Category: Enemies Domestic

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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BLUF:
As with any crime, and to be clear, willfully violating the Constitution is a criminal act. You have to look at motive, means and opportunity. Joe Biden has the motive to violate our rights and the means to do so. And although I believe it will happen sooner rather than later, unless fate or the 25th Amendment intervene, for the next three long years he’ll have opportunity for all the infringing he and Kamala desire.

The Question On Gun Owners’ Minds: What Will Joe Biden’s Next Pivot Be?

The Biden-Harris administration is trapped inside a hostile media spotlight, a victim of their own incompetence. They’re like a cornered animal – desperate for a way out, but clearly willing to settle for anything that would shift the public focus off of their ever-growing list of failures.

They’re a consistent bunch, that much is true. They consistently lurch from one self-inflicted crisis to another, while we pay the price for their mistakes.

It began with Joe’s unconditional surrender of Afghanistan and was followed by the Build Back Better bust and the deadly fiasco on our Southern border. Added quickly to the mix were skyrocketing inflation, lots of empty shelves, the Supremes embarrassing denouncement of a clearly unconstitutional vaccine mandate, COVID tests becoming unobtainium while omicron surged.

All the while, the filibuster remaining as strong as it was a year ago thanks to good Sens. Manchin and Sinema, and the fact that Russia is making ready to launch an invasion of the Ukraine, which could trigger a third world war, in which Joe Biden (!) would be the defender of the free world.

The Biden-Harris administration tried to get the focus off of its near-daily faux pas by uploading a Jan. 6-themed “democracy is under threat” speech onto Joe’s teleprompter. The speech caught hold of the media’s news cycle for about a day, but the respite didn’t last long, despite hard-sell attempts by Pelosi et al.

Next, Joe tried pivoting to voting rights, but when voting rights advocates themselves boycotted his speech, his pivot lost its luster. The speech itself – “Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” – was about as easy for most Americans to stomach as a fistful of ghost peppers. It was, in fact, more of a cry for help – another what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-Joe exemplar.

Now, what has me and some of my much smarter and more experienced friends losing sleep, is trying to fathom what Joe will try next. It is time, we fear, for Joe to pivot once again toward gun control, as he did right out of the box a year ago.

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BLUF:
Is there any Islamic terrorist too monstrous and evil for even Biden to free? It’s still a long way to 2024 and there’s plenty of time for us to find out and for him to free them all.

Biden Frees Alternate 9/11 Hijacker and Military Base Truck Bomb Plotter

After Obama’s obsession with freeing as many Islamic terrorists from Gitmo as possible, the ones who remained were the absolute worst of the worst. Now Biden is setting them loose too.

5 Islamic terrorists, Al Qaeda and allies, have been scheduled for release from custody.

They include Osama bin Laden bodyguards and murderous terrorists with blood on their hands.

Zuhail al-Sharabi had been allegedly trained in “how to function in Western cities” and “reading airline timetables” alongside 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi. He also met Khalid al-Mihdhar who, along with Al-Hazmi, was part of the crew that hijacked American Airlines 77 for the attack on the Pentagon.

Al-Sharabi had been part of an expanded version of the September 11 attacks that would have targeted American planes in Southeast Asia; either blowing them up in mid-air or hijacking them to crash into American military bases. That part of the operation was cancelled by Al Qaeda.

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It’s nice when pictures are provided for positive identification.

Bernie Sis Nina Turner Calls Manchin & Sinema ‘Extremists,’ Suggests Takin’ It to the Streets.

Democrat activist Nina Turner called Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) “extremists” on CNN and urged Presidentish Joe Biden to take his agenda “to the streets.”

Turner made a losing Ohio congressional run last year and previously served as an Ohio State Senator and a member of the Cleveland City Council.

Turner now serves as president of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (CPUSA-Vermont Oblast) Our Revolution political action committee.

I guess she really wants to put the “action” in PAC.

In addition to her lucrative make-work at Our Revolution, Turner was the national co-chair of Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign.

Here’s the clip, courtesy of my colleagues at Townhall:

 

Biden’s agenda officially has the support of 48 senators in a chamber of 100.

Where I come from, 48 vs. 52 ain’t exactly a majority vote.

“Take it to the streets” ain’t exactly an unbreakable code for “violent temper tantrum to get by force what we couldn’t get by legislation.”

Who’s “subverting our democracy now,” tough guy?

Alabama – ASA and Bloomberg Fight Against Constitutional Carry

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Bobby Timmons, director of the Alabama Sheriff’s Association (ASA), is so opposed to acknowledging your inherent right-to-carry, and wants so badly to protect the revenue stream from permit fees, that he openly opposes the Second Amendment and allies with anti-gun extremists. He said in a media interview that the ASA is working with a Bloomberg-backed, national anti-gun group in order to oppose the constitutional carry legislation currently in the Alabama Legislature.

From the 1819 News article:

“Timmons has claimed several times that the Second Amendment was not written to give citizens the right to carry a weapon in a concealed fashion, saying that the amendment was only written to allow citizens to have weapons to defend their homes.

Given his interpretation of the Second Amendment, 1819 News asked Timmons if ASA would support amending the Constitution to limit the Second Amendment to the possession of firearms only for the defense of a person’s home.

‘Oh yeah,’ Timmons said. ‘I’d be in favor of that. But, I mean, it would never get passed.’”

…

“When asked if permits were a significant revenue stream for Alabama Sheriffs, Timmons conceded this was true, but stressed that any such revenue would come from permits or taxes on the public.”

He never had any ‘credibility’. The stories are that everyone in Congress knew him as a blowhard, lying bigot from day one. The left knew it but they and their lackies in the media wanted to fool enough people to get Trump out.

The moment Joe Biden finally lost his credibility

If President Joe Biden’s disorderly and lethal Afghanistan withdrawal was the moment that fractured voters’ regard for him, then his vicious Atlanta speech last week may be the moment that defines his presidency.

Speaking Tuesday at Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, Biden uttered venomous, brutal accusations lacking factual basis. His shouting-in-the-wind delivery was inexplicable, and his decision to lash out at members of his own party — Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — appears to have only strengthened their resolve not to give in to his demands.

Biden called those who disagree with his political views on legislation “domestic enemies.” He compared them to Confederate President Jefferson Davis and former Alabama Democratic Party Committeeman and ardent, violent segregationist Bull Connor. In American politics, that is about as divisive as one can get — at least he didn’t mention Hitler.

Biden bears no resemblance today to the man who ran for president, pledging over and over again to unify the country and restore a sense of calm and normalcy to politics. From the day he was sworn in to office and signed executive orders putting thousands out of work in the energy industry, he ceased to be that guy from Scranton that people thought he was.

He has not been that guy since he invited, through ill-considered policy changes, untold numbers of illegal immigrants across our borders. He has not been that guy since he miserably failed the troops and the nation’s image during his catastrophic tail-between-his-legs retreat from Afghanistan.

Biden, despite having no mandate and only the barest legislative majority for his party, has turned divide-and-conquer politics into the solution for everything, including the pandemic.

You don’t warn a nation that a winter of “severe illness and death” is coming for the unvaccinated because your aim is to bring people together; those words are intended as a threat and a slight, just like his resurrection of George Wallace in last week’s speech to score cheap political points.

The scope of Biden’s fall from grace — from glib middle-class Pennsylvanian to venomous, lying politico who will say anything to please left-wing activists — has been staggering.

This has not gone unnoticed by voters. Last week’s Quinnipiac poll showed that a plurality of voters (49%) now believe Biden is doing more to divide the country than to unite it.

Biden’s approval rating among adults was at an abysmal 33% points; independents gave him 24%; Hispanics a bit more at 28%. His approval rating within his own party has fallen 12 points since November.

The media tried to write off his fall as temporary last August, when a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed the public disapproving of his incompetent performance in Afghanistan by a 2-1 ratio. At the time, this event marked the first time in his presidency his approval rating was net negative.

But in the time since, Biden has only kept losing support.

This moment and the associated loss of credibility that Biden is suffering will have lingering effects in the American psyche. They might not remember all of the words, but they will remember Biden’s vicious, nasty, bad-faith accusations, his flagrant falsehoods, and his petulant tone.

As with Afghanistan, the media and the people who surround Biden will dismiss the public reaction, and Biden will be worse off for it.

The only thing really surprising is that the demoncraps feel ‘sporty’ enough to let what they’d like happen out in public.

COVID-19: Democratic Voters Support Harsh Measures Against Unvaccinated

While many voters have become skeptical toward the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a majority of Democrats embrace restrictive policies, including punitive measures against those who haven’t gotten the COVID-19 vaccine.

A new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 48% of voters favor President Joe Biden’s plan to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate on the employees of large companies and government agencies. That includes 33% who Strongly Favor the mandate. Forty-eight percent (48%) are opposed to Biden’s vaccine mandate, including 40% who Strongly Oppose the mandate. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

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The Great Liquidation

America is hanging by a thread.  A great liquidation is underway, with many of the structures that support American society..or, in some cases, any viable society…being kicked away, sold off piecemeal, or just wantonly destroyed.  I’m talking about physical structures, legal structures, and social structures.

I do not think it is too late to turn this trend around, but the situation is very serious, and I’m going to ask you to gaze into the abyss with me before I discuss some reasons for hope.

Consider:

–Significant parts of America’s energy infrastructure are being destroyed or targeted for destruction.  For example, the Indian Point nuclear plant, serving NYC, was closed in April, despite the fact that this closure will likely create grid instability–and will certainly result in the zero-emissions power it had previously produced being generated instead by sources which do generate emissions. (Yet at the same time, NYC is banning the use of natural gas in new buildings–which will further increase the demand for electricity!) The Diablo Canyon nuclear plant, the largest source of electricity in California, is also scheduled for closure in 2025.  The cost of Diablo Canyon was $14.5B in present-day dollars, and I estimate that this represents at least 50,000 person-years of labor.  Something like 1200 working lifetimes, being wantonly trashed. Only a society which is very rich (for now)–disrespectful of its past accomplishments–and uncaring about the future would act in this way.

And these examples represent only a small portion of the assaults being conducted on America’s energy infrastructure. Peaker plants which ensure continued output under tough conditions, are being closed, with much hand-waving about how ‘demand management’ will solve any problems.  Oil and gas production are being squeezed. Pipeline construction is being suppressed, at the same time Putin is given the US green light for a Russia-Germany pipeline.  Energy is being transformed from an American asset into an American vulnerability.

–Billions of dollars of America military equipment were abandoned in Afghanistan and are now in the hands of the Taliban.  If we use a conservative estimate of $40 billion, that represents at least 400,000 person-years of human labor, thrown away. But that’s not the worst of it, of course: much of that equipment will now be used against us or our allies.  There are already reports of formerly-American weapons on their way to Iran.

The effect of the horribly-executed Afghanistan withdrawal on our credibility as an alliance partner will be devastating.  While many foreign policy types expressed worry about what expecting Germany to pay a larger % of the NATO bill would do to our alliances, any imagined impact of that was trivial compared with the impact of the current debacle.  The negative effect on American military recruiting, also, will be considerable, as discussed by several commenters at this blog.  Overall, America’s actual and perceived power position in the world has been greatly reduced over the past few months.

–American manufacturing has been negatively impacted by numerous policy choices and social factors, and America is no longer the world’s facto ry: that role now falls to China.  We have become extremely dependent on China and other countries for many products and components of products–as we found out during last year’s Covid crisis when we were subject to threats that we would ‘burn in the fire of Covid’ if China should choose to deny us critical pharmaceuticals and ingredients thereof.  We have become highly dependent on other countries for electronics manufacturing, especially microchips: a single Taiwanese company, TSMC, acts as the ‘foundry’ for a whole range of chips produced to the designs of many different American companies.  A Chinese takeover of Taiwan could be devastating to our industry, and such takeover appears considerably more likely than it did a couple of months ago.

Manufacturing was, for a couple of decades, considered by the approved-expert classes to be an increasingly-unimportant industry, populated only by those with inferior and uncreative minds. There is some recognition growing lately that this field may actually matter. But American politicians generally have so little comprehension of how the economy actually works that it is hard to believe that any remedies that they propose will be efficacious ones.  As example #1, I give you Joseph Biden: a man who asserted that anyone who can mine coal can ‘learn to code’, and who apparently believes that manually shoveling coal into furnaces is an actual substantial occupation in America today.  Biden also said, referring to China: “They’re not competition for us.”  This was in mid-2019!

America has given up much of its potential in manufacturing. and the consequences are severe for national security and for millions of people.  

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