Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic

CCRKBA: KING COUNTY, WA GUN MURDERS, SHOOTINGS PROVE ANTI-GUNNERS LIED

BELLEVUE, WA – Monday’s “Shots Fired” report from the King County (WA) Prosecutor’s Office on the number of gun-related homicides and injuries last year is more proof that gun control laws and anti-rights initiatives adopted over the past few years in Washington State have been abject failures, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today in reaction.

“Proponents of these laws, and especially the gun control initiatives passed in recent years, sold the public a bill of goods, and now everybody knows it,” said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. “Voters were told in 2014 that Initiative 594 would reduce gun-related violence, and today’s data proves they were misled. Four years later, the Seattle-based gun prohibition lobby promised Initiative 1639 would prevent gun-related homicides, and they lied again. In Olympia, anti-gun politicians are pushing more gun restrictions right now, with the same promises.

“The billionaire-backed gun prohibition lobby and their allies in Olympia claim that so-called ‘gun violence’ is an epidemic,” he said. “Frankly, the intellectual dishonesty of the gun control crowd is the real public health crisis.”

King County authorities reported Monday that 88 people were murdered and another 372 were wounded in shootings last year. Law enforcement agencies in the county reported a startling 1,405 shooting incidents, surpassing the 1,025 posted in 2020.

Gottlieb opposed both initiatives, and he has been an outspoken critic of other gun laws pushed through the Legislature. CCRKBA’s national headquarters are in Bellevue, just east of Seattle. A check of the FBI annual Uniform Crime Reports shows the number of murders in Washington, and especially Seattle, have gone steadily upwards since the current gun control crusade started eight years ago.

“We warned the public these gun control schemes were wishful thinking at best,” Gottlieb said. “The data provides all the evidence necessary to say anti-gun-rights initiatives and legislation have amounted to snake oil, giving the public a false sense of security while their rights are being steadily eroded.

“Instead of pushing more restrictions like they’re doing right now,” he said, “it is time for gun control zealots to admit they’ve been wrong all along. Extremist gun control has failed miserably for Evergreen State citizens, and the rising body counts prove it.”

BLUF:
Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence. Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations. No sirree. Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state. In fact, in a leader, it’s a lethal cocktail.

Joe Biden, enemy of America.

From the moment Joe Biden stepped into the Oval Office as president, it became clear that he had stolen the job in order to destroy America from within.  He stopped the construction of the Keystone Pipeline on day one, costing thousands of good-paying jobs.  He stopped the construction of the southern border wall, costing more jobs and leaving millions of dollars worth of equipment rotting in the desert.

Biden would not even let Texas use the construction materials themselves; any wall would impede the Biden plan to import over two million migrants from around the world, to be given funds and to spread them throughout the nation into unsuspecting cities.

The Democrats voted unanimously that these illegal invaders would not be required to be vaccinated or even tested for COVID.  That should tell us everything we need to know about how seriously the left really takes this phony pandemic.  The leftists know that it is phony because it’s worked for their advantage from the outset.  They had to do something to derail President Trump.

So, with a stroke of Biden’s pen, the energy independence Trump had achieved was gone.  Biden removed Trump’s sanctions on the Nord Stream pipeline, making Germany now dependent on Russia for gas and making Russia infinitely wealthier!  What a colossally stupid thing to have done.  Natural gas prices for Americans have doubled.  Fuel gas prices have gone up by at least forty percent.  Biden and his DOJ are canceling other pipelines and oil leases on federal land and offshore.  This is allegedly in the name of the environment, but that is a lie.  It is to bring the middle and working classes to their knees.  This administration wants runaway inflation, the better to punish the deplorables, to make them more compliant.

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Just because they’re ridiculous doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous…..

BLUF:
There is no backing down. We can’t. Not if we want to survive.
It’s going to get very rough from here on out, and I want you to know that. Prepare, prepare, prepare, and gird your loins.
Just remember in the end we win, they lose.
Be not afraid, but don’t be rash.
Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

WHEN THEY HONK PEOPLE OFF

This weekend, I found that the truckers who have had enough of Little Castro’s Justin Trudeau’s insanity, enough to drive to the capital in convoy and who appear to be supported by a majority of Canadians are “really” Russian agents dressed like truckers.

My first reaction to this was to laugh so hard my son, who had just come into my office, thought I was having a stroke or heart attack or something. BTW this morning he tells me that now the NYT is running with the idea that everyone who is against mandates is “really” a Russian agent.

It’s all SO FAMILIAR.  So deja vu. So full of repeat.  So where have I heard that before.

Frankly, I almost titled this post “All the Truckers are Russian Agents, or How I became a White Mormon Male.” which would be a very accurate title, and also way too long, and would give whiplash to anyone who hasn’t been around for a few years.

Also, not completely accurate, because as well as a white Mormon male, I was also racist, sexist and homophobic (which is probably making some of you laugh till you hiccup) and and one time — briefly — a robot and a Russian robot. (I don’t know is Sad Robot Puppies is still active on Twitter (I never go there) but it was started by one of you adorable maniacs when that accusation came out.)

For those not around at the time, a lot of crap happened around and between, and if you guys feel you need clarification, ask someone in comments. Other people can explain. I woke up very late, and we were dealing with business taxes which makes me too cranky for words.

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Something from last year, recently discovered

58% Of Voters Agree: Media Are ‘Enemy of the People’

Voters overwhelmingly believe “fake news” is a problem, and a majority agree with former President Donald Trump that the media have become “the enemy of the people.”

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 58% of Likely U.S. Voters at least somewhat agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” including 34% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) don’t agree, including 23% who Strongly Disagree. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The survey of 1,000 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on July 7-8, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

The ‘gentry class’ has gotten too full of itself

BLUF:
As Shijian-21’s recent actions demonstrate, there is a pressing need for the United States to be able to defend its assets in distant orbit. It’s likely we could see similar shows of force in the near term as Space Force responds to other nations’ demonstrations of “killer” satellite capabilities.

A Chinese Satellite Just Grappled Another And Pulled It Out Of Orbit.

A Chinese satellite was observed grabbing another satellite and pulling it out of its normal geosynchronous orbit and into a “super-graveyard drift orbit.” The maneuver raises questions about the potential applications of these types of satellites designed to maneuver close to other satellites for inspection or manipulation and adds to growing concerns about China’s space program overall.

On January 22, China’s Shijian-21 satellite, or SJ-21, disappeared from its regular position in orbit during daylight hours when observations were difficult to make with optical telescopes. SJ-21 was then observed executing a “large maneuver” to bring it closely alongside another satellite, a dead BeiDou Navigation System satellite. SJ-21 then pulled the dead satellite out of its normal geosynchronous orbit and placed it a few hundred miles away in what is known as a graveyard orbit. These distant orbits are designated for defunct satellites at the end of their lives and are intended to reduce the risk of collision with operational assets.

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The left-wing dark money behind the push to kill the filibuster

Sixty left-wing groups led by Fix Our Senate recently issued a letter demanding the Senate abolish the filibuster so “democracy legislation” will pass and the party now narrowly controlling Congress can rewrite all 50 states’ election laws.

Two big secrets lie behind this push to kill the filibuster and, supposedly, protect “voting rights.” First, this lobbying campaign is driven not by grassroots groups of ordinary people but by left-wing megadonors and the AstroTurf groups they fund. The second secret: This scheme isn’t about “protecting Democracy” because overwhelming majorities of our democracy’s citizens support the state election laws that these deep-pocketed special interests want snuffed out.

This fight is about the 2022 and 2024 elections, which liberal activists fear will go badly for them unless all the dubious changes in election laws and practices they finagled in 2020 are repeated. Nse Ufot, who leads a get-out-the-vote group founded by Stacey Abrams, confessed to Politico, “If there isn’t a way for us to repeat what happened in November 2020, we’re f***ed.”

Ufot’s “we” doesn’t refer to all in this democracy but only to the partisans she’s serving.

The same partisanship afflicts the Fix Our Senate nonprofit group that made a splash with its 60-group letter. The legacy media kept the secret, calling Fix Our Senate just a “pro-reform group.” Actually, though Fix Our Senate claims it “represents millions of Americans,” it’s a pop-up group, one of hundreds of fiscally sponsored projects in the “dark money” empire operated by Arabella Advisors, the in-house nonprofit groups of which took in $1.7 billion last year.

Here’s more of the secret: Another letter-signer, Evergreen Action, is yet another front group Arabella operates via its Sixteen Thirty Fund, which Politico called a “liberal dark-money behemoth.”

At least 17 additional nonprofit groups that signed the letter have received $10 million from Arabella’s coffers, Capital Research Center reports . In other words, the dozens of groups demanding the Senate overturn 50 states’ elections laws don’t represent millions of people in those states. They represent a handful of billionaires who liberally fund AstroTurf activism. As Arabella brags , it serves “clients representing more than $100 billion in assets.”

Those clients spent handsomely in 2020. They helped orchestrate victories for left-of-center candidates, including by backing groups involved in a left-wing network Time called a “cabal” that changed how elections are run. Now, they want to be paid back for their investment. But the Left’s agenda has stalled in Congress. Rather than compromise, the megadonors have set their sights on the filibuster.

That leads to the second big secret in the filibuster fight: It is fundamentally anti-democratic. Most want it to be easy to vote but hard to cheat.

Last year, states such as Texas and Georgia passed reforms that expanded early-voting opportunities, streamlined absentee ballot procedures, and improved protections for mail-in ballots. Georgia now offers more early-voting days than deep-blue New York or New Jersey.

The policies in those bills are popular. In fact, public support for photo ID laws, the Left’s most hated election integrity provision, grew last year. More than 3 in 4 black and Hispanic voters, 67% of Democrats, and 82% of independent voters back them. That’s real grassroots support.

Arabella and its dark money backers are using groups such as Fix Our Senate to create the illusion of popular outrage. They want to give narrow partisan majorities in Congress cover to junk the filibuster and impose unpopular, and likely unconstitutional, laws that would make elections harder to run and jeopardize public trust in voting.

H.R. 1 , for instance, directs taxpayer funds to politicians’ campaigns, eliminates voter ID laws, and legalizes vote trafficking, the practice with which political operatives approach voters and collect their mail-in ballots without supervision.

If the media stopped hiding the big secrets in this scam, we’re confident large majorities would recoil in horror at the prospect of either party’s members of Congress, or D.C. bureaucrats, setting election rules nationwide, much less eliminating safeguards the public favors, such as voter ID.

The left-wing push to take over elections poses a grave danger to our democratic institutions, even if it doesn’t succeed. Activist groups and the megadonors backing them have convinced millions that future elections will be rigged through “voter suppression.”

If they truly want healthy democracy, they should face voters honestly, not hide behind dark secrets.

BLUF:
So, the defection of a top Chinese scientist to the US is indeed a game-changer. This is a double whammy for the Communist Party. Not only has the CCP lost one of its senior hypersonic scientists to the US, but this episode will also encourage other Chinese scientists to defect from China.

Top Chinese scientist working in Hypersonic program flees China with critical secrets.

The US officials were left stunned when a Financial Times report revealed that Beijing had tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August last year. The test demonstrated that China has now garnered the ability to strike any point of earth in no time and that too without letting the target know about any such imminent attack. This bold portrayal of the hypersonic program had dumbstruck the US, whose own hypersonic program runs far behind that of China.

However, what has now come as a blessing in disguise for America is the defection of a top Chinese scientist to the West. A report published by Daily Express revealed that a senior rocket technician, connected to the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp of China, recently defected to the US with the help of the UK’s top intelligence agency.

He was closely working on China’s advanced hypersonic missile program, where he helped develop a mid-range hypersonic boost-glide vehicle capable of carrying DF-17 missiles to a range of up to 2,000 miles.

Making things worse for China, the defecting scientist was attached to the developmental program of hypersonic missile delivery system that China demonstrated last August for the very first time.

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Video ~ China’s Foreign Ministry on Americans’ Second Amendment rights: “That’s the freedom the US advocates — freedom to shoot other people.”

 

1
Question O’ The Day
Why is this person speaking in Moscow?
Answer?
She’s just another commie who is pushing a line of propaganda.

2
It is nice of them to self identify like this.

Speaker: Militias not protected by Second Amendment
Law professor Mary McCord tells a Moscow audience why they frequently go unchallenged

MOSCOW — Contrary to widespread beliefs about the right to keep and bear arms, unauthorized paramilitary organizations, also known as militias, are unlawful in every state.

These groups, often dressed in military uniforms and armed with semi-automatic rifles, are not protected by the Second Amendment or its interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court, according to Mary McCord, a visiting law professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

So why do these groups typically go unchallenged?

During the latest League of Women Voters of Moscow speaker series Wednesday, McCord said the answer lies in the widespread belief that private militias are constitutionally protected.

“There is a misunderstanding, including among law enforcement and even prosecutors, about the scope of the Second Amendment and the scope of the First Amendment,” McCord said. “Sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding, but sometimes it’s because even law enforcement is supportive of militias and has a different view about what the Second Amendment protects. Sometimes I think it’s a misunderstanding about the First Amendment and that some of it protects the expression militias are conveying.”

Despite the misconceptions, militia groups have proliferated across the country.

One year ago, during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, armed militia members traveled from as far as the state of Washington in an attempt to “stop the steal,” in response to Joe Biden’s triumph over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Other times, militia groups have sought to oppose government policies or protect property at riots.

In Louisville, Ky., heavily armed rival militias faced off at demonstrations following the police shooting of Breonna Taylor.

While these groups have a right to make their views known, they don’t have a right to deploy in public as private armies. According to McCord, the Supreme Court has been very clear — through upholding anti-militia bills and laws — that even conduct with an expressive aspect can be regulated in the interest of public safety.

“The Second Amendment does not protect this activity, but there has been such a mythology that has grown over the last several decades,” she said. “When you’re deploying to protect property or engage in security — that is usurping law enforcement functions.”

These groups decide when and under what circumstances to deploy lethal force against other people, and they’re not accountable to any higher governmental authority.

All of this results in an infringement on other people’s constitutional rights, McCord says.

“This notion that militias are there to be a bulwark against tyranny is very popular in areas that are quite anti-government,” she said. “People even say to me, ‘That goes back way before the founding of the country. That’s exactly why it was put in the Constitution.’ Well, that’s not right.”

While there are comments in the Federalist Papers about state militias being a necessary defense against a tyrannical central government, there are no such comments in the Constitution about private militias doing so.

After the American colonies won their freedom from England, they decided to become states.

The new states decided to work together by forming a weak federal government, leaving most of the power with state governments. At the time, there were fears of a tyrannical central government.

“But nothing there ever said, ‘Private individuals, you don’t like what you’re seeing? Form your own private army and take up arms against your government,’ ” McCord said.

“That was not part of our constitutional history.”

McCord is a former acting assistant attorney general for national security at the Department of Justice and a former principal deputy assistant attorney general for national security.

Observation O’ The Day:
“I am aware that people can be removed from the transplant list for engaging in behavior that increases the rust of transplant failure, such as someone needing a liver transplant continuing to drink alcohol.

However, falling back on this justification to deny someone a transplant for refusing a highly contentious vaccine that may have no appreciable effect on the latest variant and may in face cause hear related issues in a patient with a bad heart, seems less about science and more about politics.

To be honest, so many people have been screaming for the unvaccinated to be killed or left to die from medical neglect that I can’t give a hospital the benefit of the doubt that they are making this decision based on a desire for the patient outcome and not partisanship.” –J.Kb.

Occupy Democrats applauds Boston hospital for removing father from heart transplant list because he hasn’t gotten the COVID vaccine

People concerned that COVID precautions have gotten out of control may have some reason to feel that way:

More:

An unvaccinated and gravely ill 31-year-old father-of-two has been taken off the donor list for a heart transplant by a Boston hospital because he ‘does not believe’ in the COVID vaccine.

DJ Ferguson, who has a hereditary heart condition that causes his lungs and heart to fill with blood and fluid, was denied the life-saving organ transplant by Boston Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School.

The hospital said it removed Ferguson from the donor list because all transplant recipients need to get the vaccine in order to ‘create both the best chance for successful operation and also the patient’s survival after transplantation.’

 

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BLUF:
This is the true meaning of “Our Democracy”™: an oligarchy in fact but with the external trappings of democracy to provide rhetorical legitimacy. We stand at a crossroads. We as citizens will either reclaim the mantle of republican self-government or, by meekly submitting to the rule of our oligarchic elites, bid a sad farewell to the American commonwealth.

‘Our Democracy™’: Oligarchy With Democratic Trappings

Over the past few months, it has become common for Democrats and progressives to invoke “Our Democracy”™ whenever they criticize efforts to ensure election integrity or condemn the perpetrators of the January 6 “insurgency.” On one level, the phrase is just another annoying example of debasing the language by the very people who have been working overtime to rewrite the Constitution.

But on another level, the phrase suggests something even more sinister: that those who invoke it literally mean “their” democracy, i.e. a regime that belongs to them, validated by the votes of the “right people” who approve of their so-called progressive enterprise. Anyone who doesn’t approve is, by definition, an insurgent, an enemy of the state. Any attempt to limit their power—e.g., by insisting on election integrity—is therefore “anti-democratic.”

I am only one of a number of writers who have argued that the United States has devolved from a republic or commonwealth to an oligarchy. Lest we succumb to the error of progressives and simply use a word to mean something we don’t like, it is important to understand the nature and background of oligarchy. It is not just any “ruling class” but an elite and ruling class of a particular sort. In this regard, it helps to examine the taxonomy of regimes outlined by the first political scientists, Plato and Aristotle.

These writers identified three types of rule: the one; the few; and the many. Each form had a good and bad version, the former based on rule for the benefit of the entire polity and the latter rule on behalf of the ruler or ruling class alone. Thus, the good form of rule by the one was kingship; the bad form tyranny. The good form of rule by the few was aristocracy; the bad form oligarchy or plutocracy. And the good form of rule by the many was politeia or a balanced constitution, which the Romans translated as res publica and which is most properly rendered as commonwealth in English; the bad form was pure democracy or ochlocracy: that is, mob rule.

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It’d like what was said about education. If a foreign nation was forcing us to doing this, it would be seen as an act of war.

BLUF:
And Biden? His woke national-security and foreign-policy B-team seem more eager to subsidize electric cars for the rich than to provide cheap oil and gas to the American middle class or to deter America’s adversaries.

Team Biden seeks to stop yet another pipeline even as gas prices rise.

If you needed any more proof that the anti-American, pro-Russia, pro-Iran, pro-China, anti-Israel wing of the Democrat Party has captured the White House flag, last week we learned Team Biden plans to put the kibosh on a natural-gas pipeline with US involvement that would reduce Europe’s dependence on Russian energy.

The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Pipeline, which would carry Israeli and Cypriot natural gas, is yet another energy resource serving America’s strategic interests that the Biden White House wants gone. EastMed joins a long list that started on Day One with the Keystone XL pipeline, a ban on oil and gas leases on public lands and the October federal court ruling that ended drilling in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska.

All these actions, demanded by “climate change” alarmists, have reversed America’s long-sought energy independence won at great political cost by President Donald Trump.

They have not only made us dependent once again on foreign oil; they have sent oil prices skyrocketing, enriching America’s adversaries in Russia and Iran.

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BLUF:
….we want to damage these pinko jerks before they Marx-up our country forever.
We want socialism destroyed. Not tamed, not moderated, crushed. Wiped out. Nuked from orbit, because that is the only way to be sure.
When we are done, we want the Democrat Party terrified of even hinting at support for anything remotely like the socialism they are currently swapping spit with.
This is a bloodsport, a matter of either us and freedom winning, or us acquiescing to a jack-booted, lib-fascist future forever.
We choose freedom.
And that’s why we celebrate and savor the total humiliation of the Democrats. Keep it up, losers!

Savor the Democrats’ Humiliation

There’s no sense in pretending that we don’t take pleasure in the total failure of our Marxist-curious party of the left. Through a combination of outright fraud, procedural irregularities, plus the total support of the garbage establishment and its failed institutions, the Democrats took power by the thinnest of margins and have proceeded to fail on a level comparable to Heaven’s Gate, New Coke, and the Weekly Standard. There’s no shame in enjoying their total rejection by all decent Americans. In fact, you should enjoy it without hesitation or mercy, especially since it means more than just us cons getting our jollies.

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“It’s only wrong to call elections illegitimate if you’re a Republican.”

Biden is hardly the first Democrat to try to delegitimize elections.

President Joe Biden joined Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and numerous other Democrats this week in a partisan attempt to preemptively delegitimize the 2022 election.

Twice the president was asked by reporters whether voters could trust the electoral system, and twice the president contended that a fair election was unlikely unless the Senate was blown up and the Democrats’ election power grab was passed — a maneuver that poses a far more serious and lasting threat to the constitutional order than anything Donald Trump is cooking up right now.

“I think it would easily be illegitimate,” said Biden. “The increase in the prospect of being illegitimate is in proportion to not being able to get these reforms passed.” Vice President Kamala Harris, sent out on the morning shows Thursday, offered basically the same position.

For people lamenting the “Big Lie,” this is nothing new. Trump’s election-fraud conspiracy theories have been endlessly documented. Sometimes it sounds as if he has merely appropriated the language of Democrats, who’ve been playing this ugly game for years. And it’s not only the post-election evidence-free Stacey Abrams-style sore-loserism that we’re typically subjected to. It’s far more pervasive.

During Trump’s first impeachment — headier times, when we were still pretending to care about the fate of Ukraine rather than inviting Vladimir Putin to take a slice — Democrats argued that ousting Trump was a precondition to a fair election.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned colleagues that maintaining the position that elections should decide Trump’s fate was “dangerous” and “only adds to the urgency of our action, because the president is jeopardizing the integrity of the 2020 elections.” Adam Schiff, one of the leading culprits in the Russia “collusion” swindle, concurred: “The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Never once, incidentally, have any of these people offered a scintilla of evidence demonstrating that a single person’s vote was changed, altered or appropriated by Trump or Russians or anyone else. Yet at one point, a healthy majority of Democrats claimed to believe that Putin had altered vote tallies. How many Democrats still believe it?

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‘Free Speech Advocates’ Panic Over Parents’ Push for More Curriculum Transparency

Teachers, unions and “free speech advocates” argue that more school curriculum transparency would be equivalent to “educational gag orders,” experts told NBC News.

State lawmakers in at least 12 states across the U.S. have introduced legislation to promote more school transparency by requiring teachers to post educational materials online, NBC News reported. Conservatives see more transparency as a way to prevent controversial curricula such as race-based education, Critical Race Theory (CRT) and sexually graphic books.

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‘enemies, foreign and domestic‘

And this is called a ‘Freudian slip’ by one of them

BLUF:
What they want for America is rigged phony Chavista-style elections.  Jeffries just let the cat out of the bag.

Hakeem Jeffries lets the cat out of the bag about Dems’ plan for America

Sometimes, the truth gets out.

That seems to be the case with Joe Biden’s “Freedom to Vote” bill, which his fellow Democrats are shilling. Problem: One of them said too much.

Jeffries is the fifth most powerful Democrat in the House and considered the heir apparent to jurassic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.  He’s a power.

His self-revision in that video, that he was talking about “César” Chávez, is total nonsense.  César Chávez was a famous labor organizer who had little to do with voting rights.  He had a job in his youth registering voters, but that’s a nothingburger compared to his claim to fame with organizing a large union and advocating for rural workers’ rights.  Hugo Chávez, by contrast, is the late, unlamented Venezuelan dictator who pioneered rigged elections under gaslighting claims, repeated on the American left, of expanding democracy for all.  Hugo was able to seize absolute power by corrupting Venezuela’s election process, starting in 2004, when he knew he was an unpopular political goner and subject to a recall referendum under his own revised constitution.

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