Article by Myra Adams in Medium

Do Americans Want to Be United?

Checking out at the grocery store recently, I saw People magazine’s cover featuring Joe Biden and Kamala Harris with the headline “It’s Time for America to Unite.” And I thought to myself, “But do Americans want to be united?”

Sorry for the skepticism, but I had just come from lunch with a prominent Republican activist. We talked about the election and, coincidentally, I raised the issue of national unity under a new president. My friend emphatically said, “Republicans will never unite under Biden.”

I asked, “Who then?” He answered, “Trump in 2024.”

He may be right. Speaking as a longtime Republican, I believe the vast majority of Trump’s 73.5 million voters will not be supportive of the promise Biden made Nov. 7 during his first televised speech as president-elect: “I pledge to be a president who seeks not to divide, but unify. Who doesn’t see red states or blue states, but only sees the United States.”

Unfortunately, that sounds like political “kumbaya” suited for carving into a stone wall at Biden’s future presidential library.

Don’t get me wrong. I love this nation and, for its sake, I wish Godspeed to the 46th president, but also understand the mentality of my party. In today’s kill-or-be-killed mega-polarized political climate, Biden might as well be talking to a stone wall because to many partisans, “unity” means surrender. At the very least, it means compromise, and compromise leads to fear that what Republicans hold dear will be whittled away.

Conversely, many Democrats feel the same.

Simplified and in general, the red vs. blue divide is as follows:

Republican perspective:

They stand for all that is good in America: religious freedom, law and order, the sanctity of life, school choice, conservative judges, Mom, apple pie, guns, God, the flag, minimum government interference, and no masks. They believe Democrats stand for socialism, open borders, unlimited immigration, and transgender cultural decline.

Democrats’ perspective:

Republicans are white nationalists, afraid of losing power as the white population ages and shrinks in proportion to minorities. They believe Republicans want to turn back the clock to the 1950s when white men ruled; they are intolerable obstructionists to any progressive social views or movement that will better the nation. They are pro-coal, pro-oil, anti-anything that protects the environment. Republicans will blindly follow Trump off a cliff.

Democrats believe in economic equality for all, and that change must spring from the working class on up. Social justice and climate change must be among the highest priorities. Government spending solves most problems. They believe Democrats are the tolerant ones.

Substantiating this synopsis is a Pew Research Center statistical report headlined, “America is exceptional in the nature of its political divide.” Pew found that “both Trump and Biden supporters say that if the other wins, it would result in lasting harm to the country.”

Now irrelevant and long forgotten is President Ronald Reagan’s governing philosophy. In 1983, journalists accused him of “moving away from the policies and principles that got him elected.” Reagan replied, “I have always figured that a half a loaf is better than none, and I know that in the democratic process, you’re not going to always get everything you want.”

Ahh, ancient times. Today “all-or-none” is the preferred method guiding partisans’ democratic process. Half a loaf? Only if the loaf was made this morning in an “opportunity zone” at a non-union processing plant that grants workers time for prayer. (Or, from the other perspective, by workers who receive full health benefits, parental leave, and make at least $20 an hour.)

After talking with Trump voters, I can attest that there is no hope or desire for unity. This “stolen” election has brought only more anger and fear, motivating them to fight harder. As for Democrats, they want unity — but on their terms.

Therefore, where is there room for compromise? How can Biden pledge to be “a president who seeks not to divide” while governing a nation where fostering division is politically and financially profitable and ingrained as a way of life?

A subhead on that People magazine cover says, “The next president and his history-making Vice President promise healing — and get right to work. There is nothing we can’t do if we do it together.” But how is that possible when 52% of Republicans believe Trump “rightfully won” the election and 68% are concerned that the voting was “rigged,” according to a Reuters-Ipsos opinion poll released this week. A new Monmouth University poll found that 77% of Trump backers say Biden’s win was due to fraud.

Meanwhile, Trump has a supernatural, super-glue hold on his party. He will do everything in his power to keep power as he “rules” in exile from Mar-a-Lago. Although Trump won 47.2% of the vote compared to Biden’s 51%, losing is winning with the 45th president. After all, winning 73.6 million votes provides the bragging rights to say he won more votes than any Republican presidential candidate in history!

Moreover, Trump won 10.7 million more votes than he did in 2016, and 11.6 million more than the last Republican president to be reelected — George W. Bush in 2004. Trump won 7.7 million more votes than Obama in 2012, and all of these stats will be repeated ad nauseam over the coming months and years.

But to stage a “comeback,” the president has to stay in the public eye (think Trump TV) and continuously counter Biden’s lofty “unity” plans. We all know that Trump and his tweets will never go away until he is “sick of winning” (which is never). Even on Inauguration Day, if Trump does not attend, there will be media saturation about his absence. Why? Because he generates clicks and ratings, a media addiction. Plus, he’s guaranteed long-term attention by insinuating that he will run again in 2024.

Then imagine when he announces his plans for the Trump Hotel Presidential Library, Golf Resort & Spa. The biggest, greatest, and most lavish presidential vacation retreat in the world. It will even have a replica of the Trump Tower escalator that you can descend with a hologram of Trump and Melania! (Not sure I am joking about this.)

Circling back to the grocery store checkout line, millions of Americans will see the People cover touting that “It’s Time for Americans to Unite” — and 51% will applaud this effort. But suppose Biden’s attempt at unity fails. In that case, Democrats will be quick to blame Republicans’ intransigence while GOP leaders’ continue to fear Trump’s tweets, sure to chastise them if they favor compromises (half a loaf) to pass problem-solving legislation.

Nonetheless, in that grocery checkout line are 47.2% of Americans who voted for the president. Many (or most?) will see the same People cover and think, as my friend said aloud, “Republicans will never unite under Biden.”

Trump knows that is true and plans to keep it that way.

 https://myraadams1.medium.com/do-americans-want-to-be-united-8749e8195d98

 

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Article by Beth Baumann in Townhall

Sidney Powell: Some 'May Need Witness Protection' After Our Exposé

Trump Team attorney Sidney Powell on Friday told Newsmax's Howie Carr that once the campaign drops evidence of voter fraud there will be a number of people who will need to be in witness protection. 

"When are we going to have some positive developments in the president's case here?" Carr asked.

Powell said evidence of fraud will be released this coming week.

"This was very widespread, very deliberate, well-funded and everybody and their pet rock is trying to stop me from exposing it," the attorney said. 

According to Powell, the various election software that was used went far beyond just the presidential election and was used so specific people were put in government positions. She believes it was also used against John James, the Republican candidate for Senate in Michigan, and Leon Benjamin, the Republican candidate for Virginia's 4th Congressional District. 

"I think they did it to any particularly strong Republican candidate this time around," she said.  

When Carr pressed the former federal prosecutor about whether or not there will evidence of a "smoking gun," Powell stated the Trump Team has it.

"We have a number of smoking guns," Powell said. "And we may have to get witness protection for them."

Powell has repeatedly said software and election officials have the ability the flip votes, in this case from Trump to Biden. She claimed the Trump Team also has evidence of dead people voting in the election, something Corey Lewandowski talked about in Pennsylvania earlier this month. 

Based on her estimates, Powell believes roughly seven million votes were purged from President Trump and given to former Vice President Biden. She estimates that Biden received at least 10 million fraudulent votes. Although the Trump Team is still verifying the data they were provided with, Powell said if it ends up being solid, several million dead people voted in the 2020 election.

"We've also got evidence of people being paid, check stubs of people being paid to ballot harvest and do fraudulent voting," she said. 

"There were several ways they did this. One was an algorithm I believe they ran nationwide but I can't say that for sure yet because we haven't had the time to run the data nationwide," the attorney explained. "But that would typically be the way that it'd be done and certainly make it less apparent that it'd been done in any one place if they ran the algorithm consistently across the country."

Powell stated "the Democratic operation had to have been involved" based on Internet evidence they have seen. She cited Biden's now infamous phrase that he had the most extensive voter fraud case in American history as evidence of Democrats' involvement. 

Below is the full interview:

 

 

 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2020/11/21/sidney-powell-whistleblowers-may-need-witness-protection-after-their-allegations-are-brought-to-light-n2580467

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America is ancient Rome and could end the same way k

 

Article by Troy Smith in The American Thinker

 

America is ancient Rome and could end the same way

Toward the end of the 2nd century B.C., the Roman republic had reached a crossroads.  The threat of rival superpower Carthage had been extinguished forever.  Via extensive conquest, Rome now had to govern lands not just in its own peninsula, but from modern Spain through North Africa, Greece, and beyond.  It was this expansion that brought new geopolitical regions to control with military might, economic and cultural conditions to consider as populations of a vast variety entered the Roman world, and internal political division and strife that an abundance of success brought.

If this sounds strikingly similar to the modern American condition to the reader, it should.  It was this historical crossroads that led to the fall of the Republic and sent Rome into a dictatorship from which inevitable decay and collapse followed.  A study of these events may shed crucial light on how America may avoid the same fate.

In the year 116 B.C., Rome had on its hands an odd military conundrum: the great nation that defeated the Carthaginians and Greeks and was stuck in a military quagmire with the...Numidians in Africa.  The guerrilla tactics of their leader Jugurtha caused what should have been a mop-up military operation to become a war that dragged on for years.  At the same time, Roman citizens began to become restless not only with this, but also with the state of operations altogether.  Rome had beforehand always used the citizen-solider as the core of its military.  These property-owning farmers, whose interests tied directly to that of Rome itself, could no longer soldier in the far stretches of the Roman world and maintain their own estates.  Many in fact lost their property to the more wealthy while serving abroad.  This meant that the foundation of the military could no longer be the citizen-farmer who went on seasonal campaigns.  It was Gaius Marius who offered a solution to this dilemma.

Marius, elected to consul in 107 B.C., resolved this manpower problem "by the simple but bold expedient of enrolling the propertyless into the legions" and quickly defeated the Numidians (Nagle, p. 331).  It was at that moment that a Germanic threat emerged from the north and threatened invasion of Italy itself.  Marius, re-elected as consul despite it being illegal, took his newly formed legions to meet the challenge and decisively won, making him a hero of Rome.  He was to the Romans a man who got things done.  Further, land was to be granted to all veterans after a fierce political fight in an attempt to unify various structures of the Roman population.  But this was not to be.  The new power of the military became a potent political tool, and the temptation to use it became too great.

It was the economic and cultural conditions of the time that led to the so-called Social War.  Complaints over citizenship and its rights, wealth disparities, and vast feelings of being disenfranchised perpetuated among the people.  Perhaps sensing weakness, the King of Pontus, Mithridates VI, invaded the Roman province of Asia in 88 B.C. and massacred 80,000 Romans (333).  Something had to be done.  The ultra-popular Marius and the current elected consul, L. Cornelius Sulla, both vied to command the army to confront these issues domestic and abroad.  To resolve the issue, Sulla did the unthinkable for the Roman world.  He marched on Rome; drove out Marius by force; and initiated a reign of terror to remove, or kill, political opponents; redistribute wealth; and most importantly "stack" the Senate after killing 200 of its members and then adding an additional 400 of his choosing to its ranks (334).  No more free elections, no checks and balances, and a dictator from 82 to 79 B.C. had emerged in the blink of an eye.  The civil wars of Rome would follow, with Caesar emerging as victor until his assassination.  From there, Caesar Augustus would take full control and officially transform the once illustrious Roman Republic into an empire that never truly regained its majesty.

The problem for Rome, like America, was never one of the military or its prowess.  It was its socio-political conditions.  Rome was in the mid-2nd century what America was as the 21st century A.D. began: the economic and military superpower of the world.  Should Rome, like America, have been able to deal properly with its new challenges, it's hard to believe that any other global power could have ever seriously challenged it.  Further, it's hard to believe that Rome's fall in later centuries would have ever ushered in the Dark Ages.  But Rome was not able to deal with its internal struggles effectively.

America should take note.  What are the lessons to be learned?

First, many readers may note how eerily similar the Roman expeditions into Numidia sound to 21st-century American intervention into the Middle East, or even Vietnam in the 1960s.  In the Roman world, this called into question the competency, and even judgment, of the ruling class.  Citizens wondered, how can the mighty Roman forces devastate Carthage but struggle so badly with little Numidia?  Similar concerns have been raised about America's ability to defeat the German and Japanese war machine but struggle with its own "backwater" countries.  It's worth considering the socio-economic effects these wars can have, especially when utilizing resources for domestic use may be more strategically paramount.  Should thought, effort, and money have been spent at home for the Romans, it's probable that a lot of its internal strife could have been dealt with satisfactorily and its national debt held in check.

Second, divisiveness creates populism and centralized control that can later be turned on the citizenry itself.  The primary goal of the Roman governing world had long been to "Romanize" new populations and to protect its citizens' rights, property, and lives from foreign "barbarians."  When that goal began to shift into redistribution of wealth, power politics, and a weakened middle class as wealth disparities grew, populist politics emerged that resulted in an internal us-vs.-them scenario.  This reached its first (but not last) pinnacle in the Marius-Sulla contest that nearly ended the Republic then and there.  It was this divisiveness that led to the stacking of the Senate, much like current threats of stacking the Supreme Court, which dealt a critical blow to the freedom of Rome.  Later factions with Julius Caesar, Pompey, etc. would eventually finish the job of eliminating the vestiges of the Republic.

Simply put, the house divided cannot stand.  Not for the Romans.  Not for the Americans.

 https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/america_is_ancient_rome_and_could_end_the_same_way.html#ixzz6eRfKv3nM

 

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Without President Trump, On Whom Will The Left Blame Their Failures?

by Nathanael Blake for The Federalist

There is honor among thieves. There has to be, if they are to be successful. Even lawbreakers require some sort of law, both in reality, where organized crime requires organization, and in fiction, where it is a standard trope that the Guild of Assassins (or whatever) has rules. The wicked still need some virtue to be effective, although it must be severed from the whole of virtue.

This explains a lot about politics. The rules and organization necessary for societal or group survival and success are not the same as justice; indeed, they may be nothing more than a predatory morality that enables cooperation in oppression. 

Governments often begin as the biggest band of brigands around, and many never rise much beyond that. As Augustine put it in “The City of God,” “Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies?” He illustrated this point with the tale of a captured pirate who told Alexander the Great that the difference between piracy and Alexander’s empire was only of scale.

Adherence to the norms and manners of the ruling class does not assure personal virtue or political justice. This is obvious to those on the outside, but members (and aspiring members and hangers-on) of the ruling class have an interest in not seeing it. This willful blindness also explains a lot about the recent election.

The Biden campaign told us that the election was about the soul of the nation. A multitude of Democrats, media figures, and Never-Trump leftovers told us that it was about restoring decency to the White House. Even now, in apparent victory, they remain appalled that anyone voted for President Trump, let alone more than 70 million Americans—don’t we know how indecent he is? But it is not that we think Trump is decent, it is that we doubt that his opponents are.

We suspect that by decency they mean nothing more than the professional civility of the educated class, and we know that true decency is more than civility. It is certainly more than not being Donald Trump. 

This is not to say that civility does not matter. Conservatives know that manners matter. Manners can force us to be restrained, to at least make a show of treating political opponents with respect, and by inculcating these habits, they can make us better.

But manners can also be weaponized. They can become tools of exclusion that keep those with different beliefs and backgrounds out. They can conceal great wickedness behind a pleasing mask.

There is a persistent temptation to focus on the superficial form of decency (as manifest in politeness) over the substance of virtue. So we are treated to lectures on decency from men who have cheated on a succession of wives or traded in the wife of their youth for a young research assistant—and from a presumptive vice president who slept her way into politics.

Nor is such wickedness confined to personal sins; it extends throughout political positions. Consider the Democratic Party’s fanatical support for abortion. There is nothing decent about tearing a baby limb from limb and displaying her still-beating heart on a tray—if decency encompasses support for unrestricted, taxpayer-funded late-term abortion, then to hell with decency and the decent. 

Likewise, the bipartisan establishment embrace of China is indecent, unless decency merely means civility in the service of ruling-class interests. There is nothing decent about closer bonds with the Chinese Communist Party and the genocidal totalitarian slave state that it runs. All the civility and cheap consumer goods in the world cannot wash away that guilt.

The pretense of decency also asks us to ignore that our ruling class is neither civil nor trustworthy. The same people who spent years suggesting that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election are now outraged that he has not conceded this one. And remember when Senate Democrats accused Brett Kavanaugh of being a high-school gang-rape mastermind?

Remember when the media tried to destroy a high school student for smiling awkwardly while wearing a Trump hat? Remember when they told you the most expensive riots in American history were mostly peaceful? Remember all the times they’ve called you and your friends and family ignorant, racist bigots—as epitomized by Hillary Clinton’s consigning you to an irredeemable basket of deplorables?

The response to this litany of leftist indecency is predictable—what about this and that and the other thing Trump did and said? Well, what about them? People who have concluded that our leaders are corrupt and indecent will not support them just because Trump is also indecent. 

Furthermore, Trump will soon be out of office, while our elites will remain in their positions in media, academia, entertainment, business and government. Without President Trump, what excuse will they then have for their failures of virtue and justice?

Trump leaving office will not make America more decent if it just returns power to those whose garb of civility covers corrupt hearts. What is needed is not further recriminations over Trump, but a commitment to seek justice and the common good. This renewal must be led by those who have the power to shape institutions and culture.

I don’t say this to deny the need for all of us to repent of our sins. I merely state the obvious, which is that those with the power to shape the culture bear the most responsibility for it. If we are as indecent a nation as they say, then perhaps the likes of New York Times writers, Ivy League professors and pop stars should spend less time lecturing Trump voters and more time in sackcloth and ashes.

Utqiagvik sees last sunset of 2020

 

Published: Nov. 19, 2020 at 2:30 AM UTC+1

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - For only 34 minutes this afternoon, Utqiagvik saw the sun briefly rise above the horizon. The sun, which officially rose at 12:41, set shortly after around 1:30 this afternoon. It’s the last sunset that Utqiagvik will see in 2020, with the sun not expected to rise again until Jan. 22 of next year.

 

 

Although the sun has officially set, twilight will still be visible on the horizon over the next 2 months. This period of time is referred to as “polar night” and occurs because of the earth’s tilt, with all locations north of the Arctic Circle seeing polar night.

The polar night varies depending on how far north you are in the Arctic Circle from 28 days near Arctic Village to the 66 days that Utqiagvik will experience.

 

https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2020/11/19/utqiagvik-sees-last-sunset-of-2020/ 

 

 

Your Political Leaders Hate You And Think You’re Stupid

Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

by John Daniel Davidson for The Federalist

One thing should be abundantly clear by now, after ten months of this pandemic: our political leaders hate us and they think we’re stupid. Nothing else can explain the blatant hypocrisy we’ve seen, mostly from Democrat governors and mayors who are eager to impose harsh lockdowns and strict rules for the public at large but then turn around and do whatever they please with their own families, friends, and cronies.

Examples abound, but this week brought a fresh spectacle of hypocrisy in the form of a nervous, patently disingenuous apology from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was caught dining at an opulent birthday dinner for a top California political operative at a fancy French restaurant in Napa earlier this month, in apparent violation of his own COVID-19 protocols. 

The timing couldn’t have been worse. On Monday Newsom announced he was “pulling the emergency brake” on reopening his state amid a spike in COVID cases, dealing a crippling blow to shuttered businesses and out-of-work Californians who have been struggling for months under rolling lockdown orders.

Only after Newsom was widely criticized for his rank hypocrisy did he offer an attenuated mea culpa, explaining that upon his arrival he was surprised to find there were “just a few extra people” at the party, but quickly added it was an “outdoor restaurant” in Napa County, which has looser restrictions compared to other areas of the state. Blinking incessantly and smiling tightly, Newsom finally got around to saying, albeit in the passive voice, that “the spirit of what I’m preaching all the time was contradicted.” Indeed it was, governor.

But then we come to find out this week that the dinner wasn’t outdoors at all. Pictures obtained by the Fox News affiliate in Los Angeles show Newsom and a bunch of others dining at the French Laundry restaurant in Yountville, California. They are obviously not outside, not social distancing, and not wearing masks. 

The woman who took the photos told the Fox affiliate that Newsom was with a “very large group of people shoulder to shoulder,” and that she was “surprised because it didn’t look like he was uncomfortable being there until the very end, until people were looking at him and staring at him as he was leaving the room.”

But it doesn’t end there! On Wednesday, Politico reported that two top officials with the California Medical Association were among the guests at Newsom’s fancy birthday dinner.

You might think the state’s top medical lobbyists would think twice about flagrantly disregarding COVID guidelines, or even feign an apology like Newsom, but no. A spokesman for the CMA told Politico that “the dinner was held in accordance with state and county guidelines,” which prohibit more than three households from gathering privately—but do allow restaurants to seat people from more than three households together. See? 

Apparently this is a pretty common attitude among California politicians and their lobbyist buddies. With much of their state locked down by government fiat, last week a bunch of state lawmakers and corporate lobbyists flew off to Hawaii for a five-day conference and schmooze-fest at an upscale Maui resort. Legislators and their families mingled with representatives of businesses and trade groups that paid thousands of dollars for access to the lawmakers in what has become an annual lobbying tradition—even during a global pandemic!

Dan Howle, chairman and executive director of the Independent Voter Project, which hosts the conference, didn’t apologize. He told the San Francisco Chronicle, “Somebody has to be first to say, ‘OK, we’re going to do a group event safely.’” Yes, Dan, somebody does has to be the first, and why shouldn’t it be a handful of powerful politicians and corporate lobbyists instead of, you know, ordinary people trying to salvage their businesses and visit their loved ones?

Lockdowns For Thee, But Not For Me

On and on it goes. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who issued a citywide stay-at-home order last week, defended her recent appearance at a massive street rally celebrating Biden’s apparent victory, where a mask-less Lightfoot addressed the crowd through a bullhorn.

When asked about the obvious double standard on MCNBC last week, Lightfoot was defensive, insisting that, “There are times when we do need to have relief and come together, and I felt like that was one of those times.” She added, as if it excuses her hypocrisy, “That crowd was gathered whether I was there or not.”

Seemingly everywhere you look you find people in positions of power ignoring pandemic restrictions and doing as they please. Often these are the same people who are most outspoken about the need for lockdowns.

Back in September, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was defiant after being caught on camera (mask-less, of course) at a shuttered San Francisco salon in violation of a citywide lockdown order, calling it a “setup” and refusing to apologize.

Then last week, Pelosi was forced to cancel a dinner for incoming Democratic House members after a viral tweet showing tables being set up for the soiree understandably provoked outrage. “It’s very spaced,” she explained to an NBC News reporter.

The truth is, our elites have been doing this since the pandemic began. Who knows how many ordinary Americans were barred from attending the funerals and burials of their beloved dead these past months? Yet thousands were allowed to gather in July for memorials of Rep. John Lewis, in services that stretched from Alabama to Washington, D.C. Thousands were allowed to gather for George Floyd’s memorial service in June in Minneapolis.

We all saw the way the media treated Trump rallies like COVID super-spreader events yet condoned the hundreds of large-scale protests over the summer and fall in cities all across the country under the idiotic pretense that the protesters were “all wearing masks.” Same with the post-election celebrations that brought out thousands, dancing in the streets cheek-by-jowl and passing around champagne bottles.

Again, there is only one possible conclusion you can reach, based on months and months of appalling hypocrisy from the media and our ruling elite: they think lockdowns are for you, not them. They think pandemic rules are for you, not them. They think suffering hardships and doing as you’re told are for you, not them. Why? Because they hate you and think you’re stupid.

Sidney Powell Discusses Status of Election Investigation – Dominion and Smartmatic

Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell has a very interesting interview with BlazeTV Glenn Beck to discuss ongoing “election rigging” involving companies involved in ballot counting (software) as well as foreign actors engaged in data gathering.

Powell states she is hopeful to begin sharing documents as early as this weekend, but the scope of the investigation is taking time to complete.

New Senate Report Confirms Hunter Biden's Biz ties to CCP, Raises Troubling Ties to Kremlin

Jennifer Van Laar reporting for RedState

We covered Hunter Biden’s business ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Ukrainian energy companies extensively in the weeks leading up to this year’s general election, reporting on evidence showing that Hunter’s ties were more extensive and long-lasting than previously known, and now a Senate report compiled by two committees is providing additional confirmation.

Both Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), through the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, are conducting ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden’s business activities in China and Ukraine. The two committees released a joint report, including documents such as emails, text messages and business memos provided by Biden family business associate Tony Bobulinski. Bobulinski previously confirmed that he is cooperating with both the FBI and Senate investigations into Hunter Biden.

According to Just the News:

Specifically, the committees’ evidence traces business deals discussed between Hunter Biden, Bobulinski and an American businessman close to the Biden family named Rob Walker. The senators released an email in which Walker described himself as “being a surrogate for H or Jim when gauging opportunities.” The committee said that in the email “H appears to refer to Hunter Biden, and Jim appears to refer to Joe Biden’s brother, James Biden.”

And, Biden’s relationship with Ye Jianming, head of CEFC China Energy, is particularly problematic. The report cites that companies affiliated with Ye wired millions of dollars to the U.S. accounts of Hunter’s associates during 2017 and that:

“Ye had established ties to the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese military, the People’s Liberation Army” and worked with Hunter Biden and his associates to pursue energy deals around the globe, including in Oman, France and Russia.

At the same time, the Committees found that Ye had business dealings with “Kremlin-controlled companies and Kremlin-aligned businessmen,” and served as “China’s unofficial bridge to Russia on energy.” As an example:

As noted in the Committees’ September 23, 2020 report, in September 2017, CEFC announced its intention to purchase a 14.2 percent stake in the Russian state-owned energy company, Rosneft, for approximately $9 billion.”

Documents attached to the report show that Hunter was in close communication with Ye during that time period and was absolutely aware of the potential Rosneft deal and even that Hunter was helping Ye “on a number of his personal issues (staff visas and some more sensitive things).”

As many conservative commentators and Republican officials have said, Hunter Biden’s business ties create a massive national security risk. The Senate committees agree:

“These new records confirm the connections between the Biden family and the communist Chinese government, as well as the links between Hunter Biden’s business associates and the Russian government, and further support the Committees’ September 23, 2020 report’s finding that such relationships created counterintelligence and extortion concerns.”

And, the issue is not going away, thankfully. Sen. Johnson told Just the News:

“Our report obviously raised serious questions and broke a logjam of information, and now we have whistleblowers coming forward with new information showing even more troubling ties back to the Chinese government, Russia’s Rosneft and possibly the People’s Liberation Army,” the senator said. “… These are the people that Hunter Biden associated with and Joe Biden knew full well his family was engaged with.”

Root. It. All. Out.

Covid: Long queues for tests ahead of US Thanksgiving holiday

 

Huge queues are forming across the US as people rush to get Covid tests ahead of next week's Thanksgiving holiday.

Despite the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) warning against travel, it seems many Americans are still planning to do so.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-55022231 

Insider Tells What It’s Really Like In The Trump White House: Cordial And Efficient

In 'You're Hired,' the former chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers writes that the Trump administration was more successful and less chaotic than the media would have you believe.

by Helen Raleigh writing at The Federalist

There are numerous books about President Trump and the supposed inner workings of the Trump White House. Whether they were written by famed journalists or those who claimed to have worked closely with the president, majority of these books seem to only confirm what the president’s detractors already believed — that the president doesn’t know what he’s doing; he’s unpredictable; he spends all his time on tweeting false or exaggerated statements. Essentially, they argue the White House has been in a constant state of chaos.

Amidst the array of these indistinguishable narratives, it is refreshing to find a book such as You’re Hired: Untold Successes and Failures of a Populist President, which casts both Trump and his White House in a very different light. The author of the book, Casey Mulligan, is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. 

Mulligan gained national notice after he penned a series for the Wall Street Journal, such as How Obamacare Wrecks the Work Ethic and The Myth of Obamacare’s Affordability, that exposed the fallacies of Obamacare in its early days, when few economists bothered to produce conventional economic analyses on Obamacare’s effects on our economy and consumer behaviors. It was Mulligan’s analysis that eventually convinced the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to admit that Obamacare will harm growth and jobs, despite the admission arriving four years after Obamacare became law.

Between July 2018 and June 2019, Mulligan served as chief economist of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), a position which gave him the front-row seat to witness how President Trump, the White House staff, and the president’s cabinet worked together on fulfilling the president’s campaign promises and formulating policy solutions. According to Mulligan, what he saw and experienced at the White House “differed significantly” from his expectations and conventional wisdom. Therefore, he felt that it was necessary to document his observations and experiences in a book to supply American people with “information and economic interpretation that nobody has yet provided,” given how biased and partisan our mainstream media has become.

Given Mulligan’s position, his book is less about the populist president and more about economic policies Mulligan worked on, such as analyzing the economic costs of socialism, lowering prescription drug prices, and comparing President Reagan and Trump’s policies regarding international trade. Still, Trump looms large throughout the book.

Myth vs. Reality in the Trump Administration

Based on his observations and analysis, Mulligan disputed several popular claims against both the president and the White House. For example, 72 percent of voters believe that the president spends too much vanity time on Twitter. 

According to Mulligan, Twitter is an effective tool for President Trump for multiple purposes – sometimes the president uses Twitter to test policy ideas with the American public. Depending on the public reaction and media coverage, Trump may then decide to either turn the idea into an actual policy or make adjustments before rolling it out or shelving the idea completely.

Trump also uses Twitter to broadcast his accomplishments and amplify his messages, bypassing hostile mainstream media, which is more interested in blaming him for everything wrong than to give him any credit where credit is due. According to Mulligan, Trump often intentionally exaggerates statements in his tweets, especially when talking about his administration’s accomplishments, so “the press might enjoy correcting him and unwittingly disseminate the intended finding” of the president’s success.

There is no doubt that Twitter has given Trump the kind of reach he would never get from corporate media. Mulligan cited a study by Gallup that found three-quarters of U.S. adults or 190 million Americans “see, hear or read about @realdonaldtrump’s tweets ‘a lot’ or a ‘fair amount.” Therefore, it is extremely important for Trump to maintain a constant presence on Twitter, but “the image of POTUS alone tapping tweets from scratch on a cell phone is inaccurate.”

The president also has a social media team, which consists of himself and Dan Scavino. According to Mulligan, Trump and Scavino often work together to compose tweets and “tweets sourced from advisers would typically be vetted among dozens of them.” Still, one can’t help but wonder whether the president’s tweets name-calling and disparaging his opponents were ever vetted. On a practical level, fewer of those might do good for the president’s reputation and image. 

The American people also have been told again and again that the Trump White House is chaotic and inefficient, that staff morale is low and they are more interested in backstabbing than getting anything done. Mulligan devoted an entire chapter to evidence that, on the contrary, the Trump White House he experienced is full of  “collegiality, predictability, and productivity.” Mulligan writes almost everyone he worked with was friendly and courteous, including the president, who “was often polite and kind (not to mention interesting) in personal relations, in contrast with many of his Twitter performances.”

Mulligan noted that the CEA is often “months ahead on requests from POTUS and his staff” and has “published roughly three million words (the equivalent of fourteen 500-page textbooks) during its first two years,” including “seventeen supply and demand analyses in its first three Economic Reports of the President, as compared to one by the Obama Administration and only eight for all other Presidents combined.”

To counter the complaint that Trump must have been a horrible boss because there is a seemingly high turnover rate of White House staff, Mulligan explained that the Trump White House is a well-oiled machine and people leave as soon as they accomplish what they were set out to do or what their skill set allows them to do. Mulligan shared several examples, including his own.

He wrote, “in my own case, 12 months was just enough to complete the 8 or 10 projects for which my skills were especially applicable. Those same projects could easily have been dragged out over three or four years, but that would have been wasteful and prevented other economists from benefiting from the historical opportunities to serve in President Trump’s CEA.” 

The majority of the book focuses on economic policies, especially how an idea was debated, formulated and eventually became policy. Mulligan does a sufficient job of explaining various complex issues free of economic jargon, so even readers without an economics background can easily grasp the core issues and solutions.

One alarming takeaway the book delivers is that when a proposed legislation becomes incredibly lengthy, even very intelligent people may fail to grasp its most fundamental flaws. A telling example is when Mulligan proposed to add a talking point in the POTUS’s State of the Union speech, about the fact that Medicare for All would end private health insurance.

Plenty of smart people within the White House questioned this line, as it seemed too radical to be true, although nobody bothered to read the entire bill. So, Mulligan began to carry Section 107 of the Medicare for All bill, which specifically outlaws private health insurance, in his pocket, and had to pull it out more than once to convince skeptics. This descriptive scenario is reminiscent of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s famous saying about Obamacare: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

It is terrifying to think about how often a bill as consequential as Obamacare became law solely because lawmakers and those working in the executive branch give their support without reading or understanding what’s in it. The American people, then, are left to bear the law’s terrible consequences.

Trump’s Legacy

Mulligan is clearly a fan of President Trump, and his You’re Hired gives a flattering description of the current administration. Still, the book isn’t all praises of the Trump administration. It also encompasses a few policy failures. But in these scenarios, Mulligan holds certain cabinet officials accountable rather than blaming the president.

The title of the book, according to Mulligan, alludes to President Trump’s former television series, The Apprentice and the famous phrase, “You’re fired.” The American people hired Trump, a Washington outsider, in 2016, to “try something new” in Washington.

From historically low unemployment rates, especially for minorities (until the pandemic hit this spring),  the first criminal justice reform bill, the appointments of Supreme Court Justices, to the groundbreaking Middle East peace deals, Trump has accomplished a great deal in just one term. At the same time, the country is more divided than ever, and our economy took a big hit as a result of lockdowns.

Today, eleven million Americans, including the president, have been infected with COVID-19 and the virus has claimed the lives of nearly 220,000 Americans. America is still a long way from going back to normal, and it is difficult to re-imagine what normality may be.

Despite Trump’s personal flaws and failures as president, November’s elections might have looked a lot different if more Americans understood and appreciated Mulligan’s perspective from inside his administration. Trump may not have been rehired, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do a good job.