cost of insulin and EpiPens by making clinics pass discounts on to patients that usually went to middle men.

There are more details at the link. The excuse was that Trump’s order was facing lawsuits by drug makers and had to be vetted to ensure it was lawful. Question: would ANY policy that lowers drug costs not face lawsuits by drug makers? Instead of fighting the lawsuits, Biden reversed Trump’s policy that would have lowered insulin prices, and now he’s lamenting high insulin prices. It’s possible he did actually forget that he signed that. Still, I find his concern about this issue about as convincing as his concern about our porous Southern border that only became porous after he took a wrecking ball to it.

Related: Ironically, considering Biden claimed he was bringing back respect for the law by reversing all those Trump policies, a federal judge Friday ruled that Biden acted illegally and harmfully in reversing the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy on migrants.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judge-biden-admin-trump-era-remain-in-mexico-policy-texas-missouri-lawsuit

With the US facing record numbers of illegal border crossings, the judge sided with Texas and Missouri in their lawsuit against Biden and ordered the Administration "to enforce and implement” the Remain in Mexico policy in good faith until it has been "lawfully rescinded" in compliance with the Administrative Procedures Act, and until the federal government has enough detention capacity.

Now, let’s see if President “Restore Respect For Law and the Constitution” will flagrantly ignore this court order the way he ignored the one on the rent moratorium. I can only imagine what Democrats would have done if Trump showed such utter contempt for the courts, considering they impeached him twice for (A.) making a phone call and (B.) making a speech.

We should all give a big thanks to Sen. Ted Cruz for being awake and alert at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday morning and saving American democracy.

https://www.westernjournal.com/sleeping-ted-cruz-saved-america-democrats-election-takeover/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

After 15 mind-numbing hours of amendment votes on the Democrats’ $3.2 TRILLION spending orgy bill, Senate “Majority” Leader Chuck Schumer attempted to sneak the “For The People” Act (aka, the “Legalize Vote Fraud” Act) into the mix, in hopes that sleep-deprived Republicans wouldn’t notice and would fail to object, thereby approving it by unanimous consent. But Cruz rose and objected repeatedly, stopping Schumer in his tracks.

Cruz called the bill a “federal takeover of elections” and a “massive power grab by Democrats” that would do the opposite of its title by ensuring that the people can’t vote politicians out of office. He elaborated that it would “strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country, including voter ID laws supported by the overwhelming majority of this country, including prohibitions on ballot harvesting, again widely supported by people in this country. It would mandate that felons be allowed to vote, and it would automatically register millions of illegal aliens to vote. It would profoundly undermine democracy in this country…”

Yes, but “for the people!”

The defeated Schumer hilariously grumbled, “Let there be no mistake about what is going on here. We have reached a point in this chamber where Republicans appear to oppose any measure — any measure, no matter how common sense — to protect voting rights and strengthen our democracy.”

That’s funny, because if you replaced the word “Republicans” with “Democrats,” that would be a perfect description of what Democrats are trying to do all over the nation to block common sense election integrity measures and to destroy them completely with the “Legalize Vote Fraud” Act.

Weekend Reading

August 15, 2021

While we take a little time off, here are a couple of articles to provide food for serious thought. First, Scott McKay at The American Spectator assesses how badly the Republicans and conservatives have failed in stopping the far-left from overwhelming America and argues that if we are going to save this nation and restore our founding principles, we need a new movement. In that regard, he says the media were wrong about Trump. He wasn’t a “messiah” figure to his supporters. He was more like John the Baptist, sounding the alarm and setting the table for what’s coming.

https://spectator.org/revivalists-conservatives/

And Deborah Bucknam at the American Thinker has an article that should be required reading for every American, but especially those who live in cities and states ravaged by decades of one-party Democrat rule, but who keep reelecting them because no matter how badly they ruin people’s lives, they say you can’t vote for Republicans because they’re “racist.”

It’s a detailed look back at the long, deep, ugly history of racism in the Democratic Party (the Republican Party was actually founded to force the Democrats to give up their slaves.) But it’s not just 18th century racism. Like the Energizer Bunny, Democrat Party racism just keeps going and going, from the Civil War to the KKK to Jim Crow to the poll tax (that Republicans tried to end) and right up to today, when they want to defund the police in crime-ridden, riot-torn black neighborhoods while keeping their own private security; bring back segregation in schools; and judge people solely by their skin color, only they now call that “Critical Race Theory” rather than what it really is: racism.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/08/a_racial_reckoning_for_the_democrats.html

I hope minorities who keep reelecting Democrats because they believe the endless lies that Republicans are “racist” will read this and consider Einstein’s rule that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

In the most underreported story of the week, Mike Lindell’s three-day cyber web symposium on 2020 election fraud kicked off Tuesday morning. Have you heard much about it yet?

Lindell is hosting the event from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and says it will feature 65 forensic cyber experts who are challenging the official results of the Biden/Trump presidential election. It will include a recreation of the vote count “in real time,” he says, so viewers can have a better understanding of what unfolded on November 3 and into the wee hours of November 4.

He’s offering $5 million to anyone who can show that the evidence he presents is “not cyber data from the November 2020 election.”

https://xyz.frankspeech.com/content/mike-lindells-cyber-symposium-2021

Let me say up front that we have no advance knowledge of the evidence Lindell plans to present at his event. I know Mike and he’s been a guest on my TBN show, but we promise to analyze his evidence as independently and objectively as possible (we’re not cyber experts) and report the findings as honestly and spin-free as we can.

We’d like to think Lindell has the goods, but whether or not he can show that voting machines were, or even could be, hacked (we have no idea), there’s plenty that still arouses suspicion about hanky-panky on Election Night. And, no, it has NOT been “debunked.” That doesn’t mean it’s been proven –- it has not –- but it can’t just be discarded, either, unless one’s agenda depends on it being discarded.

Some of Lindell’s critics wish he’d concentrate on those other reasons to suspect cheating, such as problems with mail-in ballots, and view the voting machine issue as a distraction. I see their point, but have a question for them: If there ARE security problems with electronic voting, shouldn’t we find that out before the next election?

Anyway, Lindell has invited people from across the political spectrum –- some reports say thousands of invitees –- and at this writing, we don’t really know who’s going to be there. He says he’s invited cyber experts, politicians and media. One we do know: Nancy Pelosi said she had a scheduling conflict and won’t attend. (Those hair appointments are hard to change!) But I don’t think anyone will miss her.

Lindell is hoping the event will attract hundreds of millions of viewers and be “the most watched live event in history.” That will be a good trick with the almost-total news and social media blackout on it. “I believe people are going tune in,” he said. “I want them to watch whether they’re a Democrat or Republican, or liberal or conservative. This is America, and we, and every person needs to see this, and say, ‘What are we going to do about it?’”

Of course, that’s the big question. Lindell actually has claimed that he can show the election should have gone the other way, but what he’s taken the most heat for is his prediction in March that former President Trump would be re-installed as President by August. For one thing, it’s already August, and for another, it just doesn’t work that way. For one thing, there would have to be formal impeachment proceedings in the (Democrat) House and removal of Biden by two-thirds of the (barely Democrat) Senate. And we know how the Democrats would react to even the most compelling proof: by draping it with the Cloak of Invisibility.

NEWSMAX, which --- unlike FOX NEWS --- did agree to run Lindell’s ad for the symposium, issued a statement that it does not endorse ads and that it accepts the 2020 election results as “legal and final.”

Predictably, left-wing news outlets such as MEDIA MATTERS made fun of Lindell as a right-wing conspiracy theorist and criticized him as a threat to democracy itself. Some on the right are exasperated, with Matt Margolis at PJ MEDIA saying he should “go back to selling pillows,” expressing admiration for his vocal support of Trump while saying he “jumped the shark” when he said Trump would be President again by August.

As you might know, Lindell pulled his “MyPillow” advertising from FOX NEWS after they wouldn’t run his ad for the symposium. The ad doesn’t make any claims about election fraud, only about the importance of this event, and it invites everyone to tune in –- and tell everyone they know to do the same. Then it offers some great deals on pillows and other MyPillow products, which, as you might imagine, are more challenging to sell these days.

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/O3_q/frank-speech-cyber-symposium-featuring-mike-lindell

So let’s tune in to as much of this symposium as we can and see what he’s got. I promise you a full report. And let me just put in a word for MyPillow and, especially, Giza Dream Sheets. Those sheets are fantastic to sleep on and oversized to fit the thickest mattress.

Just like he says.

By the way, here’s an example of problems on election night that have nothing to do with wilder claims of foreign countries hacking the voting machines to make Biden President. When a ballot shows that more than one candidate in the same race has been marked, it is deemed an “overvote” and is handed over to an election worker to review. JUST THE NEWS has seen what was going on with some of these “adjudicated” ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, and it’s not pretty.

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-ballot-adjudication-spoiled

Every election has ballots that have to be adjudicated –- remember the nightmare of the “hanging chads” in Florida in the Bush-Gore race –- but in 2020, hundreds of thousands of people in Georgia were voting absentee for the first time and that meant many more ballots were mis-marked and, shall we say, open to interpretation. And in Fulton County, the rules apparently weren’t clear and consistently applied, and they weren’t even in writing, but passed along verbally.

JUST THE NEWS got ballot images through an open records act request; Fulton County officials would not respond to questions regarding what they found. More than 5,000 of the 148,000 absentee ballots processed through Fulton County --- about 3 percent --- required “some form of human intervention,” they report. "Mistakes" in the adjudication process alone were not enough to have changed the outcome of the election, they say, but this is one more potentially contributing factor. We’d second what they conclude, that “[these ballots] reveal an imperfect system vulnerable to chaos, subjectivity, or political dirty tricks, especially in a county like Fulton where state officials documented widespread irregularities and misconduct and now want to take over election counting.”

I should start a regular segment called “Fact-checking the ‘fact-checkers,’” but I’m afraid it would be all I’d ever have time to do. Today’s subject is the (ahem!) non-partisan fact-checking site, Snopes.com. I’ve already covered this story, so I won’t go into detail on that (you can find the correction and follow-up here):

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=CAC940AD-EB17-4615-8CE7-8C6771A1D289

But the Snopes article contains a couple of glaring errors that need to be corrected.

This involves the story of the alleged Dallas black radical group that sent a letter to wealthy white liberals, claiming they made their money by oppressing minorities and to repent, they should not send their kids to Ivy League schools so there would be more room for minorities. That was so ridiculous, I assumed it was a hoax at first and ignored it. After it was covered by a number of news outlets that I assumed checked it out, and everyone was talking about it, I figured, “I guess we have to mention it,” but I was still dubious enough to voice my concerns that it might be a prank or hoax in the first sentence.

Because of that, I deliberately chose not to go into detail about the particular group that allegedly sent it. I just briefly recounted the story, told a few jokes about how dumb such notions are, and finished by saying that “While everyone is having a good laugh over this,” the parents should thank the group that sent that letter for doing them a big favor by scaring them into not sending their kids to an Ivy League college so they won’t come home as “insufferable, useless little socialists.” I thought that made the point that I wasn’t taking this very seriously.

When it started looking as if that was indeed a hoax, we immediately ran a correction with more info, as is our policy. Well, Snopes.com has now run a long piece looking into the story, and for some reason, among the thousands of conservative commentators who spent far more time on this, they chose to single me out for attack. They claim I “railed” against the group.

(Dan Bongino pointed out that this is the new liberal cliche: claiming that conservatives "railed" about something, implying that it was all angry emotion so people won't look at what was actually said. They had to come up with something new after everyone caught on to the "Republicans pounce" meme. The story is never the stupid things Democrats did, but that "Republicans pounced" in response to it. We've gone from "pouncing" to "railing," apparently.)

Of course, those who watch me on TBN know I’m famous for my angry rants. Actually, I’m not. I don’t “rail” at anybody. I prefer to use good-natured humor to point out the absurdity of leftist positions. I do this for three reasons: (1.) it’s more civilized; (2.) it’s more persuasive; and (3.) it drives them nuts.

Leftists have zero sense of humor about themselves. They think comedy is Stephen Colbert spewing DNC talking points while the studio audience claps instead of laughing. Dictators rule by fear, and nobody’s afraid of someone who’s being laughed at, which is why the wannabe dictators on the left have done everything in their power to terrify comedians into not making fun of them or their wacky ideas. Therefore, I consider it my patriotic duty to ridicule them. They want to be the Spanish Inquisition, and I say they should be treated the way Monty Python treated the Spanish Inquisition.

To me, the most interesting aspect of this story is the fact that Snopes and other "fact-checking" sites had to go to so much effort and research to try to debunk the story. That means if it was a hoax, it was a darn good one because it was virtually indistinguishable from the actual racist, divisive, self-serving horse droppings that are generated by real groups like this on a daily basis. Hardly anyone questioned it because as ludicrous as it was, it was actually pretty unremarkable as these things go.

Incidentally, most of my commentary wasn’t even inspired by that story, but by a friend of one of my writers. He’s an immigrant who found success in America, sent his American-born kids to what he thought were the best schools, and now he’s distraught because the older one came back home from college as an America-hating socialist.

So, Snopes.com, if you actually are interested in “facts,” I would appreciate it if you would get a few facts straight:

1. I did not “rail” against this particular group. I laughed at the entire idea.

2. I implied from the first sentence that it smelled like a hoax and used it only as a jumping-off point to mock leftist, race-mongering political hustlers in general.

3. You state at the end of your article that “As of Aug. 5, 2021, the following outlets had not corrected or updated their coverage of Dallas Justice Now, which still unquestioningly presents and describes Dallas Justice Now as a good-faith campaign or ‘Michele Washington’ as a real, sincerely-motivated person,” and you include my website on your list.

Our update/correction ran on July 29th, a full eight days before your article was posted. I also never mentioned “Michelle Washington” at all. And that’s a “fact.”

Maybe spend a little time checking facts before you make sloppy false accusations, mmm’kay?

Antifa Are Cowards

August 11, 2021

MUST READ Article: I’m not going to recount in full detail the story of the Antifa attack on innocent Christians who were holding a prayer service in a park in Portland, Oregon. If I did, I fear it would make me so furious that I might say things I would later regret putting on the record (although I wouldn’t regret thinking them.) And I don’t want to become someone who is fueled by rage, like Antifa. So I will direct you to this link and urge you to look at the photos and videos, and read every word. And please watch your blood pressure.

https://www.westernjournal.com/watch-suspected-antifa-agitators-sabotage-prayer-event-attack-worshippers/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I will note that the black-masked, cowardly thugs were throwing rotten eggs and flash bombs, even into a group that included children as young as four months. When a pastor asked them not to throw things at children, they sprayed him with mace. One was heard taunting, “Where is your God now?”

More to the point, where were the Portland Police? Standing by and doing nothing. They allowed this outrage to go on and didn’t step in to stop it or to arrest anyone. I don’t know if this is because the police have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect public safety, or they were directly ordered by the leftist idiots running Portland not to touch the little anarchists, or if they have just been so cowed by previous incidences of the city’s political leaders siding with the criminals that they’re afraid to step in and do their jobs.

To those who did this, I issue a warning: the day of reckoning is coming. Where is our God? You’ll find out soon enough when you are standing before Him and have to answer for your hateful behavior, and He’s not a leftist Portland judge who will let you off easy. Until then, let this story be a warning to law-abiding people that in some places – those run by leftists, or as they laughably call themselves, “progressives” – the police and elected officials will not protect you, your families, your businesses or your churches, so the job is up to you.

Be alert, and be prepared to take defensive action. Antifa are cowards; pretend “warriors” who hide behind masks and attack the weak and those whom they know will not or are not allowed to fight back. In short, they’re terrorists. If we had a “Justice” Department that was interested in stopping real domestic terrorists, they’d be in federal prison by now. Sadly, we do not.

It’s been said many times before, but it bears repeating: Society didn’t invent police to protect the people from criminals. It invented police to protect criminals from the people. We have a justice system to protect the rights of the accused and to prevent people from taking the law into their own hands. By seeking to destroy those systems, Antifa are ripping apart the thin curtain that’s currently protecting them from the coming consequences of their vile actions.

Eroding Trust

August 11, 2021

When future historians (if we still have any honest ones) look back at 2021, they might pinpoint this past weekend as the exact moment when the public’s long-eroding trust in elite institutions and authority figures finally imploded into a cloud of dust like an outdated Vegas hotel. And the triggers for that big bang will be Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party and the media’s reaction to it.

With fellow Democrats demanding returns to masking and other pandemic measures in light of the new variant wave, the Obamas said they would scale back their party to just family and close friends. But that was just "boob bait for the Bubbas." The opulent A-lister bash went on pretty much as planned. A few names got cut from the guest list, but it was still a mass gathering of the biggest liberal celebrities partying like it was 1999, all in close proximity inside large tents while being served by 200 caterers and wait staff, who were apparently the only ones wearing masks.

But that’s okay because it turns out that the virus only attacks “unsophisticated” people, like service workers. Vaccination might not give you 100% immunity, but being rich, liberal, well-connected, famous, fabulous - or as the New York Times’ Annie Karni infamously put it, “sophisticated” – apparently does.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/466686/

Candace Owens had a great line on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show: “Hydroxychloroquine doesn’t prevent (COVID), but ‘sophistication’ does.”

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/tucker-carlson-sophisticated-or-superspreader

As the Obama guests danced and ate cake (and probably wondered why the grumpy peasants didn’t just eat cake, too), Dr. Fauci and CNN were ignoring Obama and the glitterati’s glaring hypocrisy while they relentlessly bashed participants in the Sturgis motorcycle rally for allegedly creating a deadly superspreader event. Well, that’s what they get for being so unsophisticated. Don’t they realize the virus only attacks unsophisticated people, non-celebrities, Trump voters and crowds that aren’t protesting police or looting stores? Follow the science, people!!

Music superstar/activist John Legend was, of course, at Obama’s party, and he provided the dictionary with a Legend-ary new illustration of the word “hypocrisy,” thanks to this pair of tweets. Just one week ago, he tweeted, “Being unvaccinated and/or unmasked at a large indoor gathering is like literally begging to get COVID.” The other tweet shows him arriving with his model wife Chrissy Teigen to attend Obama’s soiree, where people went unmasked indoors.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/466833/

That will forever make it clear what “hypocrisy” means, but I don’t know if the word “sophisticated” will ever be the same again.

Columnist Jim Treacher may have hit the nail on the head when he wrote last week, “Democrats don’t need masks because they’re better than you.”

https://jimtreacher.substack.com/p/democrats-dont-need-masks-because

After this, it’s entirely possible that the establishment elites of politics, the media and the entertainment industry will never regain any credibility with the public, and will be viewed with as much contempt as clueless 18th century French aristocrats. On the other hand, John Nolte at Breitbart.com has a different take (Warning: Profanity alert!)

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2021/08/09/nolte-barrys-60th-birthday-bash-was-an-appropriate-fck-you-to-joe-biden/

He thinks we should all thank Obama for throwing that party because it shows that he doesn’t take Joe Biden seriously and he also refuses to be cowed into giving in to the fear and control effort. Nolte thinks both those views are absolutely right, and Obama sent those messages in the most public, in-your-face way possible.

He writes that this may be the first time Obama has actually done anything positive for America and its people: he sent the message, “If you’re vaccinated, this pandemic is over. Don’t listen to the fear merchants. Don’t listen to Joe Biden. Go and live your life.”

I think “I live in a clueless bubble of wealth and privilege” is probably the more likely explanation, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s not the message most Americans take away from this.

As predicted, the ratings for the Tokyo Olympics have been pretty dismal. While the media try to blame it on COVID or the lack of cheering crowds, viewers have made it clear that they have no interest in seeing US athletes use their spotlight to make leftwing political statements and disrespect their own country. This latest iteration of “Get woke, go broke” forced NBC to rerun commercials free of charge to advertisers, to help make up for the lower-than-promised viewership.

https://www.westernjournal.com/woke-politics-backfire-nbcs-olympics-coverage-hits-ratings-rock-bottom/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

It is a shame that the angry grandstanders cause people to miss some truly inspiring moments by great, patriotic young Americans. But as is often said, “Leftism ruins everything it touches.”

In a related story, Subway Sandwich shop owners, all of whom are independent franchisees, are begging the woke corporate office to yank the commercials featuring radical US women’s soccer team leader Megan Rapinoe. Store owners say they’re been flooded with complaints from customers who say they will never eat at Subway again as long as it's represented by that “anti-American” “creep” who kneels during the National Anthem.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/subway-franchisees-megan-rapinoes-tv-ads

Corporate didn’t respond to requests for comment from Fox Business News. But they’d better respond to their franchisees.

As for Rapinoe, if she loses the Subway gig, don’t worry about her. Victoria’s Secret recently signed her, and I’m sure that will work out much better.

As the 20th anniversary of the September 11th attacks draws near, a group of about 1800 survivors, family members of victims and first responders are telling President Biden to stay away from the commemorative ceremonies unless he keeps his promise to them.

https://www.westernjournal.com/9-11-families-tell-biden-stay-away-memorial-events/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

They want to know what, if anything, the leaders of Saudi Arabia knew about the planned attacks and if they had any involvement with the 9/11 terrorists. Candidate Biden said, “The 9/11 Families are right to seek full truth and accountability…I will direct my Attorney General to personally examine the merits of all cases where the invocation of privilege is recommended, and to err on the side of disclosure in cases where, as here, the events in question occurred two decades or longer ago.”

The 9/11 group says investigations have implicated some Saudi government officials in supporting the attacks, but Biden hasn’t kept his promise and has turned a deaf ear to them since taking office (he seems more concerned with directing his Attorney General to target his political opponents.)

A man who lost his father in the Twin Towers said they are “frustrated, tired and saddened” by how the government continues to keep information about the deaths of their loved ones under lock and key. He said, “We had great hope that President Biden, who campaigned on bringing truth and trust back to the Oval Office, would value the lives and sacrifices of America’s citizens over diplomatic relations with a country accused of mass murder.”

I’m sure a lot of Americans are disillusioned about Biden’s promise to restore “truth and trust,” but there are few people who have as much moral high ground to stand on in demanding that Biden deliver on his promise to them.

Ever since the Biden Administration declared domestic extremists and white supremacists to be the biggest threat facing America, the Department of Homeland Security has issued various warnings of a rising, possibly imminent threat of violent rebellion from the right. So far, most of the violent rebellion I’ve seen has been from leftist idiots like Anitifa.

The DHS just issued another warning that because of “an increasing but modest level of activity online” by Trump supporters who believe Joe Biden won the presidency due to fraud, “some conspiracy theories associated with reinstating former President Trump have included calls for violence if desired outcomes are not realized.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/dhs-warns-increasing-threat-violence-trump-conspiracy-admits-no-evidence-plot/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Even scarier, “Over the last few days what has occurred is there’s been much more public visibility, meaning the discussions and these theories have migrated away from being contained within the conspiracy and extremist online communities, to where they’re being the topic of discussion on web forums, or more public web forums, and even within the sort of media ecosystem.”

We routinely cover investigations of voter fraud in the 2020 election, but our report today points out that there is no mechanism for reinstating Trump. But gosh, I’d feel terrible if I thought that simply reporting and commenting on a news story was somehow whipping up a violent insurrection! Oh, but wait: further down in the report, we learn that the DHS has no actual proof that there’s a “plot imminent.” Whew!

In other words, what they have is a few hotheads blustering on the Internet. Well, there’s some major news.

The linked story also recounts some previous incidents in which these authorities have warned ominously of a “perfect storm” for mass violent rebellion by rightwing extremists, which never materialized. Just a suggestion, but maybe they should reevaluate their threat assessment and start paying attention to things that actually are a threat to America, like radical Islamic groups, China, and yes, the violent leftwing extremist terrorists known as Antifa.

I have a suspicion that the real fear in the White House isn’t that masses of violent rightwing extremists will try to forcibly remove Biden and other Democrats from office but that tens of millions of ticked-off voters will go to the polls and figuratively give them the boot.

RELATED: The GAO just slammed the DHS for failing to pick up on the signals that violence might break out on January 6th and prepare for it. So the one time there actually was an imminent threat, they missed it. So is their obsession with the right a justifiable security decision, a politicization of homeland security, or an overreaction because of how badly they blew it on January 6th? Or maybe a combination of two or more of those?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/gao-bombshell-dhs-blew-it-on-jan-6-cant-adapt-to-security-threats

Obama's Birthday Bash

August 10, 2021

Happy 60th birthday to former President Obama. And I’m sure it was happy, since it was marked with a lavish party for hundreds of celebrities at his Martha’s Vineyard estate.

https://www.westernjournal.com/dj-leaks-pics-obamas-opulent-birthday-bash-quickly-deletes-not-truth-got/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

Wait, what?! I thought that was going to be radically scaled back to only family and close friends after he got so much criticism for holding a mass gathering while the rest of us are being threatened with more COVID lockdowns if we don’t put on at least two facemasks even while we’re home alone? (Oh, forgot to mention: photos show the Obamas’ guests weren’t wearing facemasks.)

I’m not going to criticize Obama for holding whatever size party he wants to hold, or his guests for attending. It’s a free country (still, I think), and that should be their choice. But if that’s his attitude, then it should apply to everyone. He should stand up for every American’s right to make that choice, and not publicly side with the control freak health officials while privately doing whatever he pleases.

Or to be fair, maybe he wasn’t trying to fudge the truth. Maybe he just really does have several hundred “close friends.” I might find that believable considering the one person he did cut from the guest list: Nancy Pelosi.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/08/hundreds-at-obama-party-but-one-important-person-got-the-brush-off-n423192

Related: The New York Times tried to defend the Obama bash as being okay because it was a “sophisticated, vaccinated” maskless crowd “following all the safety precautions” (except social distancing, avoiding large crowds and wearing masks even if you’re vaccinated.) Meanwhile, Dr. Fauci was bashing participants in the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally for not doing their part to stop the pandemic.

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/466686/

Well, the difference is obvious. Just as the virus didn’t spread at BLM rallies, it also doesn’t spread at posh gatherings of sophisticated, A-list liberals. The COVID virus is not merely a Democrat, it’s an elitist, limousine liberal Democrat. Maybe we could finally get the pandemic to end if Netflix and Warner Books would just offer the coronavirus a few multi-million-dollar book and movie production deals. Then, like other wealthy leftist elitists, it could retire to its own mansion in Martha’s Vineyard and stop ruining the lives of the rest of us.

Naked Hypocrisy On The Left

August 10, 2021

Far-left Rep. Cori Bush didn’t do the Democrat propaganda machine any favors by going on an impassioned defense of defunding the police (a movement they’re trying to claim doesn’t exist, or if it does, uuuuh...the Republicans did it! – Yeah, that’s the ticket!) She made it worse by declaring, with zero self-awareness, that defunding the police has to happen now, while defending her own heavy expenses on private security because she’s so worth it.

She claims she’s gotten threats (like people surrounded by gangs and Antifa thugs thanks to police defunding aren’t under constant threat), and she needs security because her work in Congress is so important (she has to keep “protecting” people by making them less safe.) She declared, “I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now.”

https://redstate.com/jeffc/2021/08/08/watch-cori-bush-gives-pathetic-defense-of-defund-the-police-video-n423169

I was on Jesse Watters' show on Fox News over the weekend to talk about this stunning display of naked hypocrisy (we’ll overlook the fact that she also threw in her continuing fight for justice for Michael Brown, even though the Obama DOJ found that the “hands up, don’t shoot” story was fiction and Brown was fighting the police officer and trying to take away his gun when he was shot.)

Personally, I’m stunned that America made it for so many years before Cori Bush arrived in Congress to do the great work that’s so important that it makes her life more valuable than her own constituents’ lives. I award her my “Gavin/Cuomo Award for Ultimate Hubris and Hypocrisy” for those who impose rules on others that they would never inflict upon themselves.

Obviously, if the people of St. Louis value their own lives, they will quickly correct the dumb mistake of sending Cori Bush to Congress. But don’t count on it.

I’ll just conclude by pointing out that Cori Bush happily accepted the enthusiastic endorsement of the pro-abortion group NARAL, which said she would be a champion of “reproductive justice,” which is their latest phony euphemism for killing innocent children in the womb.

Why am I not at all surprised that a strong defender of abortion believes that her life is sacred, valuable and worth protecting, but other people’s lives aren’t?

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to resist stepping down, even as the threat of impeachment grows after the state Attorney General’s report detailing multiple accusations of sexual harassment. But that might be only one of his problems, since one of his accusers has dropped her anonymity protection and filed a criminal complaint against him with the Albany sheriff’s office.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cuomo-executive-assistant-brittany-commisso-interview-harassment

In an interview with CBS, Brittany Commisso explained why she hadn’t spoken up before. She said, "People don’t understand that this is the Governor of the State of New York. There are troopers outside. They are not there to protect me, they are there to protect him. I felt as though if I did something to insult him, especially insult him in his own home, it wasn’t going to be him that’s going to get fired or in trouble."

Ms Commisso also probably assumed that the media would cover for the popular Democrat Governor and attack his accuser, smearing her a “nut or slut.” Even now, when forced to face the truth, they still won’t own up to their shameful, partisan actions.

https://redstate.com/joesquire/2021/08/09/on-cuomo-the-media-owes-its-audience-an-apology-and-some-reflection-n423341

Why is this all so sickeningly familiar to those of who lived through the 1990’s?

Here’s a lesson in why it’s so hard to tell real demands from “social justice warriors” from hoaxes created by people mocking social justice warriors. It’s almost impossible to make the hoaxes more ridiculous than the real thing. But craven leftists filled with white liberal guilt don’t care out ludicrous they are; they just hear “Jump!” and ask, “How high?”

My question: How high were the officials at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who approved urinating away $50,000 on this?

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/08/08/youre-not-going-to-believe-why-a-wisconsin-school-spent-50k-to-move-a-rock-n1467973

They actually spent 50 large to move Chamberlain Rock, a 42-ton boulder that had been sitting on campus since the dawn of time, after some leftwing activist students declared it a "racist monument." Why? It’s named after Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin, former university president and geologist. He’s never been accused of anything racist (although I’m sure he was a racist, as was everyone who isn’t in 100% agreement on all things with a 2021 social justice warrior.) But one newspaper article, one time way back in 1925, referred to the rock by a racist name. That's it: that's the extent of this rock's connection to racism. But naturally, that’s so triggering to students who know zip about history and have never even read a newspaper that $50,000 had to be spent to haul it off campus lest it start them literally shaking with moral outrage.

The college says private donations paid for it, but so what? That doesn't make it any less of a pointless waste of money. If they really wanted to help black Americans, why not give those 50,000 smackers to, say, the United Negro College Fund? But that would be missing the point, as any attempt to apply common sense to modern leftism is bound to do. The money is gone, the rock is gone, and people who might have actually benefited from that cash are left like Charlie Brown on Halloween, moaning, "I got a rock." But the leftists can enjoy their own 42 tons of self-satisfaction.

As Daniel McLaughlin at National Review Online observes, the point is power. The loud activists wanted to see just how far they could push the college leaders and still get their way. And it worked: they caved (a perfect term for people who just moved a giant rock, which I think was also Fred Flintstone’s job.)

If you wonder where the “woke” left is taking America, there’s your answer: back to the Stone Age, thanks to people like this who kowtow to stupid, childish demands. If these administrators want to remove any more rocks, I respectfully suggest they start with the rocks in their heads.

Why do Democrats even run for office? Their record on border security and crime proves they have no interest in actually governing.

It’s disturbingly appropriate that Vice President Kamala Harris, whose entire career in public "service" has been little more than an exercise in self-aggrandizement and ego boosting, is the Democrat Party’s point person on illegal immigration and border security. Since taking on the role, all she’s done is hold press conferences designed to boost her own public profile while completely ignoring the problem she’s supposed to solve.

Indeed, to the extent that she and the rest of the Biden administration have done anything at all, it has been to dismantle successful Trump-era policies that were effectively holding illegal immigration at bay, such as the "Remain in Mexico" policy. Her lips may be telling would-be border crossers "do not come," but her actions are sending exactly the opposite message.

The results are as distressing as they are predictable: a historic surge in illegal border crossings, along with the accompanying human misery in the form of crime, exploitation, and disease.

In the El Paso Sector of the border, Border Patrol agents have apprehended or encountered more than 135,000 illegal immigrants over the past nine months – equivalent to about 20 percent of the entire population of El Paso, Texas. Across the entire southwest border, nearly 189,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended in June alone, and Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Vally sector reported a 900 percent increase in the rate of COVID infection among those they encountered.

The public health implications are certainly alarming, especially as the country grapples with a resurgence of the pandemic brought on by the Delta variant. But disease is not the only consequence of Democrat policies that encourage hundreds of thousands of people to pour across the border. As has always been the case, floods of undocumented migrants also bring crime with them – motivated by both desperation and opportunity.

The cartels that effectively control large portions of Mexico have for years been infiltrating American cities, using the violent tactics they’ve perfected at home to displace the criminal gangs that once controlled the distribution of narcotics in our inner cities.

That’s a terrifying prospect under the best of circumstances, but it’s being made far worse by the abdication of another core governing responsibility by elected Democrats.

Driven by the irresponsible "defund the police" rhetoric of the Party’s far-left wing, Democrat leaders in cities all over the country have been tying the hands of law enforcement and leaving their own citizens to the mercies of violent criminals.

In Oakland, California, where the City Council has voted to reduce police funding despite the strenuous objections of the city’s mayor, former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer was recently mugged in broad daylight.

Another city that has defunded its own police department – over the strenuous objections of Republican Governor Greg Abbott – is Austin, Texas, which just so happens to be right on the front lines of the border crisis. Last August, the Austin City Council voted to cut the police department’s budget by a whopping $150 million, resulting in the elimination of the department’s gang unit.

"Public safety is job one, and Austin has abandoned that duty," Abbott said in response to the defunding, adding that the decision "paves the way for lawlessness."

That’s exactly what happened. In June, 25-year-old Douglas Kantor was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout while visiting Austin. Had the police gang unit still been operational at the time, it’s likely that officers would have been in position to put a stop to the shootout before it even began, because they would have been monitoring the communications of known gang members who posted their intention to be at that location on social media.

Kantor’s family is now suing the Mayor and City Council of Austin, arguing that their decision to slash funding for the police department was a purely political decision with obvious and predictable consequences for public safety.

This wasn’t about balancing a budget or adjusting policy priorities; it was about tying the hands of the police department as a means of making a public political statement.

I spent a great deal of my adult life in public service. It’s unbelievable to me that anyone could ask voters to entrust them with such a grave responsibility and then use their power to prevent the government from doing its most basic duty to keep citizens safe. But that’s exactly what today’s Democrats are doing.

This op-ed originally ran on FoxNews.com.

Recall Gavin Newsom

August 9, 2021

You don’t have to wait until 2022 for some big political drama and major elections. Sept 14 could be an election that will deliver a Cat 5 hurricane, a 10 on the Richter Scale earthquake, and a F-5 tornado all on the same day. It’s the date of the CA election to recall Governor Gavin Newsom. I recently spent a few days out there working with the campaign to recall him and traveled the state from top to bottom. I was asked why it even mattered to me since I didn’t live there. First, there’s my personal disgust with someone who wears the title “governor” but who abuses the trust he was given by acting in hypocrisy and hubris. As someone who was a governor for nearly 11 years, I am appalled if someone believes being governor is equivalent to being a King and who arrogantly imposes rules on others he doesn’t apply to himself. No true leader asks others to do what he is unwilling to do. After imposing strict mask requirements on gatherings and closing restaurants for indoor dining, he hob-knobbed with mask-less swells at the most expensive restaurant in CA, the French Laundry. “Rules for thee, but not for me” has been his motto and practice. Maybe it’s time CA voters send the guy who dined at the French Laundry to the cleaners.

But there’s another reason what happens in CA matters to me and should matter to you as well. It’s been long said that whatever starts in CA becomes a trend across the country, whether trends in entertainment, fashion, language, music, or even politics. The same state that gave us Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom also gave us Ronald Reagan. But CA holds distinction as the most important agricultural state in the nation. The farmers and ranchers of CA, mostly in the San Joaquin Central Valley supply over 17% of the entire nation’s ag products, and produces over 400 different commodities. It’s truly the salad bowl of the world. But the overreaching taxes and idiotic regulations and restrictions that CA farmers and ranchers live with along with the lack of leadership in ensuring a stable water supply means that it costs a lot more to grow and harvest food in CA than anywhere else in the country. And that means that a man in Mississippi standing on a concrete floor all day lifting heavy things and sweating through his clothes, will go home bone-tired and sit at his dinner table with his wife and kids and the cost of the food on his table costs more than it should—and CA politics are to blame. You might live in one of the other 49 states beyond CA, but you are directly affected by the nutty policies imposed in CA when you buy food, fuel, or even footwear. And now, Gavin Newsom’s CA has really gone too far. They want to impose strict limits on how many pigs or chickens can be kept in a space because CA wants pigs and chickens to have more space. The same state that turns a blind eye to homeless people packing into a public park or business district and who doesn’t believe we ought to control the border and limit illegal immigration, wants to make sure Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn have room to roam. And that means bacon prices are likely to increase by as much as 50%. It was bad enough that Gavin Newsom was a gun-grabber and shut down churches but not strip clubs. But now he’s really done it. He’s messed with the price of bacon and where I come from, them are fighting words that’s a food fight for sure!

I felt pretty good that even liberals in CA would vote to get Gavin Newsom’s noose off their necks, but now I’m really confident. On September 14, voters will be able to tell Gavin Newsom not to let the door hit you where the good Lord split you!

Some observers have described what we’re living in now as a “post-Constitutional America.” Okay, we still technically HAVE a Constitution, and we can go to Washington, DC, and look at it under glass at the U.S. National Archives, but it gets ignored by the government so often that it feels as if we might as well not have one at all. It often seems the only people reading the Constitution these days are the ones looking for loopholes.

Never mind that during the 2020 campaign, Biden vowed to honor “the rule of law, our Constitution.” And never mind that he constantly trashed President Trump’s “assault on the rule of law.” Jonathan Turley has a new article about what Biden is actually doing in office to violate the Constitution and how the left cheers him on when he does it. Case in point: Biden’s extension, in a “knowingly invalid” way, of the moratorium on evictions.

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/566836-canceling-the-constitution-biden-hailed-for-violating-rule-of-law?rl=1

Set aside for a moment the concern for those who can’t pay their rent --- there should be concern on both sides, for the lessees and the lessors, who in many cases are barely hanging on –- and take a look at this issue from the standpoint of the rule of law. That’s what the Supreme Court had to do a few weeks ago, when they ruled on the authority of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) to impose such a moratorium. The CDC had argued that federal law gives them the authority to “make and enforce such regulations as in [its] judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases.”

(This seems like a good place to mention that if the Biden administration were really trying to prevent the introduction, transmission or spread of communicable diseases, they wouldn’t be welcoming in thousands of covid-infected immigrants at our southern border. But I digress.)

Anyway, Turley severely criticized the CDC’s argument, saying it would give that governmental agency “authority over huge swaths of our economy to avoid even the possibility of the ‘introduction’ or spread of a disease. It means that a Constitution designed to prevent tyranny and authoritarianism becomes largely irrelevant if you put on a white lab coat.”

In the case Alabama Association of Realtors v. Department of Health and Human Services, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the moratorium could be kept in place but, according to Turley, “left no question that a majority of justices ultimately view the CDC order as unconstitutional.” Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch and Barrett had wanted to suspend the moratorium immediately, to make it clear that it was beyond the CDC’s constitutional powers. The fifth vote to do that would have come from Brett Kavanaugh, but he decided that since the moratorium was set to expire soon, anyway, he would just allow it to expire in order to facilitate an “additional and more orderly distribution of the congressionally appropriated rental assistance.” It was an odd move, motivated, it seems, by practicality, but he was still agreeing with the minority on the larger point that this is supposed to be done only by act of Congress, not CDC order.

Most of even the most left-wing legal scholars who advise the Biden administration –- including Biden's own White House counsel –- said that giving the CDC this authority was unconstitutional. But Biden was not put off, and said he had found “several key scholars” who thought trying again with another order might “pass constitutional muster” and would be “worth the effort.”

The “several key scholars” are thought to be just one, actually: the unhinged, Trump-hating Harvard law weasel Laurence Tribe, whose superpower is being able to rationalize any abuse of office, no matter how objectionable, from packing the Supreme Court to spending billions under Obamacare without congressional approval to impeaching Trump as a racist and domestic terrorist. I am not kidding. If anyone reads the Constitution looking for loopholes, it’s him.

https://jonathanturley.org/2019/08/06/laurence-tribe-calls-for-the-impeachment-of-trump-as-a-terrorist-and-racist/

Tribe apparently assured Biden that even though the Court believed the original order by the CDC was unconstitutional, this would be a NEW, different order and thus would have to be ruled on again. So it would buy time for the CDC to do as Biden wanted and issue an other order before SCOTUS could rule on that one. It’s hard to imagine anything more disingenuous.

As Turley explains, “It is like being given a parole for stealing a BMW and then immediately stealing a a Lexus because it is a different car. The problem was the act, not the make of car.”

For doing this, Biden was praised by leftists for his strong leadership and “commitment to social justice,” even though his act put a few more frays and tears in the already-worn Constitution. He took an oath to preserve, protect and defend it, but he’s doing exactly what he said he wouldn’t do: use a pandemic as an excuse to abuse the law.

If Biden really wanted to help renters who still lack income, he could have done a lot for them without ripping at the Constitution and shelling out more mega-billions. How about using some of that great “leadership” ability to create conditions favorable to getting back to work and school and other normal activities? That would, OF COURSE, include closing the southern border to keep the spread of covid to a minimum and avoid undue strain on our medical facilities. But no.

Here's another example of the Biden administration trying to build up its own power by tearing down the Constitution: the relentless attack on former President Trump, meant to destroy him by any means necessary. John Eastman and John Yoo have written a good opinion piece about this for FOX NEWS.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/democrats-trump-presidency-constitution-eastman-yoo

This effort has been going on since he first became a candidate, but the latest encroachment is especially shocking: they’re intent on waiving Trump’s right to confidential communications with his closest aides while in office. Democrats who run House and Senate committees want to know everything in every conversation having to do with election fraud and have issued subpoenas to former Justice Department officials such as then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, then-assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, and U.S. Attorneys for Georgia and New York.

Under Article II of the Constitution, the Justice Department should be able to reject these demands, as the President has the right to obtain frank opinions from his principal officers. This has been very well established in the courts. In other words, butt out, Congress.

Eastman and Yoo write: “While Congress has the right to investigate the events leading to the terrible riot of January 6, it does not have a right to override the constitutional prerogatives of an independent branch of government.” Indeed, they say that if Congress gets away with this, they might just as easily force the Supreme Court justices to reveal their deliberations about election fraud cases. Why not?

If Biden’s “Justice” Department refuses to withdraw its waiver of executive privilege against President Trump, then Trump needs to fight back in court with everything he’s got, to protect that right for himself and future Presidents, such as the Republican one who will win in 2024.

In a special election in Ohio’s 15th Congressional district, Trump-backed candidate Mike Carey beat 11 others for the Republican nomination, which in that red district pretty much means he’ll win the seat.

https://redstate.com/setonmotley/2021/08/05/oh-15-trumps-guy-wins-soros-and-steyers-guys-come-in-fourth-and-dnf-n421438

But the most interesting news is who didn’t win. At least two candidates described as “conservative environmentalists” were backed by leftist mega-donors George Soros and Tom Steyer. It was seen as a trial stealth effort to see if they could fool GOP voters into “flipping” a safe seat without realizing it.

It didn’t work: one candidate dropped out before the vote and the other came in fourth with 12.6%. But as Seton Motley at Redstate.com points out, Republicans now know that far-left power brokers are trying to meddle in GOP primaries to elect their candidates in red hats. It means from now on, Republicans will have to be even more careful to research the backgrounds of candidates before they mark their ballots.

You might not want to hear anything about the US Olympic women’s soccer team, but you should see this story about star player Carli Lloyd. Considering the pressure she must be under, this took guts. Let’s hope she inspires others to start literally “standing up” against political demonstrations in sports, so that sports can get back to being something that we all enjoy together instead of one more thing that divides us.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/carli-lloyd-us-womens-soccer-teammates-kneel-bronze-medal-match

Not that some politicized sports moments aren’t truly great and inspiring. Congratulations to the Taiwan duo who won the gold in badminton, meaning that for the first time in history, Chinese athletes had to stand during the playing of Taiwan’s national anthem and the raising of Taiwan’s flag.

https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/4262639

Among the many nasty surprises buried in the 2700-page “barebones” compromise “infrastructure” bill is a provision to establish a pilot program to examine the feasibility of a national, per-mile “user fee” on all motorists – i.e., a tax on every mile you drive (since Biden hasn’t made driving expensive enough already.)

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/05/infrastructure-bill-has-provision-that-could-lead-to-big-fees-on-americans-and-blow-up-bidens-promise-on-taxes-n421952

Democrats are trying to brush off questions about this by claiming it’s not a tax hike, it’s just to study the possibility of a mileage tax in the future that might not ever be imposed. If you think that Democrats will go to that much trouble to workshop a big new tax and then not impose it, I have some oceanfront property in Kansas I’d like to sell you.

Here’s more waste stuffed into that bill…

https://redstate.com/heartlandinstitute/2021/08/06/bidens-infrastructure-bill-includes-massive-slush-funds-for-green-energy-boondoggles-n421817

It also includes a piddling $1 billion for a commission headed by Sen. Joe Manchin’s wife…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/03/one-payoff-in-the-infrastructure-deal-is-so-blatantly-corrupt-that-you-almost-have-to-respect-the-hustle-n420584

And blogger Lawrence Person also lists some not-very-infrastructurey items hidden in that bill, from state-mandated carbon reduction programs to racial quotas on broadband.

https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=48841

Person also includes this quote, which every Republican who supports this bill should be required to respond to, from two researchers at the Texas Public Policy Foundation: “It has just $110 billion, or less than 10% (of its spending), for what’s historically been considered infrastructure – roads and bridges. The other 90% is to fund mass transit waste, green energy nonsense and more items that the states or the private sector could do.”

I often wonder, if leftists are really that concerned about carbon emissions, why don’t they stop burning massive piles of our tax money?

Here’s how you know you’re over the target: Rhode Island mom Nicole Solas wanted to know what her daughter was being taught in kindergarten, so she asked for a copy of the public school curriculum, which she has a right to see. For some reason, they refused to hand over the document. That made her suspicious, so she starting filing Freedom of Information Act requests for more documents. They fought those, and even tried to make her go away by billing her $74,000 for their alleged efforts at having to compile those documents.

Now, the powerful teachers’ union, the National Education Association-Rhode Island, has declared full-out war on Solas and is suing her, claiming they’re trying to protect “private” information. But the emails Solas is seeking were sent on public school servers, which makes them public record (anyone else getting a Hillary Clinton vibe here?) For the record, the NEA backs teaching Critical Race Theory in public schools and boasts that its president, Becky Pringle, is a “fierce social justice warrior.”

Bryan Preston at PJ Media has lots more details at this link:

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2021/08/05/gigantic-teachers-union-sues-mom-for-asking-what-the-local-public-school-is-teaching-her-daughter-n1467245

If the intent was to try to intimidate Solas into backing down, it didn’t work. She’s now represented by the Goldwater Institute, and her response to the NEA lawsuit was, “Game on.” If they were trying to hide public information from FOIA requests, then they’re not going to enjoy the discovery phase of this lawsuit.

Sounds like the self-flattering “social justice warriors” are about to discover what a truly fierce warrior looks like. And by that, I mean a mom who’s being told that she has no right to know what’s being taught to her kid.

The July Jobs Report

August 6, 2021

The Labor Department reported Friday that the US economy added 943,000 nonfarm payroll jobs in July, far more than the 870,000 economists predicted.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/jobs-report-nonfarm-payrolls-july-2021

To be precise, I wouldn’t call this “adding jobs,” although I’m sure President Biden will claim that and try to take credit for it. It’s mostly people coming back to work after state and city governments finally starting lifting their months’-long “two-week” lockdowns. The big employment numbers also have a lot to do with a number of states cutting off the federal government’s extended unemployment benefits that made it more lucrative to stay on the dole than to take a job.

It does show you, though, how much can be accomplished if you just stop doing things that are actively harmful. That would be a good lesson for this Administration to learn on multiple levels.

Roger Simon has an excellent column at the Epoch Times. Unfortunately, it’s a premium article, but if you’re not a subscriber, I can give you the gist in one sentence: If you want to save America from a bleak, socialist, racially-divided future, don’t dream of running for Congress or the White House; run for your local school board.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/to-save-america-run-for-school-board_3933758.html

This is where the left has put all its chips: on taking over education and misleading younger generations into hating their own nation and culture, and trading their rights and freedoms for false promises of state-supplied security. They’re like termites destroying our foundation, and if you want to halt the damage and repair it before it’s too late, then get these poisonous ideas out of our schools by running for your local school board. Stop thinking of those elections as the unimportant little races nobody cares about and start viewing them as the front line in saving America for our children and our children’s children.

(My writer Pat Reeder adds an amen to that. He says his late dad was elected to his school board, and that’s when much-needed changes that had been blocked for years finally started happening. And yes, that included some much-needed firings.)

Recall Gavin

August 6, 2021

A new Emerson College/Nexstar poll shows that Californians are warming to the idea of recalling and replacing Gov. Gavin Newsom.

https://emersonpolling.reportablenews.com/pr/newsom-clings-to-lead-in-recall-while-crime-becomes-a-top-issue-for-ca-voters

Only 48% of likely voters now say they’d vote to keep Newsom with 46% wanting to fire him, his narrowest lead yet, and 6% undecided. Among Republican replacements, Larry Elder is by far the most popular, but 40% are still undecided.

Among the noteworthy details: Newsom is only in positive territory in two places (L.A. and the San Francisco Bay area) which you could argue have deteriorated the worst under his “leadership.” Over 54% of Independents want to deep-six Newsom, as do 22% of Democrats, while 16% of Republicans want to keep him, which I can only attribute to sunstroke or smoke inhalation. Oddest of all, voters who self-identify as “non-binary” gender prefer Larry Elder to Caitlyn Jenner. So maybe some people think not every election should be determined by gender politics. And in California! Imagine that!

Olympians Who Get It

August 6, 2021

Those who’ve been turned off of the Tokyo Olympics by the handful of athletes who are using it as a platform for leftist, anti-American political statements might have their interest rekindled and their faith renewed by this story about Tamyra Mensah-Stock.

https://www.westernjournal.com/patriotic-wrestler-elated-historic-gold-medal-freaking-love-living-america/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

She just won the women’s 68 kg freestyle wrestling finals, becoming only the second US female ever to win the gold in wrestling and the first African-American woman. The daughter of an immigrant from Ghana, she admits she was scared and nervous, but she didn’t give up. And after winning the gold, she didn’t put on a sour face and turn her back to the flag. Instead, she cried tears of joy, embraced the flag, gave credit to God and said, “I love representing the U.S. I freaking love living there. I love it, and I’m so happy I get to represent USA!”

Another US Olympian who won the gold, set a new world record and gave the glory to God and her gratitude to America was sprinter Sydney McLaughlin.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/american-olympics-sydney-mclaughlin-grateful-represent-my-country

I hope those bits of good news make you click through to read the full stories. They might even make you want to tune in to the Olympics again. Some events, at least.

The New York Attorney General’s report on Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s multiple accusations of sexual harassment (as well as retaliation and creating a toxic workplace) seems to be the tipping point at which fellow Democrats and sycophantic media members decided it’s time to stop circling the wagons, as they usually do for powerful Democrats, and cut him loose.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/cuomo-facing-impeachment-votes-from-majority-of-ny-assembly-if-he-doesnt-resign-report

Cuomo is still trying to brazen it out, accusing the report of being biased and his accusers of misunderstanding his intentions. But even some of his former top allies and defenders say he’s lost the ability to govern and should resign. If he doesn’t, a majority of Assembly members (86 out of 150 at last count) have gone on record supporting impeachment.

Howard Kurtz has a rundown of some of the former Cuomo-worshipping media outlets that are now howling for his blood, and some thoughts on why.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-the-press-wants-cuomo-their-onetime-shining-knight-to-resign

To me, the biggest question is why sexual harassment allegations, as bad as they are, are accepted as grounds for Cuomo’s removal when the same people turned a blind eye to his insane COVID policies that killed thousands of nursing home residents and his staff’s ham-fisted attempts to cover that up. Is sexual harassment deemed a worse crime in liberal circles than causing mass deaths?

But if that were true, why did such avatars of wokeness as the founder of Time’s Up and the president of the Human Rights Campaign allegedly try to save Cuomo initially by helping to smear his accusers?

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/465953/

The editors of Issues & Insights think they know why Cuomo is suddenly being thrown under the crosstown bus, and it has little to do with justice, principles or victims’ rights. It’s about raw politics. Anything is tolerable until you become a liability to the party. Only then do they spring the trap door and drop you into the shark tank.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/05/the-real-reason-dems-suddenly-want-cuomo-gone/

I wish we’d had this new information from the NEW YORK POST in time for yesterday's update on the flood of COVID-infected “noncitizens” –- illegals –- at the Texas border. (That story: the DOJ sued and obtained a temporary injunction against Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that curbed the federal government’s transportation of migrants from the border into Texas and beyond.) But here it is.

https://nypost.com/2021/08/04/thousands-of-covid-positive-migrants-pass-through-texas-border/

Nearly 7,000 immigrants who tested positive for COVID-19 --- out of the ones who WERE tested --- have passed through McAllen, Texas, including more than 1,500 in just the past seven days.

It wasn’t a big announcement, just one that was folded into a statement from the City of McAllen, population 140,000, announcing the construction of emergency shelters to help them cope with the overwhelming numbers of immigrants. On Monday, the buses Gov. Abbott is trying to stop were running constantly, dropping off passengers at a downtown Catholic charity every 30 minutes throughout the day. McAllen has declared a state of disaster.

https://therightscoop.com/breaking-mcallen-tx-declares-state-of-disaster-after-biden-dumped-1500-illegals-with-covid-last-week/

According to this story, July marked the highest number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border in more than 20 years.

On Wednesday afternoon, a crash occurred about 50 miles north of McAllen on a remote Texas highway when a van carrying 25 people (!) --- but designed to carry no more than 15 --- turned over on a curve, killing 11 people and injuring at least a dozen others.

https://www.fox26houston.com/news/11-dead-13-injured-in-crash-linked-to-human-smuggling-near-us-mexico-border-officials-say

Migrants continue to pour in, as Gov. Abbot has been ordered not to interfere, at least for now. After the temporary halt to his order, a spokesperson for his office said, “The governor’s Executive Order attempts to prevent the Biden administration from spreading COVID-19 into Texas and protect the health and safety of Texans.” The next hearing is scheduled for August 13.

Abbott’s spokesperson also said this: “The Biden administration has knowingly --- and willingly --- released COVID-19 positive migrants into Texas communities, risking the potential exposure and infection of Texas residents.”

And this brings us to what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday to President Biden, which is absolutely what needed to be said. Watch and learn; this is EXACTLY the way all Republicans need to fight back against the politics-driven idiocy being inflicted on our country right now by those in power. It makes no sense to talk about lockdowns when you’re allowing COVID-infected “noncitizens” to stream into the country as Biden is.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/florida-governor-desantis-biden-covid-restrictions

Biden had admonished Govs. DeSantis and Abbott for not doing “the right thing” to fight COVID. “Look, we need leadership from everyone,” he said. “If some governors aren’t willing to do the right thing to beat this pandemic, they should allow businesses and universities who want to do the right thing to be able to do it.” Rational people are more at risk from busting a gut laughing at lines like this from Biden than they are from the coronavirus. I wonder how many infected people crossed into America at our southern border while Biden was giving his little speech.

DeSantis’ stand-up-and-cheer response to President Biden: “Why don’t you do your job? Why don’t you get this border secure? And until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you, thank you.”

DeSantis also appeared briefly on THE INGRAHAM ANGLE with Laura Ingraham Wednesday to talk about personal decisions regarding COVID, particularly regarding parents on issues that affect their kids, such as mask-wearing in school. He pointed out that last year, school districts in Florida that didn’t institute compulsory mask-wearing had lower rates of infection than those that did.

A big name in Texas Democrat politics, Gerry Monroe, is reportedly “blowing the lid off” the story of massive voter fraud in Harris County.. That’s the Houston metropolitan area, the third largest voting county in America with about 2.5 million voters. Monroe is set to be interviewed at 11AM Eastern Thursday on NATIONAL FILE TV.

https://twitter.com/nationalfile

They say it’s to be shown live on Twitter, but does Twitter know about this? I’m surprised that anything about voter fraud wouldn’t be censored by them. Guess we’ll find out.

Another operative, Democrat strategist Damien Thaddeum Jones, who worked as a regional director for the “Beto” O’Rourke campaign, came forward in October 2020 to blow the whistle on what NATIONAL FILE describes as a “massive voter fraud ring” in Harris County. They obtained audio from him giving details on the work for Biden by alleged ringleader Dallas Jones. Jones was fired by the Biden campaign after he was implicated in an illegal ballot harvesting operation in sworn affidavits.

https://nationalfile.com/watch-black-democrat-operative-blows-the-lid-off-democrat-voter-fraud-in-texas/

It should be noted that Democrats took complete control of Harris County in 2018 when they won offices by a 200,000-vote margin, although I’m not sure if I should be putting quotation marks around the word “vote.”

The Gerry Monroe interview is the latest development in a story that’s been emerging since last year. Much has been uncovered by the 20 (!) private investigators who have been on the case. NATIONAL FILE breaks down what happened in the 2020 election during the weeks of early, “24-hour” voting to sway the results.

The Biden campaign had hired Dallas Jones to run his campaign in Texas. And though vote harvesting is a second-degree felony under the Texas Election Code, that operation allegedly had “scores” of paid vote harvesters working for them. Audio recordings suggest that identities of both living and dead people were stolen, with a convicted forger named Gloria Palmer working as a paid campaign assistant in Sheila Jackson Lee’s office, mailing the fraudulent ballot applications in Jackson’s district. Campaign insiders allege that Jones oversaw the operation and that he was interrogated by the FBI in the weeks approaching the 2020 campaign.

Vote harvesters would go door-to-door in poor neighborhoods, often dressed to look like U.S. Census workers, and would often ply their trade at nursing homes and homeless centers, where the staff would be complicit. They would “hold” ballots to be forged by volunteers and then mailed. There’s also detailed testimony and evidence from a 30-year black police officer named Raymond T. Stewart who, while serving as a poll watcher, “saw the election judge use a table full of IDs to vote unregistered people that were voting by drive-through.”

This is a criminal act, but according to NATIONAL FILE, the local district attorney “did not even want to entertain our criminal complaint.” So the evidence has been sent on to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office.

In these audio recordings, people find out that they or their dead relatives “voted,” to their surprise.

The decision by Harris County’s Democrat county clerk, Chris Hollins, to institute drive-through voting with no reason required was a violation of the Texas Election Code. He committed another violation by independently mailing ballots to everyone 65 and older. At least he was stopped by the Texas Supreme Court before he could send a ballot to every name on the voter rolls, which had not been updated since 2016.

The NATIONAL FILE story is quite long and detailed and includes the sworn testimony of several other poll watchers. Former FBI investigative specialist Charles F. Marler said he was tipped to the ballot harvesting by two witnesses in December of 2019. This is hearsay, but Marler testified he’d been told that one employee named Tyler James had bragged that the operation, with the help of mass mail-in balloting, “could harvest 700,000 illegal ballots.”

We can thank citizen journalist Colleen Vera of TEXAS TRASH TALK for updates concerning Sheila Jackson Lee’s campaign office and the two convicted forgers who were getting paid. Vera’s report --- included in the NATIONAL FILE story --- makes very interesting reading. For example, she found that 32 handwritten requests for ballots, all purported to be from different voters, were in the exact same handwriting and returned in identical pre-printed envelopes with the same stamp. Even more stunning: all these “voters” happened in Precinct #259, all voted for the same candidates, and all signed with an “X.”

What are the odds? Yet additional research showed the same thing had happened in Precinct #259 every year going back to 2008.

In Vera’s words, What has been uncovered is a group of masterminds wanting to destroy the Texas voting voice.”

It sure looks like there’s a whole lotta cheatin’ goin’ on. And it would make sense that Harris County is a key spot to be doing it, just like Maricopa County (Phoenix) and Fulton County (Atlanta). Maybe it’s the most prime of all. Increasingly, as Harris County goes, so goes Texas, and as Texas goes, so goes America. If the Democrats can steal Texas, it’s all over. So it should surprise no one that if there’s coordinated voter fraud going on in large counties, this has got to be one of the hotbeds.

Speaking of terrible, no-good, very bad New York politicians, the state Attorney General’s report into allegations of sexual harassment against Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been released, and it’s not good for him. (Details and a link to the full report here):

https://redstate.com/sister-toldjah/2021/08/03/hammer-drops-for-gov-cuomo-as-ny-attorney-general-finds-he-sexually-harassed-multiple-women-n420634

After investigators spoke to 179 people and reviewed 74,000 pieces of evidence, AG Letitia James released a 168-page report finding that Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women in violation of state and federal laws and his own office’s written policies. It also found that Cuomo and his senior staffers retaliated against at least one former employee and created a hostile work environment and a toxic workplace that enabled the harassment to continue.

James stopped short of calling for Cuomo to face prosecution (of course!), but this should fuel bipartisan calls for him to resign. It’s hard to believe someone needed even more reasons to do that, but if so, here you go.

 

“You Will Show Us Your Papers!” New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced that starting next month, proof of COVID vaccination will be required to engage in a range of indoor activities in the city, including dining, fitness, entertainment and others.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/spencerbrown/2021/08/03/de-blasio-announces-nyc-proof-of-vaccine-mandate-for-indoor-activities-n2593514

So having forcibly shut down businesses for months to stop the spread of COVID, he’s now going to allow the businesses to open but ban large numbers of potential customers from entering them -- to stop the spread of COVID. “Full enforcement” will begin on September 13th, marking perhaps the first time since taking office that DeBlasio has actually enforced something.

Since this makes no exceptions for people who had COVID and have natural immunity or who object on religious grounds, or who have been advised against vaccinations by their doctors, or who just have personal objections, it’s being described by critics as madness and tyranny. But New Yorkers should be used to that by now.

Incidentally, how will people prove they’ve been vaccinated? They’re required to show either their paper CDC vaccine record card or the New York City or State's vaccine record app. That means not only forcing people to make their private medical records public to strangers, but also forcing them to show a government-issued ID. And since blacks and Hispanics have declined vaccination in higher percentages than whites, and will be disproportionately affected by the policy, that means it’s straight-up racism under the Democrats’ own definition.

Prayers For Kathy Griffin

August 4, 2021

Controversial Trump-hating comedian Kathy Griffin revealed that she has lung cancer and is about to undergo surgery to have half of her left lung removed. She says it’s stage one and hasn’t spread, so doctors are optimistic that she will recover without chemo or radiation.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2021/08/02/kathy-griffin-reveals-lung-cancer-diagnosis-n1466450

Lung cancer is a frightening and terrible disease (Griffin already knows that from having lost her brother to cancer in 2014), and like fellow conservative Matt Margolis at the link, I send her my prayers for a full recovery. As Matt notes, that’s what decent people do at times like this, even for those who have ignored basic rules of civility toward others. He hopes she will survive this ordeal and come out of it with a little more empathy for others. Amen to that.

At this writing, former President Trump has yet to comment. But a lot of people are waiting.

For the last couple of days, we’ve been following Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s attempt to stop contractors hired by the federal government from transporting “noncitizens” (illegals) from the border to other parts of Texas, where those infected with COVID-19 can spread it throughout the state and beyond. The case was presented on Monday before the U.S. District Court in El Paso, and the feds won this round, obtaining a temporary restraining order against Abbott. LEGAL INSURRECTION has a very good analysis of what took place, by William A. Jacobson.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/08/court-issues-temporary-restraining-order-halting-texas-illegal-migrant-transport-ban/

Gov. Abbott had signed Executive Order GA-37 to minimize the “potentially catastrophic effect on public health in Texas” caused by the confluence of the migrant crisis and the pandemic. Texas was facing two surges at the same time: a COVID-19 surge and an illegal immigration surge, and he had to do something to protect the citizens of his state. There is precedent for his standing up to the federal government in such a situation, in the case of Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts: “Upon the principle of self-defense, of paramount necessity, a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic of disease which threatens the safety of its members.”

But the DOJ sued, claiming the Texas order infringed on federal control of immigration. Here are the details, also from William Jacobson, including the full texts of the order from Gov. Abbott, AG Garland’s complaint, and a letter sent by Abbott in response, helpfully suggesting some actions the Biden administration could take to avoid a “constitutional showdown.” But such a showdown seems to be exactly what they want.

https://legalinsurrection.com/2021/07/doj-sues-texas-to-continue-private-transport-of-illegal-migrants-despite-covid-risks/

One of those suggestions was to “simply enforce the existing federal immigration laws and stop admitting migrants who are not authorized by Congress to be admitted. That would substantially reduce the importation of COVID-19 while also fulfilling the government’s role to faithfully execute the laws of the United States.” Seems simple enough. Of course, we know that this is not President Biden’s goal at all, or he would do it.

“How much does the Biden administration love the illegal migration taking place at the southern border?” Jacobson asks. “Biden has encouraged people to come here illegally, and to send their children here illegally in dangerous conditions, by offering a de facto sanctuary nation. So important is protecting this migration to the Biden administration that it trumps the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.”

With that last sentence, Jacobson nails the reason for this whole mess: twisted, toxic politics. We see quite clearly what this administration's actual priorities are, and it’s infuriating. We’ve done our part for a year and a half with the masks and distancing and social isolation and kids at home and business-crushing lockdowns and now shots, only to see that those in charge, in the end, care nothing for our safety. That’s a strong statement, I know, but it’s obviously much more important to them to bus in illegal immigrants by the hundreds of thousands from a part of the world where the virus is rampant. Come on in, healthy or sick, the Biden administration tells its new “noncitizens”; Biden and his Justice Department want you here so much that they’re willing to let you spread the virus from sea to shining sea if you happen to be infected. They just know you’ll vote Democrat, and they want you to keep pouring in till the country is solid blue.

Jacobson finds the federal government’s argument presented Monday to be without merit. The U.S. government, he says, “seeks to judicially nullify GA-37 through a blunderbuss and sweeping application of preemption and intergovernmental immunity.”

[From Oxford Dictionaries –- blun-der-buss (noun) an action or way of doing something regarded as lacking in subtlety and precision: “economists resort too quickly to the blunderbuss of regulation”]

So Attorney General Merrick Garland is using a big ol' blunderbuss to keep Gov. Abbott from protecting the people of his state from the rampant spread of COVID-19. And so far, it’s working. A DOJ lawyer argued that Abbott’s order would disrupt a network of government-paid contractors transporting migrants and cause a backup --- “chaos.” You know what’s already causing chaos? Biden’s border policy.

The next step now is for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to file responsive papers, in which he’ll acknowledge that, yes, the feds control immigration but will then argue that their non-enforcement of federal law is creating a health crisis in Texas. This is not an attempt to regulate immigration but to regulate public health during a pandemic. Also, the reasoning goes, there is no infringement on federal immigration because Texas isn’t deporting people. To put it another way, they’re just “stopping the spread,” as we can’t stop the spread of COVID without stopping the spread of migrants who carry it.

In a statement on July 30, Paxton accused the Biden administration of abandoning its duty to safeguard the border and vowed to protect Gov. Abbott’s executive order in court. He says he and the governor “will work together to keep President Biden out of Texas’ business.” We should all count ourselves as Texans in spirit today.

The temporary restraining order goes until 8AM on August 13, “or until such later date as may be extended by the Court or agreed upon by the parties.” That's the specific date and time set for the hearing on the request for a preliminary injunction against Gov. Abbott’s order. In the meantime, presumably the buses will continue to run.

Jacobson agrees that Biden’s malfeasance is “outrageous,” but he says Texas still has “an uphill fight.”

To the surprise of many, New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, the first transgender Olympic athlete to compete in women’s events, flamed out and lost to weightlifters who were, you know…actually born female.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/02/heres-how-that-transgender-weightlifter-fared-at-the-olympics-n420030

As the article at Redstate.com notes, defenders of allowing biological males who’ve “transitioned” to compete against women will treat Hubbard’s failure as evidence that they have no unfair physical advantage. But there were two major factors in this case that worked to counter Hubbard’s unfair advantage. The first is age: Hubbard didn’t start taking female hormones until the age of 34 and is now 43, by far the oldest person in the competition.

The second is that weightlifters don’t all lift the same weight. They choose how much they’ll lift with the total of three lifts comprising their scores. By attempting to lift 120 kg (264.5 lbs.), 125 kg (275.5 lbs.) and 120 kg (failing on the first and third lifts), Hubbard tried to lift too much weight. I hope she didn't give herself a hernia. Some might attribute this to “male ego,” but I’m sure that was surgically removed.

Frankly, Hubbard’s loss was the best thing that could have happened to the transgender movement. Imagine how it would have looked on TV to millions of viewers if Hubbard had cleanly lifted so much weight, then stood there towering over the competition and accepting the gold.

Also as noted, Hubbard still got lots of adulatory press coverage for “making history” while the actual winners of the event were completely overlooked. None of the stories that I saw that fawned over Hubbard’s “accomplishment” even mentioned the winners. I had to do a Google search and dig deep into the Olympics website to discover that the gold went to China’s Li Wenwen, the silver to Great Britain’s Emily Jade Campbell and the bronze to American Sarah Elizabeth Robles. Congratulations, ladies: you’re the ones who made Olympic history.

One thing that really stands out about Attorney General Merrick Garland’s attempted smackdown of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is how much Garland cares about PROTECTING people, as long as they're here illegally.

In case you didn’t see yesterday’s commentary about the legal fight between President Biden’s “Justice” Department and the Lone Star State, it’s here at the link. The case boils down to whether or not the federal government always has supremacy over a state, even when it causes harm to that state.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=D4342846-F6F2-4D33-A822-930438E55E44

Garland argues that Gov. Abbott’s order to stop contractors hired by the federal government to transport “noncitizens” (their word for illegals) causes injury to those the government is charged to protect,”jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody...”

Sarcasm alert: Ah, I see that I’ve been looking at this all wrong! For some reason, I had it in my head that the government’s priority was to look after the health and safety of its own citizens. But obviously, my view is outdated. The most important consideration in 2021 is not to cause injury to our country's honored guests. That means citizens and legal residents will just have to deal with any injury THEY receive as a result, because we are a compassionate nation.

While many citizens face renewed requirements to mask up to go to work or school, as the pandemic reportedly rages on, the ”noncitizens” get to hop a bus or plane –- chartered for them by Uncle Sam at taxpayer expense –- and head from border towns to big cities within Texas and far beyond, many spreading COVID-19 across the land.

https://news.yahoo.com/surge-raises-suspicions-migrants-propelling-185900170.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

Gov. Abbott made the mistake of being concerned about Texans who might get exposed to the virus. The AG is just trying to show him the truth: that government is there not to protect Texans but to make sure everything possible is being done for hundreds of thousands of new Democrat voters---I mean, our new guests.

To that end, Biden’s newly proposed immigration plan says Congress should make available $15 million to cover the cost of private lawyers for “families and vulnerable individuals” who have entered our country illegally (though he doesn’t use the word “illegally”). It also calls for $23 million more to cover “legal orientation programs” administered by the Justice Department.

This is the first time an administration has proposed covering such an expense.

These lawyers would be making an estimated $150 to $300 per hour. We learn from this that the Biden administration is looking out for not only the “noncitizens” crossing the Rio Grande but also the immigration lawyers who will guide them through the legal territory that still must be crossed. That initial $15 million really won’t go very far, though, as it’s only enough to cover several thousand people. But since taking good care of “non-citizens” and the immigration lawyers representing them is so very important, that amount is sure to be just the starting point.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-to-cover-cost-lawyers-migrants-at-border

The WASHINGTON EXAMINER did some math and says that in the past four months alone, 190,000 people illegally crossed our southern border with a family member and 64,000 unaccompanied children also arrived. Just how the Biden administration plans to apply the money is vague, but the EXAMINER estimates the cost of providing lawyers for all of these people at $500 million. Again, that’s for four months.

I’d like to ask Merrick Garland about Section 292 of the Immigration Nationality Act, which specifies that the government is not supposed to pay for legal representation in immigration proceedings. Immigrants have the option of paying for their own representation, or they can receive help from one of the many pro bono and advocacy organizations that are there to assist in such cases. In other words, the American taxpayer is not supposed to be on the hook for this. These are civil cases, and since American citizens and legal permanent residents don’t get taxpayer-funded representation when they’re involved in civil litigation, then “noncitizens” certainly should not.

Obviously, the Biden administration doesn’t view it that way. “Noncitizens” get special privileges that we citizens don’t have. And the attorney general, as we have seen, takes it as his responsibility to keep them safe from harm as they pour into the Lone Star State.

But if the AG really feels that way, he might want to rethink his support of Biden’s border policy. We found a must-read article in the NEW YORK POST from April that would surely change his mind, as it details the nightmare that waits for many children, particularly young girls, who are brought across the border by the drug cartels.

https://nypost.com/2021/04/17/how-bidens-border-policy-will-increase-child-sex-trafficking-to-us/

Many have already been raped and beaten by the time they get here, if they do manage to get here alive. The cartels exploit them in child pornography and as drug mules. Because they’re indebted to the cartels for the cost of bringing them here, they become indentured servants working as prostitutes. One homeland security agent describes the “direct human pipeline” from Tenancingo, Mexico, to New York City, saying his office has prosecuted cases involving girls as young as 14.

The girls are held against their will in apartments in Queens and driven around to be made to have sex with men, typically 15-20 men in one evening. All the money is handed over to the trafficker, to pay the girls’ “debt.”

As for the situation in Texas, here’s more of the reality: So many are crossing the border that they have overflowed the facilities and are being massed under bridges to await being processed. The attorney general’s solution is to keep those buses rolling, throughout the State of Texas and to points north, east and west! And the governor had better not “interfere.” The VICTORY GIRLS BLOG has an outstanding report from South Texas, complete with unbelievable photos of this catastrophe.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/illegals-housed-under-bridge-and-bused-everywhere/

Finally, a legal immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who also happens to work as a health care policy analyst tells us just what is wrong with the current border policy and why. She sees the policy of allowing illegal immigrants to pour into America as “a slap in the face” to legal immigrants. She notes that while the administration is using the threat of COVID-19 to restrict Americans’ freedom, Biden has allowed over a million illegal immigrants, many infected with COVID and other serious diseases, to come here.

Op-Ed: I'm a Legal Immigrant - Here's Why Biden's Border Crisis Angers Me

So this is the reality of illegal immigration. Not only is it spreading COVID and crime, but we can’t “protect” the many thousands of young people who are brought over. Some on the left support this open-border policy because they are naive and think they’re being compassionate, but those at the highest levels of government such as Merrick Garland and Joe Biden, as well as those who promote open borders with their billions, know good and well the damage it causes but don’t care, because, you know, politics.

Rep. Ilhan Omar and some of her fellow far-far-left colleagues are pushing a bill they call the SUPPORT Act (I guess that sounded better than the HAMMOCK Act) that would give $1200 a month to people making less than $75,000 a year or heads of household making less than $112,500 a year, plus $600 per child. This would be a first step toward a national “guaranteed income.” Because paying people for doing nothing is working out so well right now.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ilhan-omar-guaranteed-income-1200-monthly-checks

Omar declared, "Poverty is a choice. For too long we have prioritized endless growth while millions are homeless, hungry or without healthcare. We as a nation have the ability to make sure everyone has their basic needs like food, housing and healthcare met.”

Hoo-boy, where to start? I guess with the fact that America already takes care of those who genuinely need food, housing and healthcare. We spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year on programs like Medicaid, Section 8 housing and SNAP food assistance. If we wanted to spend even more on those programs, maybe we could secure the border and stop letting millions of illegal immigrants suck up so much public assistance funding that could go to Americans, especially veterans. Just spit-balling here.

Second, prioritizing growth has enabled us to create the most dynamic economy in the world, one that was creating plenty of jobs and rising wages up until a Chinese virus and Democrat politicians strangled it (and somehow, Trump got blamed for that.)

I do agree with her on one thing: in some cases, poverty is a choice. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of people who are poor through no fault of their own. But then, there are those who make the mistake of listening to the false promises of leftist politicians who promise them things for free in exchange for their freedom. Like a subsistence wage for no work. Leftists hope you choose to stay in poverty because that keeps you dependent on government and them in power.

But one of the problems with socialist ides like this is that there is no magical forest full of money trees, so all that free stuff has to be paid for by someone else. As soon the people paying for it realize it’s not worth it to keep producing when the government is just going to take away the fruits of their labor and give it to the non-productive, then they become nonproductive, too.

And that’s when America becomes Venezuela.

For more news of my news coverage, visit my website here.

GOP report on Wuhan lab

August 3, 2021

Monday, Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee issued a report that the preponderance of evidence, including recently uncovered evidence, points to COVID-19 being accidentally released from the virus lab in Wuhan, China, sometime before September 12, 2019.

https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/press-release/mccaul-releases-addendum-to-origins-of-covid-19-report/

Texas Rep. Michael McCaul said the Wuhan virologists were “playing with fire. They were genetically manipulating at the lab this gain-of-function that was taking place." McCaul called for top researchers involved with the Wuhan lab to be sanctioned and for Peter Daszak, the head of EcoHealth Alliances that sent $3.4 million in NIH grants to the Wuhan lab, to be called to testify before Congress.

https://www.foxnews.com/world/wuhan-lab-report-raises-further-questions-about-possible-covid-19-lab-leak

McCaul also accused the Chinese Communist Party of engaging in “the greatest cover-up in human history.” I don’t know if there’s an award ceremony for that, but if so, I hope the CCP remembers to thank all the US-based social media sites that made their win possible.

When the Supreme Court pulled a right to same-sex marriage out of the air, it created a legal hornet’s nest that pitted their newly-created right against the clearly-enumerated religious freedom rights of the First Amendment. Almost overnight, LGBTQ activists went from arguing that legalizing same-sex marriage would have no effect on Christians who oppose it to launching lawsuits to destroy Christian-owned businesses that declined to participate in same-sex weddings. In its original ruling, the SCOTUS voiced some empty words about respecting others' beliefs, but created a cloud of confusion that opened the door to religious persecution.

They had a chance to correct it when they got the case of Colorado Christian cake artist Jack Phillips, who has been hounded for years by lawsuits for declining to take jobs creating gay wedding cakes. But again, the SCOTUS punted and refused to clarify that First Amendment rights are supreme. So Phillips continues to be targeted with malicious lawsuits. And now, the SCOTUS’ creative rights-making and general dithering has resulted in yet another injustice, and from the same state and the same politicized and vindictive state officials they already had to reprimand before.

https://www.westernjournal.com/judges-rule-christian-web-designers-beliefs-not-supersede-colorado-law-refuses-promote-gay-marriage/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Once again, a federal court has sided with Colorado officials who are ordering Christian web designer Lorie Smith to take jobs designing same-sex wedding websites or else face serious legal consequences. In a 2-1 ruling, the court said Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination law is a “neutral law of general applicability” and can therefore compel Smith to promote speech that violates her religious beliefs. But the dissenting judge called the ruling “unprecedented,” and said, “This case illustrates exactly why we have a First Amendment.”

Exactly. So how many more Christian business owners are going to have their lives, businesses and finances ruined before the Supreme Court finally does its job, cleans up the mess it’s created, and affirms the supremacy of the First Amendment?

Sarah Palin For Senate

August 2, 2021

Other than “Trump Wins Second Non-Consecutive Term,” I can think of few headlines that would cause more anguish in liberal circles than “Sarah Palin Elected To Senate.” And for that reason alone, this story makes me smile…

https://www.westernjournal.com/sarah-palin-floats-big-2022-possibility-sen-murkowski-notice/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

In a related story, I have a feeling Sen. Lisa Murkowski isn’t the only Republican in Congress who will be facing a challenge from the right. In a new McLaughlin & Associates survey 53% of regular Republican primary voters in Wyoming described Rep. Liz Cheney, currently the darling of CNN for her spot on Nancy Pelosi’s Jan. 6th show trial, as “liberal.” Only 23% say they plan to vote for her, and 77% say they will not. I think you can safely call those “daunting odds.”

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/cheney-in-trouble-77-gop-would-not-reelect-53-call-her-liberal

One common refrain over the weekend, in podcasts and on the radio, was that “there just isn’t anything to talk about right now!” What, are they kidding?

Here’s a story, for example, that probably hasn’t been talked about much (yet) outside the Lone Star State, but it has to do with vitally important issues of states’ rights, balance of power, federal sovereignty, illegal immigration and public health. The federal government is trying to stop Gov. Abbott from restricting the ground transportation of illegal border-crossers within his state, as he did with an order filed last Wednesday. And Abbott has responded in writing that the Biden administration has “created a constitutional crisis between the federal government and the State of Texas.”

It sure is looking that way. According to Biden’s DOJ, “In our constitutional system, a State has no right to regulate the federal government’s operations.” Even when those operations are affecting the health and safety of people in that state? We’ll see about that.

Biden’s disastrous border policies have been leading up to this moment, but the final straw was when Attorney General Merrick Garland, who apparently is so disappointed at not becoming a Supreme Court that he’s decided to act like one, filed a restraining order in U.S. District Court, the Western District of Texas in El Paso, on Friday afternoon to stop Gov. Abbott’s order. We went to THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS, definitely not a conservative newspaper, to see how a local paper reported this development. To their credit, it’s pretty straightforward.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/us-sues-texas-over-abbott-e2-80-99s-order-restricting-transport-of-migrants/ar-AAMLxcD?ocid=uxbndlbing

The state attorney general has filed five immigration-related lawsuits against the Biden administration. But AG Garland’s suit alleges that this order by Gov. Abbott “violates the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which says that federal laws take precedence over state laws.” Oh, really? I would imagine that many Texans would have a big problem with that, considering that Biden’s border policies are putting the lives and property of Texans near the border at serious risk.

But never mind those Texans --- Garland’s suit argues that the governor’s order causes injury to individuals whom the U.S. is charged to protect (yes, he’s talking about the migrants, not the Texans), “jeopardizing the health and safety of noncitizens in federal custody, risking the safety of federal law enforcement personnel and their families, and exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in our communities.”

What? If anything is exacerbating the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, it’s the steady stream of illegal, potentially infected border-crossers into Texas and other border states.

But Garland called Gov. Abbott’s order “both dangerous and unlawful.”

Let’s turn Garland’s argument around and word it so it actually makes sense from Gov. Abbott’s point of view: Biden’s border policy causes injury to American citizens who reside in Texas, particularly near the border, whom the U.S. is charged to protect. By allowing covid-infected individuals and members of violent drug cartels –- and who knows who else? –- to cross into Texas, they jeopardize the health and safety of American citizens (Texas residents and their families), risk the safety of federal and state law enforcement personnel, and exacerbate the spread of COVID-19 in Texas communities.

Abbott accuses the Biden administration of exposing Texas to COVID-19 (true) and “creating a public health disaster in Texas.”

I would add that letting thousands of untested, unvaccinated and largely unmasked people cross illegally into Texas makes it a lot harder for rational people to take the government’s warnings about the virus seriously. COVID-19 and its variants are either still very dangerous, or they’re not. If they are, then why are hundreds of thousands of people from around the world allowed to stream into our country through our southern border? This makes absolutely no sense, except perhaps in Joe Biden’s brain.

Abbott’s executive order, which took effect on Wednesday, ordered the Texas Department of Public Safety to detain vehicles that were transporting migrants after their detention by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and reroute them to their point of origin or entry.

Attorneys and “immigration nonprofits” jumped all over this order as unconstitutional. But Abbott responded that he has legal authority to do it under “long-established emergency response laws to control the movement of people to better contain the spread of a disaster, such as those known to have COVID-19.”

Abbott’s order certainly plays heck with the government’s logistics for transporting “noncitizens” (the nice vanilla word now used by the feds to encompass illegals), as Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are designed only for short-term holding, and with people pouring as fast as they are, they have to keep folks moving...somewhere else. In just the Rio Grande Valley, CBP in the fiscal year to date has used contractors to transport about 120,000 (!) “noncitizens” hither and yon. Your tax dollars at work.

The “noncitizens” are transferred to another federal agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), except for unaccompanied children, who are taken to Health and Human Services. It is then that “other non-governmental agencies” do COVID-19 testing along with what Garland suit describes as “safe placement and quarantine.” Sarcasm alert: I’m sure it’s all very safe and the virus doesn’t spread at all.

The numbers quoted in the DALLAS MORNING NEWS report are quite staggering. Just Thursday, nearly 2,300 unaccompanied minors were put in custody of the Border Patrol. This fiscal year, about 95,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended. Detention facilities can hold only so many. It’s clear that if Texas doesn’t play nicely with the Biden administration and cooperate fully with their master plan for spreading new “noncitizens” throughout the country, the feds will face a logistical nightmare. That’s the argument being used by many to get Gov. Abbott to reconsider and cooperate.

We all know there’s another solution to this logistical nightmare: stop letting people stream across the doggone border. Close up the gaps in the wall and stop the flow NOW. But that won't happen.

A story in the DAILY CALLER has more details. The DOJ suit also claims that in dealing with the contractors the feds are using to transport “noncitizens,” Abbott’s order allegedly interferes with nongovernmental partners and contractors working with the federal government and the “administration of federal immigration law.” It also said that the order obstructs Congress, since Congress is charged with crafting immigration law.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/07/30/biden-doj-sues-texas-greg-abbott-migrant-transportation/

If that’s the case, then Texas or any state is at the mercy of any federal law having anything to do with immigration, no matter how damaging it might be. Abbott could be right: this might be a constitutional crisis.

And so far, he's not blinking. Garland has warned him that if his order is not rescinded immediately, then the United States “intends to pursue all appropriate legal remedies to ensure that Texas does not interfere with the functions of the federal government.” It occurs to me that this is the strong-arm approach he’s taking with state legislatures that want to run and audit their own elections, as they are constitutionally entitled to do.

There’s a key difference between how those on the right and the left view the economy and the role of the government. We’re experiencing the stark contrasts as the Biden administration carries out its policies that lean to the left—in some cases to the far left.

Here are some basic truths about how the economy works. The rule of supply and demand says that if the demand is higher than the supply, prices go up. So if a lot of people want a car or a house but there is a low inventory of cars and houses, the prices will go up. The more demand, the higher the price. That’s true for gasoline, groceries, or gravel. Conversely, if there is a huge supply and little demand, prices will plummet. This is true of labor as well. If there are lots of help wanted signs and job openings but not many workers willing to take the jobs, employers will have to bid up the wages and pay more. But they may try to function with fewer employees, which in the long run means fewer jobs.

Another truth is that taxes taken by the government mean less money for a family or a business. We need taxes to pay for essential services and functions, whether having a military, having airports, waterways, police departments, fire trucks, roads and highways, parks, or sewer systems. But whatever the government does for you, it takes FROM you to do it. If they do stuff you don’t want or need, it costs you in real money. That’s money you don’t keep to buy clothes for your teenager, buy food, pay your housing costs or utilities, or put gas in your car.

When prices go up but wages don’t, that’s inflation. Inflation is a silent tax on you. If the cost of your electricity, gasoline, food, building supplies, and the cost of labor goes up, you have less money left to do things you want to do and less money to buy things you want to buy. The decrease in what you can afford to buy leads to fewer things being sold, which means fewer things will be manufactured and transported which means some people who made, shipped, or sold those things will lose their jobs. Everyone gets hurt by inflation and we are seeing a uptick in inflation right now under the policies of the Biden administration and the Democrats in Congress. Those on the left believes that government should do more to redistribute the money in the economy by taking more from the people who have worked and giving it to those who either didn’t work or who didn’t earn as much as others. Sometimes government promises to “do things” for people for providing “FREE college or childcare.” But it isn’t free at all. The government will have to take more of your money to pay for it. And when taxes are higher, you have less money. And your employer has less money. You can’t buy things you want and your employer can’t increase your wages or benefits. And a store can’t afford to put more items on the shelf which means fewer things are ordered, fewer things are shipped, and fewer things are made. Get the picture? Good, because the folks on the left don’t seem to. They truly believe they can spend your money better than you can. If you actually believe that, you will love those who govern from the left. If you believe you’d spend your money better than the government would, then you’ll want to vote for people on the right.

It’s really not that complicated. How you vote will determine how you live. Elections do have consequences. And if you’ve bought gasoline, clothes, food or planned a vacation lately, I hope you’ve noticed the consequences!

Vaccine Talk

August 1, 2021

The Biden White House is furious at the New York Times and the Washington Post for tweeting what they claim is false information about the risk of COVID infection among the vaccinated and their likelihood of spreading it. Details here:

https://www.foxnews.com/media/white-house-washington-post-new-york-times-covid-spread-vaccinated

Can I just point out that it’s no wonder the public is skeptical of government claims about COVID and vaccines? What does it say when the Administration’s messages are so mixed and confused that not even their court stenographers can get the official version straight?

Speaking of which…

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/30/white-house-walks-back-biden-statement-that-national-vaccine-mandate-is-under-consideration/

And Matt Taibbi shows how vaccine skepticism is not a new phenomenon but the latest manifestation of the long term out-of-touch arrogance and doubletalk of the elites.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/28/smug-dems-have-only-selves-to-blame-for-vaccine-hesitancy/

Thanks to all who wrote concerning the story of the father whose son has been "detained" for months after the Capitol breach and our follow-up concerning a letter critical of the dad. Here's one we found particularly insightful and would like to highlight, from Terry...

Dear Gov. Huckabee:

First of all, I am extremely grateful for your daily newsletters, which are a primary source of news for me, as well as for your TV show that provides a variety unmatched in that medium.

I'm moved to write concerning what is being said about the events of January 6 by people on both ends of the spectrum who seemingly value inflammatory hyperbole over rational discussion of what actually happened. Your own remarks have consistently been even-handed and well thought out, it seems to me.

Conservatives are wearily accustomed to the distortions and outright falsehoods voiced by people like the chair of the Joint Chiefs and the Capitol Police officer who testified this week before the House committee. As onerous as those remarks are to us, some statements I've seen in your reader comments bother me almost as much. They amount to heaping fuel on the fire that the left wants to keep burning. The criticism leveled at the letter from the detainee's father was to me excessive and uncalled for.

Believing in an unrealistic and idealized view of Jan 6 is certainly their prerogative, but conservatives who do so need to realize the grave harm still being done to the movement they purport to represent.

This response is somewhat lengthy I know so I will end here. Once again, thanks for providing a forum for rational discussion.

Terry Allen

Pekin, IL

Dear Terry:

Thank you so much for writing. This is a point we've been trying to make ever since the event took place. It's easy to understand why Trump supporters were fed up --- especially after even the Supreme Court refused to look at evidence --- and why some of them were ready to blow and desperately wanted to make a statement, but to understand this is not the same as approving of it or defending it.

The way they chose to make their statement caused tremendous long-term harm to conservatives, by playing right into the left's hands. We should know by now how the left will twist whatever they can to further their own narrative, which in this case was that Trump supporters are crazy right-wing "insurrectionists" who want to "subvert democracy." Conservatives attended that rally because they want to PROTECT democracy. Think that case ended up being made? No, it did not.

Letters such as yours might help more conservatives see that we have to not just fight, but FIGHT SMART. Thanks again.

News Correction

August 1, 2021

CORRECTION: We recently commented on a report that the CDC was revoking emergency use authorization for a particular test for COVID because it couldn’t differentiate between the COVID virus and influenza. It turns out that’s inaccurate (that test can differentiate but was withdrawn for different reasons.) Although it is true, as I said, that the initial story had a lot of people questioning whether the original COVID case numbers were accurate, but the CDC says they are. You can read full details at this fact-check article by Kaiser Health News.

https://khn.org/news/article/fact-check-cdc-pcr-covid-test-distinguishes-from-flu-eua-request-withdrawal/

On a side note, I don’t know why the writers saw fit to single me out, as if we were a source of this story, which had been widely distributed long before we touched on it. In fact, that’s the only reason we posted a brief mention of it: it was already all over the place.

As we have repeatedly made clear, in most cases, we aren’t an original news source site, we’re an aggregator/commentary site. We try hard to find multiple reliable sources for stories, but those are increasingly hard to come by in the age of social media and blatantly politicized news. Our original story even linked directly to the CDC website, so if it was incorrect, all they had to do was add a correction to that page. We may be the first people accused of spreading misinformation by linking to the CDC’s own website.

We have no interest in spreading misinformation, and if something we comment on later turns out to be inaccurate, we always run a correction, as you see here. How many original source news outlets – or for that matter, fact-checker sites – do that?

The only good thing I can say about Attorney General Merrick Garland and his stewardship of the Biden “Justice” Department is that at least he’s not a Supreme Court Justice. During his brief time in office, he’s obliterated any sense of the DOJ as a fair and impartial arbiter of laws and the Constitution and is rapidly turning it into the kind of politicized enforcement arm of the President that we normally see in banana republics.

Here are just a few recent stories out of the DOJ:

They’re threatening states that conduct ballot audits…

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/28/doj-warning-election-ballot-reviews-501295

They’re threatening states that pass laws to safeguard election integrity…

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-doj-sets-stage-permanently-destroy-election-integrity-ensure-gop-never-wins/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

They’re suing Texas because Gov. Greg Abbott is trying to stop the feds from transporting COVID-positive illegal immigrants around the state. Imagine if this Administration went to this much effort to keep COVID-positive illegal immigrants out in the first place...

https://www.theblaze.com/news/doj-sues-texas-gov-abbott-over-the-governor-s-executive-order-on-migrant-transportation

They dropped charges against five suspected Chinese spies while hounding Trump supporters like Inspector Javert…

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/07/26/doj-drops-charges-against-5-possible-chinese-spies-as-fbi-focuses-on-january-6-n1464726

They declared vaccine mandates legal, even while admitting that some legal scholars say they’re not…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doj-vaccine-mandates-legal

And now (surprise!), the Biden DOJ has ordered the IRS to turn over former President Trump’s personal income tax records to his rabid haters in Congress for them to fish through.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-doj-orders-irs-release-trumps-tax-returns/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

The DOJ memo said, “Executive Branch officials must apply a presumption that Legislative Branch officials act in good faith and in furtherance of legitimate objectives.”

So I’ll give Biden’s and Garland’s “Justice” Department this: they may no longer be providing justice, but at least they’re trying to give us some much-needed laughter.

Dem Panic

August 1, 2021

Citing concerns over the Delta variant, various cities and businesses including Walt Disney World are bringing back indoor mask mandates. Teachers unions are pushing to continue them in schools. And President Biden, who changes direction more often than LeBron James, now appears poised to mandate that all government workers (not surprisingly, that’s the largest workforce in America) get vaccinated or face regular tests and various restrictions. The Postal Workers Union had something to say about that.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/07/29/americas-largest-postal-worker-union-has-thoughts-about-vaccine-mandates-n2593280

We’re told that we need to bring back all these draconian measures because of the dangers of the dreaded Delta Variant. Biden once even claimed it’s deadlier than the original disease, which it is not (like all viruses, it’s mutating to forms that are weaker but easier to spread as it tries to stay alive when there are fewer potential hosts.)

This mixed messaging is destroying the CDC’s credibility and undermining their own arguments for getting vaccinated. For instance, if it’s still necessary for vaccinated people to wear masks and social distance, that implies that the vaccine is useless, which isn't true. They say we should listen to them because they represent “SCIENCE!” but they’re coming off more as politicians speaking out of both sides of their mouths at once (I wish there was a vaccine to cure that.)

Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw released a series of tweets blasting the CDC and claiming that the entire basis for the return of mask mandates was a single study done in India that was rejected in peer review and that involved a vaccine we don’t even use here.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/07/28/dan-crenshaw-tweets-stunning-revelation-on-new-cdc-mask-guidelines-n2593271

Wednesday, Fox News Primetime aired a series of graphs illustrating the rising cases of COVID that are sparking the return of draconian measures. They showed that the case increase was about one-tenth of the previous peak, and the more important measures (hospitalizations and deaths) were flat. In fact, US COVID deaths are at their lowest level since March of last year, around the time the pandemic began.

https://fee.org/articles/despite-delta-alarmism-us-covid-deaths-are-at-lowest-level-since-march-2020-harvard-and-stanford-professors-explain/

Since so few people trust the CDC, here’s some straight dope on the actual danger level of the Delta variant and the effectiveness of the vaccines (quite high, but not perfect), from health industry consultant Kevin Roche’s Healthy Skeptic blog.

https://healthy-skeptic.com/2021/07/28/what-more-can-i-say/

He deserves a read just for his brilliant observation that “pandemic” is an anagram for “Dem panic.”

Cuomo Begs For Business

July 30, 2021

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is begging New York City employers to make workers come back to their offices by Labor Day because so many people are working from home that local businesses are struggling. Cuomo said they have to get people back to support all the struggling shops, restaurants and service businesses. I'll say to him what many of his female staffers probably have: "Please don't beg."

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/cuomo-begs-businesses-nyc-return-devastating-shutdown

I won’t go into the fact that it was boneheaded lockdown policies by Democrats like Cuomo and Mayor DeBlasio that forced people to work at home in the first place. But they also bear responsibility in many other ways for the reluctance to return. DeBlasio’s awful leftist policies have brought back the crime and filth that Rudy Giuliani miraculously reversed, and the high taxes and costs of living are also driving people not only out of the city but out of the state.

I’ll share a secret with him: employers don’t locate in a city or people move there because the city needs them to support it. They move there because they see it as a good place to live. If it’s dangerous, dirty, inconvenient and over-priced, they’ll go somewhere else.

I used to have to go to New York City every weekend to do my Fox News show, and I can’t tell you how happy I am that I now get to record my TBN show in Hendersonville, Tennessee. I assume that many of those workers are overjoyed to be able to work from somewhere else via Zoom and the Internet.

I’ve been predicting for years that as more and more of our business transactions moved online, people would start to question why they were living in tiny, expensive apartments in cold, dirty, dangerous, overtaxed cities when they could do the same work via their laptops from the sunny patios of their spacious homes in low-tax Florida or Texas? I've said that the day that possibility finally dawned on everyone would be the beginning of the end of New York City as a hub for major financial services.

Gov. Cuomo doesn’t seem to realize that COVID didn’t cause the great exodus, it just sped it up. Begging employers to force workers to come back is like standing on the banks of a river and ordering it to flow the other way. Or to choose a metaphor liberals should appreciate, it’s like trying to deny evolution.

New York City might recover a bit, if its leaders ever take their boots off the necks of business owners and citizens and start using them to kick criminals into jail again. But the only way they’ll convince people to start flowing back in big numbers is to do what Rudy did: create a clean, safe, well-run city and state. Frankly, I don’t believe they’re capable of that.

Thursday, President Biden held a press conference where he promised to give us the straight facts about COVID-19 and vaccinations. To say the least, many were skeptical of that.

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/07/29/joe-biden-loses-it-calls-fox-fax-snaps-at-peter-doocy-and-wrecks-his-own-argument-on-masks-n418622

The big takeaways from Biden’s speech were that Americans should get vaccinated, and he would require civilian federal workers to “attest” that they’ve been vaccinated or wear masks and undergo regular tests and travel restrictions. He also encouraged local governments to use leftover COVID relief funds to pay $100 to people who get vaccinated.

(Just as an aside: isn't making people prove they're vaccinated a form of requiring ID? And since blacks and Hispanics are less likely than whites not to be vaccinated, that would mean it's an ID requirement that disproportionately affects minorities, or as the Democrats call that, "RAAAAAAACISM!!!" But I digress...)

Many critics are taking this as a sign that the government is ramping up for tighter restrictions and even more lockdowns over a spike in cases that’s not that high and that isn’t accompanied by a big increase in deaths because the Delta variant isn’t as dangerous. All this paranoia, and the DOJ’s dubious ruling that it’s legal for companies to require workers to get vaccinated, is sparking big companies like Google, Twitter, Netflix and Facebook to require their employees to get vaccinated.

(Some legal scholars question the DOJ’s reasoning, arguing that the Geneva Convention recognizes the right to refuse to have experimental drugs injected into your body against your will, and the vaccines have received only emergency use authorization by the FDA. Please note that I’m not discouraging vaccination – I’ve been vaccinated myself – I’m just talking about other people’s right to say no.)

I expect quite a bit of pushback even from government workers (the postal union already is rebelling), and even more if they try to use COVID to hang onto the abusive power the government seized last year.

Meanwhile, Mark Theissen in the Washington Post (surprisingly) helped put this pandemic/”Dem panic” into perspective by pointing out, using the CDC’s own numbers, that only 4,072 vaccinated Americans have been hospitalized with symptoms out of 161 million, for a breakthrough infection rate of less than 0.003%. Of those hospitalized, 849 have died, for a death rate of 0.0005%. The median age of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections was 74, and an Israeli study found that only 4% of those hospitalized with breakthrough infections had no comorbidities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2021/07/29/joe-sacrifices-military-readiness-and-freedom-over-stats-showing-vaxxed-people-are-more-likely-to-die-from-bee-sting-than-covid-n1465668

For comparison, that means that if you’ve been vaccinated, you are less likely to die of COVID than from a car crash; seasonal flu; a lightning strike; choking on food; sunstroke; drowning; a dog attack; or being stung by a bee. Yet some people want to bring back draconian pandemic measures.

Somehow, I get the feeling we're all being stung.

As thousands of illegal immigrants continue streaming across our border, and getting released on the US side with no court dates (only 13% even check in as they’re ordered to), Vice President Kamala Harris finally released her five-pronged plan to deal with the problem. It has to be seen to be believed.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/29/harris-releases-migration-strategy-amid-border-crisis/

Talk about a fork full of manure. The various prongs are heaped with high-flown liberal fantasies about fixing the “root causes” of illegal immigration into America, like “combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law” and “promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and free press” in Central America. All well and good, as future goals. But, maybe, in the short term, we might consider CLOSING THE DOOR!!!

It’s like asking someone to help put out a forest fire that she started, and seven months later, she hands over an essay on the history of combustion. And it’s a D- essay. If she and President Biden really want to know the root cause of our current illegal immigration crisis, they can find it in the nearest mirror.

Meanwhile, a new cry has gone up for Biden to appoint someone else as an illegal immigration czar. Say, I know someone who’d be perfect! He has a proven track record of reducing illegal immigration, and he left his last job on January 20th, so he’s probably tanned, rested and ready.

Yesterday, we wrote about a letter from a newsletter reader whose son is one of those incarcerated in the wake of the Capitol breach on January 6. (His son is one of those who didn’t even go inside the building.) Imagine how it must be to have one’s son being held in jail by the feds, with no bail, for many months (like a murderer), awaiting a trial that might not even happen until sometime in 2022. It’s not even possible for the father to have a private conversation with his own son, as phone conversations are monitored at the jail, and the son isn’t even able to meet in private with an attorney. All of this, I feel compelled to remind you, is happening in America, the land of the free.

In case you didn’t see the father’s letter and our response, here it is.

https://www.mikehuckabee.com/latest-news?id=25AAFBB1-0197-4525-A6F6-CC190FDAB183

After this piece ran, we received a comment from another reader who took exception to what the father had said about his son, saying the son had nothing to apologize for and was even a hero. In fact, her letter ended in a way that seemed downright abusive to the father. (It’s all too easy to get abusive towards people we only talk to online, people we have never met and don’t know at all.) We thought this reader’s questions and observations deserved to be addressed at length. First, here is her letter...

(From Sharon)

Just a couple of questions about the father of the Capitol Hill detainee:

First of all, why would black people not support Trump people?

Because most black people do but then again these were criminals.

Also, the father says what his son did was wrong? Oh? Getting in the way of Goebbels and the Gestapo?

My father saw combat in Korea and Vietnam and if that’d been me he’d have been cheering not saying I’d done wrong.

Mister your son did right and he is a hero and if you don’t stand with him shame on you.

………………..

Dear Sharon:

Thank you for responding; we welcome responses from all sides. But I think some issues here cry out for clarification.

The father, Keith, did mention in his letter that most of the inmates at DC Correctional were black –- as are most of the residents of Washington, DC –- and that in general they were dismayed to have Trump supporters in their midst. That is not surprising and is not the same as saying black people don’t support Trump, only that these particular black people in Washington, DC, did not. And while the black conservative movement is picking up steam in some parts of the country, most black people are still not a part of that. We can deny reality if you would like, but these inmates of the DC Correctional facility, who do happen to be mostly black, are not Trump supporters. Probably some of the white ones aren’t, either; after all, this is Washington, DC. On the bright side, once they learned Alan was a Trump supporter and not a pedophile, they treated him better than they treat pedophiles.

Recall that according to the letter we previously posted from detainee Joe Biggs, some of the black people Biggs met in a Florida correctional facility were struck by what a nice guy he was. They liked him. It wasn’t the black men, but some of the white men identifying as white supremacists, who didn’t want to be associated with him. They said he was “too nice” to be in their group.

In fact, Joe said that one thing he’d learned for sure after meeting real white supremacists in this jail was that he WASN’T ONE.

Sharon, you criticize Alan’s father for saying that what his son did was wrong. We don’t know the details of the confrontation his son had with police and a reporter outside the Capitol Building, but the son does, and if he feels contrite and believes he was in the wrong, I think we should take him at his word. You know I’ve said myself that this confrontation was a bad idea and has had terrible repercussions. I’m not sure you understood me when I said the left is using this for great political benefit. In that sense, anything that was done at the Capitol Building that went beyond peaceable assembly was indeed wrong. If this young man realizes that, so much the better.

You may say he did right to fight against “Goebbels and the Gestapo,” but, again, we don’t know exactly what went down and his part in it. According to his dad, since he’s come to the Lord he’s thought deeply about the kind of man he wants to be. He’s sorry for what he did. His father respects that, and I think we should, too.

The thing that really stood out to me in this father’s letter was the dismay at the two-tier justice system. “I guess if you are a Democrat,” he said, “you can burn a city or burn a federal building with agents inside it; you may be arrested but will be out the next day without bail.”

This young man does NOT deserve to be languishing on a lower rung of our “justice” system simply because he is a Trump supporter, and he absolutely does not deserve to be held for many months with bail denied. As I’ve said, he and the other “detainees” (political prisoners) are being used as political props for the statecraft that is Nancy Pelosi’s investigatory “commission,” when they should be treated with exactly the same rights as any other American. Direct your fury at THAT, not at a father who is hurting and thinking about his son.

Related news?

July 30, 2021

Are these stories related? You make the call!

1. Wages are rising due to the difficulty of getting people to take jobs (maybe because they’re being paid more not to work under expanded unemployment.) But at the same time, inflation is pushing consumer prices so much higher that real average hourly wages decreased by 1.7% between June 2020 and June 2021. That means that Americans earning $50,000 a year lost about $850 in purchasing power to inflation. And with Biden and the Democrats determined to pump out trillions more in deficit spending, inflation shows no signs of slowing.

https://www.westernjournal.com/bidens-america-american-wages-drop-nearly-2-inflation-spirals-control/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

2. The Commerce Department reports that in the three months ending in June, the US economy grew slower than expected, considering the lockdowns were finally ending. Due to supply chain disruptions and labor shortages (see above), GDP grew at only a 6.5% annual rate. Economists were expecting 8.5% growth. First quarter growth was also revised downward from 6.4 to 6.3%.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/gross-domestic-product-q2-2021

3. Six months into his Administration, President Biden’s approval rating with likely voters has taken a plunge. Rasmussen’s poll is based on a three-day rolling average, and Biden has generally polled in the high 40s to low 50s. As of yesterday it had dropped to an all-time low of 46% with 52% disapproval.

https://www.westernjournal.com/official-poll-shows-bidens-approval-rating-time-low/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=empowerconservatives

See any connection? If you do, forget about ever working for CNN.

As a number of commentators are pointing out, the once-free nation of Australia is quickly devolving back to its roots as a penal colony, with the government using the spike in COVID cases to justify outrageously draconian measures. Residents of high-transmission sites in Sydney are being ordered to stay within three miles of their homes and wear masks even outdoors. The government is sending in military troops to enforce the measures. This is in reaction to a rise in cases that has resulted so far in 13 deaths in Sydney out of a population of nearly 5.4 million.

https://www.westernjournal.com/looks-like-people-facing-total-medical-tyranny-military-rolls-major-city-enforce-covid-lockdowns/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

I’m worried that our leaders must be looking at Australia as a role model while the rest of us should be looking at it as a cautionary tale.

Chief among those “leaders” who are seeing disaster in a minor spike of a less dangerous variant is, not surprisingly, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has finally found a way in which she thinks police can be useful.

https://www.westernjournal.com/pelosi-bends-capitol-police-will-stunning-power-grab/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

Republicans immediately launched a protest of Pelosi’s threat to arrest people who don’t wear masks even if they’re vaccinated. They called it, “Kiss My Mask.” They’d better be careful: protests are only legal in the Capitol when Democrats pull them.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/republicans-democrats-mask-mandates-cdc

Related: While Democrats are excoriating fully-vaccinated Republicans who refuse to obey Pelosi’s mask edict, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was photographed reportedly walking in the halls of Congress, carrying her mask in her hand.

https://www.westernjournal.com/aoc-busted-dire-health-risk-damning-photo-floating-around-dc-report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=huckabee

That gave conservatives an opening to mockingly denounce her as a homicidal maniac and a dire threat to public health who’s putting people’s lives at risk.

Of course, that’s just exaggeration for satirical effect. I think the only thing coming out of her mouth that poses a serious danger is her words.

While it’s always sad to have to write the celebrity obituaries, this one hits especially hard. Dusty Hill, bassist and vocalist for “The Little Ol’ Band from Texas,” ZZ Top, died in his sleep at his home in Houston Wednesday at 72. The Top were on tour and Hill had taken a break, supposedly to deal with hip problems.

https://nypost.com/2021/07/28/dusty-hill-zz-top-bassist-dead-at-72/

Hill was a Dallas native (like me), and I can assure you that to us true Texans, ZZ Top are icons. Anyone who badmouths ZZ Top, Willie Nelson or the Alamo in Texas runs the risk of getting their butts kicked up to their shoulder blades with a pointy-toed boot. We grow up on ZZ Top, never grow tired of ZZ Top, and when the real thing isn’t touring, we go see tribute bands who wear department Santa beards. ZZ Top IS Texas. What other band ever went on tour with live longhorn steer on stage with them? Or had a hit song about the Chicken Ranch five years before “The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas” debuted? But I saw a recent YouTube video that attempted to list the “Most American Bands of All Time,” and they tied for #1 with Lynyrd Skynyrd, so I guess we’ll share them with the rest of y’all.

Dusty Hill, drummer Frank Beard and guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons had been together since 1969, making them the longest-running band ever with the original unchanged lineup (52 years!) They’ve gone through some musical changes over the years, from the bluesy sound of “ZZ Top’s First Album” through the smoother ‘80s hits like “Sharp-Dressed Man” and “Legs,” to their more recent albums like “Rhythmeen” or 2012’s “La Futura,” that returned to the rough blues/rock style I sometimes think of as the sound of heavy machinery self-destructing. But they never strayed too far from that uniquely Texan blend of blues, rock, country and sly, hilarious lyrics. If you liked the old stuff and haven’t heard any of the newer material, check it out. It’s raw and terrific.

The band announced that it will continue on, and I’m sure Billy and Frank will keep making great music (Billy has put out a couple of excellent solo albums in recent years.) But it will never be exactly the same. Especially if Gov. Huckabee grows his new beard out and becomes Dusty’s replacement.

Order a taco plate, hoist a Lone Star and put on “Tres Hombres” or "Tejas" in Dusty’s honor. And watch the Grammy-nominated documentary, “ZZ Top: That Little Ol’ Band From Texas.”

https://www.amazon.com/ZZ-Top-That-LIttle-Texas/dp/B085LW1FYD

But wait, there’s more! We’ve also lost yet another American icon of a very different sort: Infomercial king Ron Popeil died in Los Angeles Wednesday at 86.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/entertainment/news/infomercial-icon-ron-popeil-dies-at-86/ar-AAMGaB6

Possibly the greatest sales/pitchman of all time, Popeil also invented many of the gadgets he hawked on TV (although two of his most famous, the Veg-O-Matic and the suggestively-named Pocket Fisherman, were actually invented by his father.) Popeil’s knack for coming up with products you never knew you needed (The Inside-The-Shell Egg Scrambler! The Mr. Microphone! The Electric Food Dehydrator! The Portable Smokeless Ashtray! And of course, Hair-In-A-Can!) was matched only by his talent for making them so entertaining.

While some of these products seem kitschy today, they were often surprisingly high quality. I recently saw a YouTube video of someone trying a Veg-O-Matic from the ‘60s, and it still worked like a charm. Try that with one of today’s plastic, made-in-China gadgets. And I would definitely not recommend any Chinese-made Hair-In-A-Can.

A Sad Day In The House

July 30, 2021

It was a sad day in the House Thursday, and a sign of just how radical the Democrats have become, when for the first time in 45 years, the House passed on party lines a Medicaid spending bill that didn’t include the Hyde Amendment. That’s the amendment that prevents taxpayer money from being used to fund abortions, something opposed by a majority of Americans.

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2021/07/29/democrats-blow-up-the-last-bipartisan-refuge-in-congress-n418763

It also didn’t include the Weldon Amendment, which prohibits agencies that receive federal funds from discriminating against entities because they refuse to provide or fund abortions.

Later that night, House Democrats passed a State Department funding bill that dropped the Helms Amendment, which prohibits using taxpayer money to fund abortions in other countries. A Marist poll shows that’s opposed by 77% of Americans and supported by only 19%, but the Democrats care more about the abortion lobby than the will of the people.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/07/29/breaking-house-passes-bill-to-force-taxpayers-to-fund-abortion-n1465634

The Democrats have always been the more pro-abortion party, but at least there used to be room for pro-life Democrats. Not only have they all been driven out, but now, even the reasonable compromise of not forcing pro-life taxpayers to fund the killing of children in the womb is gone.

That’s been replaced by denouncing every disagreement as racist, which California Rep. Barbara Lee tried here, saying, “These provisions have long had a terrible and disproportionate impact on low-income women and women of color. Getting them off the books will be a huge step forward for reproductive and racial justice.”

In short, the Democrats now claim to be fighting racism by making it even easier to abort black babies, who are already greatly disproportionate victims of abortion. In opposing voter ID, Democrats argue that the disproportionate impact of any policy on certain races is prima facie proof of racism. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a eugenicist who thought that “inferior” races should be weeded out, must be looking up and smiling.

The good news is that these radical changes aren't likely to survive in the Senate. But it should send a long-overdue wake-up call to everyday Democratic voters that this is no longer your father’s Democratic Party. The leadership is now solidly a far-left, pro-death cult of radical extremists. And the one thing I do agree with them on is that extremists are dangerous to America and should not be in positions of power.

Reliable News Sources

July 30, 2021

I get a lot of requests from readers asking where they can find reliable sources of news that are not tilted too far to the left or the right – aside from this newsletter that is (I am unapologetically conservative, but I won’t bend or ignore facts to make a point; that would only weaken my own arguments.)

The sad truth is, there are few sources these days that are completely reliable. My staffers previously wrote a radio prep service that required them to read news from a variety of sources and they developed good noses for sniffing out self-serving bias and spotting fake news and slanted “facts,” which made them uniquely qualified for this job. I like Fox News and Western Journal and have business relationships with them, but I acknowledge that they mostly come from a conservative point of view, even as they do try hard to get the facts correct. One good thing about them is that, unlike many of their critics, they label commentary as “commentary,” not front page news.

To find the news we print, we look at a wide variety of sources, even liberal outlets (we have to know their version if we’re going to refute it.) The aggregator/commentary site Instapundit is a good place to go for a variety of viewpoints and intelligent commentary. For videos that YouTube censors, the sites Rumble and Odysee are oases of free speech. JustTheNews.com does a good job of living up to its name. Substack has become the home base of a number of reporters such as Glenn Greenwald whose archaic pursuit of actual journalism has gotten them banished from the big media outlets. And the Epoch Times and the associated sites of Redstate.com, Townhall.com and PJMedia.com offer a good selection of news and conservative/Libertarian commentary.

And here’s some welcome news for those who have been frustrated by the recent leftward lurch of the once-mighty Drudge Report: a former Drudge editor who feels your pain has launched a site called OffThePress.com that brings back the no-holds-barred spirit of the original Drudge Report.

Here’s some more information on that:

https://redstate.com/beccalower/2021/07/27/conservative-and-miss-the-old-drudge-report-heres-some-awesome-news-for-you-n417299

Or you can just continue reading this newsletter, safe in the knowledge that we read the news, so you won’t have to.