Monday, August 29, 2022

Medicare Part G. America Being Destroyed From Within. Trump And Half Of America Fascists. Stay Home. Fantasy. More.

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Medicare Part G

Say you are an older senior citizen and can no longer take care of yourself and need Long-Term Care, but the government says there is no Nursing Home care available for you. So, what do you do? You opt for Medicare Part G.

The plan gives anyone 75 or older a gun (Part G) and one bullet. You are allowed to shoot one worthless politician. This means you will be sent to prison for the rest of your life where you will receive three meals a day, a roof over your head, central heating and air conditioning, cable TV, a library, and all the health care you need. Need new teeth? No problem. Need glasses? That’s great. Need a hearing aid, new hip, knees, kidney, lungs, sex change, or heart? They are all covered!

As an added bonus, your kids can come and visit you at least as often as they do now!

And, who will be paying for all of this? The same government that just told you they can’t afford for you to go into a nursing home. And you will get rid of a useless politician while you are at it. And now, because you are a prisoner, you don't have to pay any more income taxes! Is this a great country or what?

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American civilization is being destroyed from within by the ‘Republic of Nice’

Turning a blind eye to open borders, raging crime, cultural decay and homelessness

By Don Feder

America Destroyed from Within Illustration by Greg Groesch/The Washington Times

Civilization isn’t self-renewing. It takes work and will. In America, we won’t do the work and no longer have the will.

The signs of imminent collapse are all around us:

1. A ruling class that’s opened the floodgates of uncontrolled immigration — and damn the consequences

2. Crime without punishment

3. Elites that mock the values on which our nation was founded

4. Supporting barbarians at the gates

5. Refusing to procreate in sufficient numbers to maintain our population.

A shocking video from Texas shows Border Patrol agents calmly unlocking a gate that had previously been secured by the Texas National Guard, to allow dozens of “migrants’ to enter the country. The president’s open border policies are hugely successful, with more than 2 million Welcome Wagon encounters so far this year, compared with 1.27 million for the same period last year.

Flash mob looting is the latest innovation in crime. In Los Angeles on Aug. 19, a mob, organized on the internet, descended on a 7-Eleven, cleaning out everything from snacks and cigarettes to lottery tickets before police arrived. In some cities, cops have given up trying to enforce the law for minor offenses, knowing that tender-hearted prosecutors will put those arrested back on the streets soon after they’re booked.

A recent editorial in the University of Virginia student newspaper demanded that Thomas Jefferson’s name be removed from the school he founded. It makes sense, in a perverse way. Since we no longer believe in rights endowed by the creator, why should the author of the Declaration of Independence play any part in higher education?

Communist China unleashed a virus that killed more than 1 million Americans. Now it’s exporting fentanyl — a drug that’s become the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45. There is no accountability for China’s attacks on our sovereignty. We’ll continue to enrich the world’s largest totalitarian state with trade whose profits will be used to expand its military. We’re even allowing Chinese companies to buy American farmland — an estimated 35.2 million acres so far, up 60% from 10 years ago. How do you say “death wish” in Mandarin?

Healthy societies have growing populations. The U.S. fertility rate is the lowest ever recorded — 1.78 children per woman during her childbearing years, with 2.1 needed just to replace the current population. Fewer and fewer Americans are choosing to marry, and more and more who do have decided not to have children. Elon Musk calls population collapse “the greatest threat to civilization.”

But it’s what we call homelessness — the squalid encampments that dot our urban landscape and what issues therefrom — that symbolizes the decline of our civilization the clearest.

Novelist O. Henry called New York City “Baghdad of the Hudson.” Kabul on the East River is more like it.

Last week, a homeless man and convicted sex offender coldcocked a random victim in the Bronx, punching him in the back of the head and leaving him with a skull fracture and brain bleeds.

A few days later, a passenger on the New York subway was stabbed in the stomach by an aggressive panhandler.

In 2020, there were more than half a million homeless in America, half of them living outdoors. It’s estimated that one-quarter have a serious mental illness, and a third are substance abusers. The former may be delusional, but we’re the ones who are crazy for putting up with them.

With the denizens of the pavement come crime, vermin, disease, used needles and feces. In San Francisco, reports of human waste in public places increased from 5,547 in 2011 to 28,084 in 2018.

That we tolerate their presence, living as they do, is proof that we have lost even a semblance of a survival instinct. Our greatest fear is to seem insufficiently compassionate. The United States of America has been replaced by the Republic of Nice — and it’s killing us.

To incarcerate those charged with major crimes who can’t make bail wouldn’t be nice. To deny that America is uniquely racist isn’t nice. Securing our borders from crime, poverty, disease and drugs isn’t nice. Stopping the homeless from defecating on our streets isn’t nice.

That we’re blithely throwing away a civilization that took millions from all over the world centuries to build is apparently inconsequential. Our relentless drive for niceness is all that counts.

Historian Will Durant observed, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.” In America, the wrecking balls are working overtime.

• Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer and syndicated columnist.

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Liberals spew out accusations but seldom back them with facts. They know they can get away with these tricks because they have bureaucrats who run agencies as well as the mass media to support them.

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The Strangest Thing About ‘Semi-Fascist’ Trump

By Victor Davis Hanson 

Of the last three presidents, Trump was either the most indifferent or the most obstructed when it came to using government agencies for his own partisan political advantages or to neuter his enemies.

For the Left, Donald Trump is synonymous with “fascism” (or “semi-fascism,” as Joe Biden put it the other day). And for Liz Cheney and most of the NeverTrumpers, he remains an existential threat to democracy. 

But to quantify those charges, what exactly has Trump done extralegally—as opposed to his bombast and braggadocio about what he might have wished to have done? 

And what are the standards by which to judge this supposed menace? Did Trump illegally and with a mere signature nullify over $300 billion of contracted student loans—to firm up his college-student and college-graduate base nine weeks before the midterm elections?

Did Donald Trump weaponize the feared IRS, the logical place to find fascistic tendencies of any president bent on using government to punish his enemies? Did he push through a plan to add 87,000 new IRS investigative agents at a time of national discord?

For the last five years, Trump was rumored to be under investigation by the IRS. Currently, his accountant is facing felony sentencing for advising improper write-offs. 

Certainly, from the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop and the remarks of Hunter’s associates like Tony Bobulinksi, the Biden family raked in millions of foreign dollars. Evidence so far suggests Joe Biden was a recipient (as the “Big Guy”) of 10 percent of these quid pro quo payments. At times, Bobulinksi may have sent a strapped and broke Hunter thousands of dollars in cash gifts. Were any of these stealthy transactions taxed? Does the recently heavily Biden-endowed IRS care?

If Trump wished to abuse his power over the IRS, he would have followed the Obama model of weaponizing it during a reelection year to go after his ideological enemies. 

In Obama’s case, the tax agency slow-walked or denied nonprofit status for groups whose ideology was deemed not helpful to Obama’s campaign in 2012. There was a reason Lois Lerner invoked the Fifth Amendment, and it was not to protect Donald Trump.

Politicized National Security

Did Trump blatantly use the national security apparatus of the government to enhance his own reelection bid in 2020? That is, did he do anything analogous to Obama’s gambit with Vladimir Putin in 2011? 

Was Trump ever caught on a hot mic promising a Russian president that he would try to ease Russian worries about Eastern European missile defense if only the Russians would give him space during his 2012 campaign for president against Mitt Romney?  

What we forget about the 2011 Seoul, South Korea hot-mic Obama exchange with then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was that all the conditions outlined in their hushed 2011 recap were adhered to by both parties: Obama did dismantle plans for a joint U.S.-Eastern European long-range missile defense—a system that might be now of advantage to the U.S. and its allies. Putin did stay quiet during the Obama campaign cycle. Obama did get reelected. And Putin did invade Ukraine and Crimea only after Obama was elected (or, a cynic might put it, because Obama was reelected). 

A current Trump “collusion” critic, mutatis mutandis, might have surmised that a colluding Barack Obama put the national security of the United States and its allies at risk in order to use his office to massage campaign advantages over Mitt Romney in 2012. And the ultimate result of such machinations was a loss of U.S. deterrence that in part explained Russian aggression in 2014.

Weaponizing Justice

Did Trump weaponize the FBI? That is, did the FBI go after journalists, former Obama officials, or Democratic Party activists who variously were attacking Donald, Jr. or Ivanka on the pretenses of retrieving one of their lost laptops or diaries? 

Did Trump use Republican National Committee firewalls to transfer money to private lobbyists and law firms to find dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016, and then turn it all over to the FBI to launch a Crossfire Hurricane investigation of Clinton, centered around a Trump-hired ex-spy who became a paid FBI informant? 

Are there texts of Trump-era FBI agents talking about how to “stop” Hillary Clinton’s or Biden’s election bid?

Did Trump’s FBI, in the predawn hours, burst into the homes of New York Times reporters—in James O’Keefe -style—and march them outside in their underwear, all for the possible “crime” of receiving a stolen draft of the Supreme Court early draft of the Dobbs decision? Which is the greater “crime”—trafficking in clearly stolen confidential Supreme Court papers or looking at the abandoned, lost, and lurid diary of a wayward presidential daughter?

Did the Trump Justice Department start an investigation of the suspected illegal lobbying of Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, who used the former’s political connections to win large cash payments from foreign governments? Were there Trump officials in the permanent Justice Department who went after his various political opponents on the pretexts of the Logan Act?  Or did the Trump Administration help spread the allegations of any hired anti-Clinton ex-spies and salt them around the bureaucracies?

Speaking of Trump and threats to the democratic order, did any Trump attorney general refuse a congressional subpoena, as former Attorney General Eric Holder did? Was anyone held in contempt of Congress, as Holder was? Did any simply refuse to honor subpoenas and withhold requested documents from Congress, as the Obama Administration did time and again?

Did Trump order an FBI raid on the Obama home, on rumors that there were thousands of documents under dispute with the National Archives in his possession, especially given the Obama record of fiercely fighting any Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to release his documents? 

Was a John Podesta put in leg irons by the FBI? Was Robbie Mook’s house stormed to learn of what he knew about Hillary Clinton’s missing emails? 

Was Jake Sullivan’s phone grabbed by the FBI at an airport to determine his role in the Russian collusion hoax? 

Or, with a look ahead to his own reelection, did Trump in 2018 order a raid on the Biden home, in search of “lost” Biden vice presidential documents, supposedly improperly removed after Biden’s tenure that might have shed light on the Biden family’s extracurricular foreign lobbying?

Where Is Trump’s Deep State?

Are there now any former Trump loyalists who, as “anonymous” officials in cabinet agencies or obstructionists on the National Security Council, are writing op-eds about their stealthy daily efforts to undermine Biden’s executive orders or his administration’s action? Is anyone listening to Biden’s phone calls with foreign leaders while working with Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee and while prepping a “whistleblower” to find grounds for impeachment based on some of the things Biden has allegedly said to foreign leaders? 

Did Pfizer rush prematurely to announce a viable COVID-19 vaccination to aid Trump’s reelection—or in contrast, did it slow walk a viable vaccination’s rollout until after the election to massage the result?

Are there now “50 former intelligence officials” who signed affidavits in support of Trump’s allegations about the authenticity of Hunter’s laptop? Are there dozens of retired four-stars now opportunely blasting Joe Biden’s historic humiliation of the United States in Kabul? Have any retired admirals mocked the Uniform Code of Military Justice to write New York Times op-eds suggesting a befuddled Biden leave office “the sooner, the better”?

Are there former Trump officials writing in Foreign Policy that Biden is a disaster who could be removed by impeachment or the 25th Amendment—or more rapidly by a military coup? Are retired officers writing to General Mark Milley urging him to act should he feel in the next election that a likely Republican loss seems suspicious?

Election Interference and Denial? 

Between 2017 and 2020, did Trump’s team systematically seek to change the voting laws in key states to radically transform traditional balloting, in a mail-in or early voting revolution, in which only 30 percent of the electorate would vote on Election Day?

If Trump improperly questioned the ballot result of the 2020 election, then he sinned in the long tradition of presidential ballot objectors, including former U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), January 6 committee chairman himself Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), and Hillary Clinton, who claimed Trump was an illegitimately elected president and advised Biden not to concede if he lost the 2020 popular vote. A defeated Stacey Abrams toured the country claiming she was the “real” governor of Georgia, yet nobody smears her as an “election truther.”

Was there any “dark money” effort analogous to the efforts of corporate and tech money along with DNC activists and Biden operators in what Time magazine’s Molly Ball described as a “conspiracy” to ensure the defeat of Trump’s opponent? 

Did Trump’s team coordinate with right-wing billionaires to infuse hundreds of billions of dollars to modulate street protests, to absorb the work of state and local registrars in key precincts, and to censor unfavorable stories on social media? 

Trump impotently railed and bayed to the wind about the “fake news” reporters at his rallies. By contrast, the Left, both private elites and public officials, kept quiet and injected half a billion dollars to alter the way people voted and effectively to censor the way people produced and consumed the news.

Restoring Our Norms?

How about Trump’s efforts to revolutionize the very system of government? Did he promote a court-packing scheme to ensure he might not just get a 5-4 majority, but perhaps 11-4 conservative advantage in a new 15-justice Supreme Court? 

Did he keep mum while right-wing demonstrators swarmed the homes of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan? Did his attorney general ignore the obvious felonies involved in such threatening tactics? Did Trump work with his Republican Congress in 2017 to end the filibuster to ensure his legislation would not be stonewalled? Did he dream up ways of getting rid of the Electoral College so the “blue wall” might never return? 

It’s alleged that Trump was insincere when he approved the request for thousands of federal troops to be available to local law enforcement on January 6, or that he did not really mean it when he instructed pro-Trump demonstrators on January 6 to “Peacefully and patriotically march to the Capitol.” 

Perhaps even the hint of encouraging any type of protest was reckless in such partisan times. But just days after violent protestors attacked Secret Service agents manning barricades and had sought to storm onto the White House grounds, did Trump boast to the nation of the ongoing demonstrations, as did Kamala Harris, soon to be a vice presidential candidate?

They’re not going to stop. And everyone beware, because they’re not going to stop. They’re not going to stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not going to stop after Election Day. And that should be—everyone should take note of that, on both levels, that they’re not going to let up, and they should not, and we should not.

Was that a sober or insurrectionary thing to advise in a summer of rioting that saw 120 days of violence, $2 billion in damage, 35 dead, and hundreds of police officers injured?

Did Trump as president meet with CIA and FBI directors who, in their weekly and daily briefings, apprised him of efforts to monitor, spy, and infiltrate the campaign of Joe Biden?

Was there after 2017 a Republican majority committee investigating the former Obama role in launching Operation Crossfire Hurricane, or Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s secret meeting with Bill Clinton while she was investigating Hillary Clinton? And if there were, would Obama loyalists in the House be excluded by the Republican speaker from participating in House investigations that also would allow no hostile or even neutral witnesses, no general counsel’s report, and no cross examinations?

The strange thing about Trump was that he did not use extraordinary powers to investigate anyone unlawfully. He boasted, he railed, he screamed, he whined, he became at times crude and obnoxious. But he did not use the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, or the IRS to go after the Obamas, the Clintons, or the Bidens. 

Instead, he became the most investigated, probed, smeared and autopsied president in modern history. Trump’s legislative agenda did not include revolutionary changes in the Electoral College, or the filibuster or radical changes to the Supreme Court.

In fact, of the last three presidents, Trump was either the most inept or indifferent, or the most obstructed concerning any issue of using government agencies for his own partisan political advantages or to neuter his enemies. 

In truth, the entire apparatus of permanent government—the Pentagon hierarchy, the Washington elites at the FBI and CIA, the permanently entrenched at the Justice Department, and the apparat at the IRS all despised Donald Trump. And they did not just hate him but acted on their antipathy by using their powers of government to destroy his campaign in 2016, to undermine his transition, to either obstruct or sabotage his initiatives while president, and to hound him as an ex-president. As ex-felon and FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith put it of his own illegal effort to destroy a president, “Viva le [sic] resistance.” Is that the sort of FBI, we want a cadre of self-described revolutionaries?

Donald Trump was impeached for raising the question of Biden family corruption in Ukraine with the Ukrainian president and delaying offensive military aid that had never been approved by a Democratic president.

Evidence since Trump’s impeachment suggests he was prescient in his warning to the Kyiv government to stay out of domestic American politics. Everything thing we know since that 2021 impeachment vote solidifies—not contradicts—Trump’s point that the Biden family was corrupt, and Hunter Biden was receiving large sums of money from Ukraine and China solely because Joe Biden had been vice president and was seen as a possible or even likely future president worthy of such corrupt investment. Or to put it another way, why would those with contacts with the Ukrainian government ever pay millions to an incompetent, drug-addicted miscreant like Hunter Biden, if not for pay-for-play influence?

In that context, Joe Biden’s early boast that he got a Ukrainian attorney general fired, most likely for probing too deeply matters involving his family, gives credence to Trump’s instincts. So does the fact that both Obama and Biden for a time stopped shipments of offensive weapons to Ukraine, while Trump for a time only delayed them but eventually gave them what they wished.

The result of this unprecedented effort to accuse Trump of using government fascistically while fascistically using government to destroy a president is all too clear in the destroyed careers who sought to undermine constitutional government. What John Brennan, James Clapper, Kevin Clinesmith, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Bruce Ohr, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and a host of retired flag officers and intelligence operatives share is not just their venomous antipathy toward an elected president and their efforts rhetorically and often concretely to neuter him, but their subsequent disgrace even among those who once cheered them on.

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He might as well stay in Israel and talked to "The Wall."

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Mossad Chief to Present Washington With Intelligence on Emerging Nuclear Deal With Iran


Mossad Director David Barnea is expected to travel to Washington next week to present Israel’s intelligence position against a return to the emerging nuclear agreement between Iran and Western powers.

Barnea will be the third senior Israeli official in recent days to travel to Washington to meet with US officials to share intelligence and concerns about the dangers of the emerging nuclear agreement. Over the weekend, Israel’s Defense Minister Benny Gantz met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan after national security adviser Eyal Hulata concluded his visit to Washington last week. Israeli government officials have said that the efforts have already borne some fruit as a few points which would have caused damage to Israel and the world have been excluded from the draft agreement.

Earlier in the week, Barnea warned that the emerging nuclear deal with Iran is a “strategic disaster” which “gives Iran a license to manufacture a bomb.”

Israeli senior government officials have clarified in recent days to the Biden administration that the country will not be bound by a nuclear deal with Iran and will define where its own red lines are based on intelligence material.

“The IDF and the Mossad have been instructed to be prepared for any scenario,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid was quoted as saying during a press briefing to Israeli media.. “We will be prepared to act to maintain Israel’s security.”

“The Americans understand this, the world understands this, and Israeli society should also know it,” he added.

Israel increased its diplomatic efforts in recent weeks as the indirect talks between the US and Western powers to reach an agreement to salvage Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – appeared to be drawing to a close, following more than 16 months of negotiations. The JCPAO offered sanctions relief to Iran in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.

“For more than a year, Israel has been waging a multi-systemic political struggle aimed at preventing the re-signing of the nuclear agreement with Iran,” Lapid said. “We are making a coordinated effort to make sure that Americans and Europeans understand the dangers involved in the agreement.”

However, Lapid emphasized that Israel does not oppose an agreement per se, but that the current draft agreement is “bad” and argued that a better deal could only be reached if a credible military threat was put on the table so that the Iranians understand that their refusal and their deceptions carry a heavy price.

“It is possible and necessary to get the Iranians to sign a much better agreement, which will be without an end date, with tighter oversight, and which will also deal with Iran’s ballistic missile program and its involvement in terrorism in the Middle East,” Lapid said.

“The agreement was not good when it was signed in 2015,” Lapid remarked. “Today the dangers inherent in it are even greater and Iran is in a different place technologically.”

“A good deal is an agreement that does not inject $100 billion a year into Iran and an agreement that will last forever, so that Iran will not have nuclear weapons,” an unnamed Israeli government official told Israeli news portal N12. “Until Iran becomes a peace-loving country, I suggest minimizing the money that goes in there.”

And: 

A Second Iran Deal Would Be Based on Pure Fantasy

By DR. Joseph Frager

Iranian opposition activists demonstrate in Vienna outside negotiations to revive the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal. Photo: Reuters/Lisa Leutner

America is about to sign off on a second disastrous and foolhardy nuclear deal with Iran. Like Yogi Berra said, it’s “déjà vu all over again.” The same people who made the first bad deal in 2015 are about to make another. The only difference is that it is not Barack Obama at the helm but President Joe Biden.

Once again, Israel’s concerns are not being given the time of day. Biden has said over and over again that he will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon. He told this to Israeli officials on his recent visit to Israel.

The problem is that Iran is nearly at the point of nuclear breakout and a nuclear bomb is achievable in a very short time. No deal is going to stop the Iranians at this point. The deal will only be “smoke and mirrors.” In a very important sense, a bad deal is worse than no deal at all.

The two main American critics of the first Iran deal, former National Security Advisor John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo now have Iranian bounties on their heads.

The Iranians learned how to build a bomb and fool the West from North Korea. Iran has been following the same playbook for years. All the while, it has used the $150 billion it received from Obama as part of the 2015 deal to remain the number one state sponsor of terrorism in the world.

As of 2020, North Korea had 40 nuclear weapons, along with the ability to make at least seven more per year and outfit its long-range missiles with nuclear warheads. If one looks at the timeline of North Korea’s agreements and deals with the United States and the West from 1994 until its nuclear breakout in 2006, one sees an eerie reminder of Iran’s actions.

The difference, however, is that Iran is in the Middle East. Although South Korea is central to America’s interests, the Gulf states and Israel are game changers. The oil states have all joined Israel via the Abraham Accords to fend off Iranian aggression. Yes, the Abraham Accords go much further and deeper than that, but it was Iran’s nuclear ambitions that got the ball rolling.

Israel is not South Korea. It will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. There is no way of “containing” a nuclear Iran as some on the left have proposed. I believe that the proponents of a second Iran deal actually believe containment is possible. This is sheer fantasy. Israel and the Gulf states will hold Biden to his promise that Iran will not be allowed to acquire a nuclear weapon under his watch.

I have spoken to Israeli officials about how long it would take to obliterate Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The answer was always “a few days.” These were high level officials with the intelligence to back up their statements.

There have been reports of Israeli F-35 jets flying over Iranian airspace. I don’t doubt it.

Biden is determined to sign a second Iran deal. It plays well in the left’s universe. It is not going to stop the Iranians from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Dr. Joseph Frager is a lifelong activist and physician. He is chairman of Israel advocacy for the Rabbinical Alliance of America, chairman of the executive committee of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim and executive vice president of the Israel Heritage Foundation.

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Republicans Desperately Need An Agenda

By Kurt Schlichter

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Without An Agenda Republicans Will Wander

By Gil Gutknecht

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The Rape of the American Mind

By Will Alexander

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FBI Responds to Zuckerberg's Claims About Hunter Biden's Laptop

By Sarah Arnold

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Sunday, August 28, 2022

Whitey Blew It. Salena. Special Master To Be Appointed? Bill Maher. Woke Unmasking of America. Immoral Subsidizing.





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Whitey has allowed himself to be conned because of misplaced guilt and what of BLM and all the corporate shakedowns? Then there is CRT and all the other flash pan ideas that were predicated on emotion and BS intimidation  etc.
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Dispatches from the middle of somewhere 
By Salena Zito
       
In my estimation, there is no patch of geography in this country that is the "middle of nowhere." 
This is America; everywhere is the middle of somewhere.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — After 22 years working as an IT professional for Verizon Wireless, Marcy O’Donnell left to start a new career in the medical field — specifically her husband’s optometry practice here in Luzerne County — two years ahead of the pandemic.

Ms. O’Donnell, a natural communicator, says she really enjoys interacting with the patients and the staff, but the past two years — from pandemic shutdowns to navigating skyrocketing inflation and stubborn supply issues — have been hard for the family practice.

When the practice reopened after a ten-week COVID lockdown, the time and money that went into keeping up with protocols became a separate full-time job. They were also limited to seeing one patient at a time every hour. Since then, Ms. O’Donnell said, they’ve done everything they could think of just to keep the business and practice open: “We weren’t going to just sit there and go into apathy over it; we really pushed hard to make sure that we could still service patients and do everything right.”

Ms. O’Donnell said things still have not returned to normal. The setbacks of the pandemic have morphed into setbacks created by inflation and the recession. “Definitely everything is much more expensive — from frames to contact lenses — but there’s also the never-ending backorders to get these products.”

Ms. O’Donnell says not voting is not an option in her family. She and her husband Brian are planning to cast a ballot this November. “I guess we call it the super-voters, because my husband and his family, they were in politics for the longest time,” she said.

Her father-in-law, Tom O’Donnell, served on many local boards and authorities, was active in the Democratic Party and once ran for Congress.

Ms. O’Donnell says she is casting her vote based on who will get to the root of inflation and address rising crime rates, and who won’t turn a blind eye to how Fentanyl is pouring into America’s cities and suburbs.

“I have never voted straight party ever in my lifetime,” she said. “I’ve voted Democratic. I’ve voted Republican. I voted at one point for a Libertarian. I just vote based on what I think or what I feel at that point in time — who I think is the best for the country.”

People like Marcy O’Donnell will tell us more than any poll about what may be in store on midterm election day.

For those prognosticating about Pennsylvania, the concerns and sentiments of voters here in Luzerne County — as well as in Erie County and in the suburbs of Allegheny County — are the most important in determining which way the state goes in the race for control of the U.S. Senate.

Luzerne County famously flipped Republican in 2016 after decades of supporting Democrats for president — and hasn’t looked back since. It also gave Tom Wolf a win in his 2018 reelection and Attorney General Josh Shapiro a win in his 2020 reelection.

What happens here matters.

Portraits of voters offer a peek into the mood of electorally significant places. They don’t tell the whole story, but they do offer a glimpse into voter sentiment — and the sense of place, community and opportunity that will drive their decision, as opposed to what happens on social media.

Every city should be so lucky as to have a Kyle Bohrer — especially post-industrial cities like Erie, whose economy has had a bit of a bad run in the past few decades. This fourth-generation Erie resident’s motto references the city’s maritime history: “Don’t give up the ship.”

Mr. Bohrer has owned franchises of a logistics company called Unishippers since 2007. “That’s actually the job that pays the bills, he said. “Then I bought a meat market three years ago: Gordon’s Butcher and Market.”

Gordon’s wasn’t just any butcher shop: It was an icon, a mainstay, the heart of the community. For Mr. Bohrer, the purchase was sentimental and has become a labor of love.

When he bought it in October 2019, it was a 2,000-square-foot 50-year-old dilapidated but beloved butcher shop. “It was a neighborhood favorite, and I didn’t want see it go anywhere,” he said.

The father of three sold a chunk of his Unishippers group that year and went all in: Today it’s a 7,500 square foot, top-of-the-line meat market — with a restaurant called “Firestone,” a bar, a six pack and craft beer shop and a wine store called Paris’s Cap and Cork, all located in one building.

Mr. Bohrer — like most Pennsylvanians — has never lived anywhere else. He is rooted to his community and, despite Erie’s challenges, he wants to be part of making it better for the next generation. That sentiment is what will drive his vote come November, along with the impact inflation has had on his business, and his inability to find workers.

He considers his worldview moderate and pragmatic. His vote, he says, will reflect that, as well as the impact all of these things have had on his family and his community’s life.

“Prices for everything are still very high. Even though they’ve stopped climbing for the moment, they haven’t come down. The labor problem and people problem are still there. And the other thing people don’t talk about are our 401k’s — my father got beat up so bad this year in the market that he’s having to stay working for another year or so. He is going to keep going to hopefully see it turn around a little bit more, but yeah, it’s been a little bit, uneasy feeling, for sure,” he said.

Erie, like Luzerne, was a swing county in 2016. Voters here narrowly gave Donald Trump their support, then four years later, narrowly supported Joe Biden. Last year, for the first time in decades, they elected a Republican for county executive.

Mr. Bohrer, 41, says when reporters descend upon his county to cover elections, they always focus on the used-to-be’s of their days as an industrial powerhouse. “They miss how beautiful Erie is — the lakefront, the tourism, the affordable living and the growth of our economy based on higher education and state of the art hospitals,” he explained.

In Allegheny County, though, Democrats have ruled the roost. It’s hard to find anyone who remembers when it ever elected a Republican, outside of the 2000 county executive race. In 2020 it was crucial — along with Montgomery County in the East — in putting Mr. Biden over the top.

It was Mr. Biden’s success in the suburbs that solidified his win, which makes talking to suburban Allegheny County voters so important. Chris Scott of Plum was one of those voters.

Mr. Scott, a Plum Borough native who owns a landscaping and excavation company, said his career choice was formed when he was six years old, after his father passed and a family friend became a mentor who saw a talent in him at a young age.

“I was the last of seven, so I had to grow up working. At a young age, I was fortunate to meet . . . sorry, I’m tearing up a little bit here,” he said, wiping back tears, “but I was fortunate to meet a gentleman that took me under his wing, and that’s what he did — he encouraged me to do what I was doing because I did it well.”

It is clear Mr. Scott works with his hands — and back. It is also clear that family is the very center of his life. “Everything I do is for them,” he said. “It is to make sure I leave the world a better place for them and that I show them the value of hard work.”

An operating engineer and a member their Local 66, Mr. Scott is one to cut to the chase no matter who he is talking to: “Here is how I vote — my family first, my community second and my country third.”

Rather that asking someone what party they are in or who they are voting for, we should ask them what the most important things are for them this election season. It may not be scientific, but it offers a glimpse into the context and complexities that go into their decision. And it tells us more about how people are actually feeling than the raw numbers do.
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    INTO THE FRAY: Israel's pernicious paradox: Tactical brilliance vs strategic imbecility -
  • ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
  • Joe Biden Has Earned Your Disgust

    By Derek Hunter

  • +++
    Judge Intends to Grant Trump's 'Special Master' Motion on Docs Taken in FBI Ransacking of Mar-a-Lago

    By Matt Vespa

  • +++++++++++++++++++++++

  • Bill Maher is saying what liberals are thinking

    For The Spectator, FAIR Advisor James Kirchick writes about Bill Maher’s “resuscitating the dying art of conversation,” which “has been Maher’s mission for almost three decades, ever since his show Politically Incorrect premiered on Comedy Central in the summer of 1993.”


    Maher’s critique of our societal craving for moral absolutism speaks to his larger capacity for adding the nuance so often missing from contemporary political debates. If Maher paved a trail in late-night comedy by being forthright about his political opinions, he has distinguished himself further by expressing opinions that vary from Democratic Party talking points. And it’s this independence that Maher believes to be the secret of his success. “People are looking for something that’s not catering to the excesses of the right, which of course we never did, but also of the left,” he tells me of his show. Other late-night hosts “pretty much cleave to whatever the dictums of the woke are. The worst thing that seems in their minds to happen to a human being would be to say something and have the studio audience not approve of it. Which is, as we know, certainly not the way I’ve run my business, and I have many clips to prove it.”

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The Unmaking of American History by the Woke Mob
Progressive scholars increasingly abandon the past to focus on present-day politics.
By Dominic Green


Academic historians are losing their sense of the past. In his August column for the American Historical Association’s journal, Perspectives on History, James H. Sweet warned that academic history has become so “presentist” that it is losing touch with its subject, the world before yesterday. Mr. Sweet, who is the association’s president and teaches at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, observed that the “allure of political relevance” is drawing students away from pre-1800 history and toward “contemporary social justice issues” such as “race, gender, sexuality, nationalism, capitalism.” When historians become activists, he wrote, the past becomes “an evidentiary grab bag to articulate their political positions.”

History’s armies of nonacademic readers will find this obvious and undeniable. Mr. Sweet’s academic peers, however, tore him to pieces on Twitter, accusing him of sexism, racism, gratuitous maleness and excessive whiteness.

“Gaslight. Gatekeep. Goatee,” said Laura Miller of Brandeis University, detecting patriarchal privilege written on Mr. Sweet’s chin. Benjamin Siegel of Boston University, who thinks his politically correct profession is “leveraged towards racist ideologies,” called the essay “malpractice.” Dan Royles of Florida International University accused Mr. Sweet of “logical incoherence,” which is academic-speak for “idiot.” Kathryn Wilson of Georgia State detected an even more heinous error, “misrepresentation of how contemporary social justice concerns inform theory and methodology.”

Other users accused Mr. Sweet of using a rhetorical device called the “white we,” pitching for a guest slot on Tucker Carlson’s show, and writing “MAGA history.” Many called any questioning of the “1619 Project” racist. David Austin Walsh of the University of Virginia advised historians to support the project regardless of whether they thought it good history, because criticism would be “weaponized by the right.”

Mr. Sweet responded with the bravery that defines the modern academic. He apologized on the AHA’s website for the “harm to colleagues, the discipline, and the Association” that his “ham-fisted attempt at provocation” had caused, especially to his “Black colleagues and friends,” and begged that he be allowed to “redeem” himself.

The AHA, which had done nothing to stem the tide of insults from its members, prevented nonfollowers from commenting on its Twitter feed, because, it said, “trolls” and “bad-faith actors” had joined the debate. One of the bad-faith actors was a racist agitator, Richard Spencer. His contribution, alarmingly, was hardly trolling. Mr. Spencer pointed out that Mr. Sweet was merely repeating the advice of the eminent 19th-century historian Otto von Ranke, who told historians to go into the archives and tell history “as it really happened.” We know a profession is in trouble when it takes the worst kind of amateur to state the obvious.

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child,” Cicero once wrote. “For what is the worth of a human life if it is not woven into the life of our ancestors by the record of history?” Even Ms. Hannah-Jones would agree with that. The AHA’s activist wing, however, disagrees. Like Cicero, who was both a politician and a historian, they see history as a rhetorical resource. Unlike Cicero, they see nothing good in their people’s history and only wickedness in their ancestors.

When the purpose of history changes from knowledge of the past to political power in the present and future, historians become mere propagandists. Academics who succumb to the sugar rush of activism lose their sense of balance. Meanwhile, the AHA’s annual reports show that undergraduates and graduates are voting with their enrollments, with a related decline in job opportunities for holders of new doctorates. In 2016-17 alone, undergraduate enrollment fell by 7.7%. The number of new doctorates fell by about 15% between 2014 and 2019, and the number of job openings has halved since 2008. The latest AHA Jobs Report is a threnody of “program closures, enrollment declines, and faculty layoffs.” Signs of stabilization, it reckons, are a “false floor.” Why study history if all it equips you for is a nasty and crowded climb up the greasy pole of academic preferment? Much easier to pursue activism through the modish triad of sex, race and gender studies.

All of which tends to confirm Mr. Sweet’s observations about the perils of presentism and activism. Yes, history is always written backward, from present to past. And history’s present uses might include politics. But the task of a historian is to understand the strange past and show how it shapes the familiar present. If we succumb to what the English historian E.P. Thompson called “the enormous condescension of posterity,” then we lose the ability to imagine how people lived in any era before our own. We lose difference and complexity. We lose the perspective that history is supposed to impart and with it any sense of progress. Dictators are presentists, too.

Mr. Green is a Journal contributor and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
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Biden Vote Bribe: Squeezing Chumbolone Nation Workers to Subsidize Elite College Grads
By John Kass


When Democrat President Joe Biden was starting out in politics, how did Democrat Bosses buy votes just before the election?

They’d have trucks pull up outside their political offices. And their political workers would toss out the turkeys and hams and booze to the crowds.  Who paid? Shopkeepers who “donated” all those turkeys and hams.  They didn’t dare complain. They just shut up and took it.

And now that Biden is the boss–or at least the doddering front man for the Obama Biden 2.0 regime– the “Big Guy” is still buying votes, with mid-term elections just weeks away.

Yet Biden’s fingers don’t smell like poultry or ham from throwing turkeys and hams out from the back of a truck to buy voters before Election Day. He’s got a phone and a pen to unfairly take your money to buy Democrat votes before the November mid-term elections. What is this?

It’s a bribe.

Biden has bypassed Congress to use dubious executive powers to order a massive (and unprecedented) $300 billion to $900 billion transfer of wealth, taken from the working and middle classes and giving to the college educated to subsidize those college tuition loans.

But Biden’s shakedown is unconstitutional and politically dangerous. It is inherently unfair, because those who didn’t attend college, those who didn’t sign those college loan agreements, are still the ones who’ll pay for it. That’s how Ivy League lawyers and budding power players in Washington get their tuition breaks, thanks to Joe Biden and the Democrats.

And who pays? The plumbers and electricians pay. The truck drivers, motel maids, and others who never went to college. And those who went to college yet paid their own way, and spent years after college, eating Ramen noodles and working two jobs to scrape by and pay their debts and the bills.

I think of the young people who struggled and economized and paid their debts and college loans. It wasn’t easy, but they had an obligation. They signed their names. They paid.

And think of the parents who scrimped and saved so their children  wouldn’t be saddled with debt. Of that dad who didn’t fix the holes in his shoes until the spring rains came, and the mom who didn’t buy new clothes for herself. The couple who drove that clunky old car, and didn’t take vacations. Some ate beans rather than fine steak. Why? Because they loved beans? No. It was because those college bills were coming.

You know the people I’m talking about. People like you and me. What do you call such people? You could call us suckers, but now that Biden is playing old timey boss and godfather, he’s christened us anew.

We are the Chumbolones.

Because if you sacrificed to pay your college debts, you’re a chumbolone, which is Chicago Chinatown wise guy slang meaning “stupid, idiot, or fool.” It is pronounced this way: Chum-buh-LOAN.

Thanks to Joe Biden, we are a Chumbolone Nation now.

Yet if you dare publicly mention that the beneficiaries are the elites (think of Biden White House staffers) and those who are stuck playing are the working classes (think of motel housekeepers) here’s what happens: You’ll feel the wrath of the leftist Twitter fever swamp.

And corporate media that has been protecting Biden since before they suppressed news of that Hunter Biden Laptop from ell will also strike back:

“The GOP Throws A Hysterical Shit Fit Over Biden’s Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Targeted at The Middle Class,” shrieked a headline in “Vanity Fair.”

“Shit Fit?” is that the name of Biden’ White House adviser Susan Rice’s garage band that sang those songs of unity on Biden’s Inauguration Day?

You get the message? In case you missed it, here it is: Shut up and Take It, Chumbolones.

Philip Wegmann nails the elite beneficiary angle in Real Clear Politics .

“There is more outstanding student debt in Washington than in any other city in the country,” Wegmann writes.

“The average debtor in D.C., according to a 2021 breakdown by the small business analyst, AdvisorSmith, owes $52,982 in unpaid student loans. This includes many political staffers at the Department of Education, senior advisors as well as junior aides who moved to that agency from the Biden campaign.”

And the White House.

But only about a third of Americans get a college degree. And those who pressed on seeking dubious degrees, signing their names on loans for a degree in Ancient Greek Mythology, Gender Studies, White Fragility or the Origin of Indo-European Languages and the like found that jobs are few. But they get a break.

You know who doesn’t get a break?

The young person you may know who went into debt to purchase a pickup truck to start a landscaping or other business. The plumber, the electrician, the house painter who didn’t didn’t go to college, didn’t put themselves into debt. Under Biden’s vote buying scheme, they’re still forced to pay off college tuitions of White House staff? What’s fair about that?

Nothing. The socialists are for it. They want to call themselves “progressives,” but that’s a lie. They’re socialists.

If you read their whiny Jacobin nonsense or hear their wailing on cable news you know this. They constantly portray themselves as morally superior to those deplorables with calluses on their hands. And now that Biden reaches into those deplorable jeans to take the bribe money, the young socialists lunge are ecstatic and protect their treats.

They’re exactly like the those old time Democratic voters in Chicago or Baltimore, or Tammany New York lunging and jabbering excitedly over all those “free” pre-election turkeys and hams.

This may be one government giveaway that will bounce back and bite. Why? Because it is clearly unfair and American mythology depicts us–despite our differences–as a people who prize fair play above greasy political clout.

And what’s fair about the college tuition of an entitled White House staffer or a pouting CNN anchor being subsidized by a motel housekeeper, or a truck driver or anyone else?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has been singing that socialist song of “free” college for years. During the last presidential campaign, out in Iowa, she was approached by a voter, a hard-working dad who sacrificed and paid his daughter’s college tuition so she wouldn’t have debt.

“I just want to ask one question,” said the man to Sen. Warren. “My daughter is getting out of school. I’ve saved all my money. She doesn’t have any student loans. Am I going to get my money back?

Warren was shocked.

“Of course not,” said Warren.

The father was outraged.

“So, you’re going to pay for people who didn’t save any money, and those of us who did the right thing get screwed?’ he said, his voice rising. He adds, “You’re laughing at me.”

They’re still laughing.

If you played by the rules, if you followed the law, if you paid your bills, they’re laughing at you. Those with political clout who use your money for their benefit are always laughing at you.

 We’re the fools of Chumbolone Nation. And they slap us in the mouth, telling us to shut up and take it.

But Nov. 8, is Election Day, which is 72 days from this Sunday.

And all the powers of the regime, and their allies in corrupt corporate media and Big Tech are focused on one thing: distracting and confusing Chumbolone Nation  before the mid-term elections.

Will the people continue to doff their caps to the lords of the regime, and kneel, and shut up and take it?

Or will they remember who they are, that they’re Americans, and refuse to play the Chumbolone?

It’s not up to me. It’s up to you.

It’s your country.
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Saturday, August 27, 2022

Biden, The Amoral President. Liberals Vs. Conservatives. More.

This utterly amoral administration floods our republic with  illegal immigrants who have no protection from COVID but bars a talented athlete because he refuses to get a vaccination:
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                                                        https://fb.watch/fcQnWd2lJP/
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I am no psychologist but I believe liberals are generally miserable because nothing suits them. They always can find fault with everything and need to improve even if it works.  Meanwhile, their solutions generally make matters worse. They also love sticking their nose in the business of others because they are constantly unhappy with status quo.  Finally, they tend to be more emotional and fall into the trap of being haters.
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Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals?
By Ross Pomeroy

It may be one of the most surefire findings in all of social psychology, repeatedly replicated over almost five decades of study: American conservatives say they are much happier than American liberals. They also report greater meaning and purpose in their lives, and higher overall life satisfaction. These links are so solidly evidenced that, for the most part, modern social scientists simply try to explain them. They've put forth numerous possible explanations.

There are a couple clear contributors to point out first. Marriage tends to make people happier, and conservatives are more likely to be married. Religious belief is also linked to happiness, and conservatives tend to be more religious.

But these explanations don't account for the entire gap, which equates to about a half-point on a four-point scale, a sizable happiness divide.

Social psychologist Jaime Napier, Program Head of Psychology at NYU-Abu Dhabi has conducted research suggesting that views about inequality play a role.

"One of the biggest correlates with happiness in our surveys was the belief of a meritocracy, which is the belief that anybody who works hard can make it," she told PBS. "That was the biggest predictor of happiness. That was also one of the biggest predictors of political ideology. So, the conservatives were much higher on these meritocratic beliefs than liberals were."

To paraphrase, conservatives are less concerned with equality of outcomes and more with equality of opportunity. While American liberals are depressed by inequalities in society, conservatives are okay with them provided that everyone has roughly the same opportunities to succeed. The latter is a more rosy and empowering view than the deterministic former.

Two other studies explored a more surprising contributor: neuroticism, typically defined as "a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings." Surveyed conservatives consistently score lower in neuroticism than surveyed liberals.

In 2011, psychologists at the University of Florida and the University of Toronto conducted four studies, aiming to find whether conservatives are more "positively adjusted" than liberals.

They found that conservatives "expressed greater personal agency, more positive outlook, more transcendent moral beliefs, and a generalized belief in fairness" compared to liberals.

They added:

"The portrait of conservatives that emerges is different from the view that conservatives are generally fearful, low in self-esteem, and rationalize away social inequality. Conservatives are more satisfied with their lives, in general... report better mental health and fewer mental and emotional problems (all after controlling for age, sex, income, and education), and view social justice in ways that are consistent with binding moral foundations, such as by emphasizing personal agency and equity. Liberals have become less happy over the last several decades, but this decline is associated with increasingly secular attitudes and actions."

There have been a few studies that attempted to rain on conservatives' happiness parade. In one, scientists proposed that conservatives might simply be more inclined to provide socially desirable answers to surveys than liberals. Society expects you to be happy, and so conservatives say that they are. In another, researchers found that while conservatives certainly report being more happy than liberals, liberals tend to display more signs of happiness, as evidenced by uploading more smiling photographs on Linkedin and posting more positive tweets on Twitter. So maybe conservatives just think they're happier, or judge happiness differently?

Regardless, the gap remains. So if you need some cheering up, maybe turn to a conservative friend rather than a liberal one.

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My point:  https://thefederalist.com/2022/08/26/yes-bidens-student-loan-forgiveness-is-also-immoral/
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A repeat posting:

And.

Lessons From Biden's Reckless Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Plan

By Josh Hammer

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I was wrong about Trump
 
By M.B. Mathews

I recently wrote a column about why I believed Trump should not run in 2024. I was wrong. I allowed my distaste for Trump’s personality to override his virtues, which are considerable. Some people want Trump without his vices. I was among them -- until yesterday, when I watched and listened to Tom Klingenstein’s speech titled “Trump’s virtues.”  It was masterful and shamed me that I did not make the distinction between Trump's character and his virtues, the former being deeply flawed, the latter being almost perfect. I need to man up in my defense of the former President's virtues. The speech was among the most pointed I have heard and deserves some exposure. Klingenstein says:

Other Republicans say some version of “I like Trump policies but I don’t like the rest of him.” This gets it almost backwards. Although Trump advanced many important policies, it is the 'rest of him' that contains the virtue that inspires the movement… Trump was born for the current crisis, a life and death struggle against a totalitarian enemy I call woke communism... that control all the cultural and economic powers in America…  

[Trump] revealed, not caused, the divide in this country. In war, you must make a stand… Trump is a manly man...

Traditional manhood, even when flawed, is absolutely essential… Trump plays to win... There are no clean hands in a fistfight…Trump is unreservedly, unquestionably pro-America… Trump is a refreshing break from the guilt and self-loathing that marks our age…

It is anti-Americanism that makes so many of us very angry: The Left have trashed America's Founding and her history to the point where some believe it virtuous to hate America. Rather than advocating forgiveness for sins, the Left are advocating hair shirts, self-flagellation, and perpetual guilt. It is un-American and certainly un-Christian.
Trump thinks we can vanquish all comers if we just put our minds to it, and he's right… Courage never demands perfection… Trump over and over said exactly what political correctness prohibits one from saying... Trump said Haiti is a shithole and that representative Maxine Waters has a low IQ. These were not racist lies. They were uncouth, politically incorrect observations that most of us would agree with but would not dare say.


In 2016, we loved Trump for his outspokenness. But many seem to have changed their minds without cause; Trump is the same today as he was before he was elected. The very things we disdain today are the things that made him the man for our time.

From morning to night, we were told that Trump is a racist. But endless repetition does not make it true. It isn’t. Trump’s contempt for political correctness showed patriotic Americans that its ever-tightening grip could be loosened... It is difficult to overestimate the significance of Trump’s fight against political correctness, a fight which most Republicans are reluctant to engage… Trump treated the woke media with the same contempt he treated political correctness, provoking their outrage and revealing their utter corruption... it must be defeated.

I take back my unwillingness to engage Trump on his own terms. It is the Left, not we, who are politically correct. They are the ones restricting speech, cancelling and censoring, not we on the Right.

Unlike most politicians, when Trump sees a problem, he goes out and fixes it. He fixed our porous borders. He moved our Israeli embassy to Jerusalem after decades of inaction. He eliminated hate-America critical race theory in his administrative agency. He developed a vaccine in record time. He achieved energy independence and much, much more.

His accomplishments far outweigh his personality quirks. No other president did so much in so little time.

Trump smoked rats out of hiding places. Because of Trump we know our intelligence agencies are corrupt. We know also that the mainstream media is not just biased, that it is the propaganda arm of the Democratic party.
 
Had it not been for the vehement and irrational hatred of Trump, we never would have discovered that our own security and intelligence structures are compromised. I blame #NeverTrumpers for corrupting these Agencies. This unprecedented breach of the very security of this nation is unprecedented and deeply dangerous, leaving us open to the espionage of courtesans who prey on politicians who think with their private parts.

A large part of Trump’s appeal was that he was a bona fide outsider. He distrusted the experts who believe they knew better than the average American how to run the country. This distrust was appealing to Trump’s base who believed, and with good reason, that is the experts who created the despotic mess in which we find ourselves.

We always knew but never had anyone champion that we, not the Swamp, knew better how to manage our money, our time, our personal lives, our resources and our families. In their authoritarian mindsets, the Left wanted to take over all these very personal, uniquely American functions and replace it with governmental overreach. They nearly got their wish, had it not been for COVID's home zoom classes where we found out that very young children are being sexualized, perverted, deliberately alienated from their parents and taught to hate America and white people.

…They know that Republicans will lose all further elections until they get to the bottom of the last one.

This most sensitive area of politics is a disaster. I believe the election was stolen and millions of others do. We now have evidence from many quarters that this is so. It cannot be permitted a repeat or there will be severe repercussions that will dwarf the current ones.

Some will say that Trump is a bad man and that disqualifies him. I do not think Trump is a bad man, but for those who do I remind them that a bad man in some circumstances can be a good president. If you’re dying of thirst and there is only one person offering you water, you accept the water gratefully without much concern for the character of your rescuer.

We wanted Trump not only to fix things; we wanted him to be perfect while doing it. That is unrealistic in the average family, the average relationship, the average business and the average political or cultural milieu. Yet some of us wanted Trump to be perfect enough to invite to tea. He is not that man. But he is the man for our tumultuous times.

This enumeration of Trump’s virtues does not fully capture his uncommon courage and firmness of purpose. Trump is the most towering political figure in living memory… Trump inspired a movement. If properly deployed this movement might challenge the woke-comms, and God willing, save the country.

These very things are what the Left hate, yet it is not their favor we need to care about. They will not embrace anyone on the Republican ticket and certainly not one they cannot bully. We need to stop worrying about acceptance of our candidates by the Left or they will have won.

Republicans, however, should not forget that it is his support and the spirit they embrace that have become the life force of the Republican party. Among the talked-about alternatives to Trump I have not yet seen anyone who possesses or even understands Trump’s virtues. Nor have I seen anyone with his backbone and fortitude. One does not appreciate the strength of relentless gale-force winds until one is in the eye of the storm.

…which is exactly where Trump and we are at this moment. We have to prepare for the gale-force winds we will encounter. To not do this is to ignore the lessons of the recent past and it will be forever to our sorrow to ignore them.

His virtue must be the standard by which we judge other candidates.

Amen and amen. We don't have to like his personality but his virtues far outweigh it. I humbly stand corrected and offer my mea culpa.
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Forever is a long time.
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.The West loses the Middle East and Africa forever -
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HOOVER WEEKEND:
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A Stable Constitution for Unstable Times
By Richard Epstein via Defining Ideas

Richard Epstein writes that the only way to achieve a sound constitutional design for a government is to entrench permanent rules that will prevent degenerative outcomes. These rules, he explains, should be based not on short-term considerations but on permanent features of human conduct—such as self-interest and scarcity. He argues that a solid constitution, such as what was born in America in 1787, must guard against the abuse of force, the confiscation of property, the suppression of political speech, and the specter of kangaroo courts. To ensure justice and to function properly, the constitution should have procedural hurdles, such as the separation of powers and checks and balances that can prevent transient political majorities from wreaking havoc on democratic institutions and that can slow down the rate of legislation so that good statutes with broad political support are more likely to be passed. The federal structure of the US constitutional system, and the diffusion of jurisdiction, enables states to compete and cooperate with one another and create and preserve open national markets. Finally, Epstein explains that another feature of a sound constitution is the substantial rights it provides to private individuals, such as those over property, contracts, speech, and religion, which act as counterweights to political powers.
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Adams must be jealous of Chicago's mayor.
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Dozens shot, several killed in violent weekend across New York City
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- More than a dozen people were shot, several fatally, in nearly a dozen incidents across New York City over the weekend.

The latest incident of gun violence happened Sunday afternoon, just after 1:30 p.m. in Brooklyn.

A man and woman were both shot in the arm at 5721 Avenue H. Both were taken to the hospital and are expected to survive.

Earlier Sunday, around 5:15 a.m. at 275 Liberty Avenue in Brooklyn, a 44-year-old woman was found shot in the head.

She was taken to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

It came just hours after a shooting at the boardwalk in Coney Island, where one person was killed, and four others were injured. Police are searching for the gunman.

The 42-year-old who died was shot in the back and the others were shot in the leg.

Also in Brooklyn, a man was shot multiple times in the chest while inside the lobby of an apartment building on Wortman Avenue in East New York just before 8 p.m. on Saturday.

Police say the victim 51-year-old victim was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center, where he was later pronounced dead.

Meanwhile in the Bronx, three people were killed and several others were shot in the span of 24 hours.

Despite the number of shootings over the weekend, incidents still appear to be down 11.1% from this point last year, and shooting victims are down 10.9%.

That's not good enough for Barkim Robinson, an activist with Operation Hood.

"We need a lot more attention to these guns, because if the guns are not here, we will have less crime," Robinson said.

It's also hardly a comfort for New York City residents, who wonder when it will be safe to go outside.

"What are we supposed to do? Come in and close our doors and pull the covers over our heads?" said Brazil Serrano.

"I can't go outside without feeling unsafe, because of all the shootings happening lately. So it's scary," said 15-year-old Klayani Mollette.
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And why not? Israel's left leadership are ready to expose the nation to an existential threat that could /should be avoided at all costs.
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Jewish Israeli Voters Have Moved Significantly Rightward in Recent Years, Data Shows – ISRAPU
By Carrie Keller-Lynn

(ISRAPUNDIT) Israel’s right-wing Jewish voter base has grown from 46% before the April 2019 election to 62% now, ahead of November’s vote, according to an analysis of self-reported political affiliation by the Israel Democracy Institute.

The growth has been mostly at the expense of the political center, although the left has also taken a dip.

From 2019 to 2022, with four elections having taken place and a fifth scheduled, the size of the political center dropped by nine percentage points and the number of left-identifying citizens by six points, to 24% and 11%, respectively.

Analyzed by Or Anabi, the IDI survey has for years asked Israelis of voting age where they place themselves on the political spectrum, based on a 1 to 7 scale from far-left to far-right. Answers of 1 to 3 are classified as left-wing, 4 as centrist, and 5 to 7 as right-wing.

In 1986, when the survey was first conducted, 39% of Israeli Jewish voters defined themselves as right-wing, 25% as centrist and 23% as left-wing. In the survey for 1995, the year in which prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, 36% defined themselves as left-wing, 29% as right-wing, and 28% as centrist. Anabi said the 1995 survey was taken shortly after the assassination, and marked the only year since 1986 when the left outscored the right.

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BY having their own nation, Jews were able to throw off some of the various prejudices, ie. they could not farm, they were weak, etc.

Today Israeli's can claim they are making the desert blossom they are strong and looked up to by their Arab neighbors, they have proved their ability to be technologically creative etc,. They are making significant contributions to improving world health and other various living conditions.
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In a world before the internet, social media, or endless efforts to delegitimize Jewish nationhood and nationalism, Zionism was a beacon of light against the threat of hate and division that threatened the stability of Jewish life in Europe in the 1800s. One man is remembered for his courageous acts of diplomacy and leadership - Theodor Herzl, a young man whose vision has since become a reality in the thriving modern yet old state of our one and only Israel.

As leaders from around the world gathered this weekend in Basel, Switzerland, they represent the streams of commitment, passion and hope that have continued to thrive since the first Zionist Congress in that very space so many years ago. Our Israel Forever leaders were there representing the hopes of all our Virtual Citizens of Israel who believe that we share in the fate of this ancestral legacy.
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The Student Loan Forgiveness Scam

It’s hard to imagine how we could screw up higher education any more than we already have, but we just did. Find out how the recently announced student loan forgiveness plan hurts those who can least afford it.
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Interesting:

And:

  WHY PELOSI WENT TO TAIWAN AND RISKED WW3

We’ve learned a little more about Nancy Pelosi’s rogue trip to Taiwan last week, that caused so many people to be so impressed with her bravery and selflessness in “supporting” the people of Taiwan, only to walk it all back this week by publicly announcing she’s supporting the CCP.

Now remember, the military assets and security for that trip probably cost billions. Now add the risk of even accidentally starting World War III. It would be beyond shameful if the real reason she went was to tend to some private business, right?

Paul Pelosi, Jr., is Nancy Pelosi’s adult son. Paul is the second largest investor in a Chinese telecommunications company, Borqs Technologies. Paul earned his significant stake in the business — second only to Borqs’ CEO — through “consulting,” or by serving on the board — not by actually paying for any of the shares. Pay? Me? What nonsense.

Anyway, Paul Jr. CAME ON THE TRIP TO TAIWAN. 

Which was especially weird because Paul was missing from the official passenger manifest. People had to connect the dots by noticing Paul Jr. in the background of pictures from the trip:  When asked about it, Nancy explained that since her husband couldn’t go, her 53-year-old son escorted her instead, just to keep her company. Into a war zone. On official business.

The New York Post ran a story about the trip yesterday headlined, “Nancy Pelosi’s Son, Who Tagged Along on Taiwan Trip, Is Investor in Chinese Tech Firm: Report.”

Paul Jr. currently holds 700,000 shares of Borqs,* but he was given 1,000,000 shares for his “services.” He sold 300,000 shares at the company’s initial public offering at a starting price of $157 per share. In other words, he made $47 million dollars on the shares he never paid for, right out of the gate. Nice bonus

But what’s it got to do with Taiwan? First, Pelosi didn’t ONLY go to Taiwan. She made several stops in Asia. Second, since the pandemic, Paul Jr. has managed to land himself some more sweet board gigs, most recently with two lithium processors, for which he also got an ownership stake in each. Guess where they’re located? Yep, Taiwan.  Lithium is the essential ingredient in electric car batteries. You know, like the kind the new Build Back Better 2.0 bill subsidizes by +$7,500 per new electric car. People aren’t dumb. News of Paul Pelosi being in Taiwan with Nancy spiked the stock in both his lithium companies.

        Coincidence.......

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Worthwhile - Hoover Daily:

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The Hoover Institution Launches Special Podcast Series With Elections Expert Benjamin L. Ginsberg Focused On Restoring Faith In American Voting

via Hoover Daily Report

The Hoover Institution has launched Saints, Sinners, and Salvageables: Restoring America’s Faith in Voting, a special new podcast series with Benjamin L. Ginsberg, Hoover distinguished visiting fellow, preeminent election law expert, and nationally recognized attorney who has decades of experience representing presidential campaigns, including as counsel for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004 and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012.

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