Monday, February 22, 2021

House Democrats Target Newsmax, Fox News for De-platforming From Cable

 

Article by Marisa Herman in Newsmax
 

House Democrats Target Newsmax, Fox News for De-platforming From Cable

Democrats are waging an assault on the First Amendment, with two Democrat House lawmakers demanding answers from cable television providers on the role they play in the “spread of dangerous misinformation.”

The letter, signed by Reps. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., and released to the press Monday, targets only conservative-leaning outlets, including Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN.

On Wednesday the House subcommittee on Communications and Technology of the Committee on Energy and Commerce is scheduled to hold a hearing on disinformation and extremism in media.

Cable service companies such as Comcast, AT&T, Spectrum, Dish, Verizon, Cox, and Altice all received the same letter on Monday pressing for answers on policies related to the spread of disinformation, rumors, and conspiracy theories on networks they carry.

The letter directly only assails conservative news networks Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN and accuses them of airing misinformation on various topics -- among them, the coronavirus, the 2020 election, and the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

Newsmax issued a statement Monday decrying what the company said was an attack on the First Amendment. The Newsmax statement read:

“The House Democrats’ attack on free speech and basic First Amendment rights should send chills down the spines of all Americans. Newsmax reported fairly and accurately on allegations and claims made by both sides during the recent election contest. We did not see that same balanced coverage when CNN and MSNBC pushed for years the Russian collusion hoax, airing numerous claims and interviews with Democrat leaders that turned out to be patently false.”

Newsmax noted that the Eschoo-McNerney letter makes several false or misleading characterizations of its coverage.

While Newsmax reported on President Trump’s contest of the 2020 elections, covering the claims he and his attorneys made, the Democrats said such reporting was “incendiary.”

The letter also states, “As a violent mob was breaching the doors of the Capitol, Newsmax’s coverage called the scene a ‘sort of a romantic idea.’”

The claim was made on Newsmax by a Touro College law professor and prominent liberal, Thane Rosenbaum, who was describing the rally before any violence or illegal activity had taken place at the Capitol.

In fact, Newsmax hosts began condemning the illegal activity that took place at the Capitol in real time, and did so repeatedly throughout the day. 

The Democratic letter also alleges that Newsmax “amplified allegations that members of the Chinese Communist Party helped to develop the COVID-19 vaccine.” Newsmax stated it has no idea what House Democrats are alleging here, as Newsmax did not report anything unusual about China and the COVID-19 vaccine.

In their letter the lawmakers also questioned what the cable providers will do, if anything, to combat the spread of such alleged falsehoods.

The Democrats even goes as far to ask whether the outlets will continue to be carried by the providers and questions their “ethical principles.” Tellingly, the Democrats are not targeting any leftwing media like CNN and MSNBC.

“It’s cancel culture coming to our news media and our sources of information,” said David Johnson, CEO of Strategic Vision PR Group. “It’s an orchestrated attack, not just by Democrats, but also by other left-wing networks to silence conservative voices completely. It’s an attempt at almost outright censorship.”

While Democrats aren’t trying to “outlaw the networks” they are calling out, Johnson said the letter is a “form of intimidation” to force cable providers to drop these networks in order to do away with conservative voices in media.

“To our knowledge, the cable, satellite and over-the-top companies that disseminate these media outlets to American viewers have done nothing in response to the misinformation aired by these outlets,” Eshoo and McNerney wrote.

The letter continues: “Are you planning to continue carrying Fox News, OANN, and Newsmax on your platform both now and beyond the renewal date? “If so, why?”

The Congressmen request companies provide a response to them by March 8.

Eshoo has previously advocated for the return of the Fairness Doctrine for both radio and television. She has gone on the record backing the doctrine to apply to both cable and satellite programming.

Under the Fairness Doctrine, TV and radio stations were required to balance opposing viewpoints on a topic. Many conservatives are opposed to the doctrine, which they say impedes on First Amendment rights.

The doctrine was repealed by the Reagan administration’s Federal Communications Commission in 1987.

Eshoo and McNerney, who have districts that represent Silicon Valley, don’t mention social media companies like Facebook and Twitter in their letter, nor do they raise questions about the disinformation these platforms may have helped spread.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/newsmax/2021/02/22/id/1011064/





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Fear and Falsehood, Tony Fauci Says Masks Could Be Needed Until 2022 or Beyond


The scale of false narrative engineering by Dr. Fauci is quite literally stunning when you stand back and look at the bigger picture behind the narrative engineering around COVID-19 and the threat it represents.

Within this interview Fauci-Mengele claims he has not seen his adult children because it is a risk. This is full-blown Pravda-level manipulation toward the viewing audience.  There is no level of fear that needs to be this great from the virus.

Take Florida as an example; the entire state is essentially open, people are engaged, there is physical interaction at all levels of human contact, and there is no extreme death or outbreak pattern related. The false and exaggerated stories just do not reconcile with the reality amid a population of more than 19 million, with massive inbound residential visits from all 50 states. Nothing is happening and life is essentially normal.

Additionally, Fauci claims masks may be needed into some unknown future, again because of some fearful determinations that have absolutely no basis on fact.  This is propaganda.


Stephen Miller Talks About JoeBama Policy and President Trump’s Next Steps


Senior Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller appears with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the dangerous immigration policy of JoeBama and the next steps in President Trump’s future working on the MAGA agenda.  Ms. Bartiromo discusses the 3,500+ border apprehensions daily along the Texas, Arizona and Southern California border area.

Mr. Miller noted he has been in recent conversations with President Trump (likely speech writing instructions), about the outline for the upcoming speech the people’s president will deliver to the CPAC audience next Sunday.




Environmentalism’s Unintended Consequences – A Wake of Destruction

 

Article by Kevin Grieve in Townhall
 

Environmentalism’s Unintended Consequences – A Wake of Destruction

Four million homes went without power in Texas. Will the self-inflicted power grid blackouts in Texas finally throw cold water on the fantasy of alternative and intermittent renewable energy as a replacement to the miracle of hydrocarbon fuels? It should. 

Cold weather completely shut down wind turbines which supply over 20 percent of Texan’s energy needs and partially shut-down natural-gas and coal-powered plants which were running at about half capacity just when energy demands skyrocketed. While winterizing the grid was not foreseeable, especially for a hundred-year weather event, even for Monday morning quarterbacks, it is a stark reminder of the intermittent energy supply of sun and wind which require battery storage.

Windmills, solar panels, and batteries are not ready for prime time, will not scale, are cost-prohibitive, and will create more environmental damage than thermal sources. According to Mark Mills, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, if we want to be stewards of our environment, further pursuit of wind, solar and batteries is not the answer as they are reaching their physical limits.  

To illustrate a few examples, it would take 500 years for the world’s largest battery factory, built by Tesla in Nevada, to produce enough batteries to store one day’s worth of U.S. electricity needs. Second, these alternative energy machines have a useful life of about twenty years, which is half that of gas-powered turbines creating a waste disposal crisis. IRENA, International Renewable Energy Agency, estimates that based upon current plans, disposal of worn-out solar panels by 2050 will constitute double the tonnage of all of today’s global plastic waste. Finally, it costs the same to drill one oil well as it does to build one large wind turbine. While the wind turbine generates the equivalent of one oil barrel of energy per hour, an oil well produces ten oil barrels per hour. One oil barrel of energy costs about $0.50 to store whereas you need $200 of batteries to store the same energy from a windmill.

The Left will treat the above as “unintended consequences” after implementing the Green New Deal, spending trillions, and causing massive dislocation to our economy in the process; just like Biden recently did with his penance to the Left when signing the executive order that canceled the Keystone pipeline. 

Economist Thomas Sowell provided us with a simple, three-question framework to ask of any “solution” that comes from the Left: Compared to what? At what cost? What hard evidence do you have? That hasn’t stopped environmentalists from leaving a wake of destruction in their path.

It all started with the false crisis of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, widely credited for starting the environmental movement.  Carson’s vilification of DDT has now been tossed upon the ash heap of history because she ignored contradictory evidence and deliberately omitted discussion of DDT’s benefits.

Over 80 percent of all infectious diseases afflicting humans are carried by insects or other small arthropods, in particular, the deadliest, malaria. Millions of people from poor countries died as a result of DDT bans. In Ceylon, for example, DDT use had cut malaria cases from millions per year in the 1940s down to just 17 by 1963, its banning in 1964 led to a resurgence of half a million victims per year by 1969. In many other countries, the effects were even worse. 

In 1970, the National Academy of Sciences issued a report praising the beleaguered pesticide and estimated that, in little more than two decades, DDT has prevented 500 million deaths due to malaria that would otherwise have been inevitable. Minor, inconvenient facts for Rachel Carson and the hysterical environmentalists.

Climate alarmists have been wrong for the past 50 years with their apocalyptic predictions. They are 0-41. Yet that hasn’t stopped “woke” car companies from jumping on the Michael Mann-made global warming bandwagon to peddle their electric cars to feed the egos of their “green” consumers. Climate change is better known as virtue signaling for the wealthy who remain buffered from their endorsed climate policies. 

Ironically, in classic socialist fashion, these cars are subsidized with “other people’s money” via the federal $7500 car tax credit. Never mind the strip mining, toxic chemical leaching, and massive water consumption of rare metal lithium extraction for non-recycled car batteries. Ignore the fact that if your electric generation source comes from coal-burning power plants, which is about 20% of the US grid, you have damaged the environment far more significantly than any gas-powered vehicle. And you still need to account for the mini toxic hazard that will have been created when it comes time to dispose of these carcinogenic, half-ton batteries.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the face of the Green New Deal, was recruited by her chief of staff, Saikat Shakrabarti, from a cast of 10,000 entries, for New York’s 14th Congressional District. Saikat is the brains behind AOC, author of the Green New Deal, and said that the controversial Green New Deal was about breaking America’s capitalistic economy and replacing it with a new system, according to The Washington Post.

These neo-Marxists and authoritarians brush aside the fact that since 1990, capitalism has lifted over 2 billion people out of poverty, those earning less than $1.90 per day. Just another page from the global governance and the Davos “reset” agenda. Since over 80% of our energy comes from CO2-emitting fossil fuels, controlling the world’s energy effectively controls the world.

The Democrat’s answer to America’s energy independence and capitalistic-based freedoms is yet another wake of destruction heading our way with more job losses, rolling blackouts, foreign entanglements, and a lower standard of living.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kevingrieve/2021/02/22/environmentalisms-unintended-consequences--a-wake-of-destruction-n2585087 


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The death of free speech

 

Article by Arthur Kennelly in The American Thinker
 

The death of free speech

From the 1960s until quite recently, most Americans could freely voice their political views without fear of repercussions. Liberals defended the right of conservatives to voice their views. While liberals and conservatives disagreed on various economic, social, and political issues they both knew how essential it was for the wellbeing of our democracy for both sides to be taken seriously. Sadly, this genuine respect for both sides recently ended.

In 2018, Alex Jones was removed from every major social media network for his statements about Muslims. In the years since, several other major conservatives have been censored from social media including Paul Joseph Watson, PragerU, and Stephen Molyneux. The censorship of conservatives culminated when Twitter permanently banned President Trump in 2021. Just recently a famous Hollywood actress was fired for her conservative views. 

On February 10, 2021, Lucasfilm fired Gina Carano from the hit Disney+ show The Mandalorian over a political post on her social media page. On Twitter, Carano shared a post stating, “Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors… even by children… Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

In response to Carano’s tweet, Lucasfilm said that she would no longer be cast as Cara Dune nor will she ever work with Disney in any other capacity. Carano played the main supporting female character in The Mandalorian, Cara Dune. She was in seven of the series’ sixteen episodes. Dune was an old friend of The Mandalorian (actor Pedro Pascal) and she helped The Mandalorian on his adventures with Grogu (Baby Yoda). Carano is an important character, as important as Carrie Fisher was to the original trilogy. The series will not be the same without her.

Ironically, Lucasfilm and Disney firing Carano for her political beliefs further proves that her statement is true. Just as Jews were bullied for their religious beliefs by their neighbors in the 1930s, so Trump supporters are bullied by Leftists today. Over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, several incidents occurred in which leftists assaulted Trump supporters. In December 2019, a 37-year-old man was arrested for hitting and choking a retired Navy Seal Trump supporter. The victim had attended an event supporting President Trump.

In February 2020, a 34-year-old man attacked a 15-year-old boy for wearing a Trump hat outside of a voting location in New Hampshire. After the man voted, the boy told the man to, “have a nice night.” The man was so distraught at the sight of a Trump supporter that he cussed at the kid and slapped him in the face.

Recently on January 9, 2021, several members of Antifa attacked Trump supporters and police officers in San Diego. The Antifa members were armed with baseball bats, chemical sprays, and bottles.

There are also multiple incidents in which Trump supporters were either suspended from school or fired from their jobs. In 2018, an Oregon high school senior wore a pro-border wall shirt in his “People and Politics” class. He was asked to remove the shirt or leave the school because the shirt offended multiple people. The student chose to leave the school and the school suspended him for leaving. The school later rescinded its suspension, but the harm was already done. This student was punished for supporting the president.

In 2021, following the capital protests, several Trump supporters from the Dallas-area were either fired or lost their businesses for participating in the capital riots. 

Ours is now an oppressive society, with freedom of speech sadly becoming a thing of the past. Many Trump supporters are uncomfortable voicing their views. America is becoming more like China, where the big tech giants tell everyone what to believe. As in China, if Americans act or speak against the socialist agenda, they are either censored or lose their jobs. 

This new environment has fostered a society where no one can discuss political issues. Most conservatives are afraid to speak because of repercussions. Due to this, we no longer have civil discourse in America. People stay within their own political echo chambers and few listen to the other side anymore. It is becoming increasingly difficult for liberals to hear conservative ideas because there are few conservatives in the mainstream media. These things have significantly divided the country. 

The longer conservatives, particularly Trump supporters, are punished for voicing their views the longer our society will be divided. Evelyn Beatrice Hall summarized the traditional liberal view in 1906 by writing, “I don’t agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Liberals used to use believe in this. Let us return to a time when liberals support freedom of speech. 

 





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Is the Biden Administration Stumbling Into War?

Nothing is more dangerous than stronger powers, even inadvertently, 
sending signals that are interpreted as weakness by weaker powers.


What causes wars?

Innately aggressive cultures and governments, megalomania, the desire for power, resources, and empire prompt nations to bully or attack others. Less rational Thucydidean motives such as fear and honor and perceptions of self-interest are not to be discounted either. 

But what allows these preemptive or aggressive agendas to reify, to take shape, and to leave tens of thousands dead?

The less culpable target (and wars are rarely a matter of 50/50 culpability) also has a say in what causes wars. The invaded and assaulted sometimes overlooked or contextualized serial and mounting aggression. They displayed real military weakness or simple political ineptness that eroded deterrence. They failed to make defensive alliances with stronger nations or slashed defense investments that made the use of deterrent force impossible. 

In sum, without deterrence and the clear potential in extremis to do an aggressor damage, there can be no meaningful peace negotiations, no “conflict resolution”—unless one believes a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, or Kim Il-sung can become a reasonable interlocutor across the peace table.

Weakness as Strength, Strength as Weakness

But there are also other more subtle follies that can turn tensions into outright fighting. And they are relevant in the current global landscape as we go not just from one president to the next, but from a realist and tragic view of foreign policy to an idealist and therapeutic one. 

One catalyst for war is a lack of transparency about the relative strengths and will of potential enemies. 

If, even unwittingly, President Biden projects the image that the Pentagon is more concerned about ferreting out wayward internal enemies than in seeking unity by deterring aggressors, then belligerents such as China, North Korea, and Iran and others will likely—even if falsely and unwisely—wager that the United States will not or cannot react to provocations, as it has done in the past. And accordingly, they will be emboldened to provoke their neighbors with less worry about consequences. 

Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941 on the false assumption that Stalin had been too busy purging his military elite, starving his own people, or executing both rivals and friends. He certainly did all that and more. 

Yet despite Soviet cannibalism, nonetheless, Hitler was apparently unaware that the chaotic Russians could still field an army twice the size of his own. Stalin’s tanks and artillery were just as or more deadly than Hitler’s—and soon far more numerous than the assets of Blitzkrieg. A spirited, defiant and, yes, united populace was determined to protect Mother Russia from the invader. The British Empire and America were far more potent allies than Hitler’s Mussolini and Tojo. 

So wars are deterred when all the potential players know the relative strengths of each and the relative willingness to use such power in defense of a nation’s interests. Lack of such knowledge leads to dangerous misjudgments. And war then becomes a grotesque foreordained laboratory experiment to confirm what should have been known in advance.

Wars begin when aggressive powers believe that their targets are weaker, or give the false impression that they are weaker, or at least stay inert in the face of provocation. What were Argentina’s generals or Saddam Hussein thinking when they provoked the United Kingdom or the United States during the Falkland War and First Gulf War? No doubt, they assumed that their more powerful targets were too busy elsewhere, played out, or insufficiently concerned to react. In aggregate, a lot of damage and death followed in those two respective brief wars of 1982 and 1991—and all to prove what should have been obvious.

Perhaps Buenos Aires had one too many times read of British parliamentarians referencing the “Malvinas” rather than the Falkland Islands. Or Saddam remembered too well the United States Ambassador to Iraq naïvely voicing uninterest in 1990 “border” disputes between quarrelling Arab neighbors—perhaps in the manner of Dean Acheson’s controversial speech in January 1950 to the effect that South Korea was probably not inside the U.S. defensive orbit abroad and thus made a previously hesitant Stalin, Mao, and Kim Il-sung a little less hesitant. 

Both Argentina and Iraq wrongly equated diplomatic naiveté and laxity with military unreadiness and weakness and paid the price in inglorious defeat.

The truth is that for the immediate future, the U.S. economy and military remain the strongest in the world. Provoking America is an especially unwise act, given the repercussions that could follow. What reassures our allies is not talk of new bipartisanship, internationalism, and tolerance, but quiet coupled with overwhelming power and a clear message to use it in defense of our interests.

Some German and Japanese military grandees pointed out to the Hitler and Tojo regimes that it was insanity to de facto prompt a potential alliance between the British Empire, the United States, and the USSR, given their enemies’ aggregate populations, collective GDP, global reach, and military potential if mobilized. 

But too many in the deluded Nazi and Japanese militaries instead judged British appeasement in the mid-1930s, American isolationism during the 1930s, and Russian collaboration from 1939 to 1941 as proof of weakness and timidity. Nothing is more dangerous than stronger powers, even inadvertently, sending signals that are interpreted as weakness by weaker powers. 

Biden should not assume that Trump’s gratuitous rough talk abroad was as dangerous as loud laxity. His predecessor never committed the felony of suggesting to a weaker Iran or China that their aggression would be contextualized or ignored. And his unpredictability more likely bothered Beijing than the predictable acquiescence and reassurance of the Obama years.

Peace For Our Time

It is also dangerous to raise unwarranted expectations that a new round of negotiations, a new head of state, a new climate of reconciliation can all per se reformulate animosities and lead to landmark negotiations and peaceful resolutions to potential conflicts.

If proper attitudes, good will, and eagerness for negotiations on the part of democracies could ensure peace, then the 20th century could have skipped the over 150 million killed in conflicts, and the League of Nations and United Nations would now be deified for eliminating deadly wars.

The story of intifadas and Middle East wars is often the aftermath of unrealistic new peace efforts to bridge differences that could not be bridged without the perceived humiliation of one or both parties. Thinking an enemy will give concessions that it simply will not or cannot only inflames an aggressor.

Neville Chamberlain’s felony was not just going to Munich with the intention of rewarding German aggression, or believing he could trust a thug, but also returning waving a piece of paper with grand boasts of “peace for our time” that deluded his own countrymen. When the idiocy of Munich soon sorely woke up the formerly ecstatic British public, and perhaps enraged the German people who felt Hitler’s enemy already earlier acquiesced to German dreams, both nations concluded that if a sure peace treaty had failed, then what was left but war?

The so-called comprehensive Peace of Nicias (421 B.C.) was supposed to ensure not just peace to end the first decade of the Peloponnesian War, but a grand 50-year peace and de facto alliance of Sparta and Athens to resume their partnered leadership of the Greek world. 

But after the prior five invasions of Attica, the plague, the chronic revolts of Athenian allies, the savagery at Plataea, Mytilene, and Torone, a mere modest armistice would have been a greater achievement. 

Instead, within months, both sides were scheming to use third parties to harm their respective “ally.” And the massacre at Melos, the disaster at Sicily, and a near decade of brutal naval war in the Aegean lay ahead. Once grand, comprehensive, all-inclusive peace deals fail, both sides can see no alternative but war.

“Comprehensive” peace talks often can be more dangerous than modest agreements to channel hatred in some way other than shooting. Biden should keep an eye on Iran and China, and avoid the fantasies of some wide-ranging settlement that will be neither thorough nor a settlement.

We’re All Glad He’s Gone

Just as hazardous is to attack gratuitously the statecraft of one’s predecessor. Such internecine sniping sends the message abroad that common ground will be found not among Americans but among America and its enemies—a surreal idea that America’s enemies see as weakness to be leveraged. 

Barack Obama made a career about reassuring the world that George W. Bush and his preemptive wars were reckless and not to be repeated. He earned the murderous ISIS “Jayvee” caliphate as his reward along with misadventures with Syria and in Libya. If we wondered why Putin turned so ambitiously aggressive, it might have been that the foundations of Obama-Clinton reset were based on a false conclusion that Bush’s modest pushback against Russian aggression was too provocative and would be mitigated in a way that green-lighted Putin. 

When a government loudly and boastfully expresses a new reset, a new paradigm, a new arrogance about solving problems, it risks blaming its own country rather than the foreign belligerent, and thereby can only encourage adventurism.

Joe Biden has billed his foreign policy team as a return of the “bipartisan” and “internationalist” breakthrough pros—in rebuke of his predecessor, in the manner that Trump himself sometimes publicly trashed Obama’s foreign policy, rather than just silently resetting and changing it.

In all these cases, foreign powers, friendly and hostile, infer not just that U.S. foreign policy is mercurial, but that they can calibrate and massage it to find either assistance or exploit weakness, that otherwise would be difficult or unwise. 

After all, if Biden sounds like he hates Trump more than the Iranians, why then would not the Iranians believe he is the enemy of their enemy and now a friend to be used? 

When a president tells the world that his predecessor did not vaccinate one American, and then enters office weeks after he and 17 million other Americans were already vaccinated, what is the world—and especially American enemies— to think? That irrational hatred of Trump and his policies is a way to win exemption for their own behavior?

If Biden promises to return to the Iran Deal to create peace in the Middle East, to bring back the Palestinians to the center of negotiations to “find a comprehensive peace” with Israel, he will not merely stumble, but fail after claiming he did everything right in failing. 

Despite the animus toward Trump, nothing is broken abroad. NATO is better funded, better armed, and more fairly contributory to the shared cause. In the Middle East, pro-Western Arab and Muslim nations are now aligned with the United States to contain Iran and its appendages like the Assads in Syria, Lebanese Hezbollah, and West Bank Hamas. Iran, the font of anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East has not merely been sanctioned and isolated, but broken and decimated by the pandemic and crashing oil prices. 

The reason that China despised the Trump Administration was not, as it claimed, xenophobia, racism, or China bashing, but rather because Trump called out and exposed its decades of aggression, subversion, and its planned trajectory to global hegemony. 

When the Biden team talks of reentering the Iran Deal without the Trump baggage, or wants a new relationship with China, they may well instead be interpreted by our enemies as rejecting deterrence, forgetting why the Trump Administration held those two countries to account, and inviting them again to take risks they otherwise might not be willing to take. 

Our enemies may not see Biden just as elderly and frail, his congressional majorities thin, his animus directed more at the Trump movement than others abroad, but as unlikely to respond to their own aggression.

Biden would do better to apprise quietly his friends and enemies of America’s force and determination. He should resist comprehensive deals with China and Iran that have unrealistic chances of success given their agendas. And he could claim Trump’s successes as his own and continue their current trajectories, rather than court favor abroad by distancing himself from a largely successful foreign policy guided by Secretary of State Pompeo. 

Otherwise, the alternatives will become increasingly dangerous.


A word we should stop using

 

 

One Billion Dollars in $100 Bills

 

Article by Nile McAdams in The American Thinker
 

A word we should stop using

“Billion” is a word we need to stop using. It represents such a vast amount that it’s vague to the point of meaninglessness to anyone not a mathematician. Any discussion using “billion” is automatically and immediately evicted to the realm of the terminally abstract, lacking any reference to the world as we know it.

What do we use as a replacement? The phrase per capita, which provides with a clear and undeniable connection to the real world. The calculations are simple: there are approximately 330 million people in the United States.  A billion is 1,000 million, so dividing 1,000 by 330 equals 3.03.  In other words, when the federal government spends one billion dollars, the proportionate share for every man, woman, and child is a little over three dollars.  Every time you hear that a government program costs X billions of dollars just multiply the lead number by three to arrive at your share of the spending.  You should then wonder, “Did I get my money’s worth?”   

Instead of saying “the U.S. Department of Energy 2021 budget ask is $35.4 billion,” we should say “the budget ask is $106.20 for each and every person in the United States.” The Department of Education’s ask is $66.6 billion.  That works out to $199.80 for every American.

Let’s take some hypothetical situations to see what this means. The federal tax burden of family of four of these two federal departments will be $424.80 for energy and $799.20 for education for a total of $1,224. Remember this is just two of the many federal budget line items.

A family of eight, for both departments, would pay $2,448.  Remember, these amounts are just for federal taxes.  There could also be state and local taxes earmarked for education or green energy. These could be special items such as property taxes, special assessments, and state taxes.  

The question everyone should ask is “Am I getting my money’s worth?”  I’ll bet most people in Texas don’t think they are getting their money’s worth from the Department of Energy just now. 

Here is a list of the 100 worst schools in America as of June, 2017.  I will bet most people with kids in these school districts don’t think they are getting their money’s worth from the Department of Education.

So… the next time you hear or read the word “billion” just think "three dollars." Then ask yourself “is it worth it?” You might be surprised how often the answer is no.

By the way, President Biden is proposing a $1.9 trillion dollar stimulus package. Your share of that amounts to $5,700. Do you think you will get your money’s worth?

 





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No Proof January 6 Was an ‘Armed Insurrection’


Not one person has been charged with 
possessing or using a gun inside the Capitol. 
Further, no one even has been identified 
as carrying a gun inside the building.


Since the Justice Department launched its nationwide manhunt to track down and arrest anyone involved with the Capitol breach on January 6, hundreds of perpetrators have been arrested.

Most face misdemeanor charges for trespassing or disorderly conduct, but dozens are in jail and denied bond for the thoughtcrime of believing the 2020 presidential election wasn’t on the up-and-up. The acting U.S. attorney general overseeing the investigation promises to apprehend hundreds more, however, it’s been two weeks since authorities have arrested anyone in connection to the probe.

Almost as embarrassing as the bad behavior of a handful of Trump supporters that day is the conduct of the national news media and Washington lawmakers. The country has been subjected to a public group therapy session of sorts wherein grown adults—Republicans and Democrats alike, elected to defend the country at all costs—now recount their harrowing experiences on January 6, which include running away from no one in particular or insisting, without evidence, that they were on the verge of being “murdered.”

The media continue to promote any number of fabricated storylines intended to bolster the laughable narrative of an “insurrection” occurring at the Capitol. The concocted account of the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick recently fell apart; the New York Times, after pressure from outlets including American Greatness, effectively retracted its January 8 article claiming Sicknick was killed by a fire extinguisher at the hands of Trump “loyalists.”

So now it’s time to straighten out another twisted tale animating the folklore of January 6: The idea the random chaos amounted to an “armed insurrection.” Hundreds of crazed Trumpists carrying deadly weapons, the public believes, stormed the Capitol to injure or kill senators, representatives, and even Vice President Mike Pence in order to avenge a “stolen” election.

Most news outlets—as they did with the coverage of Sicknick’s death—unflinchingly repeat the “armed insurrection” trope, which can be traced back to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s January 7 press conference. “[Y[esterday, the President of the United States incited an armed insurrection against America, the gleeful desecration of the US Capitol…and the violence targeting Congress are horrors that will forever stay in our nation’s history,” Pelosi ranted.

But like everything else that exits the mouth of the Speaker of the House, her description isn’t only flat wrong but also manufactured for wicked political purposes.

When a thinking person hears the word “armed,” he usually thinks of a firearm, or a gun. Yet here is how the Justice Department describes the trove of deadly weapons seen at the Capitol that day: “During the course of the violent protests, several violent protestors were armed with weapons including bats, pepper spray, sticks, zip ties, as well as bulletproof vests and anti-tear gas masks.” (The zip ties, it’s important to note, weren’t brought into the building by Trumpists but by law enforcement officials.)

I reviewed the charges filed against the more than 200 people arrested for criminal misconduct related to January 6 and found only 14 defendants face any sort of weapons charge. Offenses vary; indictments range from possession of a “deadly” weapon on “restricted” grounds to assaulting a police officer.

But so far, just two people have been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm—and there’s no proof either man “breached” the Capitol let alone threatened lawmakers as part of a coordinated, armed insurrection.

Lonnie Coffman, 70, was indicted by a D.C. grand jury on January 11 with 17 firearms violations. Around 1 p.m. on January 6, Capitol Police, according to charging documents, noticed what appeared to be a gun on the front seat of a pickup truck parked near the Capitol. Cops searched the vehicle and found a handgun, a rifle, loaded magazines, and mason jars filled with material they believed were components to make Molotov cocktails. When Coffman arrived near his vehicle at around 6:30 p.m., he was questioned by police; they discovered two small handguns in his pockets.

Federal authorities threw the book at Coffman, a veteran with no criminal record.

But although he’s been charged with more than a dozen violations of D.C.’s strict gun possession laws, Coffman has not been charged with using his guns, ammunition, or the alleged Molotov cocktails. Further, it’s worth noting that aside from the two pistols found on his person, the other contraband was locked in his truck as the “insurrection” occurred.

The FBI isn’t finished with Coffman yet; agents raided his remote Alabama home on January 26. He’s currently being held in a D.C. jail without bail.

Christopher Alberts was arrested near the Capitol the evening of January 6 after police found a 9 mm handgun and ammunition in his possession. The Maryland resident has been charged with one count of unlawful possession of a firearm on Capitol grounds or building, one count of carrying a pistol without a license, one count of possession of ammunition, and one count of trespassing.

Again, although Alberts was detained near the Capitol, prosecutors do not allege he entered the building or attempted to use his weapon on January 6.

Here is a roundup of the non-firearm “dangerous and deadly” weapons charges:

  • Zachary Alam, nicknamed “Helmet Boy,” is charged with assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon although it’s unclear if the weapon used was the helmet he found on the ground or his body. (Documents allege Alam “pushed his body up against one of the Capitol Police officers guarding the door.”) Alam was near Ashli Babbitt when she was shot and killed by a still-unidentified police officer.
  • Richard Barnett, the man pictured behind Pelosi’s desk, faces two charges of unlawfully possessing a “dangerous or deadly weapon,” which, according to prosecutors, was a “ZAP Hike N Strike 950,000 Volt Stun Gun Walking Stick” he carried with him on January 6. He did not use it.
  • Scott Fairlamb faces a 12-count indictment including assaulting an officer and “entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon.” Fairlamb had a small collapsible baton; it’s unclear whether he entered the Capitol at any time.
  • Robert Gieswien, found with a baseball bat and pepper spray, is charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon.”
  • Alex Harkrider and Ryan Nichols are being charged together; they face 13 counts, including four related to possession or use of “deadly or dangerous” weapons. Nichols is accused of using pepper spray on an officer—he allegedly sprayed the irritant on a crowd which included officers attempting to secure the building—and carrying a crowbar into the Capitol. Harkrider is charged with illegally possessing an axe on government property. Investigators gleaned most of their evidence from posts on the defendants’ social media accounts.
  • Emanuel Jackson is charged with striking police officers outside the Capitol with a baseball bat.
  • Edward Lamb, according to charging documents, “swung, thrusted, and/or jabbed the [baseball] bat at law enforcement officers multiple times” outside the Capitol. He faces 11 counts including three related to use of a deadly weapon.
  • Patrick McCaughey was directly behind Officer Daniel Hodges when he was crushed in a doorway by the mob. McCaughey faces three weapon-related charges; the weapon was a police riot shield he found on the scene.
  • Matthew Miller is charged with using a deadly weapon—a fire extinguisher—outside the Capitol. Miller allegedly sprayed the contents toward officers.
  • Jordan Mink is accused of using a “deadly weapon,” a baseball bat, on “unrestricted” grounds. (Mink is photographed smashing in a window.) In denying bond, a federal magistrate stated that January 6 was “a horrendous crime against our democracy that Mr. Mink not only participated in, but was a very active and violent participant.”
  • Robert Sanford, initially believed to be the suspect who injured Sicknick, is charged with throwing a fire extinguisher and striking three officers. (Investigators said the object “appeared” to be a fire extinguisher.) The retired Pennsylvania fireman also is being held without bond. 

So, as Joe Biden likes to say, let’s be clear: Not one person has been charged with possessing or using a gun inside the Capitol. Further, no one has been identified as carrying a gun inside the building. Of the hundreds of photographs posted on the FBIs Most Wanted List for the Capitol breach investigation, not a single picture shows anyone with a firearm.

Only one defendant had a handgun on his person outside the building hours after the “insurrection” ended. The other defendant had two guns on his person but investigators don’t allege he was inside the Capitol on January 6.

At least 100,000 attended Trump’s speech that day; fewer than 1,000 “stormed” the Capitol. A few hundred have been arrested and only 14 face weapons charges. Those “deadly and dangerous” weapons include two baseball bats, a can of pepper spray, a walking stick/stun gun, an axe, a few fire extinguishers (one in question), a helmet, a riot shield, and a collapsible baton. And at no time did this random weaponry pose a lethal threat to lawmakers inside the Capitol.

Do the idiots who used any sort of weapon to harm an officer or damage property deserve to pay for their stupid and violent actions? Yes.

Was January 6, 2021 an “armed insurrection” or anything close?

No.