Category: Question O’ The Day

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

Question O’ The Day

How many U.S. Presidents in modern history have announced ‘food shortages’ before they occurred?

The answer is: Only President Biden.

Quip O’ The Day

At one point I would have dismissed this sort of thing as conspiracy theory. But the conspiracy theorists’ track record isn’t bad, these days . . .

See: Did We **** Up (Again)?
QOTD:
Now we have a new potential issue showing up with severe hepatitis in young people which has no reasonable link to covid vaccines, since in nearly all people of that age they’re not eligible to receive them.  But, ominously, it is linked to an adenovirus that, in the past, has no known causation for hepatitis.

This raises a question: Has co-infection with another adenovirus, along with the vector being introduced to an unwitting person either in the form of the J&J or AstraZeneca vaccines, resulted in reassortment in the body and a transmissible adenovirus that causes liver damage?

11 countries now reporting outbreak of hepatitis in children.

The World Health Organization said it is investigating an outbreak of acute hepatitis among children that now involves 11 countries, including the United States.

Among the 169 reported cases, at least one child has died from this inflammation of the liver and 17 children needed liver transplants, the WHO said Saturday in a statement.

“It is not yet clear if there has been an increase in hepatitis cases, or an increase in awareness of hepatitis cases that occur at the expected rate but go undetected,” the WHO said. “While adenovirus is a possible hypothesis, investigations are ongoing for the causative agent.”

The symptoms “among identified cases is acute hepatitis with markedly elevated liver enzymes,” the statement added.

Hepatitis is typically caused by a virus. Adenoviruses are common, can spread between people and can cause people to be mildly or severely ill. Among these recent infections, adenoviruses have been detected in at least 74 cases, but they typically don’t cause severe hepatitis in healthy people. The common viruses that cause acute viral hepatitis, including hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D and E, have not been detected in any of these cases, according to the WHO.

While most of the children did not have a fever, many reported gastrointestinal symptoms such as abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting “preceding presentation with severe acute hepatitis,” as well as increased levels of liver enzymes and jaundice, CNN reported.

Most of the 169 cases were reported in the United Kingdom, which had 114. Nine cases were reported by the Alabama Department of Health last week.

Investigators are also aware of 13 cases in Spain, 12 in Israel, and smaller numbers in Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Romania. The children are between the ages of 1 month and 16, CNN reported.

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Question O’ The Day
‘If gun control works so well, how does this happen?’

Violent Crimes Up 60% in LA According to Latest LAPD Data Since 2019
There has been an increase in the levels of violence and and firearm use during robberies

During a Los Angeles Board of Police Commission meeting earlier this week, LAPD Chief Michel Moore revealed that violent crimes have risen exponentially in the past year, moving the city closer to San Francisco in terms of the highest crime rates in the country.

According to the LAPD, citywide robberies are up 18% compared to this time last year, and up 5% compared to 2020. City wide robberies with a firearm also went significantly up, climbing 44% from this time last year, 57% from 2020, and 60% compared to 2019. While 36% of robberies and 74% of all robberies as part of the increase from last year used a firearm, the LAPD also got into specifics, such as noting that those who wore expensive jewelry in  public have been targeted more often in armed robberies.

“Over the course of this year, the Department has experienced an increase in robberies taking place in various communities in the City of Los Angeles,” the LAPD said in a press release on Tuesday. “Most concerning is that there has been an increase in the levels of violence used during these robberies and the frequency in which a firearm was used. During the Board of Police Commission meeting on March 22, 2022, Chief Moore discussed citywide robbery statistics, crime prevention techniques, situational awareness, and mitigation.”

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Question O’ The Day

The real question is, did Ukraine hold any back when it “disarmed?”
What would you have done?

Here is Ukraine President Zelensky’s speech
A salient piece

Has the world forgotten its mistakes of the twentieth century? What do attempts at appeasement lead to? As the question ‘Why die for Danzig’ turned into the need to die for Dunkirk and dozens of other cities in Europe and the world. At the cost of tens of millions of lives. These are terrible lessons of history. I just want to make sure you and I read the same books………….

The security system is slow. It crashes again. Because of different things: selfishness, self-confidence, irresponsibility of states at the global level. As a result, we have crimes of some and indifference of others. Indifference that makes you an accomplice. It is symbolic that I am talking about this right here. It was here 15 years ago that Russia announced its intention to challenge global security. What did the world say? Appeasement. Result? At least—the annexation of Crimea and aggression against my state……..

Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability. We don’t have that weapon. We also have no security. We also do not have part of the territory of our state that is larger in area than Switzerland, the Netherlands or Belgium. And most importantly—we don’t have millions of our citizens. We don’t have all this.

Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees.

Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. Three times without success. Today Ukraine will do it for the fourth time. I, as President, will do this for the first time. But both Ukraine and I are doing this for the last time. I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs was commissioned to convene them. If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.

Ukraine intends to develop its own nuclear weapons, and it is not an empty bravado. Ukraine indeed has Soviet nuclear technologies and delivery systems for such weapons, including aviation and Tochka-U tactical missiles, developed back in the Soviet; their range is over 100 km, but they will develop even longer-range ones, it is only a matter of time. There is groundwork from Soviet era………..

Claire Belinski:

Is it empty bravado? I don’t know. But we know this: For years, leaders around the world in Japan, Germany, South Korea, even Taiwan—have asked themselves this question: Which is safer? If we build the Bomb, we will enter an arms race that encourages our adversaries to obliterate us in a first strike. But if instead we shelter under the American nuclear umbrella, the Americans may not have our back. The NPT has held, more or less, because countries with the technical ability and resources to build the Bomb have considered this question and concluded that on balance, it’s best to trust us.

This is what we really mean when we talk about the “international order” and the “rules-based security system.”
It’s a shame we don’t speak of it plainly, because high school intellects the world around will always pipe up, “What international order?” “What rules-based security system?” They are always pleased with themselves; they always think it a clever thing to say.)

The balance is very fine. France, Israel, India, and Pakistan all considered the matter closely and concluded that however often Americans declared our fealty to the rules-based international order, when push came to shove, we’d forget we’d ever heard of them.

Fair? Unfair? Our record is mixed.

If we allow Ukraine to be gobbled up, in pieces or in whole, it may not change the world. But conversations in defense ministries the world around will surely take this into account. No one wants to be invaded by a bigger, stronger, rapacious neighbor.

There are only two solutions to the problem of a bigger, stronger, rapacious neighbor: a big, strong ally, or Shiva, destroyer of worlds.

The miserable, needless human tragedy engulfing Ukraine matters in its own right. It should matter to any sentient human even if American national security interests weren’t at play. But American national security interests—the security of the whole “rules based international order”—are very much at play, and Putin proposes to destroy that order, which will, ultimately, destroy everything.

Yes, well, this is what happens when the Pax Americana breaks down. And it breaks down when America is weak, and under Biden America isn’t just weak, it’s chosen to be weak.  

Question O’ The Day

Did Biden secretly agree in advance to allow Putin to do this? Or are we to believe this is a coincidence?

What’s next from Russia, Ukraine and the new Cold War?
Putin’s land grab in Ukraine is a grim reminder of a new world order under Biden’s watch

“This is the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine,” President Biden said on Tuesday in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recognition of Ukraine’s two breakaway regions. Putin’s decision was quickly followed by the movement of thousands of Russian troops to the region to enforce that land grab, a sobering reminder of the emergent new world order.

Moscow’s invasion of eastern Ukraine is déjà vu 2008 with the Republic of Georgia [seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia] and Ukraine in 2014 [annexation of Crimea], and if I were in the Baltics [Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania] and the balance of Ukraine, or perhaps even Poland, I’d watch carefully movements to my east. Putin is poised to push west against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to recover lost ground which he considers part of the historic Russian Empire.

Putin’s aggression should alarm westerners who naively cling to NATO’s prowess. Years ago, during the Cold War (1948-1991), the West was much stronger and more able to stand up against Soviet aggression but not so much now. I doubt anyone who truly understands NATO’s capabilities believes the alliance can really defeat the Russian army. The numbers just aren’t there anymore.

Meanwhile, Putin long ago planned to create the pretext to move against Ukraine’s east via misinformation about alleged atrocities. That’s been building now for weeks: hybrid warfare with psychological operations, cyberattacks, and cease-fire violations. Recently the evacuation of civilians into Russia was a clear indication Putin’s plan was falling into place. Those actions remind me of Germany in 1939 and Poland.

Has Putin set his sights on NATO member states?

What now? Putin didn’t need 190,000 troops and a phalanx of tanks, thousands of artillery pieces, and a shipment of plasma to declare the eastern Ukrainian region independent. No, there is much more and this was long ago planned.

Looking into the future, expect Russia to keep large numbers of troops in Belarus, and many thousands inside eastern Ukraine. Also, recall that Putin and Belarus’s President Alexander Lukashenko declared the formation of a reaction force, a key indicator that Russia will hold its ground. Further, expect the geopolitical temperature to rise, subject in part to NATO and the West’s response, if any.

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