Category: You Can’t Make This Up

Harris on Hurricane Ian: Biden Admin Will Give ‘Resources Based on Equity’ and to ‘Communities of Color’
No, Vice President. It doesn’t work that way.

Vice President Kamala Harris wants the Biden admin to base Hurricane Ian funds and resources based on color.

That’s racist. This is not the time to run with your leftist agenda, Kamala. So disgusting. Just like Don Lemon. The agenda is more important that Ian impacted all communities regardless of wealth or race.

Pathetic and disgusting.

 

Wife of Top Biden Aide Named Ambassador for Plants and Animals.
Ron Klain’s wife, a supporter of the Green New Deal, gets a plum new gig

The wife of President Joe Biden’s top aide has a fancy new gig at the U.S. State Department.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday announced that Monica Medina, wife of White House chief of staff Ron Klain, will serve as U.S. Special Envoy for Biodiversity and Water Resources.

According to the Washington Post, which initially declined to note that Medina is married to Klain, the decision to promote her to the newly established role of “diplomat for plants and animals” is one that “underscores the Biden’s administration’s desire” to fight climate change.

“There’s a direct connection between biodiversity loss and instability in a lot of parts of the world,” Klain’s wife told the Post. “It’s not just about nature for nature’s sake. I think it is about people.”

Medina currently serves in the State Department as assistant secretary for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs. She is an outspoken proponent of the Green New Deal, a controversial legislative proposal sponsored by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) that would cost roughly $9 trillion to implement but would have a negligible effect on global temperatures.

“The Green New Deal is a unifying political message that gets back to the basics of creating an economy that works for all people and protects the planet as a result,” Medina wrote in January 2019. A national poll conducted the following month found that just 29 percent of Americans supported the Green New Deal, while 51 percent of respondents said they would rather the government spend trillions of dollars to build a wall on the U.S. southern border.

Medina is also a prominent advocate for fully integrating women into military combat units, which resulted in the lowering of rigorous physical standards to accommodate female trainees.

You simply can not make this up.

Army doctor tried to give military medical info to Russia

A U.S. military doctor — who previously made headlines as the first known active duty Army officer to come out as transgender — and their spouse were federally indicted in Maryland on Wednesday for attempting to pass sensitive medical information about members of the military to a person who they believed worked for the Russian government.

Maj. Jamie Lee Henry, 39, previously a staff internist at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with a secret-level security clearance, and their spouse, Dr. Anna Gabrielian, 36, an anesthesiologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University, communicated and met with an undercover FBI agent who posed as a Russian embassy employee.

Army officials did not immediately respond to a request for information regarding Henry’s current service status and military records.

During an Aug. 17 meeting in a Baltimore hotel room, Gabrielian told the undercover agent that “she was motivated by patriotism toward Russia to provide any assistance she could to Russia, even if it meant being fired or going to jail,” the indictment stated.

Previously, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, she reached out directly to the Russian embassy offering assistance from her and her spouse, though she reportedly did not tell Henry of this interaction, according to the indictment.

“My point of view is until the United States actually declares war against Russia, I’m able to help as much as I want,” Henry told the undercover agent in another meeting later that night, the indictment stated. “At that point, I’ll have some ethical issues I’ll have to work through,” Henry said, to which Gabrielian reportedly replied, “you’ll work through those ethical issues.”

Additionally, during the discussion, Henry shared that they had looked into volunteering for the Russian Army after its invasion of Ukraine began but noted their lack of combat experience prevented them from joining.

Also in the conversation, Gabrielian instructed Henry to read the book “Inside the Aquarium: The Making of a Top Soviet Spy,” a narrative about recruitment and training for the Soviet Union’s intelligence organization.

The initial meeting was followed by another interaction the next week between Gabrielian and the agent in which the medical professor called her spouse a “coward” for being concerned about violating government health privacy law.

Any issues Henry had, however, allegedly dissipated.

On Aug. 31, at a hotel in Gaithersburg, Maryland, Gabrielian provided the agent with medical information related to the spouse of a person currently employed by the Office of Naval Intelligence, and medical information related to someone described as an Air Force veteran.

“Gabrielian highlighted to the [undercover agent] a medical issue reflected in the records of [the military member’s spouse] that Russia could exploit,” the indictment said.

In the same meeting, Henry provided medical information related to five patients at Fort Bragg, including a retired Army officer, a current Department of Defense employee and spouses of active and deceased Army veterans.

Henry, a transgender woman, previously told BuzzFeed in 2015 that to their knowledge they were the first active duty service member to change their name and gender.

The couple is charged with eight counts of conspiracy and wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information.

Both were scheduled to make an initial appearance at the U.S. District Court in Baltimore on Thursday.

If convicted, the pair face a maximum of five years in federal prison for conspiracy and a maximum of 10 years in federal prison for each count of disclosing personal medical information.

“Henry is currently assigned to Fort Bragg, N.C. as a Staff Internist (61F/Medical Corps) with a rank of Major,” Army spokesperson Matt Leonard told Army Times via email, adding that Henry entered active-duty service in May 2007 and has no combat deployments.

 

‘Not sure what to do…………’

Texas couple who ordered surplus gun cases get fully automatic surprise

Agents inspecting a green box full of rifles

Federal authorities are investigating after a couple in Houston, Texas who purchased a lot of 100 gun cases from a military surplus website ended up with a surprise inside one of the boxes: fully automatic M16 rifles.

The couple say they assumed they were buying empty rifle cases, and were hoping to turn around flip the products on eBay, but when they were going through the cases after they’d been delivered, a friend cracked open one of the boxes and discovered it was chock full of select-fire rifles.

The couple found at least a dozen fully automatic M16s designed strictly for military use.

Not sure what to do, they reported it to authorities.

Within hours, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives seized the single box and quickly got a search warrant for the storage unit containing 100 more. Experts were shocked by what they found.

“It’s almost surreal to believe something like that happen nowadays. It’s incredible,” said retired Houston police captain and former Marine Greg Fremin. “It’s unbelievable to think weapons of that grade, military-grade weapons, would be shipped in containers would be shipped across state lines and somebody have access to that. It’s pretty shocking,”

Fremin says the military carefully tracks all its weapons, because any misplaced weapons can be extremely dangerous.

“For these boxes to have M16s in them and being shipped to a public destination, not only is it shocking, it’s a federal crime,” he said.

Apparently the military isn’t tracking their weapons as carefully as Fremin says they are, since at least a dozen of them ended up first at a military surplus store before being sent on to unsuspecting customers in Texas.

In fact, the Associated Press ran a pretty big story just last year pointing to the theft of at least 1,900 military firearms from 2010-2019; guns that in many cases the military had no idea were missing until they were found at crime scenes.

Government records covering the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force show pistols, machine guns, shotguns and automatic assault rifles have vanished from armories, supply warehouses, Navy warships, firing ranges and other places where they were used, stored or transported. These weapons of war disappeared because of unlocked doors, sleeping troops, a surveillance system that didn’t record, break-ins and other security lapses that, until now, have not been publicly reported.

… Weapon theft or loss spanned the military’s global footprint, touching installations from coast to coast, as well as overseas. In Afghanistan, someone cut the padlock on an Army container and stole 65 Beretta M9s — the same type of gun recovered in Albany. The theft went undetected for at least two weeks, when empty pistol boxes were discovered in the compound. The weapons were not recovered.

Even elite units are not immune. A former member of a Marines special operations unit was busted with two stolen guns. A Navy SEAL lost his pistol during a fight in a restaurant in Lebanon.

The Pentagon used to share annual updates about stolen weapons with Congress, but the requirement to do so ended years ago and public accountability has slipped. The Army and Air Force, for example, couldn’t readily tell AP how many weapons were lost or stolen from 2010 through 2019. So the AP built its own database, using extensive federal Freedom of Information Act requests to review hundreds of military criminal case files or property loss reports, as well as internal military analysis and data from registries of small arms.

The AP admitted that their totals are almost certainly an undercount, but without ready access to DoD documents it’s impossible to know for certain how many military weapons “disappeared” over the course of the decade.

The big question now is whether or not these particular M16s were “lost” or whether someone was attempting to steal them, though I’d also be interested in knowing if these rifles were ever reported missing, or if their discovery by the couple in Houston came as a surprise to military officials as well. Either way, it’s not a good look for Uncle Sam, and I suspect the Biden administration is going to be less than forthcoming about what the ATF’s investigation ultimately reveals.

More SloJoe senility on display

Joe Biden Gets Uncomfortably Lost and Confused at Globalist Conference

….To be sure, Biden has done this before. After all, this is the same guy who had to be led away by the Easter Bunny at the White House last Spring. For my money, this is the worst episode yet, though. He legitimately doesn’t seem to understand where he’s at and where he’s supposed to go.

And while some might say this could happen to anybody, I’d contend that stretches credibility. Normal people do not meander around a stage, staring in random directions while someone else is addressing them. Normal people do not have to be guided down by handlers, which is what looks like is happening as he points, seeming to ask where he’s supposed to be. In short, it is not difficult to walk off a stage. That Biden continually makes it so hard is evidence of his senility.

Cue the “fact-checkers” to claim that he was really just “greeting” people, but no one who watches that video with a fair mind would come away thinking that’s what happened. He’s confused, and it’s obvious he’s confused. That he gets confused while someone else is addressing him makes it all the worse as a visual exercise……….

Things like this take on a special significance when Biden is overseas, appearing on the national stage. Adversaries of the United States see this stuff and they do not fear this man. In fact, if recent Iran and Russian behavior is any indication, they fully believe they can take advantage of him. There are real consequences to having a president who doesn’t appear to actually be functioning as the president. Hopefully, voters figure that out if Biden is crazy enough to run for re-election.

Well, he’s senile. Just look at his face, how he always has his wife at his side to guide him along as he walks and how he acts.  What would anyone expect?

Biden Shames America and Insults the Crown With His Behavior at the Queen’s Funeral

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II has filled the news for a couple of weeks, and one of the parlor discussions regarding her funeral ceremony involved whether former President Donald Trump was snubbed from attending, either by the Royal family or by current President Joe Biden. As it turns out, there was no backroom drama concerning the appearance, as a US embassy official has clarified that the heavy interest and select seating meant that only Biden and his wife would be in attendance.

This, of course, did not prevent speculation in the press, both regarding Trump being allegedly blocked and what political maneuvering Biden might have employed with regard to inviting his predecessor to the affair.

Look, nobody is going to argue that Donald Trump is the very model of social decency. He may, in fact, be the polar opposite of a contemporary David Niven, for example. But even while he is not thought of as being the picture of a Modern Major Gentleman, Trump could be told what not to do and to comport himself at least in an acceptable fashion.

And as we then saw during the lengthy proceedings of the burial ceremony, Trump could hardly have been more embarrassing than President Biden on this solemn day. The first issue was that Biden felt the need to buck the Royal directives regarding the ceremony. Almost all of the world leaders and foreign dignitaries in attendance followed the delivered protocols and rode to the church in the assigned motor coaches set up for their arrival.

This was not a debasement of authority. Leaders of foreign lands and royalty were carried in on the buses, including Prime Ministers and Kings. Biden, however, filed for and received a dispensation. He was later granted permission to arrive in his presidential limousine and motorcade; the reason for this was not given, [I’ll opine, he’s so mentally gone that no one dare have him in contact with anyone for any longer than absolutely necessary] but the appearance was notably gauche and crass in contrast.

Then Biden managed to pull off his usual crudeness and arrived at the chapel 30 minutes late. This has become a trademark of this president. Whether it be a planned event, social appearance, or scheduled press conference, Biden is consistently extremely late for proscribed start times. He even was notably tardy at a global conference and was chastised over this by the very unrefined Boris Johnson, of all people. For Biden to do this at a Royal funeral ceremony is beyond embarrassing on an international scale; boorish behavior on the world stage.

When it came time to sign the official condolence guest book, again, Biden managed to turn heads – in the same manner as a dog twitching its head when presented with something unforeseen. As he sat to fill in his solemn respects, he did so while working off one of his now infamous note sheets. He could not somehow deliver genuine feelings – he had to work off a prepared statement.

Due to their late arrival, the president and first lady were seen awkwardly standing in wait at the back of the church for a period of time, prevented from immediately taking their place in the pews as the ceremony was already commenced. Eventually came the time for their seating, and they were placed some 14 rows back, away from many of the other leaders who managed to make their arrival at the appointed time. 

Then, just to add to his glaring insensitivities, upon his arrival, President Biden acted in his traditional imbalanced behavior. As he and Jill were striding to the church steps, Joe decided to give one of the church patrons a poke in the stomach.

The action itself is just bizarre and disrespectful, but it is also a violation of church decorum. As the press has roundly insisted that Joe Biden is a devout and serious practitioner of Catholic structure, he should be well advised that you do not touch any members of the clergy. Aside from an offered handshake, it is understood that touching the individuals or their vestments is not done. Why a grown man would see the need to prod another adult in the belly is beyond understanding.

This entire display by our president was a shameful gaffe-fest, and it was noticed by many others abroad. Recall that we were told repeatedly that Trump was bringing shame to the U.S. in the eyes of other nations – where are those same global social critics when it comes to Biden repeatedly displaying odd behavior? It is a convenient dodge as they see him displaying all the behavior they promised Trump would enact.

John Francis Kirby is a retired Rear Admiral in the U.S. Navy serving as Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House

State V. Philpotts – Ohio Supreme Court Justice Brunner’s Dissent

The Supreme Court of Ohio ordered all parties in State v. Philpotts to file supplemental briefs addressing the impact on the case of the US Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen. Given the import of the Bruen decision on both the state and federal level, this seem eminently reasonable.

That is except for Justice Jennifer Brunner (D-Ohio) who seems to take the first line of Sam Cook’s classic What a Wonderful World as her motto. She issued a dissent in which she objected to this order of the Ohio Supreme Court.

After rambling on about it being hard to convey lessons from history, about how revisionists have re-written history to make it fit modern times, and how it is hard to use primary documents, she comes up with this objection to the use of text, history, and tradition.

{¶ 8} Importantly, the glaring flaw in any analysis of the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation in relation to Ohio’s gun laws is that no such analysis could account for what the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation would have been if women and nonwhite people had been able to vote for the representatives who determined these regulations. How would this problem be addressed in any modern analysis of historical gun regulations? It cannot simply be ignored. And even if a court tries to take the views of women and nonwhite people into account, are there sufficient materials on their views available to enable reliable conclusions to be made? (emphasis mine)

Does she not know that gun control was historically used to keep nonwhite people disarmed and disenfranchised? There have been many books and articles on this such as Prof. Nicholas Johnson’s book Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms. Perhaps she is unaware of Ida B. Well’s seminal work on lynchings in which she said, “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give.” A very recent study by economists at Clemson found that when blacks had greater access to firearms, the incidence of racial violence and lynchings was diminished.

Does Justice Brunner really think that nonwhite people preferred being disarmed in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries? Since there were no laws preventing women from being disarmed, I will skip that except to say that Annie Oakley was a damn fine shot.

And to answer her question, yes there are sufficient materials available to discern the views of nonwhites on gun control with which to enable the court to come to a reliable conclusion.

UPDATE: I found out this evening that Justice Brunner is running as the Democrat candidate for Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. Among her pledges is for “bail reform”. Given the experience in other states with “bail reform”, it seems a recipe for more property and violent crime in Ohio. That, when combined with her willful ignorance of history, makes her totally unsuited for the position she seeks.

Her opponent, Justice Sharon Kennedy, has the endorsement of the Buckeye Firearms Association along with many law enforcement organizations. Before she went to law school, Justice Kennedy was a police officer in Hamilton, Ohio. Justice Brunner, by contrast, has a number of union endorsements but not a one of them deals with law enforcement.

If you live in Ohio, I would urge you to get out to vote for Justice Kennedy and get your friends, family, and neighbors to do the same.