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Biden is withholding weapons from Israel that were approved by an overwhelming congressional vote. Why isn’t this an impeachable offense?

It was rumored that Italy paid Muammar Gaddafi $2 billion a year to stop the migrants from reaching Italy. With Gaddafi now gone, the floodgates are open. I was wondering if the US could pay Obrador $2 billion to keep the illegals from entering Mexico. A good friend who knows these things said “No. The cartels would assassinate him immediately.” Then my friend said that he thinks that the Biden Administration has an agreement with the cartels to allow illegal entry into the United States.

No one has mentioned that the new EPA internal combustion engine restrictions will kill the RV industry. The battery banks required to electrify large class A buses will be too heavy and the pickup trucks would not be able to tow the larger fifth wheels. Yet from the RV industry comes only silence.

I am proud of my carbon footprint. I have a big SUV and a diesel pickup to tow my fifth wheel. I also have a Can Am Spyder and a Piaggio motorscooter. 

The positive sentiment of the public regarding the Viet Nam war waned over time with the mounting casualty lists and demonstrations. Will the same thing happen with Israel? Currently, the student demonstrations are having little impact on the public which overwhelmingly supports Israel. Maybe the public just considers them part of the kook fringe as spoiled, privileged, mostly white foul mouth rich kids.

Have you noticed that all the students interviewed and all the professors that are demonstrating are in the Arts and not the Sciences? It is though serious students in business, engineering and the sciences and their (non Muslim) professors are still trying to get an education.

When I attended my niece’s inauguration as president of Harvey Mudd College, the ceremony which was at neighboring Pomona College was delayed when a group lay in front of the auditorium and covered themselves with sheets. The police let the platform party and family into the back entrance and the other participants and attendees were taken to a site on the Mudd campus. Mudd is an engineering school and one of their professors told me that he doubted if any of the protestors were Mudd students. He said they were likely from one of the liberal arts schools because “Mudders were too serious to be engaged in such nonsense.”

If I were in university administration I would have told the students that they can protest but cannot disrupt the business of the university. No encampments. No threats to Jews and Jewish students. No hateful slogans espousing violence. Those who disobey will be expelled (not suspended) from the university. This close to the end of the semester and graduation an expulsion would have a deterring significant impact.

Remember how the media covered the right wing demonstration in Charlottesville? White nationalists, neo-Nazis, the KKK and the alt-right kooks showed up to protest the removal of a Robert E. Lee stature from a city park. The protest turned violent. Trump was president and said that “You had some very bad people in that group. You also had some very fine people on both sides.” The media went ballistic condemning Trump for not unilaterally condemning just those on the far right. Well Biden did much the same thing when he condemned antisemitism and islamophobia. No criticism from the media here. Talking about walking down the proverbial middle of the road.

Why isn’t it hate speech when student protestors say vile things about Jews? Students joined by outsiders are chanting the most vile slogans. Consider “From river to sea, Palestine will be free” advocates the eradication of Israel and the killing of 10 million Jews. How about “Globalize the intifada”? The last time this praised the suicide bombings of temples and Jewish businesses. “Death to Zionists” is hardly subtle. Neither is “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground”. Then there are chants at Jewish students of “Go back to Poland”, “Death to Zionists” and “Go back to Germany and get gassed.” I won’t list the obscene ones.

What about the university in Iran offering scholarships to students expelled by their American universities? I can just see the “Gays for Palestine” and the “Queers for Hamas” flocking to Iran and its warm embrace of the LGBTQ crowd.

My other half watches Fox News. I noticed that they have adopted the language of the left calling illegals “migrants.” On their website they are even capitalizing “B” in black. One wonders if their conservatism is just marketing.

The Republican AGs are the only line of defense against the tyranny of the Biden Administration. Several states have said that they are not adopting the Title IX mandates on transgenders. The EPA is being sued to block its carbon rules which go beyond its authority. There is a suit to block the rule on background checks at gun shows. A suit on the pausing of natural gas exports. The AGs have asked the EPA to stop using civil rights laws to investigate actions and policies in pursuing “environmental justice.” The AGs sued the Department of Agriculture over its LGBTQ guidance (the Department of Agriculture?). The AGs sued when Biden reinstated California’s emission standards. They sue when Biden stopped the Keystone pipeline. They are suing the Biden administration over its policies on school and workplace protections for transgender people alleging that the rules go well beyond the law. There are others as well. Again the question is what are the republicans in congress doing other than making fools of themselves with their endless bickering?

Thoughts on the Israeli-Hamas War

Harold A Black

Don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of Israel. I have never forgiven them for the bombing of the US Liberty and never will. The Israelis and their sycophants worldwide proselytize, cajole, bribe, manipulate, distort and influence politicians and the media. It is therefore interesting that the media has turned on Israel and are sympathetic to the pro Hamas crowd. It is always said that the United States is Israel’s closest ally. That may be true but it is clear that Israel does not return the favor. Israel is primarily focused on its own survival – a fact that I completely understand – and everything is predicated by that fact. I am not opposed to arms sales to Israel but I am opposed to giving them grants when they are perfectly capable of paying for the armaments themselves. I am not opposed to their extermination of Hamas – or Hezbollah – given their threat to the survival of the country. I do not know enough about how to conduct a war, much less urban warfare, to be critical of their tactics in Gaza. However, the mere fact that Israel was totally unprepared for the events of October 7 is a real puzzle. The Israelis have strict gun control laws. One would have expected that every household near their borders would be heavily armed. One would have thought that Israel’s border defenses would be stout and vigilant. One would have thought that there would have been a military presence at the music festival that was ravished by the Hamas raiders. Yet none of that is true. It is as though the Israelis were inviting an attack by Hamas, presumably to give them an excuse for going into Gaza to eradicate the threat. However, the counter to that is why would the citizens living near the border not insist on security 24/7? I have no answers.

Now Israel is poised to go into Rafah despite the warnings from Biden who looks weak by trying to placate both sides. But Israel must go into Rafah or else it would have lost the war, leaving intact the threat of Hamas. Although Hamas cannot be eradicated it can be reduced from a fighting force to a bunch of single suicide bombers. That is Israel’s goal. Some have said that if Israel attacks Rafah it will become a pariah nation. Whoopie. It would then join Russia, China, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Sudan, Afghanistan, Belarus, Myanmar and more than a few others with that label. 

Israel will only negotiate with Hamas and agree to a cease fire only if it is in Israel’s interests. To have a cease fire without the return of all the hostages would result in the removal of Netanyahu so that is off the table. I think that the reason Hamas has not agreed to release the hostages is that most of them have been killed. Once that is a known fact then all that has transpired will look like child’s play. I think that the gloves will come completely off and Israel will stop trying to somewhat placate its critics in minimizing civilian casualties. Some Israeli apologists have pointed out that the civilian to terrorist ratio is low compared to other conflicts. But how does anyone know given that the civilian casualty statistics come from Hamas?

I have little doubt that Israel will successfully degrade Hamas as an effective military and political force because the Israelis do not care to coddle the opinion of others. They will ignore Biden, the student protestors, the rising antisemitisms in the Western world and do what they think is best. What I think is interesting is that the Arab world seems to be sitting idly by and not coming to the aid of Hamas. Even Hamas’ main patron, Iran is doing nothing visible. Iran’s response to the Israeli assignation of its generals was feeble and impotent at best. Jordan partnered with Israel and the US in thwarting the Iranian missile attack. Egypt has continued to strengthen its border at Rafah to keep the Palestinians out. No Arab country has offered the Palestinians asylum – except of course the stupid Biden Administration. One would think that the Arabs have no love for Hamas and the Palestinians. It appears that their only support manifests itself in the leftist “progressive” politicians, Muslim communities and the impotent protests of a small group spoiled, privileged children on college campuses. 

I was disappointed that Mike Johnson did not attach a southern border security package to the Ukraine funding bill. Given that the majority of both Houses favor funding Ukraine, I thought that such an attachment would win. However, I do not favor Johnson’s ouster. I know that my representative (whom I still like), Tim Burchett is among those who would vote to vacate. But I oppose such a move. Leading republicans today is akin to herding cats and I sympathize with anyone with the gumption to try.

I don’t understand, as I have previously suggested, why Johnson doesn’t have the republicans to enact a simple change in their rules: namely that any motion to vacate must be accompanied by a nominee for speaker. That would end nonsense like Marjorie Taylor Greene’s threats.

Personally, I don’t know why we fund Israel. It is a developed country with a strong economy and actually has a budget surplus. Are the funds grants or loans? I am not opposed to our selling them armaments but I question why we have to give them funds when they have the ability to pay. 

As to Ukraine, it is a European problem and the Europeans need to shoulder most of the load. I understand our commitment to NATO but Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Besides, the EU is a much larger economic entity than Russia so I don’t understand why we get blamed for not supplying the Ukrainians. Why not have the EU purchase the military hardware from us and gift it to the Ukrainians?

I had the worse turkey season ever. Not only were there no gobbles – so I could not locate the birds, I could find no signs on the 70 acres that I hunt in Georgia despite being overrun by turkeys during deer season. Still it was great being back in the woods.

Biden is panderer in chief. He is trying to cancel student loan debt to bribe former students to vote for him. His crushing green agenda is for the greenie weenie vote. He has decided to delay the proposed ban on menthol cigarettes to avoid alienating black smokers. He is trying to walk the Israeli-Hamas war down the middle of the road by criticizing Israeli military tactics while endorsing additional funding for the Israelis. He has become rabidly pro-abortion to keep the women’s vote. But despite all of this, Biden still has the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent president and is running behind Donald Trump.

Speaking of Trump, I once thought that all the indictments were aimed at getting Trump nominated. The democrats thought that the indictments would galvanize the right wing of the republican party around Trump and intimidate the rest into supporting the former president, thinking that Trump was the only republican that Biden could beat. That strategy worked. However, Biden is such a disaster that he has made Trump look good. Now I think the strategy is to bankrupt Trump and to keep him off the campaign trail by tying him up in courtrooms. I think most everyone knows that Trump cannot get a “fair” trial anywhere in the country and that he will lose in New York, Atlanta, and DC even though all the cases against him are a joke. However, he will be forced to spend millions defending himself and will have to expend additional millions upon appeal. I think that each conviction will be overturned on appeal. But the fact that all this is occurring during a presidential campaign cements the Biden and his surrogates as turning the country into a banana republic (without the bananas). 

California has raised its minimum wage to $20 and hour. I am assuming that there might also be benefits with the job meaning that the realized wage is even higher. Not surprisingly, businesses are raising prices with the cost of a Happy Meal now creating frowns. Businesses are also laying off workers. Many small businesses will fail, creating more unemployment in the state that has the highest unemployment rate. I know that California has lost over a million residents but why the remainder put up with this nonsense is beyond me.

I love living in Knoxville. I was going past a local school when I saw young people with signs. I thought “you mean there is a pro-Hamas demonstration in Knoxville?” The signs said “Want swimming lessons?”

AMA: Straight white Christian male doctors are responsible for inequities in health outcomes. Who knew?

Remember Rocky and His Friends when Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale were turning smart people into idiots by spraying them with goof gas? Well it is obvious that the American Medical Association is one of their victims. How else to explain their stances on social issues? Like many universities and other institutions infected by wokeness, the AMA has produced a guide in which they try to change standard language into woke speak. George Orwell would be proud. The “Advancing Health Equity: A Guide to Language, Narrative and Concepts” should be an embarrassment to all physicians. The guide juxtaposes conventional statements to revised ones. Consider “Native Americans have the highest mortality rates in the United States.” The revision is “Dispossessed by the government of their land and culture, Native Americans have the highest mortality rates in the United States.” Really? Is the “dispossession” of land responsible for mortality rates? Then I guess all those who have their land grabbed by the government under eminent domain must also have higher mortality rates. Or how about “Low income people have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States”? The revision is “People underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies, real estate developers gentrifying neighborhoods and corporations weaking the power of labor movements, among others, have the highest level of coronary artery disease in the United States.” Who wrote this stuff Saul Alinsky? Consider the assertion that health equity is impossible unless there is “explicit recognition and reconciliation of our country’s twin, fundamental injustices of genocide and forced labor.” In the AMA’s own words: “The dominant narratives in American medicine and society reflect the values and interests of the historically more privileged socioeconomic groups—white, heterosexual, able-bodied, cisgendered, male, wealthy, English-speaking, Christian, U.S.-born.” Egads! I guess I should find a queer, nonbinary, poor, non-English speaking crippled, Third World heathen doctor! Understand that the ones who are condemning the above are most likely white males damning themselves. Being an empiricist, I want the AMA to produce evidence that a change in language positively affects medical outcomes. It’s a pretty safe bet that no such evidence exists. Moreover telling the majority of doctors that they are racists and are not colorblind in their practice of medicine does not engender better medicine.

The wokeness of the AMA has spilled down to our medical schools which now ask applicants about their views on racism, diversity, equity, inclusion, sexual orientation and gender identity. I bet that 100 percent of the applicants lie. Not only is wokeness on the application but has also been incorporated into medical education. The AMA says that “we believe this topic deserves just as much attention from learners and educators at every stage of their careers as the latest scientific breakthroughs.” Huh? Boris Badenov strikes again! There have been virtually no studies that have shown that teaching of Critical Race Theory and the woke glossary have produced better outcomes. Rather the research shows that instead of enlightenment, such teaching builds resentment and racial/class strife. I guess toney educations don’t prevent one from being a fool.

Next there is the AMA’s position on transgenders and transgender “care”.  The AMA vigorously supports the use of one’s chosen pronouns and has filed several amici briefs in cases where such pronoun use has been at issue. The AMA is all in stating “Gender-affirming care is medically-necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.” Excuse me? The evidence is to the contrary. Several European countries recognize that gender dysphoria by the young is often the product of mental strife and that most grow out of it. They urge caution in performing surgeries such as the removal of breasts and castration. A recent study in Great Britain showed that the country’s national health service was “failing thousands of children, and prescribing puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones despite “remarkably weak evidence”. 

The British study is a rebuke of the gender-industrial complex. Recall that Vanderbilt University was revealed as one that performed these surgeries and that they were highly profitable – never mind the harm they were inflicting on the children. There has got to be a special place in Hell for the doctors who perform these surgeries. 

Excuse me but are these your bullets? 

An American tourist is being held in jail in the Turks and Caicos because their equivalent of TSA found four hunting cartridges in his bag. He faces up to 12 years in prison. He admitted that the cartridges were his and were from a previous hunting trip. One wonders how our TSA could have missed the cartridges. However, they did and the unfortunate tourist, rather than being faced with a fine, is in prison.

The incident brought back memories of something similar that happened to me on one of my bow hunting trips to South Africa. I landed in Johannesburg and went from the international terminal to the domestic terminal to catch my flight to Polokwane. Going through their security I was summoned to come look at the x-ray of my carryon which showed a rifle cartridge. The agent asked if he could open the bag. I said yes. From it he pulled out a .375 H&H. I told him that I was going bow hunting and did not own a rifle with that cartridge. The H&H is a big bore cartridge used for large game such as rhinos and elephants. The agent didn’t care. He said “it is in your bag so it is yours”. He said he was going to have to call the airport police who would take me to their office for questioning. That would mean that I would miss my flight. The hunt was three hours from Polokwane and the outfitter would be on his way to pick me up and due to the lack of cell phone service could not be contacted. I then asked if there was anything I could do in order to make my flight. The agent then said “walk with me.” He grabbed my bag and walking to the gate said that his friends were “very thirsty.” I took out a $100 bill and asked if he could use this to buy them a Coca-Cola. He held out his hand. I let him palm the money. He gave me my bag and said “Welcome to South Africa.” What he meant of course was “Welcome to South Africa, sucker.” I made my flight. When I told the outfitter what had happened, he said that it was a common scam played on hunters at the airport. I naively thought that when I went to South Africa that I would be greeted as a long lost brother. Silly me. I was just another easy mark.

Another incident occurred on a bear hunting trip to Canada. Although hunting is a major source of revenue, the Canadian custom agents act as though they do not like hunters. We are usually the last allowed to go through customs and are often harassed. On one trip to Alberta, the customs agent pulled a can of bear spray from my bag and informed me that it was considered a “projectile” and not allowed to be brought into the country. I showed him a list of items that the outfitter had suggested I bring with me. One of the items was “bear spray.” I then asked the agent if I could buy bear spray outside the airport. He said yes and that it was available in most every store in the province. He was going to confiscate my spray and because of the letter from the outfitter he was not going to fine me. Instead, he was going to make a record of my transgression and allow me to enter the country. As I was leaving he said “Have a good hunt.”

I posted a note on Congress failing to check the power of the executive. I mentioned that while our elected representatives in congress are fighting over trivial matters, they are failing to govern. In an earlier post I called them “gutless”. Meanwhile the republican AGs are suing the Biden Administration’s abuse of power.Here is the latest example on the absolutely insane mandates of the EPA.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/25-states-hit-biden-admin-legal-challenge-climate-crackdown-gas-cars

What checks and balances?

Harold A Black

When I was in school I was taught that the United States had a system of checks and balances where no one branch of the government could devolve into tyranny given the oversight of the other two branches. The three branches (for those who have been “educated” by our current system) are executive, legislative and judicial. Legislative is divided into the House of Representatives and the Senate who must pass identical bills that are signed by the president to become law. The president can veto the bills and it takes a two thirds vote in both houses of congress to override. The congress can pass a bill, the president can sign it but the courts can rule the bill unconstitutional preventing it from becoming law. Yet even the courts can be overridden by the legislature by passing a constitutional amendment that is approved by two thirds of the states.

In reality, we no longer have a system of checks and balances mainly because the legislators in the House and Senate have abdicated their responsibilities to the executive branch. The executive has usurped the power from the congress through the use of executive orders which do not require congressional approval. Presidents now typically ignore the congress when they feel that their wishes will not be put into law. Remember when faced with a republican congress, Obama famously said “I’ve got a pen”? He signed 277 executive orders. Bill Clinton signed 361 and Donald Trump signed 220. Biden has signed 130 thus far. In 2023 he signed 24 and his administrative state added 90,402 pages to the Federal Register. When Biden first took office, there were a flurry of executive orders as he sought to eradicate the actions taken by Trump. There was the cancelation of the Keystone Pipeline, the stopping of the border wall, and the review of all Trump actions by department and agency heads. Biden then installed pro DEI and LBGTQ policies and aggressively issued rules on climate change including banning internal combustible engines and liquid natural gas. Remember mask wearing, mandatory COVID shots, the Paris Accord, Iran appeasement, immigration, student loan forgiveness and all the rest? But Trump does not get a pass. Remember the Muslim country ban, the shutting down of the economy (with the exception of big corporations) and the tariffs on our allies?

Congress cannot overturn an executive order but they can sue the government stating that the president has exceeded his authority. Please tell me if there are any suits filed by the congress. I can’t find any. However, the states have sued the government with mixed results. Recently a federal judge in Texas found that a rule issued by the Federal Highway Administration was “unauthorized”. The state of Texas brought the suit. The Kansas attorney general and 10 other republican AGs have sued to stop the Biden’s forgiveness of student loan debt. The private sector can sue as did the steel companies who sued when President Truman ordered the steel mills to be seized by the government during the Korean War. The Supreme Court ruled that Truman had overstepped his authority. I guess the automobile companies could sue the EPA mandate that will ultimately ban gas and diesel vehicles. But the auto actually favor the EPA rule because they can dramatically reduce the amount of labor needed to manufacture automobiles and trucks.

The republicans in congress have abdicated their responsibilities to govern and would rather fight amongst themselves rather than impede Biden’s actions. I believe earlier I called them “gutless”. Perhaps they are hoping that the republican governors and attorney generals will sue the government so that they can continue embarrassing themselves. I have a suggestion: why not unite against Biden’s efforts to radically change our institutions, his attempts to divide the races via Critical Race Theory and DEI, to radically shrink the American economy with his industrial policy, to flood the country with illegals, to allow males to compete in women’s sports and emasculating our military? I guess the congressional republicans are hoping that Trump is reelected so they won’t have to do anything useful. There is no doubt that Trump spend his first few days in office overturning Biden’s executive orders and having his appointees roll back the rules of the EPA and the other federal agencies. It seems that the only hope of slowing down the runaway train of climate hysteria and federal wokeness will be Donald Trump. Let’s hope that he is not so caught up in payback and retribution that he will forget to govern.

I like Victor Davis Hanson. I find the following troubling. All of it is true and we are aware of everything Hanson writes. Only we sort of let it sneak up on us. Much like the frog put in a cool pot of water that so slowing heats up that the frog is cooked before it realizes that it should have jumped out of the pot, we are being cooked slowly but surely. The question is whether we can reverse the process or we will continue down this road. Historically, countries swing from one side of the political spectrum to the other. Let us hope that it is not too late to swing back to the side of sanity.

Is The Great Illusion In Ruins?

/ April 8, 2024

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness

In 2021, Joe Biden was elected after a bitterly fought campaign that deposed the incumbent Donald Trump. Democrats eventually captured, for a time, both the House and Senate, ensuring the most left-wing government in modern American history.

Americans were then set to witness a great experiment. For the first time in their lives, a truly radical socialist program would supposedly fundamentally transform the way America dealt with the border, immigration, the economy, race relations, foreign policy, energy, law enforcement, crime, education, and social questions such as religion, gender, abortion, and schooling.

In a sense, we were all to be lab rats of sorts, to be experimented on by the radical left and their various critical theories. Now in the last year of the Biden term, we can see the results of that experiment—and the unfortunate disasters that followed.

But first, how was such a radical move to the left even possible in a center-right America?

The Democratic nominee, Biden, had earlier united the left, but only through a Faustian deal. The handlers of a nearly non compos mentis Biden had ushered all his 2020 primary rivals out of the primary races in unison.

But in exchange for their exits that ensured Biden the nomination, the left took over his general campaign—in which Biden was virtually relegated to his basement—and then set his agenda.

Who was running things?

The mysterious architects of White House ideology included, inter alia, the omnipresent, now-Washington-DC-dwelling Obamas, the old socialist gadfly Bernie Sanders, the fossilized tribunes of the black and Latino congressional caucuses, the DEI firebrand Squad, and the neo-socialist scold Elizabeth Warren.

As a result, for one of the few times in American history, the hard left now had undreamt of power. And it was enhanced by a chorus in our compliant media, academia, corporations, the administrative state, foundations, entertainment, and popular culture.

So we were all to embark on a great adventure led by the foot soldiers of DEI, the Chicken-Little green extremists, the critical race and critical legal theory crowd, the modern monetary theorists, the woke commissars, the transgendered zealots, Antifa, BLM, the hate-Israel lobby, and the Trump Derangement Syndrome media sorts.

Ostensibly, America was to be reset financially, economically, socially, culturally, militarily, and politically. The nation would be arbitrarily divided into oppressors and oppressed—with one caveat: hyper-rich, left-wing white architects had to be exempt from the damage inflicted on those they targeted. Thus, like Orwellian pigs who walked on their two hind legs, they were free to fly their private jets, get their kids into racially quota-bound Ivy League schools, burn lots of fossil fuels to heat and cool their massive homes, and be protected by their walls, security details, and zip codes from the crime wave they would soon unleash on others.

Now, as we enter the fourth year of the great experiment, America is $35 trillion in debt, borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. Home mortgages are at 7 percent. Key prices for food, insurance, rent, and fuels are 30-40 percent higher than when Biden entered office.

The nation has been humiliated and emasculated abroad. Racial relations are the worst in a half-century. The military is in virtual receivership. Biden is polling about 40 percent approval and is behind in key swing states in most of the 2024 polls.

As a result, the Biden administration is furiously trying to find a way to release more of its hated oil and natural gas on the world market. It stopped refilling the strategic petroleum reserve that it had earlier drained to lower gas prices before the 2022 midterms.

So it will quietly pump more oil and gas, appease Iran in fear of a war in the oil-producing Middle East, plead with the once “pariah” Saudis, and order the Ukrainians not to hit Russian oil installations—all to get more oil produced to lower November 2024 gas prices.

It will head nod to eliminating fossil fuels, mandating EVs, banning natural gas stoves, and subsidizing more inefficient wind and solar farms. But it now realizes that its green agenda on its watch will wreck the United States economy and throw the left out of power. So it pivots to an old-fashioned “Drill, World, Drill” mantra—at least until the election is over.

Biden fulfilled his agenda of getting 10 million illegal aliens into the United States by destroying the southern border. The point was to swarm America with poor, unaudited migrants, all in need of massive federal and state assistance, all supposedly now loyal to their entitlement benefactors. Who could stop them from voting as repayment to their enablers in the new age of 70 percent mail-in ballots, same-day registration, inadequate authentication and audit of ballots, third-party vote harvesting, ballot curing, and Zuckbucks pouring into key precincts to absorb the work of the registrars?

Most of the illegals went to Texas and Florida, key swing states that the left still thinks it can flip to blue status. Long term, the 10 million will recalibrate congressional districts to favor neo-socialist agendas. Short-term, millions of new arrivals unlawfully may still try to vote in 2024.

Any who object to or publicize this agenda will be dammed with boilerplate smears of “election deniers,” “voter suppressions,” “racists,” and “xenophobes,” Yet all that said, the administration is now desperately trying to distance itself from its greatest “new Democratic Majority” border success, given that public opinion abhors what Biden had done at the border to the country at large.

So it floated a phony “bipartisan border security” bill in hopes of luring naïve Republicans to support a stealth de facto amnesty agenda that would have still allowed 5,000 illegals in a day rather than the now customary 10-15,000. The hope was that when it failed (and the left knew it would), to blame Republicans for what the left had wrought.

Biden knows destroying the border will ruin America for generations to come, costing billions of dollars in subsidies and legal and policing costs to integrate the massive influx. So until the election, it is thrashing about, claiming that it never did such a thing at all. Its duplicity is again proof that the open borders agenda was hated by the public, a human catastrophe, and not sustainable before an impending election.

Biden’s foreign policy is also in ruins. Biden destroyed deterrence in an effort to beg, appease, and buy off America’s enemies to behave and not cause an election-losing war. But the more it fled from Afghanistan in humiliation, the more it appeased Russia as it massed on Ukraine’s border, the more it snored as a Chinese spy balloon traversed the United States, the more it put early holds on aid to Ukraine, the more it assured Putin a “minor” offensive into Ukraine would not elicit a US response, so all the more it convinced Putin that he could take Ukraine without an American pushback, the Chinese to threaten Taiwan, and Hamas to prepare for massacring Jews.

So here we are in Ukraine with nearly 800,000 dead, wounded, and missing Ukrainians and Russians. The administration has no clue how to stop the Verdun that its appeasement birthed. The entire therapeutic approach to foreign policy lies in ruins.

Ditto the Middle East. National security advisor Jack Sullivan’s “quiet” portfolio that he inherited from the Trump administration simply blew up. Biden is now scrambling to stop the Israeli response to the encircled Hamas remnants, trapped in their last redoubt in Rafah.

Biden is now replaying the 1950s CIA-stereotype of the “Ugly American,” as he does his best to overthrow the Netanyahu government, and to allow the trapped Hamas remnants to escape and claim they defeated the Zionist entity, despite butchering more Jews in a single day than any time since the Holocaust. No matte: the Biden administration is stealthily communicating with the Israeli opposition concerning the best joint strategies to force Netanyahu out. Mass protests in the streets of Tel Aviv attest to the success of destabilizing the current Israeli government.

Team Biden whispers to the media about slow-walking or stopping key arms shipments, abdicating America’s once protective role in the UN, or encouraging the “international community” to go after Netanyahu for “war crimes” for accidentally hitting a civilian team in Gaza. (By such logic, are Biden and Gen. Mark (“righteous strike”) Milley equally culpable for being in charge when a US strike in Kabul blew up 10 innocent civilians by similarly mistaken targeting?). Meanwhile, Biden keeps courting Muslim-American Michigan voters, who repay his appeasement with cries of “Death to Israel! Death to America!”.

The release of violent criminals and an uptick in property crimes, murders and assault follow a similar script. The Biden administration outsourced criminal justice to defund the police/critical legal theorists at the federal, state, and local levels. No bail arrests led to violent offenders released the next day. Thousands were let go from jails and prisons.

The word spread in the criminal community that in the new Biden years, there were no real consequences, no serious punishments for violent assault or major felonies.

So in 2021-2023, crime exploded. When it reached the point of making life unlivable in the major cities and began to max out, the administration declared “crime is declining”—in the same way that hyper-inflation supposedly did so on the economic front.

After spiking the prices of key food staples, insurance, fuel, and interest rates, such hikes could not go too much higher without destroying outright the American way of life. So as the rate of inflation slowed, Biden bragged about “lowering inflation”—but not the 30-40 percent higher food prices since his own inauguration.

The common denominator for these disasters is the embrace of left-wing “theory.”

Critical legal theory mandates that jurisprudence is a construct. Laws have no morality since they favor the powerful. The latter use “white privilege” arbitrarily to invent crimes and punishments to protect their own power hierarchies. All that nonsense has now led to a pre-civilizational free-for-all in our dirty, dangerous, and dysfunctional cities.

Modern monetary theory—printing lots of money to spread around to those who have none while diminishing the value of money of those who have it—only led to hyperinflation and high interest rates.

When DEI theories were unleashed on the military, potential recruits hesitated, and thousands quit. After Pentagon grandees virtue signaled their fear of “white rage” and “white privilege,” after DEI made promotions and assessments often contingent on race, gender, and sexual orientation, and after the new military was humiliated in Afghanistan, it found it could no longer deter the enemy, recruit sufficient soldiers, or win back the confidence of the American people.

In all these cases, the woke genie left the bottle—and won’t go back in. So it will be hard for the administration to assure a long-suffering public that things are just wonderful, much less to reverse these policies, if indeed they are reversible, before November.

Expect instead nonstop distraction as the left beats the January 6 horse to death, calls for abortion on demand, and waits for its underling judges, prosecutors, and juries to jail or bankrupt Trump and therefore do what balloting cannot.

In other words, the long-awaited Great Fundamental Transformation finally got its moment, crashed, and now has torched the nation—middle-class Americans most of all.

Harold A Black

haroldblackphd.com

April 15, 2024

I have written before that one of the motivations that the democrats have for open borders is to prevent losing congressional representation when citizens leave their “blue” states for “red” ones. Since the Census is used for congressional representation purposes (and federal funding) the dems adamantly have opposed the census asking citizenship. Tennessee senator Bill Hagerty has led the charge on the senate side and Clay Higgins of Louisiana has spelled out the details on the House side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_1CpRfh_zE

Now a congressional committee has forwarded a bill with 100 co-sponsors that requires a citizenship question on the census. Chuck Edwards, R-N.C., and Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, introduced the bill in the House and Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., introduced the bill in the Senate. Of course every democrat on the committee voted against it and it likely will not even be brought up for discussion in the senate. But the democrats are no longer denying the fact, One member from New York actually said “I need more people in my district just for redistricting purposes.” https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/04/12/this-bill-would-prevent-illegal-immigrants-from-swaying-congressional-representation/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell

This is important stuff. As Higgins said in his speech in the House, the amount of illegals in the country equals 60 congressional districts. Mind you that these cannot be new districts because the number in the congress is set at 435 (of course the congress can change this number and I am surprised that the democrats haven’t tried). If citizens are fleeing the democrat run states and cities, then congressional seats will shift as well unless offset by illegal inflow. Note that in the last census, some democrat states did not lose as many seats as was forecast by their declining population. Also some republican run states did not gain as many seats. No one asked at the time if this was due to the influx of illegals to “sanctuary” cities and states.

Recall that Donald Trump as president called for a citizenship question on the census and was promptly labelled a racist. His commerce secretary Wilbur Ware was to comply but was stopped by democrat litigation. That litigation went to the Supreme Court where the then court’s four liberals were joined by John Roberts to stop the citizenship question from appearing. With today’s makeup of the Court, perhaps the question could be added even if Roberts joins the remaining liberals if Trump regains the White House.

Knoxville Focus

April 15, 2024

Knoxfocus.com

Happy Tax Day

I have long advocated for no mandatory withholding. Withholding should be optional. If people opted to pay all their federal income taxes on April 15 there would be a lot more pressure on our national politicians to reduce spending. Federal spending is out of control. It doesn’t really matter what party is in power, federal spending continues to grow. Once spending increased during economic downturns and decreased during periods of prosperity. No longer. Spending is completely independent from the nation’s economic health. Federal spending as a percent of GDP is steadily increasing. While on average it has been around 19% the budget submitted to the congress by Biden is a jaw-dropping 24%. While the percent of federal taxes to GDP has been around 17 percent, it is over 19 percent in the Biden budget guaranteeing a larger deficit. Biden ‘s claim in his State of the Union address “We’ve already cut the federal deficit by over $1 trillion” has to be given 10 Pinocchios. Biden did nothing to reduce the deficit. It declined due to the high levels of federal spending during the pandemic. Federal debt keeps climbing and the deficit with it to the point where the interest paid by the government on the debt will soon eclipse the budget for the Pentagon. In fact the deficit is now 25% higher than when Biden took office.

There is no political will to reduce spending regardless of which party in in the White House and which party controls the congress. Even proposals to decrease the rate of increase in spending (mathematicians call this the second derivative) are greeting by howls of indignation in the congress and amongst the lobbyists for all the special interests feeding at the federal trough. Don’t get me wrong. We all belong to special interest groups and very few of us want to give up that subsidy from the feds.

Biden’s budget is a whopping $7.3 trillion wish list with little chance of passage in the House. However, don’t be surprised if a large portion of it does pass. The budget also calls for a $5 trillion tax increase over 10 years. The resulting taxes would be among the highest in the developed world with a top individual rate of 45.4%, a capital gains tax of 49.8% and a corporate rate of 32.2% (estimates from the Cato Institute). Biden claims that over 10 years the deficit will be $3 trillion less. This is not true. What he is assuming is that the sharp increases in taxes will not decrease federal revenue growth. However, there will be increased incentives to move corporate activity offshore to lower tax countries. There will be increased incentives by individuals to shelter income. Most economists would predict a slowdown in the rate of growth of federal tax receipts due to the increased tax burden resulting in a larger, not smaller, deficit. This has often been the case when taxes go up.

I have made several proposals to control federal spending – none of which have a snowball’s chance in Hades of being adopted. One is to limit federal spending to the historic level of 19% of the previous year’s GDP. This could only go up on a one year basis if the president declared an emergency and received a two thirds vote in congress. I would institute a flat tax at 20 percent of income with no exemptions. That also could only change with a declaration of emergency from the president and a two thirds vote in congress. 

I also know how to radically reduce federal spending while increasing the well-being of the poor. Generally, any proposal to reform welfare is met with howls of “You are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor!” Well currently, we spend $1.7 trillion on welfare programs. The poverty level for a family of four is $27,750. There are around 38 million poor in the United States. Thus, we spend $42,105 per poor person! I propose that we eliminate all welfare programs and administrators and simply give each poor person $10,000. A family of 4 would receive $40,000 with the amount decreasing for each additional child eliminating poverty in the United States. If every poor person received $10,000 the total expenditure would be $380 billion rather than the $1.7 trillion we currently spend. Voila! Federal spending is decreased by $700 billion! So Happy Tax Day.