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I Have A Solution by Bill Schoettler

I Have A Solution

By: Bill Schoettler

January 25, 2023

Since a “solution requires a “problem”, let me begin by defining/ describing the “problem” so we’re all on the same page as we proceed.

Let’s begin with a broadly defined problem, unwanted deaths.

Now that terminology implies that there may be wanted deaths so some sort of further explanation is needed. An example of a wanted death would be that of people sentenced to death by a jury or judge. It may be said, at least by some, that the people have spoken for such deaths.

Arguably, such deaths as those decreed by judicial fiat can be considered “wanted” because of the procedure followed.

Then we might say that deaths that come about through war/combat are “wanted”. This is a bit murky category because while wartime deaths are inevitable, some categories of such deaths are considered unacceptable. Such issues are frequently left to the victor to decide any justification or lack thereof…when it comes to an ultimate judgment.

It is certainly easy to accept the idea of a soldier who is threatened, shooting those who threaten him. Shooting an enemy combatant is probably a wanted death, at least it is wanted by the shooter who himself is the object of an enemy shooter. In general terms, we do not condemn the soldier for such killings.

But combat deaths as being wanted becomes a murky area when considering what is euphemistically called collateral damage. That would be deaths caused not intentionally but as the result of an intentional effort to destroy a “legitimate” military target. We don’t want to debate here the issue of collateral casualties or whether such deaths are wanted or unwanted.

Then there is the classic issue of self-defense and defense of family/loved ones/friends. The mother causing death to one trying to harm her child(ren) is a classic example of a wanted death. The individual faced with an attacker who uses lethal force to defend himself can be said to have caused a wanted death.

We can look to medicine for other examples and perhaps many can find personal experiences which are equally acceptable in describing wanted deaths.

But let’s jump into the broad category of all other deaths and simply call them unwanted deaths. These would be accidental deaths and intentional deaths caused without legally acceptable justification.

Okay, now we have the problem, let’s look at some solutions.

Starting with the idea of wanted deaths, we have first the issue of societal philosophy that allows the death penalty to be imposed. The obvious issue here is whether society’s wishes prevail, or some sort of philosophical objection should carry more weight. That is a social problem for which I do not offer a solution.

Next, we have the issues of combat deaths and collateral damage. Here we have a wealth of philosophical questions over the nature of mankind, issues of the psychological makeup of nations and their leaders, and a multitude of issues that have been discussed for as long as we have had people to discuss them. We will not go further into this arena.

What about deaths caused by self-defense? There are arguments raised by some that the sanctity of life is so important a concept that even the notion of self-defense is not adequate justification for killing another. This is an area of ample discussion we will put aside.

Finally, we come to deaths caused by accident (no matter how one may define it) and intent (of another). Here is an arena where prevention is worth exploring and for which some solutions will be offered.

Let us begin with the annual statistic of deaths caused by traffic accidents. In this country, that number runs around 30,000 plus per year. The solution? Simply ban all traffic. This answer is ridiculously simple. By eliminating all motor vehicles, nobody would be killed by a motor vehicle.

Now you may argue that motor vehicles are so necessary to the survival of all citizens that by eliminating them more deaths would result nationwide than the number of deaths caused by the continued use of motor vehicles.

Such an approach might be called “risk analysis”. In other words, it becomes necessary to consider the cost (in this case, the “cost” in terms of human life) versus the benefits (how many lives would be saved by the alternative). By permitting motor vehicles to continue functioning, more people would continue to live than might be killed in motor vehicle accidents.

Once we understand this cost-benefit analysis we can probably agree to the continued use of motor vehicles.

What about accidental deaths involved in various kinds of recreational activities, such as sky diving, hang gliding, skiing, mountain climbing, motorcycle riding, automobile racing, football, and a host of other activities that have all reported participant deaths? Well, simply banning all these activities will certainly prevent any involved deaths. Yes, there are enormous sums of money involved in some of these athletic activities but then that involves another kind of risk analysis, and there is the issue of potential personal reward (endorphins plus emotional satisfaction) that would seem to draw willing participants.

Not to be forgotten is the very real fact that participation in these activities is mostly voluntary. Those who do participate can be said to appreciate the various risks involved and willingly accept them. While we can’t say that death resulting to participants is a “wanted” matter, it is a philosophical question for each participant to decide.

What about those deaths caused intentionally to those who neither voluntarily participate and do not willingly accept such risks? The “victim” of an attack who frequently has no reason to believe another bears him harm, the innocent bystander whose only “mistake” is being in the wrong place at the wrong time…are these deaths “preventable”?

Yes, they are. Again we can use the simple approach…eliminate whatever mechanisms might be involved in a causal connection with the deaths.

We considered, and eliminated the idea of abolishing motor vehicle travel, air travel, train travel, and ship travel. I suppose we should include travel of any sort here (horse, bicycle, tight-rope walking, etc.).

What about deaths caused by firearms? Simply eliminate all firearms?

Whoops. Where are we going here? This is a sacred area and is certainly one of high emotional considerations. Eliminate all firearms? Well, certainly if you get rid of all guns, nobody will ever be killed by a gun. Works for automobiles, airplanes, and so forth.

There are some problems here. Perhaps we should start with the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These documents are enshrined in legal protections that are considered sacrosanct. That is, the laws of this land, at all levels (Federal, State, County, City) and the courts of this land (Federal, State, County, City) very specifically allow any adult honest citizen to possess a firearm, and to use it (in both recreational use and self-defense) without civil or criminal penalties. This idea is enshrined in the very foundation of this country and has been demonstrated to be not only a valid concept but a vital one, used over and over again for the protection of the country and its citizens.

Then there is the problem of the willingness of the general population to have their firearms“taken”. We’ve all heard or read the comment “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead fingers”. This is a silly statement because if the potential “taker” has more firepower than the potential “giver”, the taker will pry it from his cold, dead fingers. Next, consider that if the government were to pass laws requiring the relinquishment of ALL personally-owned firearms in the hands of ALL citizens, regardless of personal inclinations to resist, the holder of an “illegal gun” would not be able to use it, ever, anywhere, except perhaps just once.

Now let us consider the concept of “risk analysis” when applied to the social question of benefits to the public versus risk to the public over whether we permit the continued ownership of firearms.

We have to consider such things as the voluntary participation of gun owners in sporting activities such as competitive target shooting, hunting, pride of ownership, and exhibition. We should recognize the volume of annual gun sales (millions per year) demonstrating the willingness of a majority of the population to own, possess, and use firearms.

We also need to address the statistical reality that the percentage of firearms used in so-called “mass shootings” and individual shootings represents the “use” of perhaps 0.0001% of all guns in the hands of private citizens. From a practical standpoint, punishing 99.9999% of gun owners for the misuse by such a small fraction of miscreants is not only absurd, but it is also legally unsupportable. And this without even examining the true social benefits provided by and to the owners of guns.

What are the social benefits of gun ownership? Depends on whom you ask and how you go about establishing the information. The Centers for Disease Control has done studies examining the number of times the ownership and/or use of a firearm has protected an individual or individuals. Their findings have demonstrated the actual number of times per year that the use of a personal firearm has protected against a potential “threat” substantially exceeds the number of times “innocent” people are killed by the wrongful use of a firearm. Thus we have a similar argument on the subject of risk analysis for keeping personal firearms as we have for automobiles and other forms of travel, as well as recreational activities.

Hunting license fees, sales taxes on the sale of guns and ammunition, and related sporting activities provide a significant source of income to governments at all levels. On any given weekend, regardless of weather conditions, it is possible to find literally millions of individuals enjoying shooting sports of all kinds. Target shooting, skeet and trap shooting, bird and game hunting, and just plinking…all are happening everywhere. Just as people go for rides in their personal vehicles, go swimming (do you know how many people, especially children, die each year in swimming pools?), hiking, flying, skiing, and so forth.

What is it that “causes” accidents, intentional crimes, and any form of unwanted deaths? It is not the instrumentality, it is the user. How then can we change the user? That is the rub.

U.S. Disarms Itself To Aid Ukraine: Byron York

JANUARY 25, 2023

Welcome to Byron York’s Daily Memo newsletter.

U.S. DISARMS ITSELF TO AID UKRAINE.

The United States has shipped massive amounts of military aid to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022. There has been bipartisan support on Capitol Hill for the aid, although some Republicans have questioned the price tag — $27.5 billion so far in military aid, or “security assistance” alone, which does not include tens of billions in financial, humanitarian, and other types of aid. Some GOP lawmakers have also expressed concern about the lack of safeguards in sending so much money to a notoriously corrupt country.

But there is another growing worry about the amount of U.S. military aid to Ukraine. The Biden administration is sending so many weapons to Ukraine that the U.S., already underprepared for a major war, is running low on munitions for its own defense. In effect, the U.S. is disarming itself to aid Ukraine. That would be troubling in any event but is especially so amid growing tensions with China over Taiwan.

The scope of the problem is detailed in a new report, “Empty Bins In A Wartime Environment,” from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Author Seth Jones writes that “the U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists.” Citing analysis of stockpiles and usage rates, plus several CSIS war games, Jones writes that supplies are so low that “the United States would likely run out of some munitions — such as long-range, precision-guided munitions — in less than one week in a Taiwan Strait conflict.”

Jones writes that the U.S. has been underprepared for years. But the war in Ukraine is making the situation worse. The American effort in Ukraine has “depleted U.S. stocks of some types of weapons systems and munitions, such as Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155 mm howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems,” Jones writes. “For example, the quantities of Javelins transferred to Ukraine through late August 2022 represented seven years of production [at 2022 rates]. … The number of Stingers transferred to Ukraine is roughly equal to the total number built for all non-U.S. customers in the last 20 years. … As of January 2023, the U.S. military has provided Ukraine with up to 1,074,000 rounds of 155 mm ammunition, significantly shrinking the availability of 155 mm rounds in storage. Because of the limited availability of 155 mm howitzers and ammunition, the U.S. military began sending 105 mm howitzers and ammunition instead.”

“Since many of the weapons systems and munitions have come directly from U.S. inventories,” Jones concludes, “U.S. assistance has depleted some stockpiles that could be used for training, future contingencies, or other operational needs.”

Jones notes that lower weapons stockpiles make it difficult to deter China — why would China be deterred, knowing its adversary would run out of ammunition in a week? A major argument in favor of U.S. support for Ukraine has been to send China a message that aggression like Russian President Vladimir Putin showed in Ukraine will meet stiff resistance. But what if it has also shown China that the U.S. has exhausted its supplies on Ukraine and will take years to recover?

And it will be years. Weapons systems take a long time to develop. Weapons are stockpiled and supplies not renewed. Then, all of a sudden, they are needed, and there’s no quick way to replace them. “The history of industrial mobilization suggests that it will take years for the defense industrial base to produce and deliver sufficient quantities of critical weapons systems and munitions and recapitalize stocks that have been used up,” Jones writes. “It might take even longer to materialize facilities, infrastructure, and capital equipment, making it important to make changes now. The long timelines are manageable in peacetime but not in the competitive environment that now exists.”

Things never work out as expected. U.S. defense planners put a high priority on preparing for a possible conflict with China. And then they found themselves “directly aiding Ukraine in an industrial-style conventional war with Russia,” according to the CSIS report. The U.S.’s new proxy war with Russia is burning up weapons and ammunition at a rate the planners didn’t plan for. “While the Pentagon has focused on fighting wars with small numbers of more expensive precision-guided weapons, Ukraine is largely relying on howitzers firing unguided shells,” noted the New York Times.

The good news is that Congress has appropriated billions more to upgrade American capacity. There will be more Javelins, more Stingers, more howitzers, and millions more artillery rounds. It is part of “the most aggressive modernization effort in nearly 40 years,” according to an Army report cited by the New York Times.

Right now, the goal is to make more weapons — for Ukraine. “Before Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the U.S. Army’s production of 14,400 unguided shells a month had been sufficient for the American military’s way of war,” the New York Times reported. “But the need to supply Kyiv’s armed forces prompted Pentagon leaders to triple production goals in September, and then double them again in January so that they could eventually make 90,000 or more shells a month.”

It is important to increase U.S. weapons production. The No. 1 reason, by far, is that the U.S. might need the weapons to defend itself. Now, the U.S. is ramping up production because it has gotten progressively deeper and deeper into a proxy war with Russia, a war that could burn vast amounts of weapons and munitions in the months, or perhaps years, to come. As they increase U.S. military capacity, civilian leaders might also want to consider how deeply and for how long they will be committed to the current war.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found. You can use this link to subscribe.

How did we get here?!

What Will the FBI Not Do?
By: Victor Davis Hanson
December 26, 2022

The FBI on Wednesday finally broke its silence and responded to the revelations on Twitter of close ties between the bureau and the social media giant—ties that included efforts to suppress information and censor political speech.

“The correspondence between the FBI and Twitter show nothing more than examples of our traditional, longstanding, and ongoing federal government and private sector engagements, which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries,” the bureau said in a statement. “As evidenced in the correspondence, the FBI provides critical information to the private sector to allow them to protect themselves and their customers. The men and women of the FBI work every day to protect the American public. Unfortunately, conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency.”

Almost all of the FBI communique is untrue, except the phrase about the bureau’s “engagements which involve numerous companies over multiple sectors and industries.”

Future disclosures will no doubt reveal similar FBI subcontracting with other social media concerns of Silicon Valley to stifle free expression and news deemed problematic to the FBI’s agenda.

The FBI did not merely engage in “correspondence” with Twitter to protect the company and its “customers.” Instead, it effectively hired Twitter to suppress the free expression of some of its users, as well as news stories deemed unhelpful to the Biden campaign and administration—to the degree that the bureau’s requests sometimes even exceeded those of Twitter’s own left-wing censors.

The FBI did not wish to help Twitter “to protect themselves [sic],” given the bureau’s Twitter liaisons were often surprised at the FBI’s bold requests to suppress the expression of those who had not violated Twitter’s own admittedly biased “terms of service” and “community standards.”

The FBI and its helpers on the Left now reboot the same boilerplate about “conspiracy theorists” and“misinformation” smears used against anyone who rejected the FBI-fed Russian collusion hoax and the bureau’s peddling of the “Russian disinformation” lie to suppress accurate pre-election news about the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop.

The FBI is now, tragically, in freefall. The public is at the point, first, of asking what improper or illegal behavior will the bureau not pursue, and what, if anything, must be done to reform or save a once great but now discredited agency.

Consider the last four directors, the public faces of the FBI for the last 22 years. Ex-director Robert Mueller testified before Congress that he simply would not or could not talk about the fraudulent Steele dossier. He claimed that it was not the catalyst for his special counsel investigation of Donald Trump’s alleged ties with the Russians when, of course, it was.

Mueller also testified that he was “not familiar” with Fusion GPS, although Glenn Simpson’s opposition research firm subsidized the dossier through various cutouts that led back to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. And the skullduggery in the FBI-subsidized dossier helped force the appointment of Mueller himself.

While under congressional oath, Mueller’s successor James Comey on some 245 occasions claimed that he “could not remember,” “could not recall,” or “did not know” when asked simple questions fundamental to his involvement with the Russian collusion hoax.

Comey, remember, memorialized a confidential conversation with President Trump on an FBI device and then used a third party to leak it to the New York Times. In his own words, the purpose was to force a special counsel appointment. The gambit worked, and his friend and predecessor Robert Mueller got the job. Twenty months and $40 million later, Mueller’s investigation tore the country apart but could find no evidence that Trump, as Steele alleged, colluded with the Russians to throw the 2016 election.

Comey also seems to have reassured the president that he was not the target of an ongoing FBI investigation, when in fact, Trump was.

Comey was never indicted for either misleading or lying to a congressional committee or leaking a document variously considered either confidential or classified.

While under oath, his interim successor, Andrew McCabe, on several occasions flat-out lied to federal investigators. Or as the office of the inspector general put it:
As detailed in this report, the OIG found that then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe lacked candor, including under oath, on multiple occasions in connection with describing his role in connection with a disclosure to the WSJ and that this conduct violated FBI Offense Codes 2.5 and 2.6. The OIG also concluded that McCabe’s disclosure of the existence of an ongoing investigation in the manner described in this report violated the FBI’s and the Department’s media policy and constituted misconduct.

McCabe purportedly believed Trump was working with the Russians as a veritable spy—a false accusation based entirely on the FBI’s paid, incoherent prevaricator Christopher Steele. And so, McCabe discussed with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein methods to have the president’s conversations wiretapped via a Rosenstein-worn stealthy recording device, presumably without a warrant.

Note the FBI ruined the lives of General Michael Flynn and Carter Page with false allegations of criminal conduct or untruthful testimonies. Under current director Christopher Wray, the FBI has surveilled parents at school boards meetings—on the prompt of the National School Boards Association, whose president wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland alleging that bothersome parents upset over critical race indoctrination groups were supposedly violence-prone and veritable terrorists.

Under Wray, the FBI staged the psychodramatic Mar-a-Lago raid on an ex-president’s home. The FBI likely leaked the post facto myths that the seized documents contained “nuclear codes” or “nuclear secrets.”

Under Wray, the FBI perfected the performance-art, humiliating public arrests of former White House officials or Biden Administration opponents, whether it was the nocturnal rousting of Project Veritas muckraker James O’Keefe in his underwear or the arrest—with leg restraints—of former White House advisor Peter Navarro at Reagan National Airport for misdemeanor contempt of Congress charge or the detention of Trump election lawyer John Eastman at a restaurant with his family and the confiscation of his phone. Neither O’Keefe nor Eastman has yet been charged with any serious crimes.

The FBI arguably interfered in two presidential elections, and a presidential transition, and possibly determinatively so. In 2016, James Comey announced that his investigation had found that Hillary Clinton had improperly if not illegally used her private email server to conduct official State Department business, some of it confidential and classified, and likely intercepted by foreign governments. All that was a clear violation of federal statutes. Comey next, quite improperly as a combined FBI investigator and a de facto federal prosecutor, deduced that such violations did not merit prosecution.

Around the same time, the FBI had hired as a source the foreign national and political opposition hitman Christopher Steele. It helped Steele to spread among the media his fraudulent dossier and used its unverified and false contents to win FISA warrants against U.S. citizens on the bogus charges of colluding with the Russians to throw the election to Donald Trump. By the FBI’s admission, it would not have obtained warrants to surveil Trump campaign associates without the use of Steele’s dossier, which it also admittedly either knew was a fraud or could not corroborate.

Again, such allegations in the dossier were false and, apparently, the FBI soon knew they were bogus since one of its own lawyers—the now-convicted felon Kevin Clinesmith—found it necessary also to alter a court-submitted document to feign incriminatory information.

The FBI, on the prompt of lame-duck members of the Obama Justice Department, during a presidential transition, set up an entrapment ambush of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. It was an effort to lure Flynn into admitting to a violation of the Logan Act, a 223-year-old law that has led to only two indictments and zero convictions.

During the 2020 election, the FBI suppressed knowledge of its possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Early on, the bureau knew that the computer and its contents were authentic and yet kept its contents suppressed.

Moreover, the FBI sought to contract out Twitter (at roughly $3.5 million) as a veritable subsidiarity to suppress social media traffic about the laptop and speech the bureau deemed improper.

Again, although the FBI knew the laptop in its possession was likely genuine, it still sought to use Twitter employees to suppress pre-election mention of that reality. At the same time, bureau officials remained mum when 51 former “intelligence officials” misled the country by claiming that the laptop had all the hallmarks of “Russian disinformation.” Polls later revealed that had the public known the truth about the laptop, a significant number likely would have voted differently—perhaps enough to change the outcome of the election.

The media, Twitter, Facebook, and former intelligence operatives were all following the FBI’s preliminary warning bulletin that “Foreign Actors and Cybercriminals Likely to Spread Disinformation Regarding 2020 Election Results”—even as the bureau knew the laptop in its possession was most certainly not Russian disinformation. And, of course, the FBI had helped spread the Russian collusion hoax in 2016.

In addition, the FBI-issued phones of agent Peter Strzok and attorney Lisa Page, along with members of Robert Mueller’s special counsel “dream team”—all under subpoena—had their data mysteriously wiped clean, purportedly “by accident.”

Apparently, the paramours Strzok and Page, in particular, had much more to hide, given how earlier they had frequently expressed their venom toward candidate Donald Trump. Strzok boasted to Page that the FBI in general, and Andrew McCabe in particular, had an “insurance policy”means of denying Trump the presidency:

I want to believe the path you threw out in Andy’s office—that there’s no way he gets elected—but I’m afraid we can’t take the risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.

When some of their embarrassing texts emerged, both were dismissed by the special counsel. But Mueller carefully did so by staggering Strozk and Pages’ departures, and not immediately releasing the reasons for their firings or reassignments.

To this day, the public has no idea what the FBI was doing on January 6, how many FBI informants and agents were among the rioters, and to what degree they knew in advance of the protests. The New York Times reporter most acquainted with the January 6 riot, Matthew Rosenberg, dismissed the buffoonish violence as “no big deal” and scoffed, “They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”

“There were a ton of FBI informants among the people who attacked the Capitol,” Rosenberg noted. We have never been told anything about that “ton”—a topic of zero interest to the January 6 select committee.

What are the people to do about a federal law enforcement agency whose directors either repeatedly lie under oath, mislead, or do not cooperate with congressional overseers? What should we do with a bureau that alters court documents, deceives the court with information the FBI had good reason to know was false, and leaks records of confidential presidential conversations to the media to prompt the appointment of a special prosecutor? What should be done with a government agency that pays social media corporations to warp the dissemination of the news and suppress free expression and communications? Or an agency that hires a foreign national to gather dirt on a presidential candidate and plots to ensure that there is “no way” a presidential candidate “gets elected” and destroys subpoenaed evidence?

What, if anything, should the people do about a once-respected law enforcement agency that repeatedly smears its critics, most recently as “conspiracy theorists”?

The current FBI leadership under Christopher Wray, in the tradition of recent FBI directors, has stonewalled congressional overseers about FBI activity during the Trump and Biden administrations. In “Après moi, le déluge” fashion, the bureau acts as if it assumes the next Republican administration in office will remove the current hierarchy. And thus, it assumes, for now, not cooperating with Republican investigations while Democrats hold control of the Senate and White House for a brief while longer ensures exemption.

Wray, most recently, cut short his Senate testimony on the pretext of an unspecified engagement, which turned out to be flying out on the FBI Gulfstream jet to his vacation home.

Yet the bureau’s lack of candor, contrition, and cooperation has only further alienated the public, especially traditional and conservative America, characteristically the chief source of support for the FBI.

There have been all sorts of remedies proposed for the bureau.

The three reforms most commonly suggested include:
1) simply dissolve the FBI in the belief that its concentration of power in Washington has become uncontrollable and is increasingly put to partisan service, including but not limited to the warping of U.S. presidential elections;
2) move the FBI headquarters out of the Washington D.C. nexus, preferably in the age of Zoom to a more convenient and central location in the United States, perhaps an urban site such as Salt Lake City, Denver, Kansas City, or Oklahoma City; or
3) break up and decentralize the FBI and redistribute its various divisions to different departments to ensure that the power of its $11 billion budget and 35,000 employees are no longer aggregated and put in service of particular political agendas.

The next two years are dangerous times for the FBI—and the country. The House will soon likely begin investigations of the agency’s improper behavior. Yet, simultaneously, the Biden Justice Department will escalate its use of the bureau as a partisan investigative service for political purposes.

The FBI’s former embattled, high-ranking administrators who have been fired or forced to leave the agency—Andrew McCabe, James Comey, Peter Strzok, James Baker, Lisa Page, and others—will continue to appear on the cable news stations and social media to inveigh against critics of the FBI, despite being all deeply involved in the Russia-collusion hoax.

Merrick Garland will continue to order the FBI to hound perceived enemies through surveillance and performance art arrests. And the people will only grow more convinced the bureau has become Stasi-like and cannot be reformed but must be broken up—even as in extremis a defiant and unapologetic FBI will, as its latest communique shows, attack its critics.

We are left with the dilemma of Quis custodiet Ipsos custodes. Who watches the watchers?

THROWING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
UNDER THE BUS!!

By: Dr. Virginia Merchant, PhD
December 24, 2022

Well, if you watched as the House passed the Omnibus Bill today by Proxy Vote, which Nancy Pelosi instituted, the Bill is containing $1.7 billion of “PORK”. First off, you can only vote for legislation in the House and Senate to pass legislation if you are present in person. Most in the House were not present and this legislation is the same as Pelosi did on Obamacare— “you have to pass it and then read what it contains.” Two things, you should note, that our tax dollars are going for in this Bill is to build Nancy Pelosi a building in San Francisco which will be called “Pelosi Tower.” Do you want your tax dollars to go for that? Next is a “hiking trail”named after Michele Obama in Georgia, do you want to pay for that? Again, this is in the Omnibus Bill—the Obamas could pay for a hiking trail themselves; I am sure!

Who voted for his bill to be passed? Well in the House only Democrats, but in the Senate where it began, the following Republicans joined the Democrats to pass this mega legislation. They were:
Roy Blunt (Missouri),
John Boozman (Arkansas),
Shelley Capito (West Virginia),
Susan Collins (Maine),
John Cornyn (Texas),
Tom Cotton (Arkansas),
Lindsey Graham (South Carolina),
Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma),
Mitch McConnell (Kentucky),
Jerry Moran (Kansas),
Lisa Murkowski (Alaska),
Rob Portman (Ohio),
Mitt Romney (Utah),
Mike Rounds (South Dakota)
Richard Shelby (Alabama),
John Thune (South Dakota),
Roger Wicker (Mississippi)
Todd Young (Indiana).
From my standpoint, I believe none of these individuals should be in the Senate or run again. How dare they throw the American taxpayers under the bus with this bill and ask that we must pay higher taxes for it.

If you watched the joint House of Congress when the leader from Ukraine spoke you would have seen a very smart man getting mega funds from a group that was “enthralled” by his coming to speak to them. By smart I mean he knew they would give him what he wanted in mega bucks to fight Putin. This is in the Omnibus Bill just passed but nothing to protect our sovereign border—which is a mess. I watched Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky give Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris (who is in charge of the border but has never been there) a Ukrainian Flag—I thought the two women were going to collapse or “wet their pants”. Of course, the Omnibus Bill has mega bucks for him to fight Putin.

Wake up America and “start yelling” at our leaders! I know this Omnibus Bill will only cause more inflation and a larger recession come 2023. We need to get younger leaders that are not willing to throw faithful Americans under the bus. The group of Republicans that voted for this “pork” should not be reelected. We need new younger politicians that are willing to fight for our 1st Amendment rights, The Constitution, and no censorship or “Shadow Banning”! Thanks to Elon Musk he is putting documents and censorship in front of the world since buying Twitter.

Actually, the GOP needs to get rid of Mitch McConnell, I know our Florida Senators made a try at that and were defeated. Republican voters are desperately concerned about the country and are looking for bold and persuasive leadership instead of comfort with a few small intermittent successes. Personally, I happen to like Florida Governor DeSantis. Look what he did to send illegals to Martha’s Vineyard—lasted about 12 hours, unfortunately. I did a bio on his background not too long ago if you happened to read it.

We all must start fighting back in some way and start taking a very serious interest in what is going on around us, especially our leaders and government. Between you and me and the fence post, I’m not sure we need Trump running again. He did a fine job for 4 years, but the end seems to be a disaster, and I am not sure most Americans want an older President. We need vitality and “real smarts” to fight the far left.

Here’s to 2023 and may we all have a Healthy, Happy New Year! Please be determined to help change the course of “ruining” the United States of America. May all voices be heard!
God Bless America.
Ginny

I Am Fortunate
By: Bill Schoettler
December 26, 2022

I consider myself fortunate to have lived during the epitome of American civilization, brief that it has been. I was born in 1936, a time when America and the rest of the world was going through the tail end of the Great Depression. It was around this time that we can trace the beginning of World War Two, that great and universal war that involved all of the world’s great powers and many of the not-so-great powers. Millions died, cities were leveled, populations were decimated and the world was laid to waste.

Except this was the time for American victory. The United States of America, that sleeping giant of economic and political, and intellectual power awoke, scourged the world of the forces of evil that had been destroying it, and, single-handedly healed the world’s wounds and made everything work better.

From 1945 when the Great War ended to roughly 2000 the USA was the global light that shone brightly over the planet earth, staunched the wounds of the world, led the way to prosperity and democracy, and, with technological achievements in virtually all fields of science and industry, set an example for all nations to achieve and emulate.

Then things began to crumble. The homeland of this great nation was attacked for the first time in almost 200 years. The country began a series of skirmishes with small enemies that drained our energies and began the slow disintegration of our greatness. New generations that hadn’t lived through the growth struggles were blessed with the rewards earned by their predecessors. These new generations developed their own philosophies based on the leisure of security and complacency of previous accomplishments. No longer were there any wars to be fought or principles to be established. Now it was possible to revel in the luxury of inherited accomplishments which allowed freedom of thought and imagination that was not earned but inherited – without struggle.

Universities began teaching bizarre history courses that changed the meaning of what I had learned. Contemporary people were to be held responsible for the sins of their fathers, ancient heroes were not only shown to have feet of clay, but they were also to be destroyed in the interests of some sort of reconciliation with the past.

Principles of economics were distorted to account for present payment for allegedly past sins and concepts of “free speech” were re-defined to allow the burning of the American Flag but not the desecration of an LBGTQ flag, the prohibition of words like “American citizen” in exchange for “US citizen” and [and this is really curious] the elimination of any words used by so-called “white supremacists” that might be imagined offensive to any grouping of non-white persons.

Can this social [and emotional] revolution be sustained? Will it lead to a complete desecration of former American ideals, all to be replaced by re-thought, woke, principles, and re-defined wordings of diversity, equity, and inclusion?

What this country has now witnessed is a mid-term election the results of which can honestly be said to have endorsed the direction which I now criticize and rejected the solutions offered by such political stalwarts as Victor Davis Hanson and Tucker Carlson.

Celebrities and political figures and man-in-the-street interviews show our current President getting not only supporting but actual rave reviews of his performance in office.

Universities basking in former reputations have replaced the more traditional subjects with progressive topics designed to alter the former thinking that produced John Wayne and Clint Eastwood. Advertising on television and in magazines would have been unrecognizable just 25 years ago.

Generations have been raised without the exposure of us “old-timers” to the “dirty Nazis”, the “dirty Japs”, the“blasted injuns” and other traditional enemies of America. Yes, those things were an integral part of my upbringing and it was left up to me to accept or reject, to learn or ignore the ever-changing political and emotional realities of daily life in this country.

The Nazis became good West Germans and bad East Germans, and the dirty Japs became our hosts in a country we helped industrialize after having first virtually destroyed its entire manufacturing ability. We financed and supported most governments of the world for roughly the first 50 years after WWII and then relaxed our vigilance as the world’s forces of evil seemed to dwindle.

With the leisure of peace and prosperity came the insidious tentacles of socialism and other experimental philosophies, alarmists over the health of the planet, and conspiracy theories about how the world’s populations should be managed and directed “for their own good and betterment”.

Those who fought against such pressures were themselves pilloried with lies and calumnies, their families attacked and their reputations sullied with deliberate and manufactured disinformation. And what’s even worse, what is absolutely inexcusable and itself deplorable to the highest degree is that once such lies and deceits have been disclosed, the disclosures themselves are completely ignored and the old lies continually regurgitated.

My days are shorter now, and I can look back upon a life of personal successes and reasonable accomplishments. I will leave behind some family, a passing reputation and will take to my grave personal memories of having lived through an historically memorable time of American greatness and personal satisfaction. I would wish that my generation’s estate, such as it is, would sustain this country for many more generations. But at this time in my sunset years, I am saddened by what I see and hear about me.

I sincerely hope I am wrong in my diagnosis.

THEY JUST DON’T CARE
By: E. P. Unum
December 25, 2022

I believe with all my heart and soul that we are witnessing the perverse undoing of everything we hold dear. Our Founding Fathers who pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to give us a Constitutional Republic must be turning in their graves.

Remember when President Obama told us about his plans for “The Fundamental Transformation of America”, that he was going to bring forth like a Messiah, “Change you can believe in”?

What he really meant is that his plans were for the fundamental destruction of America by changing what we believed, and this intentional destruction is being carried forward by Susan Rice and the rest of the Obama cabal who are working the strings of their puppet Joe Biden behind the scenes in the White House. That is not conjecture on my part. It is a fact. If you are looking for evidence to support this charge, all you need do is look at the actions taken by the Biden Administration since he took office almost two years go on January 20, 2021. Absolutely nothing he has implemented has benefitted our nation and its citizens. And if you were devising a plan for the destruction of the United States economically, spiritually, morally, and militarily you could not have fashioned a better blueprint than the one orchestrated by this band of corrupt, incompetent, wet-behind-the-ears crew called the Biden Administration.

Let me be absolutely clear. What we are witnessing on a daily basis is the planned, intentional, and corrupt dismantling of our Constitutional Republic including our belief in God, our Constitution, and our Flag. Moreover, the path those we entrusted to represent us in the hallowed hall of Congress is not what our Founders envisioned. It is an insane path based on a deep, pervasive hatred for America and contempt for working-class Americans.

It is time for the Republican Party and the Media in our nation to begin to recognize the true nature of the crises facing America today.

Planned Chaos…
The people making up the Biden Administration from the West Wing of the White House, to the Pentagon, to the Biden Cabinet are not foolish or misguided people. They are in a word, pure evil. There is no way to sugar-coat this. They are motivated by one thing and one thing only – power. They covet it, and they do not care how they obtain it. And they will trample anyone who gets in their way. Think about it. There is not a single day that goes by that Democrats are not laser-focused on President Donald Trump, and he has been out of office for two years! Their hatred of the man and anyone who supports him is palpable. Why? It is because they fear him. They know that he knows how corrupt the Biden Administration, the Biden Family, and even Barack Obama have been and they will do anything to stop his getting the nomination of his party and being re-elected President in 2024. They know he will win against any democratic candidate, including Joe Biden, they put forth in 2024.

Consider this maxim from an American farmer. If you leave the gate open, the cows will wander off. So if you intentionally leave the gate open, you want the cows to wander off. You can’t blame stupidity or laziness. You wanted it to happen.

The same holds true for other basic common sense principles. If you cut police budgets, you will get more crime on the streets. So if you intentionally cut police budgets, you want more crime on the streets. If you choose not to prosecute criminals, you will almost certainly end up with more criminals on the street. If you opt for cashless bail, then you are clearly signaling that you believe criminals should be free, and therefore more crime will result including theft, robberies, murder, shootings, rapes, etc. It’s not an accident. This is what you planned to happen. And it has.

If you cut back the supply of oil, gas prices at the pump will go up. So if you intentionally cut back the supply of oil by banning oil exploration in areas where we have proven oil reserves enough to sustain our energy needs here in the United States for the next 500 years, then you wanted gas prices to go up. It is not an accident nor is it related to Putin’s war in Ukraine, the recent solar eclipse of the sun or the mathematical equation used to calculate the distance between Mars and Venus at the Vernal Equinox. It’s because you planned for a shortage of gasoline, jet fuel, and heating oil and increased prices on over 6,000 products besides gasoline, all of which are based on petroleum. The people be damned!

If you print trillions of dollars without increasing the supply of goods, inflation will hit hard. So if you intentionally print trillions of dollars without producing more goods you want inflation to hit hard. It is not an accident nor is it related to “Putin’s war in Ukraine”. You violated a principle of sound economics, and you wanted to increase inflation.

If you leave the U.S. southern border wide open and invite immigrants to come in illegally, you will get more drug and human trafficking. So if you intentionally leave the border wide open, it is because you want more drug and human trafficking. It also means that by continuing to allow deadly drugs to come into our country like fentanyl, you want to allow the unchecked killing of Americans. Americans suffer from this blatant disregard for the security of our nation while the drug cartels in Mexico flourish making billions of dollars. They laugh at our insanity. And you wanted it to happen….and it is!

If you shut down 40% of the supply of baby formula in February, you’ll get a huge shortage. When you know a huge baby formula shortage is coming because of the FDA’s actions, and you purposefully do nothing to prevent it, month after month, until the crisis finally hits hard, you intended for this crisis to happen. It was not an accident nor a mistake in judgment. You planned for this to happen. If you are looking for someone to blame, look in the mirror.

Have you ever questioned why we have had no thorough investigation into the cause of Covid-19 and how it came to be? Would it really surprise you to learn that China has been shoveling millions to the Biden family for years? And maybe we just might find out that the U.S. has had a hand in the evolution of Covid-19 inasmuch as Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health were actually funding gain of function research at the Wuhan, China Infectious Disease Lab. That news would then leak into the media about how corrupt the Biden family has been and that our President is compromised and in China’s pocket. Hell, it might even stretch back to the Obama Administration. And that just would not do!

Do you still believe President Biden when he emphatically stated on several occasions that he had never spoken to his son Hunter Biden about any of his business dealings in China, Ukraine, Russia, or Kazachstan despite pictures showing Joe Biden when he was Vice President with Hunter and his business partners playing golf or having dinner? Are we to believe that Hunter Biden accompanied his father on Air Force 2 on a trip to China, met with Chinese Communist Investment Bankers, and walked away with $1.5 Billion in investment into Hunter’s Company, and none of this was discussed with Joe Biden? Are you still comfortable knowing that all of this was kept under wraps prior to the election of Joe Biden as President? I’m not.

Are you tired of all the lies told by our President? I am.

When you appropriate billions to help foreign nations like Pakistan shore up their borders but don’t provide a penny to secure our southern border, it is not because you are stupid or inexperienced. It is because it was intentional. You want our country overrun by illegal immigrants, many of them on terrorist watch lists. You want chaos and hardship.

When you encourage elementary and secondary school teachers to tell our children that it is OK to seek gender modification surgery if they are uncomfortable with their own sex and feel they want to be a man or a woman without seeking the approval of their parents, you have abandoned all sensibilities of reason and moral behavior. When you condone teaching that America is a racist country founded on racist ideology, and embrace the principles set forth in the NY Times endorsed “1619 Project”, you have relinquished all historical principles, disciplines, and perspectives. You are infusing our youth with false narratives and denying them the knowledge that America, for all its faults, has been the single greatest force for good in the entire history of mankind on this planet. You are no longer educating our young, you are indoctrinating them. Worse, you are teaching them what to think not how to think, and doing them and our nation a terrible disservice.

When you attempt to install woke ideology into our military, especially at West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy by forcing Critical Race Theory into their curricula, you are insuring that our future leaders will be more concerned with the use of pronouns than with leadership principles and winning wars.

When you wait until the eleventh hour – literally just before Christmas 2022 – to vote on a budget to keep the government and our military going, and then stuff that budget with wasteful, unnecessary spending and call it an Omnibus Bill consisting of 4,155 pages totaling $1.7 Trillion (money we don’t have by the way), that is not just irresponsible, it is intentional malfeasance and dereliction of your sworn duty to protect our nation and its citizens. It is also certain to create more chaos, inflation, and hardship for American citizens.

It is time to recognize the evil people behind that sad old creature in the White House. They want crisis. They want chaos. They want riots. They want conflicts in your town and, I am sad to say, they are pushing us deeper and deeper into global conflict because in war their powers will be enhanced not curtailed.

Recall the stated purpose years ago when Obama declared his approach was to “take the US down a few notches on the world stage.” Imagine a U.S. President making that statement on the world stage!

Today, I can feel the quality of my life going down with the country I love, and I want all the corruption, ridiculous rules, and regulations to stop. Our nation has serious problems. We need serious people to tackle these problems, not corrupt politicians with their hands in the till.

And above all remember this:
These are not foolish or misguided people. They are the personification of pure evil, and they just do not care about the American people.

They are headed somewhere you don’t want to go.

It’s time to take our country back.

©2022 Rip McIntosh Enterprises. All rights reserved.

Media has ceased to exist……………Victor David Hansen

How Corrupt is
a Corrupt Media?

The media has ceased to exist,
and the public plods on by assuming as
true whatever the media suppresses and as
false whatever the media covers.

By: Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
December 4, 2022

The current “media”—loosely defined as the old major newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post, the network news channels, MSNBC and CNN, PBS and NPR, the online news aggregators like Google, Apple, and Yahoo, and the social media giants like the old Twitter and Facebook—are corrupt.

They have adopted in their news coverage a utilitarian view that noble progressive ends justify almost any unethical means to obtain them. The media is unapologetically fused with the Democratic Party, the bicoastal liberal elite, and the progressive agenda.

The result is that the public cannot trust that the news it hears or reads is either accurate or true. The news as presented by these outlets has been carefully filtered to suppress narratives deemed inconvenient or antithetical to the political objectives of these entities while inflating themes deemed useful.

This bias now accompanies increasing (and increasingly obvious) journalistic incompetence. Lax standards reflect weaponized journalism schools and woke ideology that short prior basic requisites of writing and ethical protocols of quoting and sourcing. In sum, a corrupt media that is ignorant, arrogant, and ideological explains why few now trust what it delivers.

Suppression
Once a story is deemed antithetical to left-wing agendas, there arises a collective effort to smother it. Suppression is achieved both by neglect and by demonizing others who report an inconvenient truth as racists, conspiracist “right-wingers,” and otherwise irredeemable.

The Hunter Biden laptop story is the locus classicus. Social media branded the authentic laptop as Russian disinformation. That was a lie. But the deception did not stop them from censoring and squashing those who reported the truth.

Instead of carefully examining the contents of the laptop or interrogating Biden-company players such as Tony Bobulinksi, the media hyped the ridiculous disinformation hoax as a mechanism for suppressing the damaging pre-election story altogether.

Joe Biden’s cognitive state was another suppression story. The media simply stifled the truth that 2020 candidate Biden was unable to conduct a normal campaign due to his frailty and non-compos-mentis status. Few fully reported his often cruel and racist outbursts of the “lying-dog-faced-pony-soldier” and “you ain’t black”/“terrorist” sort.

The #MeToo media predictably quashed the Tara Reade disclosure. Journalists turned on her in the manner that they previously had insisted was sexist and defamatory “blame-the-victim” smearing.

Joe Biden has long suffered from a sick tic of creepily intruding into the private space of young women and preteen girls: blowing their hair, talking into their ears, squeezing their necks, hugging in full-body embraces—all for far too long. In other words, Biden should have expected the Charlie Rose or the Donald Trump Access Hollywood media treatment. Instead, he was de facto exonerated by collective media silence. To this day, despite staffers’ efforts to corral his wandering hands and head, he occasionally reverts to form with his creepy fixations with younger women.

Ask the media today which administration surveilled journalists and they will likely cry “Trump!” Yet their own sensationalist reporting that the IRS was weaponized by Trump was proven a lie when the inspector general noted Trump never went after either James Comey or Andrew McCabe. And it was an untruth comparable to the smear that “nuclear secrets” and “nuclear codes” were hidden away at Mar-a-Lago or that Donald Trump sought to profit from the trove. Nor does anyone remember that Barack Obama went after the Associated Press reporters and Fox News Channel’s James Rosen. Nor do they care that Biden sought to birth an Orwellian Ministry of Truth censorship bureau.

Fantasy
The media does not just suppress, but concocts. The entire Russian-collusion hoax—Robert Mueller’s vain 22-month and $40 million investigation—was a complete waste of time on the one hand, but on the other an effective effort to destroy the effectiveness of an elected president.

How many print and television celebrity journalists declared that Trump would shortly resign, be jailed, or impeached over the pee-pee tape or Christopher Steele’s other mishmash of lies? The problem for the media in promoting the fallacious dossier was not just that it was untrue, but that it was so awfully written, so obviously poorly sourced, and so Drudge Report-like amateurishly sensational that it could not appear factual to any sane person—other than an agenda-driven and addled journalist who found it useful.

Do we remember the Hillary Clinton-approved Alfa Bank/Trump Tower fable that is now resurfacing for a second try?

Or the Jussie Smollett caper that trumped even the Brett Kavanaugh-as-teenage-assaulter and rapist lie? Or the Covington kids fabrications that trumped the Duke lacrosse hoax that trumped the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” myth that trumped the “white Hispanic,” doctored photo/edited 911 call smear about George Zimmerman?

Recall Trump’s supposed “immigration jails” and “kids in cages” at the border—in truth both not cages and in fact birthed by Obama.

Then there was Trump’s supposedly impeachable offense of purportedly canceling military aid to Ukraine so that he could allegedly hound the innocent Biden family—rather than delaying, but not canceling, offensive arms vetoed by the Obama Administration for the prescient worry that the Biden family had left a trail of corruption in Ukraine.

Who ran with the “voter suppression” untruth that Stacey Abrams was the “real” governor of Georgia or the yarn that Donald Trump was illegitimately elected? How exactly did Jeffery Epstein and Harvey Weinstein operate as sexual perverts and high-profile, liberal-benefacting deviants for years without media scrutiny? Who created the cable news myth of now-felon Michael Avenatti as presidential timber?

Chronological Manipulation
Why, after the midterms, did we suddenly learn that Donald Trump did not, as in the case of Barack Obama’s Lois Lerner skullduggery, manipulate the IRS for political purposes to go after James Comey and Andrew McCabe? Why suddenly post-election did we read that his presidential papers at Mar-a-Lago really did not contain “nuclear codes” and “nuclear secrets” or stuff intended for sale? Why did we learn after November 8 that a special counsel was suddenly appointed? Why did we discover the Ponzi scheme of Sam Bankman-Fried only after the midterms and why is he treated as an aw-shucks teen in bum drag rather than a calculating and conniving crook?

The answer is the same as why, just days before the 2016 election, we were assured suddenly by the media that the DNC’s planted stories about Christopher Steele’s dossier “proved” that Trump was a Russian stooge.

Asymmetry
When did the media finally dribble out that Obama’s memoir Dreams From My Father was chock full of lies and thus was intended all along to be read as “impressionistic” rather than factual?

We only learned belatedly that Hillary Clinton did not brave the front lines in virtual combat in Bosnia. We were assured that she was completely out of the loop on the Uranium One deal and thus knew nothing about the cash that poured into the Clinton Foundation and Bill Clinton’s honoraria from Russian sources.

Did the media ever fully report that Hillary Clinton:
1) broke the law by using a personal server to communicate while Secretary of State;
2) lied about the missing emails by claiming they were all personal about “yoga” and “weddings” and such;
3) destroyed subpoenaed evidence by smashing her devices;
4) had her husband accidentally bump into Attorney General Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix tarmac who was supposedly investigating Clinton at the time; and
5) became our first major election denialist by declaring “Russian collusion” to be true, Donald Trump to be illegitimately elected, and the 2016 balloting to be “rigged”?

Unethical Behavior
Our once lions of network news were long ago revealed to have feet of clay. Dan Rather insisted that “fake but true”memos “proved” George W. Bush got special exemptions from military service. Brian Williams fabricated an entire Walter-Mitty fantasy existence with ease. The WikiLeaks Podesta trove revealed blue-chip reporters checking in with the Clinton campaign and the DNC to “fact check” and brainstorm their pre-publication puff pieces.

Throughout the Obama years, Ben Rhodes, the failed novelist and deputy national security advisor distorted U.S. foreign policy, as CBS News, overseen by his brother, warped its coverage of him.

Do we remember the commentary on MSNBC of the brilliant Vanderbilt professor and MSNBC “analyst,” presidential historian Jon Meacham? He periodically praised Joe Biden’s eloquence and moving addresses without informing his audience that he contributed to or indeed helped write what he gushed about. No problem. Even after finally being fired, Meacham is still at it, offering his input on Biden’s September 1, Phantom-of-the-Opera “un-American” rant.

CNN Sums It Up
The long, slow death of Jeffery Zucker’s CNN is emblematic of all the mortal sins listed above of our present-day corrupt media.

It is ancient history now and thus forgotten that the self-righteous MSNBC anchorman Lawrence O’Donnell falsely claimed that Deutsche Bank documents would prove that Russian oligarchs co-signed a loan application for Donald Trump.

Over a decade ago, CNN’s Candy Crowley—remember this impartial “moderator” of the second 2012 presidential debate?—infamously transformed before our very television eyes into an active and shameless partisan by attacking candidate Mitt Romney. CNN commentator Donna Brazile topped Crowley when she unethically leaked primary-debate questions to candidate Hillary Clinton. When pressed, Brazile serially denied her role.

CNN’s former Obamaite Jim Sciutto is known as a serial offender of journalistic ethics and was recently the subject of an internal investigation. Sciutto has also alleged, falsely, that the CIA had yanked a high-level spy out of Moscow because of President Trump’s supposedly dangerously reckless handling of classified information. Sciutto joined CNN’s Carl Bernstein and Marshall Cohen to falsely report that Lanny Davis’ client Michael Cohen would soon assert that Trump had prior knowledge of an upcoming meeting between his son and Russian interests.

Another CNN trio of Thomas Frank, Eric Lichtblau, and Lex Harris were forced out from CNN for their mythologies that the Trump-hating Anthony Scaramucci was directly involved in a $10 billion Russian fund.

CNN’s Julian Zelizer fabricated his tall tale that Donald Trump never reiterated America’s commitment to honor NATO’s critical Article 5 guarantee. The quartet of CNN’s Gloria Borger, Eric Lichtblau, Jake Tapper, and Brian Rokus all were exposed wrongly assuring that former FBI director James Comey would unequivocally contradict President Trump’s prior assertion that Comey had told him he was not under investigation.

CNN reporter Manu Raju in December 2017 trafficked in lots of fake news stories that Donald Trump, Jr. supposedly had prior access to the hacked WikiLeaks documents. And he offered another fable that Trump, Jr. would be indicted by Mueller’s special-counsel investigation. But then, who at CNN did not blast out such “bombshells” and “walls are closing in” lies?

The once supposedly great Chris Cuomo—finally fired for softball incestuous interviews with his brother Andrew while serving as confidant to his sibling’s sexual-harassment dilemmas—had been caught on tape screaming obscenities. He also lied on the air when he assured a CNN audience in 2016 that it was illegal for citizens to examine the just-released WikiLeaks emails.

Julia Ioffe was eagerly hired by CNN after Politico fired her for tweeting that the president and his daughter Ivanka might have had an incestuous sexual relationship. CNN Anderson Cooper was every bit as creepy. He harangued a pro-Trump panelist with “If he [Trump] took a dump on his desk, you would defend it!”

Erstwhile CNN religious “expert” Reza Aslan was not so subtle. He trashed Trump as “this piece of sh**.” The late CNN cooking show guru Anthony Bourdain openly joked about poisoning Trump with hemlock. Recall CNN New Year’s Eve host Kathy Griffin posing with a bloody facsimile of Trump’s severed head. Was there something in the CNN contract that stipulated CNN journalists had to be obscene, vulgar, and threatening?

The CNN circus also hired as a “security analyst” the admitted liar James Clapper. So, was it any surprise that on spec Clapper did what he was hired to do—by falsely claiming that President Trump was a veritable Russian asset?

But for that matter, former CIA director Michael Hayden preposterously alleged that Trump’s immigration policies resembled those in the death camps of Nazi Germany. Was it any wonder either that CNN host Sally Kohn and her roundtable panelists raised their hands to reverberate the “hands up, don’t shoot” lie of the Ferguson shooting?

Do the bias, invective, and lack of ethics of the media even matter anymore?

In truth, media corruption has changed the course of recent history.

Had the true nature of the contents of the Hunter Biden laptop been reported, the 2020 voters have polled that the revelation may well have made a difference because they would not have voted for a candidate so clearly compromised by foreign interests.

Tell the full story of death, destruction, arson, looting, and injured police of the post-George Floyd rioting, and what emerges is not the MSNBC denial of violence or the August 2020 CNN lie of a “fiery but mostly peaceful” sort of idealistic protestors.

The Kavanaugh and Smollett fake news accounts helped further to tear apart the country and greenlighted the new assaults on the Supreme Court, from Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) rants and threats to the would-be assassin who turned up near the Kavanaugh residence.

The Russian collusion hoax and the first impeachment media hysteria virtually ruined a presidency and have had grave foreign-policy consequences vis à vis Russia.

The media, moreover, matter-of-factly assumed Twitter was an arm of the Democratic Party. Mark Zuckerberg and the FBI worked together to suppress any news embarrassing to the Biden campaign. Do not expect much media coverage of Elon Musk’s serial disclosures of Twitter’s efforts to suppress free communications.

No thanks to the media, after nearly three years we are finally learning that the Wuhan Lab proved the likely source of the COVID pandemic, and that the media-sainted Dr. Anthony Fauci subsidized gain-of-function viral research in Wuhan.

Despite the lies, Americans assumed that Officer Brian Sicknick was not killed by Trump supporters as reported. The public shrugged “of course” when the media did its best to suppress the name of the Capitol policeman who lethally shot Ashli Babbitt for attempting to go through a broken window inside the Capitol. And on and on.

In sum, there is no media. It has ceased to exist, and the public plods on by assuming as true whatever the Pravda-like news outlets suppress and as false whatever they cover.

Here’s How They Did it:
Real-time Election Fraud
By Jay Valentine
American Thinker
November 30, 2022

Database latency — a geeky term, but that’s how they did it!

Trump Overkill by Byron York

DECEMBER 21, 2022

Welcome to Byron York’s Daily Memo newsletter.

TRUMP OVERKILL. With great fanfare, the House Democrats’ Jan. 6 committee sent to the Justice Department four criminal referrals targeting former President Donald Trump. Committee members, all picked for the job by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), want the Justice Department to investigate Trump for 1) obstruction of an official proceeding; 2) conspiracy to defraud the United States; 3) conspiracy to make a false statement; and 4) “incite,” “assist,” or “aid and comfort” an insurrection.

The whole exercise is meaningless, of course. The Justice Department is already investigating allegations surrounding Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Prosecutors have no obligation to pay any attention to what the Jan. 6 committee says. Indeed, there is a school of thought that argues the committee’s referrals might even harm the Justice Department’s investigation. “Even if prosecutors meticulously build a case with reliable evidence and testimony,” wrote former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, “a referral enables the defendant to argue that the indictment is politically motivated.”

There is absolutely no doubt that the Jan. 6 committee is politically motivated. Even a legal commentator on CNN admitted Tuesday that the committee has conducted a “one-sided” investigation and that there has been no real examination of witnesses. “Keep in mind, this has been a one-sided affair,” CNN’s Elie Honig said. “Yes, it’s a bipartisan committee, but there’s been no cross-examination. There’s not even been any real examination of the underlying transcripts.”

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The public part of the committee’s work has been a carefully produced television miniseries. As far as the audience could see, every member agreed with every other member about every issue. That’s the way a partisan exercise works, but it is not the way a real prosecution works.

The Jan. 6 committee is just one of Trump’s pursuers. There are several others. In addition to the Justice Department’s Jan. 6 investigation mentioned above, there is the department’s Mar-a-Lago documents investigation. Then there is an investigation in Fulton County, Georgia. Lawsuits by the attorney general of New York. A number of other lawsuits around the country. A group that wants to use the 14th Amendment to bar Trump from holding public office. And on Tuesday, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee voted to make public Trump’s tax returns, which the committee obtained after years of litigation.

All of that leads to the question of whether Democrats are engaging in overkill against Trump and whether, if it is overkill, it will backfire on the Democrats and others who want to bring Trump down. The answer to both questions is almost surely yes.

The reason is that Trump’s enemies, in the Resistance, in the mainstream Democratic Party, and among Republican or former Republican Never Trumpers, do not understand what will harm him with his supporters and what will not. Here is the short version: If Trump supporters become increasingly disillusioned by what he does, such as supporting losing candidates in midterm elections and obsessing about the 2020 election to the extent that he calls for the “termination” of some electoral provisions in the Constitution so that he can be reinstated to the White House — if Trump supporters grow unhappy with actions like those, they will gradually decide that it is time to move on to another presidential candidate. But if they believe Democrats and other anti-Trumpers are trying to hound, harass, and investigate Trump out of politics, they will come to his defense.

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that a significant number — not a majority, but a significant number — of Trump supporters are ready to move on. Several polls show Trump losing altitude in the nascent 2024 contest and his main rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), rising in the estimation of GOP voters. There are plenty of reasons. One is that Trump seems unable to move on from his 2020 fixation. Voters, on the whole, are interested in the future. Rants about how the 2020 election was “rigged” are becoming less and less appealing to them.

The other big reason for GOP voters to move on is Trump’s spotty record in the midterm elections. He cast himself as a kingmaker in the 2022 races, and then he did not make enough kings. As this newsletter pointed out on Dec. 7, Trump made his greatest effort “on behalf of first-time candidates who supported him in GOP primaries and then went on to the general election.” With those candidates — J.D. Vance in Ohio, Ted Budd in North Carolina, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona, Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, and Herschel Walker in Georgia — Trump’s record was two wins and five losses. Trump was not the only factor, but there is no doubt he was a factor in the Republican failure to win control of the Senate.

Backing losers in big Senate races has inflicted more damage on Trump with Republican voters than anything Democratic investigators have ever done. On top of that, Trump has done stupid things all on his own — the Constitution remark, the Kanye West-Nick Fuentes dinner, the NFT offering — that make Republicans suspect he is not entirely serious about running for president in 2024. To Trump supporters, that matters more than what Democrats on Capitol Hill do. Think about it: Does anyone believe that Republicans would be persuaded by anything Adam Schiff says? They’re much more attuned to what Donald Trump does, good and bad.

If Trump falters, and his supporters decide to move on, it will be the result of his own actions, not those of his accusers.

For a deeper dive into many of the topics covered in the Daily Memo, please listen to my podcast, The Byron York Show — available on the Ricochet Audio Network and everywhere else podcasts can be found.

1619 Project

The 1619 Project and the Fight for the Minds and Hearts of American Children

 CLIFFORD HUMPHREY

 Nikole Hannah-Jones recently changed her Twitter  background to a picture of the date July 4, 1776, crossed  out and replaced with Aug. 20, 1619. She would like your kids to do the same.

Hannah-Jones wrote the flagship essay for the 1619 Project, which is a deliberate effort by The New York   Times to displace the moral authority of the signing of the Declaration of Independence as the heart of  America’s  founding. The project’s  supporters want Americans in the future to consider the advent of slavery  in America as “our true  founding.”

As an attack on the Founding Fathers generally, the 1619 Project is neither new nor unique. What is novel about the 1619 Project, however, is the cultural scope that its social justice purveyors are attempting to   reach.

The 1619 Project has its own essay series, website, podcast, and theatrical exposé. And now, thanks to the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the 1619 Project has its own curriculum and lesson plans prepackaged    for teachers to take into their classrooms to give to your children.

We  should see the 1619 Project for what it is: part of a comprehensive attempt at political revolution. It  seeks to transform the American republican regime, which is based on equal rights for individuals, into one defined by identity politics and the unequal treatment of identity groups.

The 1776 founding contains the moral justification for the former, while the 1619 Project contains that of    the latter. Before a new regime can be set up, the moral legitimacy of the old must be torn down.

The Real American  Revolution

 John Adams once asked a friend, “[What] do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American war? The Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds   and hearts of the people. A change in the religious sentiments of their duties and obligations. … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affection of the people, was the real American  Revolution.”

This quotation from Adams contains the key to understanding the 1619 Project.

If there had been no transformation in “the minds and hearts of the people” before political tensions with England erupted into a physical revolution, the American colonists likely would have replaced the British regime with one exactly like it in the United States. In their “minds and hearts,” they would have remained subjects of a monarch.

As Adams explained, the “minds and hearts” of the colonists changed when their sentiments in regard to     their “duties and obligations” changed. Previously, they had felt a duty to obey the British king, who claimed    a right to rule them as their superior. Gradually, the colonists came to understand that no one—not even a king—has a right to rule them without their consent.

The colonists realized they only owed “duties and obligations” to a government that provided protection for their rights. When that protection ceased, so also did their consent. And the Revolution came.

Adams prophesied after that first Independence Day in 1776 that its annual return “will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival.” “It ought to be commemorated,” he said, “as the  Day  of Deliverance.”

To that end, towns all over America had “early instituted an annual Oration on the fourth of July, in commemoration of the Principles and Feelings which contributed to produce the Revolution.” Adams knew   that the continuation of the republican regime in America would only be as sure as the preservation of those same “principles, opinions, sentiments, and affection” within the people themselves.

Winning the ‘Minds and Hearts’ of  Children

 Similarly, the purveyors of the 1619 Project are trying to effect a revolution in the “minds and hearts” of American children today through an education curriculum tailored to its narrative.

The Pulitzer Center has created lesson plans, worksheets, reading lists, interpretive reading guides, and lists    of classroom activities and historical terms and events to bolster the 1619 Project. These resources are also available  for homeschoolers.

For children, there are poems and pictures; for adults, there are podcasts and dramatic performances. And for    all, a spoonful of outrage is meant to help the narrative go down and the right sentiments sink in. The New   York Times Magazine boasted that its education strategy includes partnering with the Pulitzer Center’s   “network of schools all around the country” in order “to get this stuff taught in schools.”

“We  will be sending some of our writers on multi-city tours to talk to students,” representatives said, “and  we will be sending copies of the magazine to high schools and colleges.”

The 1619 Project follows Adams’s prescription for how to effect a revolution in “minds and hearts.” It seeks  first to change Americans’ sentiments about “duties and obligations,” or justice, specifically in regard to the  past evil of slavery.

Once the change in sentiments is accomplished, the transformation of opinions and affections can soon follow. At that point, the revolution is all but complete.

In a speech, launching the 1619 Project, Hannah-Jones condemned the founders with the claim that “when    the country’s founding documents were written by enslavers, they were false.” No, those statements were    just as true then as ever. She meant that the authors were hypocrites, that their own words condemned their actions.

As Abraham Lincoln explained, though, “they did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality … They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should  permit.”

The 1619 Project would have school children think there is nothing to celebrate about the men of 1776. That    is a dangerous deception. Lincoln went on to explain exactly why all Americans should admire and celebrate what those imperfect men in 1776 found the wisdom to discern and the virtue to declare.

They “set up a standard maxim for free society,  which should be familiar to all, and revered by all;    constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly  approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness   and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.” Clifford Humphrey is originally from Warm Springs, Georgia. Currently, he is a doctoral candidate in politics at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Views expressed    in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

 

Before a new regime can be set up, the moral legitimacy of the old must be torn down.

 

Friday, 08/30/2019  Pag.A15                                                                              Copyright (c) 2019 The Epoch Times, Edition 8/30/2019