Category: Question O’ The Day

“Why do you need AR-15s?”

Home invaders pretended to be Gwinnett police, tossed grenades into homes, police say

After a series of home invasions involving suspects impersonating police officers, Gwinnett County police arrested one of potentially several suspects connected to the crime spree.

Three families were victimized by multiple masked men armed with guns and body armor during home invasions in Lilburn and Norcross from June 9 to June 12, according to police. In the first case, the suspects threw a practice grenade through a window to enter the home and ransack the house.

“Whatever they were looking for,” the victim, who asked to remain anonymous, told Channel 2 Gwinnett County Bureau Chief Matt Johnson. “I hope they find prison time for their trouble.”

The victim shared a video of a man with a mask, a shotgun and body armor at his doorstep in Lilburn off Burns Road on June 9 just after 3:30 a.m. He said the man identified himself as police but threw the inert grenade through the window when the victim didn’t answer the door. From there, police say the suspect, working with others, stole electronics when they couldn’t find any money or drugs.

“They actually sprayed mace around the perimeter of the door and underneath it to try and get me out or prevent me from coming out,” said the victim.

On Tuesday, Gwinnett police arrested Jeron Hernandez-Massa, 23, and charged him with 10 felonies, including three counts of home invasion. However, investigators say he didn’t act alone.

At a home in Norcross, a pregnant mother and her family were held at gunpoint by Hernandez-Massa and as many as four other suspects claiming to be D.E.A. agents, according to police. There were 8-year-old, 4-year-old, and 10-year-old boys home at the time and police say Hernandez-Massa and the suspects threaten to harm the children if the family didn’t give them money and drugs.

“My stepdad is a construction worker,” said one of the family members held at gunpoint. “My mom was just a pregnant lady. They left with nothing, and they hurt us.”

The family says they told the robbers they had the wrong house and that there weren’t drugs or money around. It only made them more upset, they say.

“I ran into the garage and that’s when they hit me,” said the victim, adding she was left bruised from being pistol-whipped.

Police haven’t said how many more suspects they may be looking for or how they believe the homes were targeted. Hernandez-Massa remains in jail without bond.

It’s apparent he’s nothing but a puppet. The question is; who are the real one pulling his strings?

The Flashcard Presidency: Biden’s Aides Scramble to Diffuse Narrative That He’s a Total Mess

Joe Biden collapsed at the US Air Force Academy’s commencement, an event that even his aides privately worked to ensure never happened again. They’ve developed a plan to make the president look vigorous and mentally sound to conduct his duties as president. And yet, the man devolved into a mumbling, soporific mess during his White House meeting/photo-op with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

NBC News had a lengthy piece about the Biden staff’s protocol to keep the president looking spry in the public’s view. As it was in 2020, the main concern is that Biden is both too old and too senile to be president. That narrative has grown as more public episodes of mental degeneration have presented themselves. Though buried in the piece, Biden’s staff and a former cabinet secretary, Marty Walsh, tried to relay how Joe is still working into the late night hours and how if you hugged him, you’ll see he’s healthy like a rhino. The problem is the piece goes give the impression that Biden’s aides know a mental foul-up is bound to occur again. The man will stumble even with flashcards to remind him to make certain points during meetings and speeches and a shorter staircase to Air Force One to ensure he doesn’t fall.

Even with no major primaries or debates on the Democratic side, the rigorous schedule a national campaign takes once a Republican nominee is selected will take its toll on a man who thinks railroads can be built over oceans (via NBC News):

Biden’s answer to voters who question whether he’s up to the rigors of a second term is simple: “Watch me.” The trouble is, voters are watching, and what they’re seeing is hardening impressions that it’s time for him to step aside, polling shows. Apart from being the most taxing job on the world stage, the presidency is also the most public, and signs of advancing age are tough to miss. 

Faced with life’s unbending reality — no one gets any younger — Biden’s advisers have been trying to blunt concerns about his age since his 2020 campaign. The challenge gets trickier by the day as the oldest president in history embarks on one last race against a Republican Party eager to pounce on every miscue. 

Any misstep is bound to be magnified when voters are already prone to believe Biden should consider retirement. Biden aides aren’t promising that he won’t stumble again. 

“Physically, he’s quite frail and he falls off his bicycle, or whatever,” said a former Western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “He doesn’t have the stamina levels of an Obama or a younger president. People worry about his physical frailty and running from age 82 to 86” — the age Biden would be at the end of a second term. “That is really old by European standards. Really, really old. We don’t have anyone that age.” […] 

Biden’s use of the shorter staircase, which, of course, reduces the risk of a televised fall that goes viral, has more than doubled since Biden’s tumble at the commencement ceremony, according to an analysis by NBC News. In the weeks prior to tripping onstage, Biden used the shorter set of stairs to get on and off the presidential aircraft 37% of the time. In the past seven weeks he’s used them 84% of the time, or 31 out of the 37 times he’s gotten on and off the plane. […] 

The White House did not directly answer a question about whether Biden was using the shorter staircase to minimize the chance of a fall. An aide said the choice comes down to the weather, the airport and whether the press wants a photo on the tarmac with official greeters. (There was no rain Thursday when Biden took the shorter staircase at Joint Base Andrews.) 

Biden seems to be preserving his energy in other ways. It’s customary on foreign trips for the president to schmooze with other leaders at dinners once the meetings are over. Less formal and structured than the events preceding them, the dinners offer a chance for leaders to bond, talk through differences or amplify a point. On two recent international trips, Biden has chosen to skip the nighttime socializing. […] 

Other age-compensating measures are logistical, and probably familiar to many who’ve reached a certain stage in life: extra-large font on his teleprompter and note cards to remind him of the points he wants to make in meetings. […]

With Biden, displays of frailty are bound to get more scrutiny given the propensity of many voters to believe he shouldn’t run again. 

Advisers recognize this dynamic as well as the political cost of the next awkward moment. 

They gave a collective groan when Biden fell at the Air Force Academy, knowing the episode wouldn’t soon be forgotten. It turns out the sandbag had been camouflaged so that it would blend in, making it easier to miss, a senior White House aide said. 

“It happened in seconds,” another aide said, “but it’s going to be in front of us for months and maybe years.” 

Question O’ The Day
BLUF
However, what this REALLY is, is a national security issue. Again, we should be glad that at least ONE more terrorist was nabbed at our border. Yet the question remains, what about those who have slipped through??

Afghan On Terrorist Watch List Caught At Border.

National security? WHAT national security? Joe Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas keep insisting our border is safe and secure. So I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that an Afghan national on the terrorist watch list was caught in San Diego last week?

It’s been confirmed that an Afghan national on the U.S. terror watch list was apprehended while illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in California on Wednesday, one day before Title 42 officially expired on May 11 at 11:59 p.m. ET time. The arrest was confirmed to Fox News by several sources in the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), who did not reveal the identity of the individual on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) terror watch list.

Ok, so it’s good news that this guy, a known or suspected terrorist (KSTs) decided to show up at the border and get caught. However, I have many questions about this. MANY. 

In fiscal 2022, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Field Operations agents apprehended 67 KSTs at ports of entry and 98 between ports of entry at the southern border, totaling 165. At northern border ports of entry, they apprehended 313. Combined, CBP OFO agents apprehended 478 KSTs in fiscal 2022.

Fiscal year to date, OFO agents have apprehended 45 KSTs at ports of entry and 80 between ports of entry at the southern border, totaling 125. At the northern border, the numbers are still higher: 205 at ports of entry and two between ports of entry. So far, that’s 332 this fiscal year who’ve been apprehended trying to enter the U.S.

Question number one: How many have we missed?? Because, reality check here, you can darned well bet others decided to cross the border illegally and are numbered among those 1.5 million or more who’ve slipped through CBP fingers because resources are so thin on the ground.

Yet Mayorkas went on the Sunday talk shows yesterday and bragged about the “successes” at the border. Fewer people are crossing! Well, there’s a reason for that.

Yes indeed. It isn’t because of Mayorkas that the CBP has seen fewer crossings since last Friday. Nope, it’s because Mexico stepped up their enforcement and Governor Abbott deployed TX National Guard to the border. Also, with more people showing up at the port of entries, those facilities are totally overcrowded.

Continue reading “”

NAZIs ( National SOCIALISTS) are only “the far right”, to you, if you share the same ideology as Joseph Stalin (an INTER-National SOCIALIST more often called Communist)

What Puts Nazism on the Right?

 

[nothing for the uninformed. It’s used leftists have run out of anything else to try and shut down their opponents]

This is a sincere question to which I’ve never had a satisfactory answer. I may have even asked it here before. We all know what Nazism is, but I think we need to define what we mean by “Right,” and specifically the American Right. I know some people prefer the quadrant model of political ideology to the linear one. Libertarian to authoritarian on one axis and communism to free markets on the other. But, where’s the overlap between Hitler’s Germany and American conservatism?

Do law-and-order righties fall on the far right of the axis in opposition to the chaos-and-destruction (2020 summer of love) lefties? I don’t think law and order is all that authoritarian, at least in America. If laws are just and equally applied (increasingly not the case), that would appear to be in a sweet spot near the political middle.

Economically, I don’t see American conservatives as radically free-market fundamentalists, although there are some who seem to hold that position. Personally, I’m more of a fair trade kind of gal. I see tariffs as useful to counteract those who would exploit our entrepreneurial capitalism by dumping their products and putting our industries out of business (cough China cough). But economic fascism seems more related to the hand-in-glove state and corporate cooperation the Left adores (see Big Pharma, Big Media, Big Education, . . . ).

So where’s the overlap with Nazism? Here’s what I think. I think the Left uses the Nazi/fascist slander to suggest that American nationalism (sometimes associated with patriotism or love of homeland) is just like the poisonous ethnic nationalism of Nazi Germany — Hitler’s Aryanism. It’s the basis for charges of “inherently racist” and “white supremacist.”

It’s an absurd notion. Is all nationalism Nazism? Are the French Nazis for loving their culture and language? How about the Swedes or the Spanish? It’s particularly slanderous given that America has never been ethnically pure and hasn’t even aspired to it, except in pockets where Democrats and the KKK (but, I repeat) held sway.

None of which is to say that patriots are required to believe America is faultless. I happen to believe there’s a fatal flaw in our Constitution — a sin of omission that allows the federal government to buy votes by redistributing our tax dollars. That’s a limit on government power (the raison d’etre of our Constitution) I’d like to see, but I’m not an idealist on the matter.

When American right-wingers assent to the idea that Nazis and fascists are on the Right, they’re submitting to the notion that American patriots are racist white supremacists. I dissent. And don’t even get me started on how any form of moral, academic, or artistic excellence is now considered “white supremacy.” As if nonwhites are incapable of high achievement. Who’s the racist now?

How Did George Soros’ Son Score So Many WH Meetings?

The name George Soros has become synonymous with corruption, anti-Americanism, and radical leftism due to the causes and organizations the billionaire has spent decades funding. But George’s son Alexander is even more open about his support for the Democratic Party itself—which is perhaps how he scored at least 14 visits to the Biden White House in 2021 and 2022.

The New York Post reported on April 8 that it had reviewed records showing Alexander Soros visited the Biden White House at least 14 times as a sort of “ambassador” for his father. Alexander, who not only fundraises for Democrats but loves to post online about his dealings with world leaders,  shows up in visitor logs meeting White House officials a dozen times just in 2022. Alexander is chairman of George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which has poured billions into leftist and Marxist causes. Alexander Soros himself donated millions to Democrats and leftists, the Post reported.

Continue reading “”

Who’s Running America?

Last week the Senate Democrat majority was hospitalized with Senator John Fetterman dispatched to a psych ward and Senator Dianne Feinstein, who doesn’t seem to know where she is, hospitalized for shingles. Fetterman and Feinstein didn’t let being hospitalized slow them down and went right on co-sponsoring bills even though the former had to be hospitalized because he couldn’t take care of himself and the latter no longer recognized colleagues.

Even in the Senate, Fetterman couldn’t understand what was being said and Feinstein wasn’t aware that she had announced her retirement. Despite that there are press releases from their offices and they’re cosponsoring legislation as if they’re functional and able to make decisions.

Senator Feinstein just introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023 to mandate abortion nationwide while outlawing state restrictions on late-term abortion when babies can feel pain. Considering Feinstein’s own mental capacity may not be that much greater than an unborn child, she might want to reconsider the value of human life even when it can’t articulate its feelings. But Feinstein isn’t really introducing or sponsoring bills, her staffers, who announced her retirement without her knowing about it, are legislating in her name. That’s a coup.

Or what we used to call a coup before it happened and just became how things worked.

Continue reading “”

Something like Harry Reid’s ‘mishaps’?

McConnell Being Treated for Concussion After Fall

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is being treated for a concussion after his fall at a hotel in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night, his spokesman said.

McConnell, 81, is expected to remain in the hospital “for a few days” as he receives treatment for injuries sustained by his fall. The Kentucky Senator was attending an evening dinner for the Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee aligned with him, when he tripped and fell, his office said. The dinner was at the Waldorf Astoria Washington DC, formerly the Trump International Hotel, Washington, D.C.

“Leader McConnell tripped at a dinner event Wednesday evening and has been admitted to the hospital and is being treated for a concussion. He is expected to remain in the hospital for a few days of observation and treatment,” said David Popp, McConnell’s communications director, in an update on Thursday.

BLOOMBERG HOST TO BIDEN ECON. ADVISER: ARE YOU ‘PUTTING THE POLLS BEFORE AMERICA’S ENERGY SECURITY?’
‘You’ve drained the SPR to its lowest level in four decades’

EXCERPT: [which starts at 1:06 in the vid]

FERRO: “You say it’s a prudent use of the asset. Other people are very worried about this. You’ve drained the SPR to its lowest level in four decades. There’s some accusation that you’re using — you’re putting the polls before America’s energy security. Brian, the Saudis themselves said this morning, that the U.S. requested a one month delay to the OPEC+ output. I wonder why that would be? Brian, can you tell me whether you did ask the Saudis for a one month delay to that decision? Are they telling the truth?”
DEESE: “Look, we clearly — we clearly communicated our views to OPEC members that we thought it was short sighted to for them to take the action that they were contemplating and they announced. With respect to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, this was a calibrated decision to address the real issues in the market. We talked to U.S. industry last winter, we identified that there was about a million barrel a day gap between what they were producing this winter and what they said that they could get production to by late this fall. That million barrel gap was what we calibrated to make the decision on the use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. And people should feel confident that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve continues to be an asset that we can deploy to address our economic and national security needs. That’s always what has dictated the president’s decision making on this and that’s what will dictate his decision making on this going forward.”

Yes.

Is modern environmentalism a pagan religion?

The great Rush Limbaugh used to say that “the modern environmentalists worship the created, not the creator.” I was reminded of that after listening to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi once President Joe Biden signed the fiscally unconscionable $750 billion tax-and-spend Inflation Reduction Act, which gives another $300 billion to the climate change-industrial complex.

Pelosi (D-CA) claimed the wind, solar, and electric subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act would placate an “angry” planet. “Mother Earth gets angry from time to time, and this legislation will help us address all of that,” the speaker said.

This is a highly revealing statement. Do Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues really believe that spending $300 billion on Tesla subsidies (with batteries made in China), windmills (made in China), and solar panels (made in China) is going to save the planet, stop the rise of the oceans, and lower the global temperature?

This is the same gang in Congress that can’t stop the daily drive-by shootings in our cities, can’t secure the U.S.-Mexico border, can’t come anywhere near balancing the budget, and can’t provide the resources our military needs for our national security.

Even if this additional $300 billion were to work as planned, the Wall Street Journal reports that the impact on global temperatures in the coming decades would be to lower them by 0.001%. So, instead of the global temperature being an average of 59 degrees Fahrenheit, it will be 58.999 degrees. Thank God! We are saved from Armageddon.

But as Pelosi’s quote makes clear, this is about symbolism. It is about ruining the economy as a sacrifice to Mother Earth. Marc Morano, the journalist who runs the Climate Depot website, asks: “Will human sacrifices be next to appease the ‘angry’ Earth gods? Actually, this bill will create human sacrifice by imposing even more suffering from energy deprivation, supply chain issues, good shortages, inflation, debt, and bad science.”

He’s right. The suffering that will occur from this assault on American energy security and reliability could be profound — and it will be the lowest-income people who will be hurt the most. Inflation will rise as energy prices soar. The shortages of energy will cause hardship for many consumers, including food shortages. Europe, which got hooked on the green energy fad, is now rationing energy. In Spain, there are new restrictions on using air conditioning to set the temperature of your store or home at less than 80 degrees — during a heat spell. It’s one of those sacrifices to Mother Earth.

One of the great injustices and ironies of the new law is that it purports to give billions of dollars for “environmental justice” grants to low-income communities and inner cities when it is this group of people who will feel the brunt of the anti-fossil fuel policies. The poor spend three to five times more of their incomes on energy than the rich.

The warmest years in North America are not recent years — instead, they occurred during the 1930s amid the Dust Bowl era. This was before 80% of the carbon dioxide was released into the atmosphere. Back then, tens of thousands of U.S. residents died from extreme weather. But now we have, through modern electric power and technological innovation, major ways to reduce death rates from weather events. The way to save the Earth is through more growth, more innovation, and a richer planet.

That is what Mother Earth wants. That is what America wants. Only 1 out of 20 people rate climate change as the No. 1 problem facing our country. The public wants lower inflation and more prosperity. This law delivers neither.

The God that most of us worship wants us to create peace, prosperity, and light. The god of radical environmentalists will deliver darkness, despair, and decline.

Can you make a 40 yard supported shot?

Practice and find out, seriously. If you can’t, you have a goal, worthy of attaining, and a demonstrated, not hypothetical, reason for getting there.

Question O’ The Day:
Having found out how weak, unprepared and frankly defenseless the Soviet Union was — i.e. driving trucks with long tubes around to pretend to have a lot more missiles — I’ve begun to wonder if anything — any story ever told by international media — was ever true?–Sarah Hoyt

Now the smoke is dissipating, and the mirrors are broken. What comes next?

Former Kremlin mercenary: Russian army was not prepared for a real war; Kremlin propaganda’s Janus face.

I’m traveling for work, with limited internet access. A couple things though:

(a) A former mercenary with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group, quoted on the Telegraph’s live blog today:

Russian forces were “caught by surprise” by the fierce resistance of the Ukrainian army, according to a former mercenary who fought with the Kremlin-linked Wagner Group.

Marat Gabidullin took part in Wagner Group missions on the Kremlin’s behalf in Syria and in a previous conflict in Ukraine, before quitting the group in 2019.

“They were caught completely by surprise that the Ukrainian army resisted so fiercely and that they faced the actual army,” Mr Gabidullin said about Russia’s setbacks in Ukraine.

He said people he spoke to on the Russian side had told him they expected to face rag-tag militias when they invaded Ukraine, not well-drilled regular troops.

“I told them: ‘Guys, that’s a mistake’,” said Mr Gabidullin, who refused a call from a recruiter inviting him to go back to fighting as a mercenary in Ukraine several months before Russia launched its invasion.

(b) The head of GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA (and the successor organization to the GCCS which cracked Enigma) says out loud what has been obvious for weeks: Western SIGINT [signals intelligence .ed] agencies like GCHQ are passing tactically relevant info to Ukraine in real time.

(c) Russian vlogger Roman, who has fled to Georgia, calls himself a “Bernie Bro” in US political terms (most unlike this blogger here — OK, he has the excuse he’s young enough to be my son ;)), and used to think Russian propaganda abroad only panders to “the right-wingers”. Then he discovered that Russian propaganda efforts actually are Janus-faced: different propaganda trolls pander to left-wing and right-wing audiences. The former carp on again Western imperialism, “Palestine”, social “justice”, a… and sandwich their Russian propaganda ham between slices of that; the latter instead put the ham between slices of anti-woke, anti-CRT, pro-nationalism,… bread.